We got it wrong!
We hear this sentence a lot when we see wrong behavior
around us and most of us use it. Where did it come from and why has it become
so common when sarcasm is made of some people's behavior?
The word
freedom has always accompanied humankind from time immemorial, despite the
change of its concept from one era to another according to circumstances and
events. The term freedom began when people were captured in battles since the
dawn of history and exploited as slaves deprived of will and destiny without any
rights. The captives and slaves aimed for freedom and emancipation from
captivity and humiliation and to return to their normal, dignified life,
although at that time, even the freedmen were working as servants, guards, or
peasants for kings and princes, but with the development of life the mentality
of human beings developed and began with freedom of belief and religion and a
departure from the existing thinking deifying the king and making it all
Something, since the monotheistic religions from time immemorial have played
the primary role in awakening members of society that they are all equal and
there is no reason to differentiate between them as one of them is free while
the common people are deprived of their will or restricted by worldly laws established
by people like them, but as the rule of the ruling class did not It was
difficult to attract some clergymen later on and to harness religion in
extending the authority and influence of the ruling class, but despite that,
the role of religions was very positive in those eras in liberating people from
the sway of power.
Limiting human rights to the ruling class
The natural
rights of human beings have been a subject of contention throughout history,
from the right to an education that was only available to the ruling class to
the right to choose to work, trade, and live in dignity. Human freedom has
always been subjected to persecution and robbery by the ruler or invading
armies. The personal freedom of the individual did not take a great place in
people's lives in the past. Rather, the focus was more on the freedom of people.
The beginning of openness to demand freedom and rights
The French Revolution was the beginning of the spark for
the peoples of the world to demand rights and liberties and to depart from blind
obedience to the ruler as the extreme poverty and hunger of the common people
of France, and the sophistication and extravagance that the nobles and rulers
of France reached, ignited the fire of anger and revenge within the common
people and planted a question in the conscience of each individual, which is
why the nobles have all the food, clothing and money while we starve to death,
what are they better than us? Therefore, it was the most popular revolution
representing the free collective thought of the people despite all the
violations that occurred after the revolution later on. The thought of the
revolution spread to most of the peoples of the West, and this resulted in
hundreds of philosophers, activists, and writers who began to develop theories
about the freedom of the individual and society because of the many turmoil and
abuse, a famous saying became popular at the time, which says that a person’s
freedom ends at the limits of the freedom of others, That revolution was the beginning of the formation of
real republics and the establishment of constitutions that still exist today
with some changes. With the progress of the times and the openness of the
countries of the world to some culture and thought, freedoms became more
frequent in daily life and became a very important topic, especially freedom of
opinion and freedom to choose the ruler and the form of government. With the
end of World War I, the issue of the freedom of self-determination of people
came out into the open, and it was a qualitative leap in human history, that an
entire people be given the right to self-determination, even though the issue
was no more than a formality. With the end of World War II, women in the West
succeeded in gaining their rights to freedom of expression, freedom to work, to
run for office, equality with men in rights, custody of children, and
education, although all of the above are considered public rights and women
have been demanding them since ancient times, they have been achieved in a real
and effective way in the era the talk. After the peoples of the West gained
freedom and reached a degree of prosperity, luxury, and technological
development to the extent that the limits of freedom exceeded the limits of
corruption or moral decay under the name of individual freedom because they
adopted absolute free thought and their abandonment of the principle of social
freedom, which is determined by regulatory laws that depend on the culture or
religion of the people
So that its members do not go beyond their limits and
collapse the foundations of the correct society building, which the West is now
paying taxes in the form of family breakdown and the disintegration of society
from the inside.
On
the other side of the earth, the peoples of the East began to call for freedoms
and rights, but as is the custom of the East, nationalist and partisan
governments took over most of the countries of the East and began to strengthen
the foundations of their rule with the iron and fire at the expense of the
blood, rights, and freedoms of their people, but these corrupt governments
realized that their peoples would demand rights and freedoms, so terms were
invented. And new ideas of freedom, including freedom of clothing and freedom
of “observed” thoughts, were far from any practical application of them and did
not stop that. Rather, it proceeded to bring the West’s culture into clothing
and daily lifestyle, generation after generation, to shorten freedom for its
people in these superficial matters and to distort the concept of freedoms and
public rights such as Freedom of opinion and election, freedom of trade,
freedom of learning, freedom to publish and criticize, and freedom to travel
and tourism on minor issues that contradict the culture and civilization of the
eastern peoples and make freedom a bogeyman from which conservative peoples
fear.
When
the eastern peoples or the peoples of the third world get the first opportunity
of freedom to express themselves, they do wrong actions that have nothing to do
with freedom, as a result of the culture of tyrannical governments that ruled
the minds of peoples for tens of years. That is why the term: We have
understood freedom is a common mistake because we could not understand the real
freedom enjoyed by the people of the West. Rather, we applied the stage after
obtaining absolute freedom, which is the use of freedom is negative and wrong
matters.