Night post, because my suitemates are (as usual) being loud, and I don’t entirely feel like starting my Aristotle readings yet (though I’ll need to get that done by tomorrow night, as it’s due Thursday and I’m celebrating my birthday Wednesday night (a week early, for various reasons)).
Perhaps a month or so ago, my mom posed and interesting question at dinner. I believe it was worded something like this: is freedom inherited?
Well, obviously, that wasn’t the absolute clearest choice of words, but I understood it enough–and let me know if I misinterpret this–to mean, “Can a love of (or need for) liberty be inherited?” Well, this is the oldest question in recorded history: the ol’ Nature v. Nurture problem. Seriously, Plato’s Meno asks this about a closely related topic (virtue), where the great, wise Socrates determines (after 30 frick’n pages), essentially, “damned if I know”.
Well, I tried to be a little more helpful at dinner. I responded with a suggestion that it is for some people, but the idea needs to be implanted into others’ heads from some outside force. Somehow, I believe I related it to intelligence–not IQ, necessarily, but ability to rationally see and understand the world around oneself. Perhaps more like being able to know the difference between right and wrong. Thinking back, though, this relation seems to be missing a certain need that must be present within the person to prefer what’s right (unless, of course, I, myself, have a skewed view of what’s right and wrong and it turns out that oppression happens to be right).
So, now, it seems, I’ve made the question of a love for freedom dependent upon one’s virtue and am covering ground already plowed over 2500 years ago. So, by the Ancient Greek definition, virtue is whatever makes any given thing a good or great [that thing]. They (and we) are talking of virtues of the soul, of which they had four (and, frankly, I can’t particularly think of anything to add to these): wisdom, justice (sort of changed now to morality), temperance, and courage. My current hypothesis, then, is that in order to have a love/need for liberty, one must posess these four things. Wisdom: to be able to know what’s going on in the world around you; justice: to hold a moral system that correctly knows what is right and wrong; temperance: basically, “I control myself just fine, no one else has to”… or something of the sort; and courage: ability to do something to increase one’s own or the general population’s freedoms.
Ehh… scratch that, it doesn’t seem quite right. A soul needs a certain amount of passion and spirit to feel this need. Not to mention, there are plenty of examples of freedom-loving men who lacked in one or more of these faculties (see, for example, Ben Franklin’s time in France or anything about Thomas Jefferson and slaves). Oftentimes, also, there can be some unwise people who love liberty, or some who just won’t do anything about it. Back to the drawing board, then.
Is the need for liberty inherited? See, any nature/nurture debate is difficult to answer because most people are raised by their biological parents, thus, the same people are providing both the nature and nurture for that one individual. Sure, there are friends and siblings and teachers and whatnot influencing the child, but the large majority comes from the parents. Now, of course, there are adoption studies and the like, but those can be somewhat limited and… well, I have yet to find one on this particular issue. Frankly, individuals that feel very strongly about this don’t reveal themselves until freedoms upon the public have been severely restricted, which hasn’t happened in America for, oh let’s see, 230 years or so? Obviously, it’s not that there haven’t been people like that this whole time, but the limit at which they would be willing to risk anything for it had yet to be reached. Thus, it would be hard to do any form of generational study on it.
Theoretically, one could look at the culture of certain countries in an attempt to answer this–I, myself, have often joked that bravery has essentially been bred out of Europe, since all those with that quality have long-since moved to America. But that could just as easily have been cultural influence being passed down through the ages (hah, 200 years=ages. right.)–frankly, I can’t tell. Chances are, though, that it’s a mixture of the two. That’s the way these things typically are found to be: there’s a certain love of independence that is most definitely innate in some people, but a child with even the most extreme amount of that can become a complete slave if taught that restriction is the best and most necessary thing for them.
Of course, I could be wrong one either guess. If either one, though, it’s most likely an inherent trait, for once in a while, if the need is strong enough, the love of liberty can not only be nurtured but thrive and boil over in even the most tyrannical of states. I can’t necessarily say that that person will live very long under that regime, but I’m sure it can happen (unless I’m just fooling myself with hope, which I really pray is not the case). Whether this would be a thing taken genetically or given by God or something, that’s a topic for another post, but I just have a doubt that it can by any means be untaught to an entire population.
Yay, quick 2-hour nighttime post! Later, guys, I did the best I could for the moment on this one.
