Saturday 2.43pm thoughts: Freedom and license aren’t the same thing. Freedom means doing what you want as long as you respect the equal rights of others. License is doing what you want regardless of the consequences for anyone else. Freedom is based on a limited notion of the self that acknowledges that others exist in the world and have the same rights you do. License is based on a total or absolute notion of the self that acknowledges only the rights of that absolute self. Much of the time we invoke the idea of freedom when what we actually mean is license; we claim to stand for freedom when what we’re thinking of is license and then purposefully confuse being criticised with being attacked in order to avoid having to be held accountable for our lack of concern and even contempt for the rights of others and to shift the blame onto anyone critical of our haughty arrogance, self-absorbtion, grandiosity, narcissism, egocentrism and generally shitty attitude and conduct — not to mention our cowardice. It takes no moral courage at all to defend your right to do whatever the fuck you feel like regardless of the consequences for anyone else and then complain about being oppressed whenever you encounter criticism, though it does take some to defend freedom as a principle that applies equally to all without fear or favour — and not least when it applies in a way that doesn’t happen to serve your own convenience. Maybe that’s why we only encounter the latter relatively infrequently.
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