unspeakablehorror (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unspeakablehorror) wrote2020-06-11 02:56 am
unspeakablehorror) wrote2020-06-11 02:56 am
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There's More Than One Type of Freedom
Been thinking about the term freedom, and how it's an unfortunately vague and fraught term which is often used to make false equivalences. I apologize if I'm just more clumsily reinventing some really well-known philosophy here. This is by no means an attempt to produce incredibly polished theory, so it's bound to have flaws and gaps in places, but I wanted to hash out these ideas somewhere besides just in my own head. Anyway, I'm thinking that the idea of freedom should really be split up into three general categories: personal autonomy, interpersonal autonomy, and community autonomy.
*Personal autonomy--A lot of issues with promoting freedom as a general good come from it being able to refer to anyone's general ability to perform any act. So enabling the rich to underpay and abuse their workers and to employ literal slaves, can be called granting 'freedom' to those CEOs even while it deprives those workers and literal slaves of freedom. But this sort of 'freedom' of course isn't about what these CEOs can do with their own body or mind or time. It's about what they are entitled to do with the bodies and minds and time of others. My definition of personal autonomy here is based on what one does with one's own body and mind and time (and no one else's). I believe this form of autonomy tends to be the simplest to say should be as extensively protected as possible, though I don't imagine that means that all questions involving personal autonomy necessarily have clear cut or simple answers. Among other issues, a widespread solution to promoting the autonomy of one group may unfortunately inhibit the autonomy of another. For example, allowing euthanasia may lead not only to more consenting parties being euthanized but also enable more non-consenting parties to be euthanized, and there's also the question of under what circumstances people can give meaningful consent to such an act, how to ensure such consent was actually given, and what processes should be in place to handle the possibility of consent being revoked. Nevertheless, this is an important question of personal autonomy just as life extension processes such as assisted breathing, feeding tubes, etc are. In both cases, the question is how to ensure that people who want that particular option are enabled to obtain it, while avoiding forcing it on non-consenting individuals. In neither case is it desirable for considerations beyond personal autonomy to take precedence over the individual's own desires.
*Interpersonal autonomy--this involves any activities or actions two or more people (of a sufficiently small number) engage in together. These actions occur where the primary effects and consequences of those actions are shared between multiple individuals Here the mutual consent of all parties involved, and the question of who can meaningfully give consent to an act, becomes a predominating concern. The consent of those who are not personally engaging in these acts should be deprioritized, and a community, friends, or family should not be concerned with the content of these acts to the extent that neither they nor non-consenting parties are being pressured, coerced, or forced to engage in them. This doesn't mean that consent for such acts can't be complicated by things like compulsory heterosexuality, which is a society-wide pressuring, coercion, and sometimes forcing of engaging in such acts. Here it is not that heterosexuality is inherently non-consensual, but rather that the attempt by society to erase mention, existence, or allowance of alternative possibilities creates the inevitability of producing more non-consenting acts of this kind.
*Community autonomy--this involves any activities engaged in by a sufficiently large number of individuals, where not all individuals involved may personally know or directly associate (or even want to directly associate) with each other. This involves things like the ability of communities to make decisions about the allocation of resources produced by their community and to practice customs and traditions shared by their community. This autonomy should be protected against being encroached by other communities, but should not be seen as taking precedence over personal and interpersonal autonomy. These issues are complicated by questions such as what resources can be conceptualized as belonging to any given group. For example, in a settler colonial state such as the US, Canada, or Australia, water and other vital resources have been repeatedly stolen, destroyed, and appropriated from native communities for use by the settler state. These are clearly illegitimate acts, but what is less clear is how to actually meaningfully perform decolonization. Can people simply move back to where their ancestors were from, or would that in some cases merely enable a different sort of colonization? If someone has ancestors from different countries, different continents, even, what would it mean for them to move back to their own country? What if the country their ancestors came from no longer exists (as many do not)? Just because your ancestors came from a place, does that mean that you have some automatic claim to that land? Meaningful decolonization is not a simple matter of moving people from one place to another (even if such a thing could ever be called simple), but rather must include a question of the way ownership and property themselves are conceptualized, and how current conceptualizations of these terms enable the institutional oppression of some communities by others. How do current conceptions of ownership and property enable colonization and oppression by depriving native communities, black communities, and others of clean land, water, and even air?
