Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Martin Almada: What is freedom? It is my right to have an option in life respecting the rights of others. In my country Paraguay I enjoy an absolut freedom of speech but I have no access to justice, because the judicial power continues to act as dictatorship being a part of executive branch. I don´t feel free nor protected by my state. In Paraguay officially prevails freedom, because general elections take place every five years, when a new president, new deputies and senators are elected. We have this problem not only in my country, but in the entire Latin America. We can take the example of Mexico, where frustrating elections have taken place. In those elections a small minority gains power and controls Mexico for more than hundred years now, as such is the will of the United States and big markets.

by Martin Almada

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Masami Saionji: I believe that freedom is irrelevant to where you are. When people do not bear freedom in their minds, they cannot live with freedom even though they live in the peaceful country. People with dissatisfaction or feeling fenced in, confined or comfortlessness must be changed their mind, otherwise their dissatisfaction remains in their minds no matter where they go. Therefore, I think we must find freedom in our minds instead of searching for the right place around the world. In any poor countries or lands, we can lead a life that is good for our soul if we have freedom in our minds. However, if we have dissatisfaction or comfortlessness in our minds, they are always unsatisfied and confined and then we easily get the feeling of comfortlessness/dissatisfaction even though we go and live in any rich/wonderful countries. I think that freedom exists in the mind of people and we cannot achieve it by changing our land/country/environment. Freedom is the thing you create by yourself in your mind. It is not the thing that someone gives you or is related to the circumstance, the country or the place where you are.

by Masami Saionji

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Masuma Bibi Russel: What is freedom? Today, do we have freedom? I think, freedom, peace, everything is taken by the big power, but it’s so important, of course wherever one lives, I come from Bangladesh and it’s so important to have the freedom, freedom to live, freedom to smile, freedom to laugh, freedom to have peace, I think, freedom to speak, freedom to be alive in this world, freedom to have children, to grown up, to see the world, to have educated, to go to school, to health. I think freedom is so important. Freedom is like a bird, you know. If a bird cannot fly freely, there’s no bird, there’s no wings. I think we have cut out of our wings by the big powers. Today there is no freedom, no freedom to speak, people -- freedom to look at it what’s happening, freedom of traveling, freedom of going out, freedom of looking around, freedom of speech. I think, everyone, wherever it is, which part of the world, freedom is so important, and not only to use your freedom in a right way, use the freedom to properly to be a better life, to better human being, to use your freedom to give, use your freedom to look around, to appreciate, to read, to know the culture, heritage. I mean freedom, without freedom like you’re cutting away everything. You know, freedom is very important, but using it in a right way, in a properly is so important wherever a person is.

by Masuma Bibi Russel

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Mayank Mehta: I think it’s quite interesting. In some ways, you want to say yes it is related to where you are but before even we go there, to where you are, first we have to answer, as you say, what is freedom? So, is freedom that we should be able to stand up and voice overviews, this freedom that we should be able to have the same thing that any other citizen in this country has, in principle? As it is define in the Europe and United States for example. If that’s the case, then wouldn't you say that a person, let’s say a person needs tremendous amount of money to afford a certain comfort. In principle, everybody can have it. Everybody doesn’t have that kind of money, so do they really have the freedom to afford those wealths and comforts and so? There in lies issues, if you’re talking about basic things, basic rights, basic things that lead into survival, it is somewhat easier to define. But when we start going beyond those very simple things, then things start to get some tricky. We start getting into tricky territory about what are things, what are the rights that people should have? If you go beyond food, shelter, water, healthcare and so on. They are immediately into very murky waters. So, beyond that freedom of speech, yes of course, it gets very tricky even there. One person of freedom of speech would be an insult to some other person, so what does that person do, who wants to have a freedom of speech? As we can imagine, there are many ways to handle this but I would say that’s the bottom line, it cannot be indefinite amount, it cannot be that everybody has all the freedom because soon enough will start cutting into somebody else’s freedom, either somebody else’s monetary wealth, somebody else’s social status, or somebody else’s the right to be offended, and that I would say is the source of, that’s where are the limitations of freedom, and that of course once we agree to that, those things are defined by where you are. If you are in the country where sneezing in public is consider birth right, versus and you are used to it, once you go to some other country and there if somebody sneezes openly in public, it considered an insult. Well, you don’t have freedom to sneeze and now you have conflict, and you can see many more complicated versions thereof.

