Good post Dachs, who was the bloke in the fifties?
And do you think we are living in a free society today?
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Hah! Just this morning as I was making up my bed I felt grateful.
At the end of each day, to feel healthy while turning back my bedspread, removing decorative pillows, turning on my reading lamp, and snuggling up in a clean, warm bed with my tablet and a current fiction book to read before falling asleep and knowing I was kind to someone, and someone was kind to me this day.
Yes, itâs the small things that matter.
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Compared to the unfree society I came from, which was totalitarian and closed, it sure is.
Like many other terms a free society is used for different concepts. Iâm using it for a society based on a separation of power and in which the law rules.
Let me explain it by looking at the differences for an individual.
Was I allowed to manage my life by making choices? No. I couldnât choose a job freely as my children can. Were different ideas tolerated unconditionally? No. If you refused to serve in the military, youâd be imprisoned for 18 months and would have even fewer choices afterwards.
You said youâd been on a cruise. Imagine you wouldnât even get a passport and were not allowed to leave the UK. Would that be OK?
You wrote you were working hard. Imagine your hard-earned Pounds were virtually worthless and wouldnât take you anywhere. No savings, no car, no home of your own, only clothing and consumer goods of poor taste and quality. Only a small selection of food. No fruits of any sort except apples if youâre lucky. Queuing up for everything on a daily basis.
Worst of all: No chance of ever improving your lifestyle. No prospects, no changes possible. Thereâd be limits everywhere. The state would tell you how to live, so to speak. Youâd be told which organisations to join, which films to watch, which books to read, what flat would be enough for you. Youâd be instructed how to see the world. Your own ideas would not be accepted. Youâd have learnt: People in other countries of the free world would be living their lives as they see fit but not you. Your life would be restrained by a dominant party and its ideas. Contradiction and deviance were not allowed. Welcome to an oppressive society as opposed to a free one.
Just a brief and incomplete outline of why I think Iâm living in a free society.
In the fifties there was only one chap at the helm, our PM Adenauer being in the right place at the right time. Donât want to even think of what couldâve happenedâŠ
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Thanks for your comprehensive answer Dachs, it sounds horrific, but being born when and where I was, it would be such a contrast and to be thrust into that world would be unbearable.
However, I think someone (or a group) with world power and wealth are working towards that future scenario bit by bit.
But not in my lifetimeâŠ
Wasnât it Adolf who said âIf you want to control the people, take away their freedoms in small increments?â
I could be wrong about Adolf, but itâs the quote I was focusing onâŠ
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That is where the inconsistency may be.
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