Freedom

I think this is one of those things that all of us like to imagine we have. Everyone has different definitions of freedom. Some are people who want the freedom to be left alone, others are desiring freedom in a more highly defined set of "rights" such as we have in the US where it is our government's responsibility to monitor and regulate our free interactions with other people. But freedom can have lots of different impacts on our lives every day; I'm going to try and tie freedom into every news article I post here.

Starting with the Paraguayan indigenous population. Human protection groups claim that this people have never had contact with the outside world, even though we have photos of them. Ironic, right? They're not stupid. If they've had their photo taken (in the article), it's not like they haven't had contact or not understood that there is an outside world. So then now we have the debate. Are they supposed to be free to continue their existence in this part of the country? And what about our desire to conserve the habitat in this part of the world. This directly interferes with their free lifestyle, but in the end it's supposed to help them. Should we be intruding on their life at all? But isn't the reason the conservation project exists the fault of us, and we've already intruded on their freedom to choose their own lifestyles through this negative environmental impact?

Then we have the latest news on the gulf oil spill and who's being blamed for it. It's strange in a world so big, we've been able to come up with controls and responsibility for what happens offshore in the water. And in my personal opinion, they should lose their freedom to operate oil rigs if they can't just shape up, take responsibility, clean up their mess and not do this again.

New art is being displayed in Germany, after being discovered during new construction projects. It was hidden by the NAZI regime, a perfect example of super-conservative and misguided restriction of freedom. I can't honestly say that I think any of the art was really worth saving if not for posterity's sake, but still, it's something new to look at and talk about in Germany.

In a country often criticized for lack of freedom, new talks are scheduled to take place to attempt to fix the economic problem. Cuba has never been known for holding party meetings and discussing issues, but more for blindly following its leadership. It would seem that there is hope for what we here would call "progress" towards a less strict communist state. Sometimes though it seems like that is more idealistic than practical towards improving the welfare of a people.

All of these articles target the discussion of freedom in a different way; all of them are from the news today. Freedom is such a catch-phrase, and yet a critical desire in everyone. It's just that we all imagine varying degrees and extents of freedom. Sometime I'll tell you what freedom means to me specifically, but today I just wanted to provoke some thought.