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Robin Thorén: andreårsstudent på masterprogrammet i sosialantropologi ved UiB.
DO YOU WANT FREEDOM? “[…] if freedom is doing what I want, well that means I gotta know what is, not just what it isn’t.” – Pat the Bunny (2014) How much time have you spent thinking about freedom? I have spent the most of my adult life thinking and trying to pursue what I have identified as freedom and like the retired punk musician Pat, I too find it difficult to know what that is. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary being free is not being coerced or constrained in choice or action (2021). I believe that most individuals would like to not be blatantly coerced in their choices and actions and yet most individuals are coerced into working for money in order not to be evicted from their homes. If someone were exercise their individual freedom to not participate in this system of coercion the consequences could be disastrous, but maybe that is what freedom is?
“Freedom is beautiful and terrible, it’s nothing soft and sweet” – Pat the Bunny (2014) What if freedom is beautiful and terrible at the same time? If that is the case then maybe individuals are content with having choices instead of freedom? Some of the street kids in Cape Verde (Bordonaro, 2012) and the street punks in Indonesia (Martin-Iverson, 2021; Moog, 2020) exemplify the autonomy of individuals who live in ways that they have chosen and consider beautiful, but this way of life might be considered terrible form an outside perspective. They tap into a type of autonomy that is not accepted by the normative society. According
to a VICE news report some of the individuals within the street punk scene were orphans prior to joining the community, but many had freely chosen to live on the streets (Larsson, 2016). A life that could be considered both terrible and beautiful at the same time. In Does Choice Mean Freedom and Well-Being? the authors at one point refer to how F.D. Roosevelt saw four freedoms: “freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of worship, and freedom to express oneself” (Markus, Schwartz, & Deighton, 2010, s. 345). These freedoms (or liberties) are a mix of both negative and positive freedoms, where freedom from fear and want are negative while freedom of worship and expressions are positive. A negative freedom is in other words a freedom from manmade obstacles or constraints in your way to fulfill your desires, and a positive freedom is having the ability to live life according to one’s own values (Svendsen, 2014). These concepts of freedom and liberty could be shaped to “work” within a state system but could you as an individual be considered free if you still are constrained by the laws and norms espoused by the state or (mass)society? If you made an honest and free choice to be a part of a state system to limit your previous freedom in exchange for some of its services, it could be argued that you maintained your freedom up until that point, and that you are now negotiating what constraints you are willing to accept. However, most often individuals are not asked for consent before they are integrated into a state system. If we consider the anarchists, the “true” advocates of unbridled freedom, we might get different answers. In the short essay, Freedom (Libertad) by French anarchist Albert Libertad who published the infamous anarchist journal L’Anarchie in the early 1900’s, a forceful version of freedom is described:
