Freedom burns

Freedom cuts boundaries –

boundaries cut freedom:

the all-encompassing battle.

A friend of my mother is upset because her granddaughter wants to have a sex change. The young woman is, by all accounts, stunning, beautiful, the daughter of a mixed-race couple, endowed with lovely caramel skin. Society says ‘ok!’

I’m not sure. Mother and co are all deeply against the mastectomy + hormone therapy + genital mutilation (mother’s words) and the grafting on of a penis.

I understand that being a woman is, in many ways, tough, and hell, it’s her body, if she feels like changing gender then who am I to have an opinion on it?

Well, she is a member of my community; we are connected by 2 degrees of separation. Our personal decisions affect people far beyond the range we might think; she has no idea that her struggle has inspired our conversation, and this article.

Boundaries: what a vague and all-encompassing word.

Looking back, we can chart our way through history by the constant establishing and demolition of boundaries, in all spheres of life; religious, parental, governmental, sports, business, the list is endless. Wherever there are humans, we will create boundaries.

Because, the human is amorphous, a fluid and adaptable creature: liquid. We are poured into the mould of boundaries and slowly, as we age, we harden. If the boundaries are just right, the cast comes out well. If the boundaries are too constricting, the human bursts the seams and the boundaries become blurred and fuzzy. No boundaries at all and the human comes out wild — which we could call either natural or savage.

Henry VIII rebelled against the Catholic church, established the Church of England, and paved the way for greater freedom for divorce. At the same time The Reformation pushed against the Catholic Church. Later, the enlightenment pushed against church and monarchy. The world wars were all about boundaries; Hitler crossing into Poland. The middle east is a mess partly because of badly drawn and artificial boundaries. The 20th century was defined by the fight for civil rights; for equal rights, for people of colour, women, homosexuals. During the 60’s we pushed for sexual freedoms, and in the following decades, the work of breaking down walls has been relentless; the freedom to dress according to tastes — without judgement; the normalisation of tattoos; same sex marriage and adoption; male paternity leave; the right to work remotely; the freedom of the press; the hour which kids are allowed to stay up to, the time for watching tv, or staying out with friends, has been pushed later, and later.

What we see emerging is the inter-dependence of personal freedoms and boundaries. Boundaries are established in order to ensure certain freedoms, and then the same boundaries are pushed back to allow other freedoms. This is a process of ebb and flow as the tides of morality sweep in and out.

Much like our glaciers, this tide seems to be in retreat. We are winning, in places, more and more freedoms. Acts that have been unthinkable for a thousand years, like men holding hands in public, have become common place. Children defy their parents with impunity. Certain sexual acts, once considered depraved, are now common internet purveyance for all, and anyone who uses online pornography is a voyeur and a pervert by the standards of yore. Young girls dress like the whores of yesterday; the empowerment of women diminishes the tyranny of man; the boundaries of nation and place are eroded by technology and greater international co-operation; traditional dress declines in favour of the generic jeans and t-shirt — the real uniform of the modern socialist worker.

N.B. do not interpret my emotive and judgemental language to mean that I have opinions either positive or negative on any of these changes; colourful language is for illustrative purposes only; in general, I am on the side of greater freedom; I am on the side of less boundaries.

But where do you draw the line?

We can all see that our corporations are out of bounds; greed machines fired up on planet fuel, creating products and providing services which are destroying our environment. We are all in favour of greater regulation and better environmental protection. And we should be talking about how we can, as an international community, redistribute wealth towards greater equality.

But what about our personal lives?

As a millennial, the (somehow) controversial generation Y, we landed in the midst of a turning point. Our parents told us that we could be whatever we wanted — half of us picked unrealistic career choices or decided we don’t want to work 9–5. For the first time we didn’t have parents shouting at us (as much) saying, ‘you will bloody well be a doctor’. Our parents, and states, had a more liberal attitude towards drugs, sex, and rock and roll, so we had 5 times as much as they did. I come from Bristol, a city I love as one of the most ‘progressive,’ open, and tolerant cities in the world, but also one which I now describe as a cesspool of hedonism; a city engulfed in a mental health crisis. It feels like things are out of hands; the city is eating people up, people I know, and love.

With my children, if I can ever afford to have any, I will insist on more boundaries than my parents gave me; I was allowed out too late, had too many friends over, too much free time, we didn’t do enough housework, and they were too tolerant of drugs.

So, we can see the pendulum in action, as, naturally, too much freedom begins to threaten the very foundations of freedom itself; work, family, community, sanity.

Freedom has so oft been used as a rallying cry that it is easy to overlook its dangers, to think of it as something noble and glorious; I want to say that freedom is more like a flame — it must be contained in a lamp, or a torch.

The rise of freedom is the inverse reaction to the decline of religion and moral conservatism. As we keep pushing for greater and greater freedom, the question will always be, ‘where do you draw the line? How do we protect our children’s freedom without letting them fall prey to its flames? I-pads are the new pacifiers for 21st century babies; screens have taken so much of our attention that social skills are on the decline, and we, as adults, can’t hold our own boundaries with the digital screen world without the help of applications. I would like to ask you to share your own personal stories, or take, on the issue of parental boundaries in the 21st century.’ Perhaps the best solution is to speak, and listen, and learn from the hindsight of others.

How much freedom is too much?

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