Yes I’m sure. While there are different contexts of freedom, “convenience” is not one of them. And I’m not talking about simply having convenience. But then again, it’s entirely possible for someone to try and classify certain contexts of freedom that way, and only define “freedom” as anarchy, so I suppose it depends on what definitions you’re willing to accept.
Either way, my point still stands. Jefferson would be scared shitless, and yet the average lifestyle of an American today is immensely easier and more comfortable and more enjoyable, and therefore arguably better than even the elites of his day. (And yes I’m aware of subjectivity, and I don’t need a lecture on personal preferences and the existence of people who romanticize colonial, medieval, and even primitive lifestyles, and claim they would prefer it to the civilization in which they currently reside. Some of these people use their computers and their Internet connections to complain about how much they would rather be living in the woods on this very forum.)
But I am not convinced by these people, even of their own preferences. I tend to agree with Ken Burns on this one. Life has never been better, and throughout history, that’s almost always been the case.
If I were a smart aleck I would copy your line and ask if you were sure you meant “above” and not “north of”. But I’m not, so I won’t. Either way I don’t see what you’re so worked up about. You asked a question and I gave you a pretty damn good answer. Unless of course you’re just ticked off that you didn’t think of something so obvious before you asked such a question.
About the avatar, where is it from? I recall seeing that image somewhere before but I can’t seem to put my finger on what painting / which painter that is from.
To be honest I’m not worked up. I just wanted to know how we are more free today than we were after the establishment of the Bill of Rights above the Mason-Dixon line and I didn’t think that anyone would infer that I was being confrontational by saying “smart-aleck”.
I didn’t think there were many people who were of the delusion slavery didn’t exist in the north…certainly not among posters here. Maybe this will help a little:
While this all may be true and significant, I think it’s veering away from the point that, with the rise of technology, the space in which an individual may inhabit, physically and mentally, without state molestation is continually shrinking.
I hope I can say this without getting called a racist or something to that effect.
I feel like state molestation of me personally is about a 2% drain on my happiness. If the state let me do as I please from now on as long as I didn’t hurt anyone or their property, how amazing would that be? Not very, unless I wanted to start a business or do stem cell research, etc. The income boost would be nice, but not a huge improvement. State contol of other people has a far greater effect on me than the state’s control of me directly. That’s why I think this wilderness hermit “in-duh-vidualism” that some libertarians subscribe to is completely asinine.
If they are controlling you, then they are controlling other people as well, so I don’t really get what you’re trying to say/respond to. I’d love to pay no taxes and drink in public, but the concern I’m voicing is about the subordination and surveillance of all individuals before the panoptic state, not just me personally.
Look at as absolute freedom versus relative freedom. By absolute freedom, I mean the absolute number of actions somebody could potentially take in the world, and by relative freedom, I mean the fraction of such actions that they’re actually allowed to do without being coerced by threat of violence/imprisonment. In terms of absolute freedom, we’re far freer now, in that we can do things like have a realtime video conversation with somebody on the other side of the Earth, or travel the world in the space of a day via aeroplane, or venture into space, or go diving deep in the ocean, or have thousands of hours of music at the push of a button, or interact with likeminded people on a virtual forum in a giant network of information, or access a vast fraction of human knowledge for little or no cost almost instantaneously. However, most of these activities are in some way regulated or taxed by the State, meaning a degree of coercion against us is involved when we partake in them, so we’ve got less relative freedom now, in the sense that the fraction of the total actions that we may take that don’t involve some form of government intervention is smaller than it used to be.
I fail to see how only physical adversity somehow improves human character. Indeed, I’m not even sure what “improves human character” is supposed to mean. It seems to me like you’re taking a necessarily subjective value or set of values and painting it as if it were somehow objective.
On the other hand, even today most people don’t chop their own firewood, grow their own crops, raise their own livestock, etc. Yet there seem to be many opportunities for physical adversity. Sports and exercise in general stand out here.
I’m just defining freedom as what you consider convenience. You haven’t defined freedom exactly, so it’s impossible to know exactly what you’re asking, since freedom has so many possible meanings. Define freedom exactly, and you can get an exact answer. It’s like the question “what is love?”; if the person asking it actually defined exactly what they meant by love, then they’d have answered their own question. Otherwise, if they don’t know what they’re asking, how can anybody else? Hence it’s an incoherent statement, and cannot be solved.
