Written by Dhruv Kulkarni
The crowd cheered at the execution. Unapologetic cruelty was on full display. The hero was to be executed on charges of leading the rebellion against a tyrannical king in 13th-century Scotland. Such is the marvellous plot of the movie Braveheart, based on the life of William Wallace, the true leader of the rebellion against the British king. It is a movie with excellent cinematography and direction, but one scene stands out as extraordinary, given its tremendous abstract importance. The night before William Wallace is to be executed, the daughter-in-law of the king, who is secretly in love with him, comes to meet him. She begs him to swear an oath, accepting servitude to the king. And the reply of William Wallace is nerve-wracking not just to lovers of freedom, but of human nature itself.
“If I accept servitude to him and swear an oath to protect my life, you will find that everything you love about me is dead already.” These riveting words of William Wallace to someone who loves him, certainly send chills down anyone’s spine. If the Lockean interpretation of natural rights is considered to be true, it is freedom (semantically denoted as liberty) that stands out among man’s rights. It is so because the mental and emotional impact of freedom is so strong, yet so hard to measure, that understanding this shows that nearly all other natural rights are dependent on freedom.
The evidence of this view is spread throughout history.
Anyone even remotely aware of historical events can recall numerous stories of victims and fighters of all creeds braving their circumstances in a bitter battle for freedom. Be it the brave Rajput women of Chittor, who chose death rather than slavery, or Yeonmi Park, who faced tremendous odds to escape Orwellian North Korea. What exactly motivated these groups and individuals to die as they did? Or more importantly, what motivated them to live as they did? The answer, as we shall see, is the psycho-epistemological impact of freedom. To understand this, a deep dive into human nature is necessary.
The human being has only one truly predictable ally: his mind. When his feelings run wildly, he has one potent whip to quell his frenzied thoughts. For every rational human being, i.e., the being who aims to act based on reason, his brain is his primary source of judgement. Multiple philosophers have questioned what can be done for the flourishing of this human nature. What is the causal precondition to maximum human flourishing?
The definition of flourishing has been amply butchered and needs refinement. Aristotle defined flourishing as the fulfillment of values through purposeful action, in a phrase he and the Greeks called ‘Eudaimonia’. As he studied, the free exchange of thought and inquiry (highlighted by Socrates as the Socratic method), was tantamount to better and smarter decisions. He understood the importance of freedom of thought and speech. This view was later exemplified in the Enlightenment. It is not a surprise that champions of free speech and thought were champions of political liberty too. From Locke to Voltaire, the Enlightenment sanctified the primacy of the individual, placing freedom on a strong pedestal. They saw that a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
The results were clear. It was in this period that mankind started its journey towards infinite acceleration. Mankind wrote new treatises on the universe, created new venues for exploration, and cured diseases of the body and the mind. Any civilization that accepted freedom in its original form flourished at a pace that was deemed ‘miraculous’. The most economically and socially prosperous countries were also the freest. This is true to this day. Finland, Israel, and New Zealand are the freest countries and top all happiness charts.
While the presence of freedom can aid abundance and happiness, the absence of it can create catastrophic calamity. From Nazi Germany to the erstwhile Soviet Union, authoritarian regimes created self-imploding devices of destruction and suffering. While the physical impacts of this were easily visible, the emotional and psychological ones were tougher to notice and longer lasting. There were several stories of Russian immigrants changing their names to erase their former identity. In the words of Yeonmi Park, “You can identify any North Korean by observing the fear in their voices… Not even a bug is that afraid.”
It is easy to be misled into wondering whether the medieval Scots cared about Calculus. While they did not seem to care about it, they certainly cared about its end goal: human flourishing and happiness. It was clear to them that they, being humans, could not accept servitude. That it was their nature to be free, and servitude would end that, hence ending their true nature.
It was not a coincidence that the American Founding Fathers chose “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the primary rights of a human. They understood that one without the other two is useless. As man is whole and sovereign in himself, supplements such as freedom are but a refinement to his nature.
The motive power of humanity and its progress may or may not be freedom (for correlation is not causation), but what is certainly true is that it is a powerful catalyst. Freedom has a fiery effect on humanity: the absence or presence of it radically influences one’s existence. It is that fire of freedom that makes humanity an exceptional race: to care about freedom is to care about one’s life. Tyrants of matter and spirit will come and go, but as long as rationality remains, the lamp of liberty will never be extinguished.
Senior Editor
Renesa
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