Student Essay on How Much Freedom Should Individuals Have?

How Much Freedom Should Individuals Have?

Summary:   We should all have total freedom over ourselves, free to speak, free to choose, free to gather, and even the freedom to kill. However, self-control is the key; we must improve infinitely our moral values, our ability to tell wrong from right and to not abuse the freedom that we are given.

"I have a dream." In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. campaigned against the segregation of Blacks. In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led hundreds of Indians on a long march to protest against salt tax. In 1949 the International Labor Organization (ILO) appealed on the "Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining." On August 29th, 2004, 250,000 people gathered in New York to protest against the petroleum dependent regime, and nowadays we hear stories of people killing, being killed, stealing, robbing, and raping on the news, several times a day. All throughout the course of history, we have witnessed numerous acts of human challenging laws and restrictions of society for many different causes. Apparently, the people of a society with too many laws and restrictions will always be rebelling, protesting, fighting for more freedom, while a society with too much freedom eventually turns slips into a state of mayhem as people become uncontrollable. However, not only would these two extremes not function well, there is no "happy medium" either. Since there will always be people with various beliefs, values, perspectives, philosophies, causing people to generate clashing opinions on these laws and restrictions. Thus, I think it all boils down to our own self-control; individuals should have total freedom, but individual self-control must be improved tremendously.

As I had mentioned, restrictions and laws will always be under challenge. We know for a fact that this is true, as we have all been witnesses to these rebellions in history and more that occur on a daily basis. Including underage drinking, thievery, violation of copyright laws every time a song is downloaded from Kazaa©, every time we watch a pirated DVD, driving without a legal license, and many other crimes. This happens because there will always be people who don't benefit or agree with the laws and people who benefit from violating the laws, causing them to rebel. For example, supporters of the idea of white supremacy do not agree with the Right to Equality, thus forming the Ku Klux Klan to rebel against the law. More importantly-who among us, being the same specie, is superior enough to decide for the rest what we ought to do and ought not do? Why should we trust this person's judgment? Then again, there are democratic societies in which presidents are elected by the votes of the majority. Sounds fair, but really, do we know what is good for ourselves? Additionally, this method would just makes sure that the rebelling goes on, since there would always be the minority votes that disagree. If there is anyone whose judgment we can trust, it is God. When God created our first world, the Garden of Eden, there was one rule that forbade us to eat the fruits on a particular tree. Yet, this rule we still broke. Therefore, is there not enough evidence to show us that rules and restrictions will never work for our society?

Having laws and restrictions does not work; having too much freedom does not either. Problems occur when too much freedom is given to a society, whose members are not able to act responsibly and control themselves. Just like a household, if too much freedom were given to a child who is not ready for the responsibility that comes hand-in-hand with freedom, things would get out of control. As a result, children could develop disobedience towards parents, make the wrong choices and end up as a juvenile delinquent threatening the safety of society. On a larger scale, when a nation gives too much freedom to its citizens who have no self-control, the nation turns into chaos. Hence, we would hear about incidents such as the "School Shooting at Columbine", a result of permitting gun possession to members of society could not act responsibly.

However, there is no happy medium existing in between the two extremes either, because there are only two categories that any issue could fall under, either restricted by some kind of law or not restricted at all. For example, the legal drinking age in Taiwan is eighteen. This seems like a happy medium for everyone, but in fact it is not. To the under aged, this means no drinking whatsoever, and for adults over eighteen it means total freedom to consume alcohol. Thus resulting in the teenagers making fake-ids to sneak a sip, breaking the law; while adults still drink with no responsibility, getting drunk, going home, and taking it out on their wives and kids. Also, for any laws or restrictions, there will forever be those who benefit and those who suffer from it, and the ones that benefit would definitely agree, but those who don't will always disagree, and endlessly rebel.

That is why what needs to be is that we should all have total freedom over ourselves, free to speak, free to choose, free to gather, and even the freedom to kill. However, self-control is the key; we must improve infinitely our moral values, our ability to tell wrong from right and to not abuse the freedom that we are given. We must achieve this through improving the education of new generations, not just at school but also most importantly, at home. Since family has the deepest influence over one than any other factors. By achieving this, each individual would be setting rules of their own, ones which they are not forced to live by but truly believe in. People would know that no matter what you do, that something will eventually catch up with you, just like the "karma" in Indian culture. Nature will bring about that pay back in its own way. For example, if you murder someone, you will forever live your days shadowed in guilt and haunted by the hate from family of the deceased. I believe this is truly the way we are made to live, with total freedom and punished only by nature. After all, all animals live this way, and humans are animals too are we not?