Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #144 – The Problem of Freedom and Morality

			But
		

			there's two types of freedom in political theory, one is called negative freedom, and one is
positive freedom. Okay, so negative freedom is sort of a freedom from other things, okay? There's
this sort of limit, and I want to be free from that limit. And so I obliterate the limit, so that
I'm free to do what I want. Positive freedom, on the other hand, is the freedom to write the freedom
to do something. And that comes back to actually capacity, right? Let's imagine, you know, I'm not
		

			an artist, okay, I'm really bad at art, okay, I don't have the positive freedom to create a
beautiful piece of art, I would have to train, I would have to understand this is how color works.
This is how paint works. This is how you put it on the canvas. And then with training, I would
develop that positive freedom to be able to make that piece of artwork and the same goes for morals,
right? If I want to be generous, okay, that's a positive freedom. So right now, maybe, say, I'm a
		

			stingy guy, right? You come over to my house, and I just give you cornflakes, I'm not going to give
you like the good food that I have. Okay? In order to become truly generous, I need to train myself,
I need to discipline myself so that I develop this sort of positive freedom. Now I have the freedom
to act virtuous, I have the freedom to act in a good way. Okay, one of the biggest problems of our
society in North America right now is that we only think in terms of negative freedom. We do not
		

			think in terms of positive freedom at all, hardly at all, except for little pockets that have to do
with like martial arts or sports or things like that. Most people, they're fixated on negative
freedom. Okay, there's problems with that, not just that it's out of balance. But there's a problem
with negative freedom in and of itself. And that is that it necessitates always finding another
limit to break, right? If the boundary is your parents, then we have to undo the family, if the
		

			boundary is the spouse, or the boundary is the kids are the boundary is gender, the boundary is
sexuality, whatever the boundary is, it creates this logic that in order to feel free, and
autonomous and fulfilled and satisfied that I have to constantly agitate and militate against these
boundaries, whatever's holding me back from being me. Now there's an irony here. But before we get
to the irony, we have to realize, first of all, that it's an impossible task. It's a fool's errand.
		

			We are defined by limits, even just having relationships implies limits, right? We can't have our
cake and eat it too. If you're going to have relationships, you have to have limits, right? We call
them bonds, you know. And that's actually a really significant word because it has a double meaning
right bond, and it's something that connects to people but Bond, also something that limits you like
bondage, right? It's right there altogether. If were to imagine this individual that broke free of
		

			every single bond, they would have a horrible, meaningless life with no relationships. But there's
an irony to it. Beyond that, beyond that, this is an impossible task. There's an irony to it, and
that people's ideas of what to rebel against, and what to free themselves from are not their own
ideas. These are things that are cooked up in academic conferences and in papers and in mass media.
And corporations think about these things like all the time, it's not even your own ideas. It's not
		

			even your own freedom, right, you're simply just trying to be free, like everybody else, individual
like everybody else. There used to be a Dr. Pepper commercial, it used to make me laugh, because it
was like the concept of the commercial was everybody's walking around, and they have different
clothes on and then like, they take off whatever clothes they have on the outside, and it's a Dr
Pepper shirt, okay, but there's some text on it that says something like edgy and individualistic or
		

			something, you know something about your identity or whatever. But the irony was and the people who
made the commercial didn't realize at the end that they everybody's wearing the same shirt. So it's
a perfect symbol of how people relate to freedom and identity these days, because everybody's got
something maybe a little bit different written on the shirt, but it's all the same color. It's all
the same shirt. Okay, you think that you're being different by dyeing your hair blue, calling
		

			yourself non binary, doing all this other sorts of things. You're just like everybody else, you're
just like everybody else, right? Negative freedom is not where it's at positive freedom, virtue,
morality, discipline. That's the real way to satisfaction and that's the real way to happiness.