Freedom in the Modern Age

At the beginning of the modern age, as technological advances began to simplify life and the industrial revolution brought about rapid increases in economic production, many thinkers supposed that soon men would be able to provide for themselves by laboring just a few hours a day. This would free up a great amount of time for personal use and cultural enrichment. People would study the arts and sciences, develop culturally and spiritually...

Little did they know. Not much has changed since then despite all the comforts and convenience of modern technology. Man still spends most of his waking hours toiling away simply to stay out of debt. Many of the tools and gadgets have changed, but the amount of effort needed to sustain life has not. With all this time theoretically on his hands, man has nonetheless chosen to spend almost all of it spewing out goods and services for which no one has any immediate physiological need.

No one person or group of people made this decision; it is the cumulative result of the spontaneous decisions of billions of people acting in their own interests from day to day. Abstractly speaking, they are competing for reproductive advantages — status, physical and social territory for themselves and their offspring, and the attention of the opposite sex. Even the writing of this article traces its roots to the pursuit of reproductive advantages. It is this pursuit of reproductive advantage that spurs us to do so much more than what we actually need for survival.

Competition and the overconsumption and overproduction it engenders are an integral part of the natural world. If all the trees in a forest could "agree" to grow no higher than one meter, there would be no need to waste so many precious resources on costly tree trunks; after all, the amount of sunlight hitting the leaves at one meter above the ground is exactly the same as what hits the leaves at 30 meters. The problem is, if any tree decides to cheat and break the one meter rule, it wins and everybody else loses. Hence, every tree is forced to waste its time building a tree trunk to protect itself from cheaters. Nature is all about senseless arms races. Somehow it all seems charming when you look at it from the side.

So it is with the production-related activities that monopolize our time and structure our lifestyle. We're forced to churn out ever more sophisticated goods and services in ever-increasing quantities just to hold our own against other groups in society who might otherwise seize the reproductive advantage by working harder and producing more than we do. And we will hold our own and do our best to show them up! — even if the planet be damned.

Theoretically, one could decide to go against the flow and drop out of the economic rat race if one doesn't want to be part of it all. With a little effort, one can live on two hundred dollars' worth of groceries a month, and the basic tools and clothes one needs for survival easily fit in a single backpack. With temp jobs at, say, $10 an hour, one would only have to work 30 hours a month (let's not forget taxes) to support oneself. The rest of the time one is free to realize the romantic ideals of cultural and spiritual enrichment.

Unfortunately, one needs an address to get a job and pay taxes, and society does not offer 2x2 meter lots for rent for people who choose to live in tents, teepees, or other portable structures. Modern society offers only cookie-cutter solutions for the average production-oriented joe — vast houses requiring constant maintenance and additional expenditures, and smaller apartments that are still much larger and more sophisticated than one needs for comfortable living. Even assuming you have the money initially to buy the house or apartment, maintenance and utility costs for this huge piece of territory that you don't really need require you to work another 60 or so hours a month at your job.

Also, the distances in modern communities are too great to get around solely by foot. So you buy a bike. All is well until your employer moves or goes out of business. Eventually you are pressed to buy a car — much more than what is necessary to get you to work and back each day — or at least a motorcycle. By now you are working a full 40-hour week at your minimum-wage job simply for the right to live, and you haven't even had any children yet. Without realizing it, you have been drawn into a life of overconsumption and slavish economic competition.

Each country is structured to accommodate a single basic lifestyle that is enforced through mandatory taxation and administrative procedures. Ironically, the more economically developed the society, the more restrictive the lifestyle demands it makes on its members. How can one even dream of freedom in such conditions?

1. Accumulate some capital and move to a less economically developed country.
This is what many westerners living abroad in India, Nepal, Africa, and other developing countries have chosen to do. Given their starting capital that exceeds that of the average local, they now have a significantly greater degree of freedom than they did back home. Due to more modest housing and simpler administrative procedures, they can can get by on far less money than in the West and have more time on their hands for whichever activities they choose.

2. Choose an individualistic profession or become a sought-after specialist.
Certain professions offer more "degrees of freedom" than the other 90% of workers enjoy. Some of these are: freelance journalist or writer, entrepreneur, consultant, private teacher, musician, or artist. These people choose their own hours, make their own decisions, and manage their own professional development. All of this develops one's sense of individuality, resilience, and self-reliance. Of course, it also requires risk-taking, but there can be no freedom without personal responsibility and risk.

3. Fight your way to the top and get rich.
Money can buy you freedom — freedom to make your own decisions and establish your own rules. Only the business owner can show up in whichever clothes he chooses and be late to work. By mastering the laws and mechanisms of society better than others, one can come out on top where there is more air to breathe and room for self-realization.

There is no way to avoid competition. It is too thoroughly engrained in society's structure and in our own psychology. Only by doing better than others in the rat race can one transcend it.

07/19/2006 Fnustle
Good analysis but doesn't hit on the psychological definition of freedom. Freedom is also in the small choices we are constantly making during the course of the the day and not just the big life decisions that chart the direction of our lives. To realize these smaller freedoms requires a state of mind and not a state of the environment.

07/19/2006 Author
You're certainly right — here I talk about large-scale freedom. You might call it "external freedom." That is the kind that specifically interests me. I guess I have taken an extremely extraverted view of freedom, haven't I? But there is also internal freedom to modify our attitudes and our perception of situations regardless of external conditions. That's a whole 'nuther subject.

02/04/2007 Traveler
I agree with the author almost completely. Our society has become over dependent on simply surviving by attaining goods that we don't not require. The majority of people spend most of their time struggling to survive with money. It is fascinating that by sacrificing your shelter and transportation to adequate levels, you can attain higher freedom if you are a modest-paid citizen. I also agree with Fnustle that the other slice of this puzzle involves psychological freedom, which is in fact a difficult if not more difficult problem than external freedom.

04/02/2007 Tom
We are born screaming monsters that are conditioned to live in an artificial society. The indoctrination into a culture immediately suspends freedom, and all people live scripted lives imposed on them by their environment and conditioning. Therefore, there is no such thing as freedom in a relative world. The dissolution of society renders us mere animals that are slaves to our passions and instincts. We can never fully extricate ourselves from our relative status, thus freedom is an impossibility.