Giving up freedom
Posted by chelseycolbert on February 25, 2008
Chelsey Colbert
Response 3
Why might people choose to give up their freedom is a tough question to answer, but after reading some of the text in class I think that there is more than one answer. I think the three dominant reasons are because people want something in return of their freedom, like security, or they are uneducated or just plain lazy.
When a group of people are far more frightened by something other than lack of freedom, they may choose to give up their freedom in order to feel secure about their other problem. I think the sense of security is one of the main reasons people choose to give up their freedom. In times of war, or threat of war, people often say to their government “do what you want to do as long as we stay safe”; in this case, the people are completely giving up their freedom, a thing they had previously. In another situation, a group of people may give up their freedom completely, before they had it, to ensure that they will be protected. For example, in The Hebrew Bible, the Israelites, before they experiences freedom under a king, asked God for a king to rule their land because they were afraid of their own weakness (94).
In Aung San Suu Kyi’s piece, she says that the opponents of the movement for democracy kept the people ignorant about other forms of government. She says that Burma is “distanced by several decades of isolationism from political and intellectual developments in the outside world” (191). She claims that democracy would follow the ancient teachings and beliefs of the Burma people but the current tyrannical government is keeping that information secret from the public.
The final reason, I believe, for why people choose to give up their freedom is because they are lazy; the people feel that they can not do anything about the way their situation is and it would be too much work, so they give up. I feel that Simón Bolívar was trying to make a point that the reason many people suffer under governments is because they are “deliberately kept in ignorance and cut off from the world in all matters relating to the science of government” (149); but at the same time he says that if they were not ignorant then they would still not be motivated to change because they are more comfortable with the norm as opposed to doing something about their situation.
