Freedom's Desirability - Attempting to Exist No.3

Is freedom actually a good thing? Should we be free? The first thing we may need to consider when asking these questions is actually to conclude whether there is a universal set of ethics principles. Many philosophers in the past and even now still create discourse on this topic but I will not be getting into it too much because it is simply unnecessary. Whether or not we can establish universal principles of ethics does not affect if it makes sense to suggest an understanding to people or not. I’d say this is one topic we’re closest to being boundless: suggesting an idea.

Coming back to our question, it is plausible to assume that most or all of us want to be free at least to a point depending on our definition of freedom. I will be following the understanding we have built so far. Being free now means that we are not bound by anything. We can experience any and all, therefore have no opportunity cost, and have no restrictions with the results of the decisions we make, so have no responsibility regarding consequences of choices either. Is this situation desirable? Let’s think. Firstly, a reason for something to be undesirable for a human may be that it is against the innate nature of humankind. You may refute this if you’ve read a bit too much of Sartre, like me, saying there is no specific nature of humankind. You may be right, but as a brain exercise, let’s just consider what common actions and behaviors cause a serotonin release in the body. I think it’s plausible enough to say that, even if it does not actually embody the understanding of human nature, something that causes serotonin release is at least somewhat good (up to a point of course)  for that human mentally. What I’m trying to get to is that if freedom retains something that is good for us, serotonin, it is undesirable.

Assuming that we do not have a serotonin syndrome, positive social interactions and relationships with people cause serotonin release in nearly all of us. Relationships and social interactions, though, come with restrictions. For example, you are seeing two people romantically. Your interactions with one, let’s call player A, is much higher in terms of serotonin release, or just feeling better afterwards compared to player B. You smile with player A, you trust them, share intimate experiences and secrets with them; however, none of those interactions with player B. With player B, you feel like you’re walking on eggshells. Maybe they are too controlling, or they have mood swings that lead to you feeling worse as well. In this case, it doesn’t seem that hard to choose and move forward with player A (assuming you have to choose one). But, this means you are no longer free. You both will experience the consequences of your choice between the players and you have given up the option of going forward with B. We have executed the two main actions that lead us to being bound. Wanting to be better off led us to losing our freedom.

If we were attempting to be free, we would have either not made a choice or experienced both cases at the same time. The second option didn’t make sense even when writing it since we have no power to do such a thing, the only possible case is God, but we already talked about why that does not guarantee freedom. So, let’s not make a choice, stay where we are at that moment and be static, non-dynamic. We are still not free, but at least trying. This staticity can mean two things: not seeing either Player A or B, or continuing to see both until we cannot make ends meet (remember, we are assuming that we will have to choose sooner or later).

Before starting to analyse these two staticity implications, I’d like to introduce a concept to make things easier to understand for both you and me. In economics, to compute efficiency, a tool called Pareto-criterion is used. I’ll try not to bore you with the details and talk about just two concepts: pareto efficiency and pareto improvement. Pareto efficiency is when, in a game, one player cannot be better off without another player being worse off. So, both or all players are at their best joint payoff when the outcome is pareto efficient. Pareto improvement means when the new payoff is better than the old payoff. In this case ‘better’ means that the total payoff is higher with nobody having a lower payoff compared to the original outcome. If I get five apples and you get five apples in the first case and we both get higher than five or one of us gets more than five with the other not getting less than five apples in the second case means a pareto improvement. I have explained this, but, in our examples, we will only be considering our own payoff since it is enough to answer our question regarding freedom’s desirability.

Case 1: You choose to not see either player A or B, so your payoff is zero in this case. Let’s consider your other options and see if you are better off. If you chose to see just player B, you’d most likely have a negative payoff. I am using the word ‘payoff’ but you can think of whatever you want to study serotonin release or feeling good in general. If you chose player A, you’d get a higher payoff than seeing player B and it would most definitely be positive. I think it is easy to say that a positive payoff is better than zero (not feeling any joy or sadness). So, it is pretty simple to reject the choice of not seeing either, just see player A and be happier. You can easily have an improvement or even have an efficient outcome going back to Pareto’s criterion. This attempt at freedom has failed in desirability.

Case 2: You stay static and don’t make an active choice yet. This case can only go on for so long so we will have to go back to Case 1 or give up freedom but I will consider it as if it is a definite decision. Now, you have the sum of Player A and B’s payoff as your total. This is probably a positive payoff as the absolute value of Player A’s payoff is likely higher than Player B’s. However, this is still not the best possible payoff for you since Player A by itself will make you better off. I am not considering the time struggles of seeing multiple people as we do not need to overcomplicate the example. Pareto would not like this case either. So, this attempt at freedom has also unfortunately failed.

We have only gone over one case where attempting to be free is not desirable and that may not feel convincing enough to you, but it is very much sufficient when you come to think of it. Freedom, not being bound, is a constant state in our understanding. It is unchanging and static. It cannot be bent to work for our desires, it is something that we must obey in the case of us being free, kind of ironic. As it is constant and static, it must satisfy all cases of human life according to the efficiency/improvement analysis we have conducted, without exceptions, or it will not be desirable. Freedom is a blanket term that we will conduct in every part of our life, so it should be desirable in all cases. It is not. This brings up another question to mind.

Is using any blanket term at all when conducting our actions and behaviors correct? I suppose not. The condition I put freedom under in the previous paragraph is a harsh one. For a blanket term like freedom to work in conducting our life, it has to be efficient in every part of our life. That does not sound logical. We may also question why everything has to be efficient but that is unnecessary since we have not put a strict definition on what efficiency is. Having a blanket term with a concrete definition is very very unlikely to work as exceptions exist in most if not all things in life. These exceptions should not break the rule. When they do, no rule works. And no one lives life with no rules, even the notion of no rules is a rule. So, blanket terms with concrete definitions will not work in application, not just freedom.

I may have reached a half-assed conclusion but I am leaving that to your questioning skills and brainpower. I want to delve into something that may be more important. I just said that expecting efficiency in most if not all things is fine because it is not strictly defined. Let’s consider that. Is the problem with blanket terms or strict definitions? I don’t think I can say that life is as simple as a dictionary (even dictionaries aren’t simple at times). There are too many variables to consider when living. Yes, there can be some that continue throughout several different occasions but I personally have not encountered many unchanging static situations in life. The dynamism of life leads me to think that our minds should be dynamic as well. Adjust to situations, alter your definitions of words and ideals at times according to what is needed in that situation. Efficiency is a great word for that case. Efficiency may be definite for an engineering project but not in regular life. I’m not gonna follow the dictionary on this unlike freedom because it is too simple there. I’d say efficiency is roughly “the state of getting the best with the least possible expense.” I’m not saying this is the right way to live, but it can definitely be used as a blanket term to follow in life. It is dynamic, and can be adjusted according to what is needed in situations encountered. Terms like this are much more fitting in terms of being desirable and being in conjunction with a person’s life compared to static terms like freedom.