Help me answer this question from a coworker:

[Orrex]

In a spirited but good-natured discussion in the office, a coworker asked if freedom is better than happiness, security, and comfort. And if so, then why?

To be honest, I couldn't give a great off-the-cuff response. The best I could do, and, I realized, the best argument I've ever heard, amounts simply to a rephrasing of assertions by philosophers, politicians, and/or our "founding fathers."

I'd prefer to avoid appeals to any inherent and supposedly self-evident superiority of freedom, as well as appeals to moral absolutes.

Help me out, please. Why, exactly, is freedom better than happiness, security, and comfort? Are there exceptions? Does freedom exist, really? Or is it simply an ideal to which we aspire?

I am greatly interested in your responses.

Thanks!

[Burning Water]

1. How about

Without freedom you can't have happiness, security, or comfort.

[stop the bleeding]

3. sounds good to me n/t

[yodermon]

48. Subjective.

See Cuba.

[Burning Water]

63. LOL n/t

[havocmom]

2. Yep. I'd rather be free and informed that deluded

into THINKING I was happy.

Free beats numb & dumb every time. I ani't no cud chewer, smiling, singing, and waiting to be sent to the slaughter house.

[donco6]

4. FALSE DICHOTOMY

The assumption is that you can have happiness, security without freedom. I don't believe it's possible.

[Orrex]

10. Not saying that one excludes the other, but

If you could choose only condition one or the other, why might one choose freedom over happiness/security/comfort?

That, I think, was my coworker's question.

[donco6]

15. No, I reject the question altogether.

There is no such thing as happiness without freedom. It's like asking if you would like a pink elephant or a blue one.

As it may, I guess the flawed hypothetical is really asking, "Would you rather be free, or fat, stupid and ignorant?"

My guess is, a lot of people would pick the latter.

[Orrex]

21. Well, the question was formulated by Ben Franklin, in a manner of speaking

But the assertion that There is no such thing as happiness without freedom is poorly grounded. On what basis is that claim made?

[EC]

35. Jail, dictatorships, prison camps, all come to mind

I'm sure one could dig up a smile now and then, but I'm also sure they'd rather be free.

[EC]

34. How can you have happiness/security/comfort if you are

not free? Isn't freedom the one thing people die to have?

[lady lib]

20. Yes, a false dichotomy.

The argument assumes that even theoretically these can be mutually exclusive. In reality, we derive happiness and emotional comfort from freedom. Security refers back to the emotional comfort issue. It can be achieved with or without freedom, but it's certainly more comforting to have it while also living in freedom.

[flamin lib]

5. Freedom isn't different from happiness, security and comfort.

It is a prerequisite for them. I don't understand how one could have happiness, security and comfort without freedom.

[Acryliccalico]

9. I agree....n/t

[TomInTib]

6. Weren't they self-inclusive? Why choose one over the other?

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is what freedom basically is.

[seabeyond]

7. what an illusion. without freedom you will not be able to obtain

any of hte three of those things. one can only have happiness, security and comfort with freedom

but then probably way over this persons head and wouldnt be an easy explanation for the person. they would actually have to think. but his conclusions are wrong

[valerief]

8. Who defines happiness, security, and comfort?

Wouldn't you need freedom to do that for yourself?

[oneighty]

23. Delete by owner of foolish thought.

180

[MadMaddie]

24. That' it exactly...

If for existence the * Cabal defined what happiness, security and comfort for every US citizen what would it look like?

From what we have seen it might look like this....

Every women must be married off....and produce babies...even if her health is in danger (the lady that killed all of her kids down in Texas comes to mind, Andrea Yates I think)

The only sex education the citizens will receive is from the government. Abstinence until you are married.
A heterosexaul relationship is the only way you can be happy

Every American must go to the defined religious church of the republic to be educated.

No individual is allowed to question the great leaders of this country....No unhappy thoughts
To make sure you are secure the government will monitor every Americans mail, email and movements

If you fail to meet the above objectives you will be disappeared to special Haliburton camps so you can be reeducated in the Gitmo fashion.

Sounds like a Facist Regime to me?

No thanks I would rather fight and die for our rights as individual American citizens!!

[valerief]

27. Eighty-hour work weeks and no health coverage

Oh, yeah, and enough toxins in the water and air to facilitate death before retirement.

[BOSSHOG]

11. Is that the latest right wing talking point??

Security is better than freedom?!? Freedom provides security and happiness and comfort for many. Without freedom the other three would be artificial. No doubt there are a whole bunch of happy, secure and comfortable people in Cuba; BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER.

