Freedom

Blog 5: Freedom

Galina

The Towards Freedom website focuses on different areas.  The three areas that interested me the most was world ethics, the human spirit, and freedom of choice. All people have the right to strive toward freedom.  This includes personal freedom, freedom of country, and freedom from oppression.  The website also has many articles that are reflections on freedom of thought.  In some societies freedom of thought is all of the freedom that people might have. The United States and other countries attempt to police the world by assuring others of their basic human rights but it is difficult to police another for allowing women and children to work in a sweat shop from morning till night fall when our corporations buy their goods. There are many of our celebrities that become involved in the enlightenment of others, freedom of oppressed and the celebrations of World’s diverse cultures.

I noticed a big issue and problem on one certain Article on the Toward Freedom website that I found interesting . The article was called Congo: Two Children May Have Died for Your Mobile Phone.  This article discusses certain issues and the abilities to fight for one’s rights and freedom.  I was appalled that even the young fought for dignity and freedom. Using cell phones to kill young children for their involvement in a quest for justice, peace and freedom of others the other articles were describing different situations but in many ways they were the same.  All of the articles that I read described social injustice.  All described freedom as difficult to obtain and just as difficult to hold onto.  Most of my life I took my liberty and freedom as a God given right.  There were times as a teenager I felt thwarted by a lack of what I considered a lack of freedom.  Through this website I have discovered that I can’t imagine what it means to be without basic human liberties. For example; in some areas of the world women cannot show their face, vote, own property, pick their own husbands or share their own thoughts.  They may not be educated and if they are it is usually to learn to take care of their husbands and children. Freedom has many boundaries are related to color of a person’s skin, gender, or sexual orientation.  The hardest thing to understand is that many of the world’s powerful deny freedom to the world’s weak such as children, the disabled, and the emotionally handicapped.

            In addition to the focus on peace and freedom, in the Towards Freedom website our textbook discusses many different aspects of freedom that are missing in many cultures.  The first freedom the book discusses comes from our own country, in our own discipline of study, and from the educated elite.  When you think of freedom of speech you think that most of us have the right to say what is on our minds.  Many of the academics of journalism and the media feel that you have the right to speak but maybe they are less enthusiastic about listening, reading, or allowing those thoughts to be published unless they come from the ivory towers of academia.  I do believe that many of the uneducated have thoughts about our economy, about poverty, and about the safety of their children from experience.  How many of us actually listen to what they say verbally let alone allowing them to state their views in an open forum.  This in itself is a lack of freedom that has been leveled on the uneducated by the educated.  Interestingly enough it is the uneducated in this situation that is the expert.  Not those who have just read about poverty.

There are other areas of freedom that may be violated depending on which side of the fence you may be on.  Intellectual Property may include not only written works but music as well.  Down loading of another’s intellectual property or music without permission or payment is considered stealing and a crime.  When however, is a mix tape creativity and when is it stealing.  The law is changing rapidly to accommodate the ever growing field of technology.  Unfortunately the law and law makers are playing a game of catch up.  Many of the questions about freedom to listen to what we want to listen to; and how to do it without being accused of a crime, is still being legislated. It sometimes appears that we are over legislating music and cyber print.  The laws are necessary but I believe that we need to be careful that we do not go so far as to threaten our first amendment rights to free speech, press, religion, religion, petition, and assembly.

            Our society makes laws to keep us free.  On the other hand the legislatures of our country make laws that might restrict our freedoms to make sure that we are not restricting the freedoms of others. It is a tricky dance that we play and there are times that it may seem that we are not balanced on one side or the other.  I still believe however that in all of the nations of the world we are the most free and we have the best legal system in place to keep our society free.

Works Cited

Campbell, Richard, Christopher R. Martin, Bettina Fabos, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. Print.

"Media For Freedom - News, Articles and Views E-magazine." Media For Freedom - News, Articles and Views E-magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2012. <http://www.mediaforfreedom.com/>.

"Toward Freedom." Toward Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. <http://www.towardfreedom.com/>.