The pursuit of freedom

A random thought about the pursuit of freedom in the United States versus that in China.

The freedom to act is not a foreign concept to humans. We all understand what it means: it is the balance between our desire and that of the society we live in. And this freedom can be anywhere between total anarchy and total oppression. Human society, however, is never at the extremes, so we are always somewhere in between.

This choice of where to be varies from society to society, and society's choice is based on its history and circumstances that shaped that history. I think the United States and China serve as two good examples for comparison.

Before China was unified under the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, China saw centuries of warfare, centuries of suffering. Central government was weak, resulting in local dukes (who eventually declared themselves kings) striking out on their own, each seeking to further his own power. This eventually led to development of two key schools of thought: Confucianism which focuses on the benevolent rule in a well-ordered society, and Legalism which focuses on the use of laws to regulate society.

Another two millennia of history reaffirmed a concept in the Chinese people: chaos is bad, order is good. When society falls into chaos, people suffer. When there is order, people prosper. This serves as the Chinese society's motive for seeking social order over individual freedom.

The United States' experience is more differently. With its history being European settlers trying to survive in a new land with potentially hostile natives, the earlier generations had to survive on their own without reliance on help from a government located an ocean away. Whatever government help there is locally was sparse and thin. The individual had a need to take individual action for survival. This created the motive for society's desire to have greater freedom of individual action. Again, this was born from a need, the need to survive in a new land.

So which is better? That, I think, is the wrong way to look at it. The degree of freedom given to individual action is not something that should be homogeneous. First, how each person views individual freedom versus society's rules stem from centuries of cultural and historical shaping. It is then further influenced by the current state of social and economic circumstance. If we see it under such a lens, the American pursuit of individual freedom for the rest of the world is by itself an oppression of freedom: it denies the other societies (and the individuals in those societies) their freedom to choose a model that suits them.

If we are to accept the freedom of individual action, then we must respect the individual's choice of choosing to be limited by society's rules.

There is no single right way. Only when we start to see the world in the full range of colors instead of black and white will we be able to really prosper as a human race.