by Mayank Mehta

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Michael E. Tigar: Oh my goodness. Have you ever heard the song that Janis Joplin used to sing, "Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, nothin' ain't worth nothing, but it’s free?" Yes, freedom, well it is a power to choose. I don't say a right to choose. Abstractly we can proclaim all sorts of rights to choose where you live and where you're gonna go and so on. It's the power to choose. When we think of it that way we understand that freedom is constrained by necessity. I might be free to live anywhere I want, but I don't have the power to live anywhere I want. I might be free to choose good medical care, but I don't have the power to choose medical care. Why? Because I'm in a condition and situation of deprivation. The difference between the shadow and the substance of freedom, it can be contained in one word equality. Unless we understand that freedom is worth nothing to the great majority of people, unless we couple it with equal access for all the goods that are available in the world, then it's just a shadow. And Janis Joplin’s song turned out to be true, hasn't it? Good luck, because in Canada you have begun to confront these issues, and I welcome your concern with the struggle that you've brought to our attention. Thanks.

by Michael E. Tigar

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Michael Laitman: Freedom does not at all depend on the epoch or the place of the world in which a person lives. The environment in which a person lives is given to him from above, from outside. He does not choose the environment, just as he does not choose in what society to be born, what upbringing to receive and what values to assimilate in order to afterwards live according to them. Freedom can be interpreted only according to one condition: freedom from my egoistic nature. I cannot be free from anything else. It is freedom from my egoistic nature, where I do not live by the laws of my egoism (which is what my nature pushes me to do from inside), but only according to human society, only relative to humanity and for the good of humanity. Stated differently, freedom lies in ascending above one's egoistic nature to the human good. And there I really receive my free life. I ascend from the egoistic level of life to the altruistic one, and I live and feel the flow of eternal nature. I feel myself as perfect, eternal and free. Obviously, the realization of these laws completely does not depend on the place of a person's residence, his nationality or gender. It depends on the person himself and on the opposition to his original nature.

by Michael Laitman

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Michael P. Totten: Freedom manifests in ways, freedom of expressions, freedom to learn, freedom to exist, freedom to organize and to make decisions unencumbered by imposition, for those [inaudible] the people beyond that which are necessary for functioning of society. I feel that with freedom goes responsibilities and obligations. We certainly in the United States, we’ve made such an extreme fixation on freedom that we tended to forget our moral and ethical obligations and responsibilities that go along with it. It's not just the freedom for example to consume all this world can give us at any cost so long as we can pay for it, it doesn’t make it right. We tend to think that our super sized SUVs and the super-sized houses and the extraordinary levels of conspicuous and continuous consumption is our right, our freedom. But there is an obligation to what cost that imposes on the rest of the world, both from a human and the poverty traps that are created in our accessing resources, from dictatorships or the extinction of species that occur because we have homogenized the planet for the goods and resources to be so plentiful. So, freedom is not an end in itself. It has to be balanced by obligations and responsibilities, what does it mean for us to sustain our care for creation and balance with our freedom. From an ecologist perspective, for example, there are no limits to learning. It could be consumed infinitely and it does not exhaust the resources or impose burden on those who may then have less of those resources available. So, freedom of learning in my mind is the highest of freedom that’s available that we should that we should be most vigilant in protecting.

by Michael P. Totten

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Mohammed Arkoun:

by Mohammed Arkoun

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Mohau Pheko: I really want to think of freedom first as something that is very personal because I think that if I look at it in terms of whether it's relative to where I am in the world, I think for me that's a little bit abstract. I think that when I think of freedom, I think of my ability to access opportunity and I think that that is the concept of what millions of people around the world, whether it's access to resources, whether it's access to basic means, whether it's access to land, whether it's access to credit, whether it's the ability to have the freedom to express myself, the ability to organize, the ability to dissent, the ability to challenge, to interrogate systems that are inimical to people's development. I think that, for me, the freedom to be able to move in my community secure, free from bodily harm, the ability to share without feeling that my ideas or the ideas of others are less superior. So, for me, really freedom means many things. I think that we can be free in a village that has no running water; we can be free in the middle of New York City with all the amenities. And I think that freedom is also the ability to allow your sprit and your soul to expand and to be fed in different ways, the ability to consume knowledge and to give I think knowledge. For me, these are freedoms -- the freedom away from domination, the freedom is something that is not oppressive, freedom I think that is also the ability to live harmonious as an African woman.

