All the while, that reign of desires savagely tyrannizes and batters a person's whole life and mind with storm's ranging in all directions. On this side fear, on that side desire, on this side anxiety, on that side empty spurious enjoyment, on this side torment over the loss of something loved, on the ardor to acquire something not yet possessed, on this side sorrows over injuries received, on that the burning desire to redress it. Whichever way one turns greed can pinch, extravagance squander, ambition enslave, pride puff up, envy twist, laziness overcome, stubbornness provoke, submissiveness oppress-these and countless others throng the realm of lust, having the run of it.In an earlier article with Ben Burgis, we argued that it was a mistake to claim that the fundamental divide between the political Left and Right was between an emphasis on equality by the former and liberty by the latter. As we put it, almost "everyone values freedom" regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum. Or, at least, they profess to do so, although things often turn out quite differently in practice. The primarily political differences, therefore, emerge over how best to realize freedom, and of course, what freedom itself means. Does it simply mean the absence of coercion by state authorities, or should we develop a more substantive conception? Professor Burgis and I defended the latter position.
~St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will
Here, I want to build upon some of these earlier themes by examining a somewhat different issue. That is: to what extent can an individual be uncoerced by the state, and yet remain unfree? This is, of course, a far more speculative question than the purely political one examined earlier, and I do not intend to answer it here. Instead, I want to show how major figures in philosophy and other disciplines have long acknowledged that freedom is not simply a matter of non-coercion, but has an important inner dimension. In the conclusion, I will briefly spell out the political consequences we might infer from taking such an inner conception of freedom seriously.
Comment: The above point is well taken, but as always, the devil is in the details. Becoming more self-aware, recognizing the source of one's unnecessary suffering and working to resolve it doesn't necessarily make one complacent. Self-awareness is a tool that will, ideally, make one similarly aware of the outside world, together with all its injustices and disparities. Unfortunately, mindfulness has come to be a synonym for navel-gazing. Hyper-focus on the self can be detrimental if it's not paired with an equal hyper-focus on the world as it is (not how we wish it to be), and a greater awareness of how our own biases taint our ability to see the world objectively. It is only by seeing anything, on the micro or macro level, objectively that can we truly affect change.
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