Mar 21, 2007 4:34:49 AM cite

I'm sorry, but my comment should have take no place there...

by castillo

Mar 21, 2007 4:29:36 AM cite

Dear Sir, I know, that it is not the question h e r e , but I have one, that exites me... What is FAUST in foreign countries...p lease... next year or so... thank you ...

by castillo

Oct 2, 2006 5:33:16 AM cite

Where does the line between personal freedom and social responsibility towards the common good fall? Who gets to decide? I agree with the others that this is a very good Question. I also agree with a lot of the answers posted up in reply to this question too. My take on it however is this: Who gets to decided? I think everyone should. People should decide for them selves where the line should be drawn. On the other hand, I also believe that the individual makes the society and the society makes the individual. In other words I think both society (the common good) and an individual’s freedom are not only interchangeable but work in harmony together. We are tied to everyone and everything and they too are tied to us. No matter what we decided, that decision will impact in some way on the whole, and what the whole decides together will impact each individual. I believe the two concepts of personal freedom and social responsibility should become intimately intertwined with each other, so that one is not fighting the other for more freedom. Since in reality the two working as one will make for real freedom. This balance can only be sought after by the individual, and that individual must make it their goal to make what ever they believe in as their local reality, so that they themselves can live more freely. This should never mean imposing on another person what you think is freedom. Again each individual should decide for themselves. From there you can have people come together with similar definitions, and work with others with different definitions, so that everyone can coexist. However, I would also hope that people are educated enough, and mature enough to realize that our freedoms are our social responsibility, and that to be socially responsible means that we are constantly expanding our freedoms within our selves as well as out side of our selves around where we choose to live and how we choose to live it. We will never experience true freedom until everyone and everything is truly free with us. ;-) ::: Peace :::

by AnarchyAm

Sep 10, 2006 8:11:03 PM cite

Every right has a responsibility that has higer priority. You have the right to free speech, but that comes with the responsibility to monitor your own speech. You may not use words that are offensive. You may not use terms that are derogitory of anyone's culture, religion, race, or any other characteristic of their being. The responsibility is more important than the right. If you do not make the responsibility more important than the right, you do not deserve the right. Most laws that limit rights and freedoms, were enacted because someone was not self-responsible for their actions. Who gets to decide? You do! You must!

by GeorgeSnyder

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: A man decides it himself. Of course there are many different political (structures): We have police, army which imposes limits and so to speak restricts people’s freedom and to carry out that is unwanted for other people. But we are coming closer to the situation when these limits should be put by a person himself. And to achieve this we should permit everybody, every personality to widen his horizon, to develop his soul and this is possible not only with a lot of information to which we have unlimited access today. We should develop this soul and I know million of people. They are excellent artists and religious authorities and other people among them. I am atheist but I studied religions, all world religions. And in all world religions – Buddha, Jesus and Krishna and other religious leaders expressed one single idea which is the main golden principle of mankind: to treat other people and nature in the way one want to be treated oneself. And observing your moral principles, your moral convictions your behaviour through this prism and this lens you understand where is the borderline between your freedom, your unlimited liberty of mind, creativity and imagination and where other freedom of some other personality starts because you have to leave other personality the same unlimited freedom which you enjoy yourself. And reflecting about this question through this prism you can always find…a personality can always find in this freedom unlimited frontiers.

by Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Abbas Beydoun: I have no idea for such supposition. I do not know what would happen if Columbus did not discover America or if the Africans did not immigrate to USA... I have no idea.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: We can't talk about personal freedom if we have neither social freedom nor social well-being. I think that people should have the capacity to decide where the line between personal well-being and social well-being is to them. I think I should go back to the concepts of Global Body, Collective Responsibility and Reciprocal Dependence. The personal well-being, the personal freedom and the life well-being of each person depend on their interaction with the other members of the society. Last year, as I was working as a art director at the Kampnagel Festival in Hamburg, I suggested to present a subject which was the body as the mirrow of the world, the body as a metaphor of the world. I wanted to contribute with a reflexion on this close relationship and dependence among the different organs and countries of this planet system. That's why it has no sense to talk about personal freedom if we don't have a collective freedom.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea: The liberty concept is a right that we have in life. Liberty to express what we think. Liberty to move from one place to the other, but this liberty is very often frustating with the explication of justice. And very often in this spaces doesn't exist this way of liberty. It exist the manipulation of the liberty in the juridical cases, in special cases like our comunities.... that emerge juridically that they are murdering the youth....... But a liberty concerning the juridical part to search for this delinquents ....doesn't exist..., because around the liberty there are always places of power that are manipulated.