by Mohau Pheko

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Monira Rahman: Obviously, it is relative for everyone; the freedom - freedom of expressions, freedom of choice, freedom of life, freedom to take decisions about what they want; not harming anyone, not creating any cause of harming anyone or causing violence or putting people down. But freedom is where people have the respect for each other, the respect for the human being, the dignity of the human being and in that way actually promoting humans being participation and participation in every aspects for taking decisions. Obviously, it is important for me, because it is more important because I'm a woman, and in that way, freedom of a woman is also [marginalized] because of this power and powerlessness. So it is important with freedom - it is the power and whether the people have the power for taking decisions or not. [More in another language] [Translation in the works]

by Monira Rahman

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Neela Marikkar: Yes, I think that freedom is very relative. Freedom can mean many things. There is freedom, political freedom, media freedom, economic freedom. I think the whole question of freedom is – it’s vast and freedom is applicable and relative to you and your personal needs and personal aspirations. It's not just in relation to the world, or where you are in the world. It is very much an individual thing. So I think, when you talk about freedom, one has to be more specific when you talk about freedom, what type of freedom are you talking about. I mean, most people when they think of freedom they think of political freedom, media freedom, but I think in most cases -- or religious freedom -- I think in most cases we are talking about economic freedom. That is the one main area that hits people on a daily basis. So, I think freedom is something that is more individual, and has to be looked at in the context of each person, and how does it actually apply, and how does it comfort you.

by Neela Marikkar

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Oliviero Toscani: The habitat is very important. We are physical people and also is not just related that depend on where you are in the world of freedom, but it’s also how you are and where you are and where – is a combination of a lot of limitation. Freedom is a combination of a lot of limitations and is very complex to have that simple dream called freedom. So simple, freedom is so simple is very complex and is a condition by an incredible number of factors and places and destiny and timing and anything you can put together. So we have to have a lot of luck to be at the right moment in the right place. And that is why the world is divided into people who are lucky and the other one who are not lucky. You know, sometime is enough to be born 50 meter away from where you're born and then your total destiny might change completely from – for the worst or the best.

by Oliviero Toscani

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Oscar Olivera: To put it simply, for me freedom means happiness. The luck to have all the material possibilities and the spiritual capacities to build up your life, to delegate life to those who come after us, having in mind and regaining the fortune of our ancient peoples and transfering it to the future generations. This is happiness, to have the material possibilities and the spiritual capacities to live happily, to die happily and to have the safety that those who come after us, will be happy as well.

by Oscar Olivera

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Paul D. Miller: What is freedom? If you look back at the Enlightenment in Europe and even back to Greece, thousands of years ago, I think a lot of Western powers focused on this idea of the individual enlightenment. And saying that the individual, if they were enlightened enough to withdraw from certain categories of behavior, they would be left alone and that was considered free. Now, I think we have the most regulated culture on the planet in most of the industrialized countries, whether it be France, Germany, England, United States, etcetera. Say for example, England has the most cameras, I'm talking like the most cameras per square mile in the world on surveillance, and that they are an enlightened democracy. What I’m going to get to here is getting to a kind of thinking around freedom as not only just the ability to do something. It’s, I think the nation-states in the western enlightened kind of "enlightened" industrialized scenario, they don't care anymore about certain regulated behaviors. They’ll just let it go. And I'm African American from Washington, D.C., and I come from a city where 50 percent of the male population is between the ages of 18 and 35 is either in jail or on parole. Now is that freedom when you have one out of every two people and males within a certain age range put in this kind of industrialized jail system? I don't know. I really tend to think that that's crazy messed up, and there's not any way to think about it except for the fact that the prison system in the United States is profit oriented and it's for profit. It’s not like they're enlightened just saying this is punishment. So the freedom for the people who own that structure is to put other people in jail, which is what Bush is doing to the entire society in the United States. And what happens if the whole country's just jails and churches? You know? Freedom for me is, means that you have the ability to move between structures, whether they be national, nation-states or corporate, whether they be ideologies, ethnic groups. It's hard because guess what, that means most of the planet is not free and in fact is becoming more and more enslaved as we go. I don't know right now. I'm at a very existential relationship to the idea of freedom. You know, my philosophy professor when I was in high school used to say my freedom to act ends at the edge of your face, and I tend to think right now we're seeing a boot kind of process, where, a bootstrap process, where a lot of things that would normally be called slavery or [audio ends].

