One of my favorite authorities on freedom is Viktor Frankl. “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.” is undoubtedly his most famous quote. For those of you who do not know Viktor Frankl, he was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist whom the Nazis saw fit to intern in a concentration camp from 1942 until his liberation in 1945. His book “Man’s Search for Meaning” outlines this time in his life for any who are interested so I won’t go into that here.
What is interesting to me is the only freedom we have in any society or culture is a God given freedom, one we all get no matter our social status, financial status or any other status. That is the freedom of choice of ones attitudes. No government in the history of mankind has devised a way to overcome this freedom. Granted many millions of people have given up this freedom but it simply can not be taken. That is amazing when I think of it. Which I think leads to more of a philosophical discussion than one of a political nature. What is freedom?
I think most of the world looks to the “Western World” as the standard ideal of what freedom is, and of course here in the United States we treasure our freedom as much as any I suppose. But really what is freedom at a personal level? And does freedom guarantee happiness? I happen to believe that most of us in this world compromise our freedom of our own accord simply because we are afraid to make a choice…afraid to fully utilize the one gift we were all born with to its maximum potential the choice of how we view the world. When I look at freedom from this angle I know that my freedom ends where your nose begins, because I have no control over how you view me or the rest of the world.