Becoming accustomed to Liberties

I think it is nearly impossible for people like myself, the lucky few born and raised in and lifelong residents of nations with robust civil liberties, to understand what it is like to live somewhere without these entrenched rights. 

 

The option to defy the established order, whether religious or political or artistic or historical, is inseparable from our national identity. The existence of that option is our defining characteristic; it is who we are. Imagining ourselves without that option is an exercise in fiction, for it is to imagine a wholly different human being. 

 

I can't begin to describe the ways in which this right influences my life. Everywhere I turn I see others, and thereby myself, taking a stance in the multiverse of ideas. You can make a show like Good Omens that spits on Abrahamic mythology, you can dive deep enough to drown in UFO conspiracies, you can make fun of the most powerful people around, and no one will stop you. There is no grand, overarching force to keep you in check. To reasonable extents, and sometimes even unreasonable (e.g. hate speech cesspools on 4chan), we can get away with thinking and saying whatever we want. 

 

I know this isn't news, and it's all extremely obvious because it's kind of the whole point of "liberal" countries. I just think here, within one of the countries that values free speech, we forget how novel our experience is. 

 

Not only is granting these expansive liberties to the common man a new development in human history, but it's still rare today. I read the news and see a place like Myanmar where millions have been dominated for generations by misinformation, civil war, and a military stranglehold. I watch Putin's Palace (Дворец Путина), the viral film uncovering rampant corruption, and then see the man who made it get nearly three years in a prison camp for his disobedience. 

 

The Human Freedom Index, published by the Cato Institute, uses a measure based on "personal, civil, and economic freedom," to rank countries by respect for human dignity. Their 2020 report found that 15% of people live in the top quartile of countries, while 34% live in the bottom quartile. (The datasets they have online are really extensive, if you want to explore the details more.) Out of 210 countries analyzed by Freedom House for political rights and civil liberties, only 84 were considered "free." 

None of this is to say that progress isn't being made, or that "free" countries truly respect every individual's rights, or that things are necessarily better for everyone in certain parts of the world compared to others. 

I'm not sure what exactly I'm trying to say. But when I think of the North Korean woman born into a cold bubble as far from me in every respect as the Moon, I imagine, futile as it may seem, what I would be like if I was her. And this painful mental exercise affirms in me that she, like me, deserves to take her own stance in the multiverse of ideas. For everyone to have that option, when I think about it, is really the highest of high ideals we should be striving for.