by Paul D. Miller

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Paul Knight: Freedom is really, it is relative to where you are, but I think freedom is the ability to have a choice, to really look at what can be done and where you can go, to feel empowerment. And I think freedom is truly that. It’s about being empowered by yourself. So where you can actually say this is what I want to do when I want to do it. The issue that we have I think in looking at issues around freedom and how that reacts is what do we do with it? How far do individual freedoms apply as opposed to collective freedoms? And once again that would be relative to where you are in the world, the values that you have in your culture, the rites of passage, the way things would traditionally occur. So freedom is really about being empowered, it’s being empowered to take those things into consideration and do something with it. I just think that we need to balance that out with collective freedoms and an appreciation of the values and the cultural difference that we see within our communities.

by Paul Knight

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Pauline Tangiora: Yes, it is my belief that we are, in our part of the world, have a free thought. We are able to demonstrate if we don’t agree with what our government is doing. We are able to have a discourse in public. We are able to close off roads and voice our concern or our anger at maybe government or the unions or anything else like that. But what is -- if we are able to do this, and it’s a freedom of speech, a freedom to live, we then have a concern of how can we treasure this freedom of expression, freedom of being able to challenge statements. But the freedom of the press is sometimes a concern to some of our members in our country, because we rely on the freedom of the press to report honestly and fairly of situations. And many of us would challenge that that is even happening. When I look around the world, and I see a lack of freedom of expression, it really makes one wonder where the spirits of people who survive in those areas, where they cannot speak freely, they cannot demonstrate. These are things which really can be of concern and should be looked at by other people who can freely use their freedom. And if we don’t look at how others may be suffering from the lack of the freedom of expression, then we are not looking at our responsibility to freedom as such.

by Pauline Tangiora

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Pico Iyer: Freedom in its lower sense always has to be relative and freedom in its higher sense has to be absolute. Freedom is the potential every one of us has to make our own decisions, to follow our own values and priorities at any moment. Of course, external freedom is limited in all kinds of ways by our government, by our incapacities, by our circumstances. But, I think we have the freedom at any moment, any one of us to turn within and to try to better our understanding of the world and our movements within the world even in restricted countries. And in that way, it’s a circle. I spent much of life traveling to restricted countries, to Burma, Tibet, Cuba, North Korea even. And in most of those places, the people of course chafe against the terrible restrictions brought down on them by oppressive governments. But, there is a sense in which if they can even open a tiny window, imagine it to be, their lives are a little more easy to bear, and I think that’s something that any one of us from the freer, more affluent countries can give to them. When we travel, we are opening a tiny window in what is otherwise a form of house arrest or a solitary confinement cell for many, many people in the world. Freedom takes different forms in every country and I think what we have to do is share the freedoms that we are heir to, perhaps to bring our freedom to those cultures that don’t have it and to get in return the freedoms that they have that we would be grateful for.

by Pico Iyer

Sep 9, 2006 1:10:00 PM cite

Rachid ElDaif: I don't think so. I think that there is one kind of peace. Peace is the absence of war and it's the absence of violence which causes deaths and victims. I think that it is that simple. Maybe I can add that there's also peace in the opposite sense of war. Individual peace, peace of the soul and the reconciliation with yourself. That's something different. But I think that the question is what is peace in opposition to war.

by Rachid ElDaif