“Freedom” is a word you see a lot lately, at least in the US. But nobody knows what it is. Or more to the point, everybody knows what it is, but each individual idea is different.
Two recent books have new and thoughtful takes on what freedom might be. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow is a deep examination of human history, both the written history of Europe that’s widely taught and the unwritten and lesser-known (and more recently discovered) history of indigenous societies that’s vastly broader in time and territory than anything you’ll find in standard textbooks. The authors suggest that freedom in human society consists of three parts: the freedom to move away from your current place, the freedom to ignore or disobey orders, and the freedom to create new and different social arrangements. For instance, a person in a preColumbian society in North America might have a biological family, and might also be a member of another set of connections like a “clan” (sort of). They could decide to leave the area where they grew up — on the shore of Lake Erie, for example — and relocate to somewhere along the Delaware River. They were completely free to do this, even if somebody tried to tell them not to. Along their journey, and in their new location, they would be likely to find other people associated with the same “clan,” although not their biological family members. They might settle among new neighbors and formulate a new clan-like group.
Freedom in this telling is a property of a society or community. There was no hierarchical social structure of the sort we make a lot of assumptions about. In fact, recent anthropological and archeological evidence is showing that for the bulk of human history, hierarchical social structures were well understood as something to be avoided, and people did have ways to avoid them. When they occasionally arose, they were eventually abandoned, sometimes seemingly overnight. As if a community collectively looked around, said “well this is a bad idea,” and just walked away. Often physically.
The lessons of taking such a wide view of human history include the idea that there is nothing inevitable about hierarchy and domination, and they are certainly not requirements of a large or complex society. They’re simply collective choices, and there are other choices. More people have chosen those other options than have opted for domination and hierarchy, which inherently limit freedom.
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder has more of a focus on individuals. Snyder talks about “negative freedom,” which is freedom from constraints, and “positive freedom,” which is the ability to act in meaningful ways. He talks about freedom not just as a property of society, but a capacity of each individual. It’s about creativity, choices, and growth. For Snyder, freedom also rolls up to the social level, and just like Graeber and Wengrow, he points out that hierarchy and dominance are always restraints on freedom.
Both books suggest that our modern ideas of freedom are greatly reduced and constrained from what is, and has been possible. These days we’re so steeped in hierarchy and immersed in educational systems that limit our thinking that we find it hard to even imagine real alternatives to the way modern societies are organized. There’s another freedom hidden in there: freedom of imagination. The more we choose to have “leaders,” and the more those “leaders” are themselves blindered products of constraint, the fewer alternatives we seem to be able to entertain. My favorite example of this is Margaret Thatcher, who came up with dimwitted pronouncements like “there is no alternative to Capitalism” and “there is no such thing as society.”
Freedom is not something we have. It’s something we do. Or don’t do.
