Freedom’s Paradox
Freedom is both precious and elusive precisely because it stands in a region between order and chaos. There can be no freedom in the absence of a coherent ordered social system, and yet there is no freedom if that order is rigid and coerced. This is freedom’s paradox: it exists in a region in which order and chaos come into a special kind of balance. A key idea in our growing understanding of self-organizing systems, this is referred to by systems modeler Christopher Langton as the edge of
[It is a place where the system’s components] never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either. The edge of chaos is where new ideas and innovative genotypes are forever nibbling away at the edges of the status quo, and where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life. The edge of chaos is where centuries of slavery and segregation suddenly give way to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s; where seventy years of Soviet communism suddenly give way to political turmoil and ferment; where
eons of evolutionary stability suddenly give way to wholesale species transformation.
Phase transitions between order and chaos are common phenomena in nature, as when an increase in heat causes water molecules in the ordered state of ice crystals to pass to the unordered state of a liquid. Some phase transitions, such as water’s transition from ice to liquid, are quite abrupt. Others, such as the transition of most metals from a solid to a liquid state, are more gradual. This in between state neither solid nor liquid is fundamental to the art of the blacksmith or the glass blower. In its
ordered state the metal or glass is rigid. In its totally liquid form it is unable to hold a useful shape. In between it is malleable and can be worked in wonderfully useful and artistic ways. While nonliving matter may pass in and out of the region of freedom as it moves between order and chaos, living matter exists exclusively in this region.
Liberalism has generally sought to achieve human freedom within the constraints of a Hobbesian worldview, which has precluded its embrace of the ennobling Aristotelean ideal of a civil society. There is no reason for us to remain so constrained. If the most simple single-celled life forms could learn to cooperate to maintain the coherence of the whole, then surely we who consider ourselves the most highly evolved species on
the planet might do at least as well. It is within our means to create a conscious civilization comprising politically and spiritually self-aware civil societies in which each citizen is called to participate actively in the definition and creation of a public good much as the body’s individual cells participate in creating a healthy whole.
Wholeness and coherence in one’s own life and relationships are essential foundations of both individual freedom and the coherence of society. These are in turn a product of the loving relationships that nurture our individual and collective capacities for civility. Those who experience an abundance of love in their lives rarely seek solace in compulsive, exclusionary personal acquisition. That which is sufficient to one’s needs
brings a fulfilling sense of nature’s abundance and compassion. A world of love thus becomes a world of material abundance, peace, and freedom. When we are spiritually whole and experience the caring support of community, thrift and concern for the well-being of the whole become natural parts of a full and disciplined life. One of our greatest challenges is to recreate caring communities that nurture our wholeness.
To the psychologically and socially mature individual, freedom is neither license to self-indulge nor permission to pursue personal advantage in disregard for the well-being of the whole. It is an opportunity to function freely and responsibly as a member of a coherent and fully functioning society.