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Andries Botha: Saphyre, thanks for the question. You know, as I said before, I believe your own personal freedoms are contingent on that which you are prepared to grant towards others. So in a way I am suggesting that your own self is never an individual reality but rather a collective reality. Your own self it tied to the collective. Social responsibility doesn’t just mean an attitude towards good or integrated citizenship, but it is something which makes your citizenship contingent on the circumstances that impact on your fellow citizens’ lives. So, we don’t really have freedoms if our freedom and the choice of our freedom impacts on the quality of life of other people. So, there is a very intimate relationship between your freedom, your personal freedom, and your social responsibility. Social responsibility to act in such a manner which sees yourself intrinsically, socially, politically, legislatively, and humanely, tied to your fellow human beings. Not only your next door neighbor, not only people in your own country, but to the rest of the world. If one part of it falls, you will eventually fall. So, who gets to decide? You get to decide. You must decide. No-one else can decide. No government can tell you that you should do this. No parent can tell you. You have to decide for yourself. That’s the way I see it.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Saphyre, that was so interesting. When I looked at it first the other day that you had posed a question, wow. Who would ever have thought that someone would ask such a question. Personal freedom and social responsibility toward the common good. You know, that common good, that line, that invisible line lies within you, not as a line in governance or the government or the governors within your community. That freedom is within you. No government of your land has the right to decide what that line should be. Everyone’s needs is different, remember? The need of you, Saphyre, is different from the needs of your brother and sister, of your cousins and aunties and uncles, as it is different from your neighbors and the city next to you and the state next to you, all are different. So the freedom that you have, that personal freedom and social responsibility, all depends on who you are and where you come from. When you define that within yourself that’s when you can make a decision what to do with it. Yes, we do have laws of the land where governments have attempted to make that division. Honor it but also decide within you what it is best for you and the world in which you live. Me, I have attempted to define my own personal freedom all my life and my responsibility for my community in which I live and the world I live in. So I make up my mind for that line. Often I got into silence and prayer that I have done the right thing. Often do I realize how short I fall in my effort. I pray to the Great One you will be able to do that.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: Well, that question is a difficult one. But, I think I would put the emphasis on saying that in our society, the ideology of personal freedom is one that is meant to deny deliberately the idea of a common good, so that the idea of solidarity, the idea of working for the common good is systematically denigrated or we have an ideology that in pursuing your individual interest, your individual benefit, you benefit the collective that there is an indirect benefit to greed under capitalism. I think that idea is one that we should completely reject, but the important thing I think to get at is that the idea of the common good, the idea of collective good is anathema to the interests of the powerful, is anathema to capitalism and to understand freedom is counterposed to the common good is at the heart of that ideology. We need to come to understand that we suffer from the oppression and the dispossession of others in that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others. Eugene Debs put it very well when he said, “While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” And at the end of communist manifesto, Marx and Engels talked about the free development of each being the condition for the free development of all. I think that understanding of freedom is reciprocal and is collective and is linked up with the common good that the advance of the common good is an advance of individual and personal freedom is an important idea to reclaim.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala:

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal:

