Freedom

This is intended to be first of many posts

The modern western civilization is founded on the enlightened notion of freedom.
European middle class enlightened by renaissance was disgusted with Dogma and Oppression perpetrated by religious as well as secular authorities. Whereas Church sought to implement the dogma that was engendered in the religion, Kings and Emperors sought to secure their position of power by enforcing the notion of right to rule as having divine sanction. The result of this was a constricted society, where persecution on religious ground was the norm. Any independent thinking was discouraged by various forms of tortures sanctified by church and state.
The intention was to kill any idea which could challenge authority of church or king, which were to remain undisputed in any case.

It was in these circumstances that modern Europe was molded. European philosophy furiously rejected any attempt to suppress the spirit of independent enquiry in name of religion. It also rejected any attempt to prohibit expression of speech in name of nation or state. From that start notion of freedom evolved from a right in political , religious or philosophical discourse to become one of the basic premise and a corner stone on which modern civilization draws strength from.

Here is my understanding, freedom is an enlightened notion, however it is a limited one.
It places no compulsion physical or otherwise on man to submit to other's authority or doctrine.
However it places no stress on importance to reflect, to question, in short to think.

And here is the problem a civilization whose people forget the importance of thinking, in effect dispensing of the intellect withers as surely as a tree in a barren soil.

I am afraid that not withstanding the vigorous political debate, this is what happening with western civilization. It has become too indolent for vigorous thinking. Yes there is still serious debates on economics and technical matters. But spirit of reason and analytic thinking which was evident in early 20th century is seriously missing. Instead what is evident is political brinkmanship masquerading as social ideologies .

Two things have happened first the modern version of atheism has meant divorce of observational (or empirical ) science from higher form of science, i.e. philosophy.

Second freedom has been deemed as end in itself rather than means to end.
The notion of anything goes is frankly speaking a self defeating one.

I understand that it can be argued that not everyone in a society can be a thinker, and that statistically all things remaining constant there will be an appreciable number of people tending to critically analyze.

I don't agree with this, that number of people investing time in critical analysis is independent of the emphasis placed on it.

In my view that result will be what can be termed as dumbing down of civilization. This is what unravels the great civilization in many cases, as it did in case of Rome, contrary to what Atanu said, it is not the welfare state (the concept of which is a fairly recent one), but the intellectual sloth.

How is it possible then to present a more constructive model for civilization, I think the answer is society, but I will like to write about this in other post.