[MD] for Ham, Arlo interjects

[Ham Priday]

Concerning Freedom, Arlo had asked:
> Which is it? Something that people determine?
> Or something bestowed by "God"?

[Ham's full reply]:
> Both.  Freedom is the ability to choose one's values
> [in the context of an indeterminate reality] and to act
> upon them, without regard to necessity, coercion, or
> restraint by others.  This capacity, like reason, is intrinsic
> to man--hence, the phrase "endowed by their "Creator"--
> and it reflects the autonomous nature of human beingness.

[Arlo responds]:
> You can't have this both ways. Either "freedom of assembly"
> is a right conferred by an intellectual understanding of the
> best way to order a society, or it is mandated by a Creator on High.
>
> Also, if such "rights" are innate in man, where praytell did "freedom of
> assembly" exist ten thousand years ago? Did it exist and man just had not
> "discovered" it yet? Was it lying dormant in our genes, waiting for the 
> late
> 18th century to suddenly manifest itself?

First off, the word "right" is a legal term--the license, as it were, to 
exercise one's freedom in a socially acceptable way, such as the "right to 
assemble" or the "right to bear arms".   The Framers of the U.S. 
Constitution declined to specify individual rights, except for the "Writ of 
Habeas Corpus", prohibition of a "Bill of Attainder", and the stipulation 
that only a person convicted of treason can be punished for this crime.  The 
Bill of Rights, which was an amendment to the original Constitution, 
eventually defined 24 specific individual rights.

According to The U.S. Constitution Online: "It is also important to note 
that the Bill of Rights does not grant people the listed rights.  The Bill 
of Rights simply guarantees that the government will not infringe upon those 
rights.  It is assumed that the rights pre-exist."

I think this makes clear that constitutional rights are a compact between 
citizens and their elected government predicated on the belief that Freedom 
is a "pre-existing" and inherent right of the individual.  In other words, a 
"right" is the individual's lawful claim as a citizen to exercise the 
freedom that is his inalienable nature.

The "bestowed by God" argument is a red herring, to my way of thinking. 
Nothing is "absolute" in existence.  But if it is man's nature to be free, 
if he is created with the reason and discrimination to choose what is of 
value in his life--even in the context of a collective society, then 
Freedom, like rationality and value-sensibility, is a primary human 
attribute.  To the extent that rational self-directed value defines human 
beingness, I regard it as not only the "essence" of man, but the foundation 
of morality.

[Arlo]:
> ...Intellectual freedom derives from social participation. One can
> only "live as a hermit" after one has internalized a social system,
> a baby left in the wild at birth would not "live as a hermit"
> but as a wild animal, devoid of any language to compartmentalize
> and synthesize her experiences.

I've been over this argument too many times before, Arlo.  Forgetting about 
the sequence of events (our historical perspective of existence), if man is 
essentially an intellectual entity with the innate capacity to pursue that 
which represents value to him, the "social system" is irrelevant.  You seem 
to be implying that the individual cannot think for himself, reason for 
himself, or value what is beneficial for himself.  Indeed, you trash 
sensibility when you say that "only after the self arises out of this 
confluence of collective and individual experience, are such intellections 
possible."

Regarding Ron's "structurated global diversity", you say:
> It derives from the idea, as Pirsig articulates, that the
> intellectual level of man derives from the social level.
> Man is never an autonomous agent bouncing around in
> the world.  He is both an active (agenic) and passive
> (structurated) participant in a social realm (or "habitus"
> as Bourdieu calls it).

All this sophistry is an attempt to convince yourself and others that 
individual awareness is a "dangerous myth" that certain elitists have 
overcome with a collective notion of Intellectual Supremacy.  This is plain 
nonsense.  Intellect is the product of human reasoning, which is derived 
from the value-sensibility of free agents.  Value can only be made aware to 
a conscious entity that is differentiated from the uncreated source.  Ron 
Kulp and Vygotsky notwithstanding, all knowledge, all truth, all symbols, 
all concepts are no more than this differentiated awareness.  Without it, 
there would be no universe, no knowledge, no value, no freedom, and no 
purpose for existence.

Essentially yours,
Ham