The Fundamental Currency

I have noticed that one easy way to explain how society operates is in terms of freedom. Our freedom actually underlies all that we do.

We are born with freedom. We must be, or else it would not exist and we would not have a word for it. Yet, it is true that most people do not have all of the freedom that they would like. This is because, while we are born with freedom, we are also incomplete in that we do not have all that we need. This means that we must exchange some of our freedom for the things that we need, but lack. God can be considered as being totally free in that he has no needs or dependencies and can order the universe any way he wants.

Freedom is thus a currency, just like money. The two are connected since we can use money meet the demands caused by our needs, thus reducing the demands on our freedom as a currency. In other words, we can exchange freedom, for a period of time, to work for money. The difference is, of course, that, unlike freedom, most of us are not born with money.

There is a posting on this blog, "Civics Made Really Simple", describing my vision of how all of civics can be described as "management of the subjective". This is based on freedom also, everyone's freedom of choice.

So, I think we can take a broad view of the operation of society in terms of freedom.

Freedom consists of two possible slants, "freedom to" and "freedom from". Freedom is a part of the nature of human beings and, since we are complicated, we can expect that freedom will also be complicated. A simple example that I have cited in other postings is smoking. Should people have "freedom to" smoke or, should other people have "freedom from" second-hand smoke.

There is a wide spectrum of freedom from "freedom to" to "freedom from". We have a tendency to see ourselves as free, and those without our particular stripe of freedom as not free. It would seem to me that extreme "freedom to" is tantamount to the lawless "Law of the Jungle". I have never been quite sure why it is called that, since exactly the same rule of survival of the strong at the expense of the weak, applies in the arctic tundra as well.

On the other hand, extreme "freedom from" is a dictatorship. Dictators tend to enact strict controls to be "free from" some type of insurgency or internal or external threat. Like so many other things having to do with human beings, there is a peak factor of quality right in the middle.

It is quality, by the way, which I define as differentiating living things from inanimate matter. Quality is this optimum peak of efficiency. For living things, both quality and quantity matter. With inanimate matter there is no such thing as quality, but only quantity.

The law is an attempt to establish an optimum peak in the spectrum of freedom. We give up some of our nomadic "freedom to", such as taking things belonging to others, in exchange for "freedom from" other taking things belonging to us. The concept of public and private property can also be plotted on the spectrum of freedom. Public property represents "freedom to", while private property represents "freedom from".

Any type of contract is based on this use of freedom as a currency, based on an exchange between the two sides of the freedom spectrum. Marriage, for example, is basically giving one's "freedom to" date others in exchange for "freedom from" one's spouse dating others.

As we know, there is an economic spectrum from far right capitalism to far left communism, with many shades of socialism in between. This economic spectrum is also a function of the freedom spectrum which I am describing here. Capitalism represents the "freedom to" side and communism the "freedom from" side.

Can you see now how all of the operation of society can be broken down into the exchange between "freedom to" and "freedom from"?