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I like the focus on the first part of this question. Before we look at who gets to decide, there is usually seen to be split or a tension between my personal freedom and concern for the shelf social common good of all as if there is a tension between them. And that’s usually the case in our ordinary ways of being in culture. It's me, my personal sense of myself individually versus the common good and the community. So there is a tension and duality and polarity often between me and myself versus the community. But in a high awakened culture, that is not dualistic and based upon dualising consciousness, an integral culture where we become a whole being by finding a connection with the other, there isn’t that same tension between my being and the being of the community. There is a direct connection and link because my good and your good are profoundly connected. Myself and thou, the I, thou in a dialogue community, in a dialogue world view in which in a real dialogue the "I" and the "other" are intimately bound always. "I" and the ecology and nature are intimately bound. My freedom is not in contrast to the common good but in concert with the common good. In that integral holistic non-dualistic way of personal freedom, of true freedom I would argue. And that’s really what our great real wisdom traditions have taught us. That true freedom is that freedom of connectivity and compassion, in which my self care is the care of the other. There isn’t the same divide and tension. And who decides is another matter. I think that second question is predicated on the question of the old culture of division and separation and dualism, the ego-mental culture that has a split between the ego-self and the non-self. That self and the détente and the line and tension between my personal freedom versus the common good, has to be overcome with this other more integral and holistic way of being a human being in which that tension is removed. And I find my freedom in the common good.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: First and foremost, your conscience should decide because you will always know whether how you're behaving is appropriate under the circumstances or not. And one's own sense of "freedom" to be able to do as you see fit does not mean that you have the right to infringe on someone else's responsibility or take away some else's freedoms, the freedom to life itself. So to the extent that your behavior may harm another, hurt another, infringe upon the right of the other, you have to not allow your own personal freedom to cause harm to someone else or to cause harm to society in general. A mature, a spiritually mature person is able to look beyond their own self-interest towards the interest of the society as a whole, towards the empowerment, the benefit of someone else. So you develop in ways that help you to grow in the growth of your compassionate heart, your loving heart, your understanding heart. So you understand that your role in life is not only, is not to live it as a self-centered, self-interested human being, but to live life as a fully developed spiritual being that is loving, is kind, is interested in the welfare and the benefit of others. So it is ultimately a life lived selflessly rather than selfishly, a life that is interested in the enhancement of the lives of others and not just the enhancement at your own life at the expense of others.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: The question is of course, what does society mean? What is society for? Why we don’t live alone like in the jungle? Why we need the other ones? We need the other ones to give ourselves a hand. We need the other ones to improve our own living conditions. We depend on each other. Well, the human being is an individual, that’s right. The human being goes for his own interest. This we cannot change. This will go on. But, to support our own interest, he needs the other. For this purpose he has to do something for the other one. Yes, common welfare, social responsibility, this has to be connected with the interest of the individual. Both have come together. It is like a good business. A good business means that when I want to run a good business, then I don’t have to betray the other. It doesn’t has to come to this that the other one is suffering, that he is loosing something, by the aim, that I am winning. This could be a success, but a short success. The right success is, when both are winning in this business and when we both get something out. It is like that in every part of life. When we work together and therefore earn both, when the community is earning something, the tribe, the family, the Nation, whatever you want. Then we all get something out, then me as an individual get a lot out of it. And that’s right. There has to be no contradiction, quite the contrary.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: What is our social responsibility towards the common good? What is that social responsibility? Our only ethical decision, choice that we have to make and we need to make is to take responsibility for that of our actions and our children, make it now. This is the prime directive of permaculture page one, chapter one, designer’s manual. If you go that route is that we need to take responsibility for our actions. We have that responsibility that is a social responsibility. It is an economic responsibility and ecological responsibility, towards the common good. And need to make them now and our personal freedom, we have the right to choose but we have, we should live by ethics that can help govern the way in which we live. And we shouldn’t be specific, but then limit ones’ freedom they should be open enough and flexible enough and varied, to be inclusive of all of people’s freedoms. Care of the earth, care of the people, setting limits to consumption. Earth, care, people care, fair share. The three main ethics of permaculture. Found in every indigenous tribe within the world.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 1:20:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: It's fall in the set of values and principles that every person has. So, it becomes to be more powerful when these decision has been made in a collective group, then whatsoever personal decision you made as a reflection of a collective decision, it has a greater possibility to be more sustainable, and to have more engagement, and a stronger commitment to really put it to practice, and to really go forward with what you consider may be losing a little bit of freedom for the community well-being, or the community common good.

by Benson Venegas