Would turning the country over to the republican party be better than free and fair elections. Your coworker would piss my veteran's ass off.

[OctOct1]

12. Thank God our founding fathers had no confusion

[Orrex]

13. Thanks very much for the answers so far! Let me elaborate, though...

Several people have asserted that security, happiness, and comfort are not possible without freedom, but I'm not sure that this is necessarily the case. A child, for example, can have security, happiness, and comfort without being free.

I appreciate your thoughts!

[lukasahero]

26. And therein lies your answer - a CHILD

can be secure, happy and comfortable when someone else makes all the decisions for them.

When adults choose "secure, happy and comfortable" over free they are choosing the life of a child. Where "grownups" decide what constitutes secure, where others decide what constitutes happy and where someone else decides for ALL what constitutes comfortable. What constititutes any of those things depends on the individual and while it might work for one, it should never be expected to work for all. Isn't that the very definition of freedom?

Of course it also demonstrates why the "strict father" model of government is currently working with a lot of people - they prefer to be treated as children rather than take the responsibility generally associated with adulthood. They don't want to have to put in the effort to learn and understand complex issues.

[Orrex]

30. That's a great response!

The "strict father" model is very much in line with this coworker's politics and values in general, as far as I'm able to determine.

I'll offer your answer and see what he makes of it.


Thanks!

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. We are not, for the most part, children.

There is a factor being left out of the discussion - responsibility.

A person can, like a child, be secure and happy and comfortable, but without responsibility that security, happiness and comfort are dependent upon another's good will. Children have no choice and as a result we see terrible abuses perpetrated upon them by those who are supposed to care for them.

The corollary for adults is a benevolent dictatorship, where our security, happiness and comfort are dependent upon the good will or, at worst, benign neglect of the state - if the state changes its mind we have no recourse. Acceptance of that dictatorship requires that we not think about others - the happiness of the individual is the greatest good and do not make yourself unhappy thinking about those the state does not smile upon. It cannot remain that way, however. If you do not report a child-beater you become complicit in the beating - if you do not stand against abuse by the state, you become complicit in that abuse.

In freedom we are responsible for ourselves and each other. We, as adults, accept that responsibility -- as Tom Joad, at the end of Grapes of Wrath "wherever you see...I'll be there". Without that responsibility we look to Big Brother or The Fatherland to be responsible for us, and when we do that we cannot complain if he decides to beat or starve us. And what is our security, happiness or comfort worth then?

[EC]

36. No, I contend that the child is still free

will the parents lock up the child for mis-behavior? Children are taught boundries that are the same as the laws we abide, but they are still free.

[Hosnon]

14. I believe it is a continuum...without security you can't have freedom and

without freedom much of anything else isn't worthwhile.

Happy balance somewhere...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. "Freedom" is a relative term. Nobody is truly "free".

And, most people seldom (if ever) exercise their "freedom" to speak out, protest injustice, or rebel. And, most would give up their freedoms in return for the similar illusions of "happiness", "security" and "comfort".

"Freedom" is the province of philosophers. For most people it's, at best, an abstract concept with little meaning.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

17. The pride in being a mature, responsible adult, who faces challenges

and does his or her own small part, rather than being a sniveling, immature person that lets other people take the responsibilty. An example to set for children and youth.

[Sammy Pepys]

18. Freedom

Freedom, in a philosophical sense, is our unadulterated state in nature...and it's confusing, maybe even firghtening. So we cede some of that for things like...voila...security and comfort. The pros of that tradeoff are pretty clear cut, as we've all chosen safety and comfort over freedom (again, the philosophical freedom).

[brooklynite]

19. Because happiness and comfort require freedom...

(lets set aside security for the moment; you can have a stable disctatorship with very little crime)

Happiness and comfort are subjective terms; what makes you happy may not do the same for me.

Absent freedom, someone must abstractly decide what measure of happiness and comofort will be available for everyone else. Even assuming the best of motives, its unlikely that everyone else will agree with that decision. Hence, having sacrificed freedom, the public will not fully experience the promised happiness or comfort. People must have the freedom to shoose a path of life that (hopefully) leads to the happiness and comforts they seek.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

22. Here's my take

Freedom is better because I like to read anything I choose
Freedon is better because I like to internet surf anywhere I want
Freedom is better because I like to question any ideas/concepts/laws I disagree with
etc,etc,etc,.........
:)

[TreasonousBastard]

25. Ridiculous question...

and how is it better to be "free" but unhappy, insecure and uncomfortable?

