giovedì 30 giugno 2011

On our freedom.

An interesting thing to be observed is that new measures of welfare are explored today. E.g., there is an agreement on the fact that GDP cannot express the whole wealth of a country.
Some years ago Amartya Sen won the Nobel prize by introducing functional capabilities or substantive freedoms in the economic theory and it certainly has great merits in going beyond the utility approach, which can be unfair in terms of wealth distribution and rights. Martha Nussbaum has included in a list of ten capabilities the following: bodily health, bodily integrity, senses, imagination and thought, emotions.
On the other hand, when it comes to freedom, in my opinion the hardest part to get through is asking oneself: how much am I free? This leads to another question: is freedom desirable? And, as a first point: what is freedom?
To me, the surprising thing is that freedom is always used as an adjective, so that we have "free markets" or "free thinking", as if it had no specific connotation or its negative meaning (absence of constraints) was too much clear to be defined. A remarkable thing is that in English (but not in Italian), the word "free" is used both to indicate a "subject who has freedom" and "something for which we do not have to pay". Maybe the greatest bound in the Anglo-Saxon world is considered the economic value of an object, which reduces the subject's possibility to get it.
In the ancient world freedom had a deep interior connotation, for which it would be possible to become free by losing one's body (according to Plato) or also inside a jail. This had strong links with not being subject to passions, whereas today these are "masked" by constantly reshaping our often induced needs. Kant limited the freedom to a consequence of moral duty ("you must, then you can"), representing an even more distant model for the humanity of the 21st world, for which "freedom" and "morality" are often mutually exclusive.
But that leads us to the aspect that I consider more relevant: the liberal model that promised happiness through the limitations of public power in the private's choices did not live up to its proclaims, and not just for distributional problems.
In a world where most people can choose the best instruments to reach their own aims, too much indifference  is reserved to the choice of the latters, or to a rational definition of objectives. Maybe pollution or bubbles in the real estate sector are side effects of the fact that we are not asked to declare the reason why we spend three hours a day in a car or we have to sleep in a greater bedroom to feel good. But maybe we are not asked because it is too well known that having a job implies having to reach the place where we work, and having to consume implies having a job. So, to the extent that the reason why we get up in the morning is not well known, is decided by the others or left to the case, where is the world's freedom in 2011?
Someone said that "the truth makes us free", but if everyone has his own truth, then freedom is also subjective, and it is clearly delusional, momentary, debatable. The "tolerant" world where "everybody's freedom ends where the others' one begin" gave us a poor version of democracy, reduced to voting, a poor version of economy, limited to consuming, and maybe a poor version of life, confined to "doing what I (am forced by circumstances to) want" (even spending hours in a social network, if others do the same). That's why relativism (maybe) is a risky business, also for freedom.

Nessun commento:

Posta un commento