free body #

If one is to imagine an individual, possessing free will, alone, one can think of how said individual might operate, and what abilities the individual might have.

It is obvious that if this individual is alone, then they have a few abilities, or capacities; they have the capacity to exist (i.e. to be alive), they have the capacity to move, and they have the capacity to use their environment to their advantage.

These, one might claim to be “rights” or “liberties”, granted by a higher authority such as a deity, or nature itself, or maybe derived from logic, but they are merely the consequences of existence, presupposing, as always, the existence of free will. Insofar as a person exists, they have these capacities and might choose to use them, along with their skills, acquired or otherwise, to improve their life.

effective potentials #

The moment that another human, or any other being exists, there is a effective, implicit interaction between the two which limits this freedom. Suddenly there is a question of “am I allowed to go there?”, or “If I approach this other entity, how will it react to my action?”. All of these hold, both in the frame of cooperation, either in sharing a common space, commonly available food, etc, or in the frame of antagonization, perhaps for the same resources. This simple effect acts as a restrictive force is society, and in this way one can see that even the smallest collection of humans can never be comprised of truly free individuals, nor can this society itself be truly free.

Once more than two individuals coexist, there are more interactions, which introduce further restrictions on the capacities of the individuals to act on their own volition, and at some point there is a shift of focus from the actions of the individual on others, to the actions of others on the individual.

Truly, the complexity of large societies does not allow each person to consider what is of the others, in order to restrict himself, but it pushes the person to consider what is their own, so they may restrict the others. This way, the metaphysical entity that is society, gains the ability to define the liberties of the individual, and set a mode of operations for the members of said society which diverges from the notion of “What is not forbidden is permitted” and converges to the notion of “What is not permitted is forbidden”. Under this scope, the larger the society, the more imposing and authoritative it becomes, not out of any amlice, but out of necessity.