Freedom and Obligation

Can you define freedom? Plainly, most individuals can, all they have to do is look for the word freedom in the dictionary and they'll discover its meaning. One could  say “I'm free… if I can go out and go home when I want to; if I can sleep very late; if I can hang out with my friends rather than doing my chores.” If one couldn't do what he desires, then for him, he is being deprived of his freedom, but, this is just a surface understanding of the term itself since freedom is not that simple.

Society's rules signify an effort to fill in for a shortfall in social awareness. If each human being  acted with good judgment, there would be no necessity for laws. Individuals would just size up the requirements of the circumstances in the way most appropriate for the conditions. Since we do not have constant good judgment, regulations provide guidelines for good behavior.

 Acts and laws, being human formations, are as vulnerable to faultiness as the beings that form them. Nonetheless,  law, as a notion, is essentially liberating. It exemplifies the hope -- certainly, the expectation -- that when the public obtains the custom of legal conduct, they will willingly comport themselves in an honorable way.

Most laws convey a consequence for failure to obey. This has been found in the archives of early humanity, and it appears to be essential if regulations are to be taken seriously. When a society has a constitution, most laws stem from that basis.

 A contemporary catchphrase is that it's all right to do something that hurts  others if you can "get away with it."  Nevertheless, no one  ever really "gets away" with something. In the economy of nature, no performance or oversight ever fails to harvest a corresponding reaction. Some call it karma, others say what goes around, comes around, even if it is just your conscience, but civilized societies, especially constitutional democracies, prefer to memorialize it with law.

If we comprehend this "complementarity" principle, we can begin to understand the vital purpose of the law. It is the lawful organization in civilization that reminds us of the sense of fairness inside ourselves. That sense is built out of a respect for self and others.