All of these terms are relative and interdependant. The Old Order Amish and ultra-orthodox Jews are not what most of us would consider "free" but they are quite content and many consider their restrictions to be liberating in their terms. Cubans are certainly not "free" but many prefer the certainty of their misery to the uncertainty of what we consider "freedom." Few would prefer to live in "free" Haiti or Mexico. Or Iraq.

There are the obvious poltical and social distinctions between, say, free democracies and dictatorships, but in the end "freedom" is a very personal thing. As are happiness, security and comfort. They are really all pretty much the same thing.

[yellowdogmi]

28. I think it is a false choice.

I know that if I didn't have the freedom to speak my mind I would be very unhappy. I also don't think that I would feel very secure knowing that someone that didn't like my opinions could affect my comfort level. To live without freedom would be like living in a oppresive society where we did not interact with others for fear of how the interaction could affect us. We are social animals. If we were to suspend freedoms for security, hapiness or comfort I don't think that it would take long before we lost all three of those.

[methinks2]

29. because happiness is individual

each person has a different version of perfect happiness. Therefore we should be allowed to find and express our own happiness in complete freedom. (Some of wouldn't drive a cadillac or lexus no matter the price, we want jeeps, that is our happiness. Others want the caddies and lexus' anything less doesn't make them happy. But we should never be forced to accept someone else's happiness and comfort as our own.) Freedom is choice. I choose the level of security and comfort that makes me happy. No fat politician or preacher should choose my level of happiness. But to others, happiness and security is letting other make the choices for them. It's about the freedom to choose.

[freefall]

31. Isn't freedom basically the abililty to pursue

happiness, security and comfort on your own terms? And aren't all those terms somewhat fluid? I would guess that they mean something different to almost everyone you ask. I don't think it is a valid question unless your coworker defines what each one of those abstract terms means to him/her.

[EC]

33. And how about OUR CONSTITUTION that declares our rights

to all those + security? We can have both, it's a false arguement that it's one or the other....

[MrBenchley]

37. Is THAT what she thinks she's getting now?

[cry baby]

38. I equate that question with the red pill/blue pill choice in The Matrix.

[Lexingtonian]

39. It's the difference between adulthood and childhood

As a child, you need and get happiness, security, and comfort to the greatest degree that is possible. But you are not given freedom- nor could you handle it or the responsibility it entails, and it's the rare child who uses it well when s/he has it.

As an adult, you have to live up to responsibility or be a failure. To take on responsibility in a complicated world with few things really guaranteed or granted, you need a certain amount of autonomy/freedom of action and thought to be able to meet or fulfill the responsibilities with any efficiency. The more real responsibility is involved the larger the realm of freedom and enablement required to be adequate to it.

That's just the minimum, however, but the argument a Right winger can understand.

The greater liberal need for freedom and autonomy is of a different kind and, less material/animal and more on a mental/spiritual plane. It proceeds from the realization that the fulfillment of adulthood is in creativity in the largest sense of the word. Be that cures for cancers, living the joyful and communal life of human togetherness, raising children that are wonderful human beings (or at least better than their parents), works of art, liberation of people from political or psychological chains, providing sufficient food/shelter/education, working to achieve justice and mercy, the saving of places of wilderness where people can feel inspired, or a thousand other things. These are all about raising the experience of life to a higher plane and fighting those things that would have us live in the mud and dust. About making of our lives deliberate endeavors to share and live the Higher Life to which we are called. Some people can make of their lives great performances and living that are works of art. A few can even make of their gestures and actions in the public life consistently a kind of theophany- Gandhi and the like. Most of us have to make do with less public and flashy lives and accomplishment, but being a strong point of light in a ghetto has an immense value its portion of the world exceeding that of public figure.

To live that life that becomes/is truly creative or redemptive in its bearing involves breaking out of the things that hold us down- traumas and mistakes and infractions, bad teachings, sorry conditions of material life, bad habits, traditionalisms that aspire to too little or the wrong things, stupid conventions that give safety to the lazy and indolent- and that is messy. Conservatives believe that more rigidity and harsh rules and certain varieties of privilege are a help in this. In practice that imposition of discipline helps only in getting past residues of adolescence. After that phase, growth to the higher lives and capability requires a great deal of freedom.

To not have freedom is to become trapped in a variety of adolescence. That's the bottom line, and everything emanating from the Communist bloc countries after the end of the Cold War really has been a stark illustration of what their variety of oppression cost them. Our American varieties of oppressiveness have resulted in horrible, immature, adolescent deformations as well- look over at our Right wing and its paranoid clinging to its Big Daddy Protectors (Bush/Cheney, Mammon, and Jupiter-Jesus), and it's a stark reflection of all the "freedom" and moral courage that reign in The Heartland.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

40. Beautiful, inspiring description. n/t

[debbierlus]

41. Have your read 'Brave New World' - If not, BOTH of you

Need to read it...By Aldous Huxley

Then, resume your discussion.

