Liberty

Days ago I had a short but vidid dream, I was having an argument with the king of a fallen world, when I said: “The law does not exist to limit free men, but to limit those who break it.”

The king replied: “look at this, something from the 5 fathers!” then he was about to allow me to speak, but stopped himself and without any further argument disappeared, accepting that the age of kings was going to end soon anyway.

I don’t recall more details from that dream, it seemed to be an old/ancient setup, however it makes me wonder that it may be not that different to the current era, in the sense that there is a trend to follow people, often self-proclaimed “kings”, to go against any temporary law like lockdowns, vaccination, mask mandates etc.

Fortunately is not everyone, but a small, yet growing segment of the society that goes that way.

It seems that for them freedom or liberty is doing whatever they want, while in fact liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom.

As a local example, the photo below is from today’s march in Auckland, we are with a more or less strict lockdown meaning no social events but about 5000 people went protesting against the things that have allowed us to enjoy an almost covid free reality in New Zealand. As a consequence of events like that people that has nothing to do with it will get infected with COVID and some may get to the hospital or die.

Things may be getting tough, because of new variants, but it should soon get better mainly because of these restrictions , high vaccination rates, etc. – however they just want “freedom” to decide about following or not the rules/laws already in place.

On a deeper perspective is not just about following rules so that everyone also has freedom, or in other words exercising liberty, but also about self-control.

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself… the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. …And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.

Leonardo da Vinci

The age of “kings” where anyone does as pleased is not meant to last longer, their domain is time-limited paradoxically because not abiding in the law makes them subject to the consequences a broken law.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash