Does Freedom come at a Cost?

Question

I'm very interested to hear alot of opinions regarding freedom.

What is freedom?
How does it feel to be free?
Freedom comes at a cost?
Imagine experiencing no freedom what so ever... Ouch.

Answer 1

"Find the Cost of Freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will cover you
Lay your body down."

Crosby, Still, Nash

It still applies. To free your soul from sin, Christ died. To free this nation from monarchy and tyranny, soldiers died. To keep it free for 230 years, many thousands more have died.

And to keep tyranny from winning, many more will shed their own blood for others. There is no inexpensive way.

Answer 2

There are two main kinds of freedom:
- internal (possibility of thinking freely)
- external (possibility of moving, acting etc...)
Both are dependent of your past experiences, what happened to you in your life, the place you live (you can't have much external freedom in a totalitarian country for example).
Freedom is doing the best you can within the condition you have been born with (I think one cannot really say that a person with a serious mental illness can be truly free).
Freedom comes at the cost of responsibility: the freer you are the more responsible for your action you are accountable for and the more you have to take up this responsibility.
For some kind of philosophies (hard determinism) we are not free at all: freedom is just an illusion, but everything is pre-determined.
In this case experiencing no freedom would mean experiencing the world as we normally do.
But if you are not a hard determinist experiencing no freedom at all would mean to be deprived of both internal and external freedoms: no freedom to act, move and express yourself and no freedom to think (example being brainwashed).
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Freedom means different things to different people

1. freedom from physical confinement- there are walls that keep you in prison, which may be a real institution, a home run by despotic parents, a country run by scary totalitarian bad guys...

a. The confinement is the social kind
1.There are walls of acceptable family bounderies that you must obey or be disowned and disenfranchised.
2. There are walls of class society. You cannot cross this line that for ages, your "kind" or 'genealogy' or inheritance has limited you to.
3. There are walls set by economic bounderies. It keeps you enslaved, working simply to survive. Education and a better life are impossibilities.
4. Freedom from persecution because of differences
5. Freedom from being harassed and bullied
6. Freedom as a society from being terrorized.
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How does it feel to be free. Again. you may be free in some of the above limitations, but still bound by the others on the list. We have multiple shackles as much as anybody else.
We attempt to be free of an many as we can and every chain we break from , no matter how little, defines our success.

Does freedom come at a cost ? Hell yes.
Sacrifice, dodging multiple accusations, loneliness, being ostracized, labeled with words such as being too ambitious, you name it. The path never travelled before is full of brambles.

Carry on. Dig up that last ounce of courage- to reach that unreacheable star, if you are reaching for one.

Find a mentor, an ally and a friend.

Answer 4

I live in england which is officially a free country but you can only really be free if you free yourself and let go off your inhibitions, if you don't you will never really be free because you will always be held back by trying to be "cool". And that is not being free.
Freedom is doing something because you can and you cant do this if you are restraining yourself.

I have been truly free and it ROCKZ, freedom feels like the wind through your hair, a big bubbling feeling inside that sometimes threatens to come out, a wild jump, running when you are meant to walk, shouting when you are meant to be quiet, dancing in public places and grasping the moment. That is being truly free. Of course you have to yearn to be free, to long after freedom with every part of you, because true freedom is hard to achieve, and only when you do, can you appreciate it. The moment in your life when you feel truly free is when you fall in love, because then you don't care what others think.

Answer 5

Freedom exists in different forms: political freedom, religious freedom, domestic freedom, social freedom, cultural freedom, intellectual freedom etc. I'm not sure which aspect of freedom you're talking about but I suppose in the philosophical sense of spiritual freedom?

Freedom that exists innately in everyone. The freedom of thought that is personal to all of us and hence, subjective to every individual. To some, freedom may entail the mere notion of having a whole day to themselves, without parents' intervention in their affairs. But to another, freedom may only be derived within the confines of his mind. To be truly free, he seeks to be able to bring his subconscious thoughts into his conscious mind, he is free. In general, freedom may mean the ability and acceptance to do the things we desire in an attempt to achieve our goals.

Freedom is the need to feel a sense of individualism, the need to feel our right as a human being. However, freedom too, does come with a cost. The price to pay for having freedom is that other peoples' freedom may infringe upon your freedom. Imagine a state with no civil laws, in which the freedom to kill is permitted, this freedom would breach upon our safety.

Therefore, freedom is not always good and only when it is exercised with a certain level of restraint, will it achieve equilibrium.

:)

Answer 6

Men is born naturally free, but there is no absolute freedom, men are governed by laws, conscience, morals, mores, etc. There is a consequence for our practice of freedom, so we should be really careful and responsible in exercising it, ideally, freedom should be free, but if abused it can cost you even your life, the lives of those around you, the lives and future of those you love and even everything that mean anything to you

Answer 7

Freedom is a sweet sounding word which can be felt and enjoyed. It is vivid in nature different in circumstance felt differently to different living beings.
Freedom cannot be priced;but getting freedom is too costly and too much dedication.required
Imagining of non freedom is suffocating too much afraid of such a status.
Like the air and water in nature;freedom is essential.
Non freedom is more than death.
Human society shall rise together for freedom for all.

Answer 8

i think freedom is the outcome after you sacrifice something? this is a really good question that may never be answered