[mitchum]

42. Aren't all of those ambiguous, or better yet, subjective concepts?

[katty]

59. Yes

[Left Is Write]

43. Your coworker is operating under the premise

that freedom precludes happiness, security, and comfort. I'd turn the question around on him and ask why he believes this.

For myself, I don't believe true happiness can exist in the absence of freedom. Any sense of security derived from the curtailment of freedom is a false security. Who can feel happiness and comfort when being duped and deluded?

[donheld]

44. As the others have said they ALL go together

happiness, security and comfort is freedom.

[FreedomAngel82]

45. To quote Martin Sheen from "The West Wing" he once said

in an episode "freedom means choice." With freedom you can choose to be happy, sad, what job you want etc.

[Swamp Rat]

46. False dichotomy

The prior precludes the latter.

[mnhtnbb]

47. The key is to define happiness

Some people are happy when they aren't required to think, make choices, or be responsible for themselves.

Other people cannot possibly be happy without the freedom to think for themselves, make their own choices, and ultimately, be responsible for themselves.

[katty]

60. bingo-exactly

[nomatrix]

49. Pick one

http://antiwar.com/quotes.php


There are many one liners, I have favorites but you should find your own.

Just the fact this person is asking you to choose, denies you your freedoms.

If they are asking the question about this country and going to war, suggest they read, War is a Racket, by Gen. Smedley Butler.

[radfringe]

50. I'm probably a little late in chiming in....but here goes

according to Benjamin Franklin (paraphrased here) When you surrender liberty for security you get neither...

Is he a communist or something? According to those governments their people enjoy happiness, security, and comfort - but no freedom

without freedom you have no control over your own happiness, security and comfort. Your happiness, security, and comfort is whatever the government defines it to be and if you don't like it they send you to a gulag

[immoderate]

51. I am happy that I have freedom.

I am unhappy when people tell me what to do.

--IMM

[Katherine Brengle]

52. How can you have happiness, security, and comfort without freedom?

Our nation's founders knew that you cannot.

Happiness, security, and comfort without freedom is worth nothing. Also, I might be happy, secure, and comfortable, but what about everyone else? Everyone has a right to these feelings, without freedom, we can take them away from some for the "betterment" of the whole.

[Skittles]

53. because there is no happieness, security and comfort

if one is not free

[katty]

54. Freedom is an experience, No can give you real freedom,

or give you THEIR experience of freedom, yet, human beings may facilitate and support/promote (to a greater/lesser degree), as well as groups, nations the structures in society that promote freedom of thought, expression without deliberate harm being done to the whole of society (those would 'laws' remember,America?We now have the Patriot Act to round up those that are 'getting in the way' of those that are constantly BREAKING THE LAW and REFUSING TO ABIDE BY THE LAW-like the rest of us! These type of Freedom seekers are only out for THEMSELVES-end of story).
We have those in high office blatantly breaking those laws and judges catering to the powerful. When this happens at such a high level with such frequency 'the whole' of society is, eventually, demoralized,corrupted and bankrupt BY THE FEW.


-Freedom is not uplifting when it only seves the Ego-or groups of powerful Egos.
-Happiness is fleeting-I think we all know that! Unless it is experienced from a deeper level of self, then, at least, it may last a bit longer.
-Comfort-In 3-D everyone's idea of 'comfort' is different, some like ice cream, others...
a decent roof over their head.

[uppityperson]

55. How can you have freedom without happiness, security, comfort?

How can you have happiness, security, comfort without freedom? I don't understand as they go together for me.

[katty]

57. it's subjective-tibetan monks/others/ experience their

Freedom FROM their desire to have happiness, security, comfort
Having/experiencing Freedom is not the same for everyone.

[Yavin4]

56. Ever See The Movie, "The Truman Show"

That film pretty much answers that question.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

58. The Answer Is Obvious.

They are unrelated. It is like asking which is better, eating food or getting sleep. It is our inherant right as human beings to be able to eat food AND sleep. It is a false argument to portray that one must be sacrificed for the other. And like that, it is our inherant right as well to have freedom, happiness, comfort and security. They are not to be compared or balanced across from each other. Each within itself is a god given right that we should never allow to be taken away.

[IronLionZion]

61. Freedom makes me happy, secure, and comfortable

and it was good enough for our founding fathers so many revolutionaries throughout history so it's good enough for me.

[bobbieinok]

62. remind coworker of 50s 'better dead than red' RW slogan????