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts on this matter. I would expect that the priorities above can interact in complicated ways (eg. interpersonal and personal autonomy being shaped and constrained by the customs and traditions of communities and by socialization). If anyone has any thoughts to add, feel free to do so. As I've said, I'm just trying to write these thoughts down to make them less amorphous, but that does not necessarily make them more complete or more correct.
*Personal autonomy--A lot of issues with promoting freedom as a general good come from it being able to refer to anyone's general ability to perform any act. So enabling the rich to underpay and abuse their workers and to employ literal slaves, can be called granting 'freedom' to those CEOs even while it deprives those workers and literal slaves of freedom. But this sort of 'freedom' of course isn't about what these CEOs can do with their own body or mind or time. It's about what they are entitled to do with the bodies and minds and time of others. My definition of personal autonomy here is based on what one does with one's own body and mind and time (and no one else's). I believe this form of autonomy tends to be the simplest to say should be as extensively protected as possible, though I don't imagine that means that all questions involving personal autonomy necessarily have clear cut or simple answers. Among other issues, a widespread solution to promoting the autonomy of one group may unfortunately inhibit the autonomy of another. For example, allowing euthanasia may lead not only to more consenting parties being euthanized but also enable more non-consenting parties to be euthanized, and there's also the question of under what circumstances people can give meaningful consent to such an act, how to ensure such consent was actually given, and what processes should be in place to handle the possibility of consent being revoked. Nevertheless, this is an important question of personal autonomy just as life extension processes such as assisted breathing, feeding tubes, etc are. In both cases, the question is how to ensure that people who want that particular option are enabled to obtain it, while avoiding forcing it on non-consenting individuals. In neither case is it desirable for considerations beyond personal autonomy to take precedence over the individual's own desires.
*Interpersonal autonomy--this involves any activities or actions two or more people (of a sufficiently small number) engage in together. These actions occur where the primary effects and consequences of those actions are shared between multiple individuals Here the mutual consent of all parties involved, and the question of who can meaningfully give consent to an act, becomes a predominating concern. The consent of those who are not personally engaging in these acts should be deprioritized, and a community, friends, or family should not be concerned with the content of these acts to the extent that neither they nor non-consenting parties are being pressured, coerced, or forced to engage in them. This doesn't mean that consent for such acts can't be complicated by things like compulsory heterosexuality, which is a society-wide pressuring, coercion, and sometimes forcing of engaging in such acts. Here it is not that heterosexuality is inherently non-consensual, but rather that the attempt by society to erase mention, existence, or allowance of alternative possibilities creates the inevitability of producing more non-consenting acts of this kind.
*Community autonomy--this involves any activities engaged in by a sufficiently large number of individuals, where not all individuals involved may personally know or directly associate (or even want to directly associate) with each other. This involves things like the ability of communities to make decisions about the allocation of resources produced by their community and to practice customs and traditions shared by their community. This autonomy should be protected against being encroached by other communities, but should not be seen as taking precedence over personal and interpersonal autonomy. These issues are complicated by questions such as what resources can be conceptualized as belonging to any given group. For example, in a settler colonial state such as the US, Canada, or Australia, water and other vital resources have been repeatedly stolen, destroyed, and appropriated from native communities for use by the settler state. These are clearly illegitimate acts, but what is less clear is how to actually meaningfully perform decolonization. Can people simply move back to where their ancestors were from, or would that in some cases merely enable a different sort of colonization? If someone has ancestors from different countries, different continents, even, what would it mean for them to move back to their own country? What if the country their ancestors came from no longer exists (as many do not)? Just because your ancestors came from a place, does that mean that you have some automatic claim to that land? Meaningful decolonization is not a simple matter of moving people from one place to another (even if such a thing could ever be called simple), but rather must include a question of the way ownership and property themselves are conceptualized, and how current conceptualizations of these terms enable the institutional oppression of some communities by others. How do current conceptions of ownership and property enable colonization and oppression by depriving native communities, black communities, and others of clean land, water, and even air?
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts on this matter. I would expect that the priorities above can interact in complicated ways (eg. interpersonal and personal autonomy being shaped and constrained by the customs and traditions of communities and by socialization). If anyone has any thoughts to add, feel free to do so. As I've said, I'm just trying to write these thoughts down to make them less amorphous, but that does not necessarily make them more complete or more correct.