Too Much Freedom Could Be Poisonous
Freedom is something that we all strive to obtain throughout our life, but have we ever thought about the possible negative outcomes of them?
Maybe it’s vacation season.
Maybe it’s a long weekend.
Or maybe you just need a getaway.
Where should you go?
That is all up to you. No one can’t stop what you do or where you go. Hop in a little yellow van and take an adventure along the endless path through the valleys. Dive in at the crystal-clear ocean and cruise with the dozens of fish, all with different hues. Who cares?
The beauty of freedom is that you can do anything that you want to without any hindrance. For instance, you reading this article is one example of a person with adequate freedom since you would have accessed Medium with your own choice, found my article, clicked on it because you wanted to, and started reading. Surprisingly, many people and animals do not have this fundamental freedom due to many blockades. For humans, they could be limited from having full freedom due to financial issues or societal matters. Animals who were taken away from their natural habitats and put into zoos could also count as those who lost their freedom. Yet, are they really the unfortunate or are we, the ones with infinite freedom, the unhappier ones at the end of the day?
Animals
Let’s first start off with animals. Animals are very simple and to them, it is the best when they roam around freely, unrestrained by other things. From this, animals are happier in the wild where they are given freedom no matter what. For instance, animals that require a lot of space such as birds would be very distressed since they cannot fly like they could in the wild. In fact, the difference in the area of their showcasing room and the wild would be almost incomparable in size. Additionally, it is known that a polar bear’s enclosure is about one-millionth of the area that they roam around in the wild. If we, humans, were to live in a space that was one-millionth of a house, we would probably not even have a place to stand properly. Moreover, animals such as cheetahs whose specialty is to accelerate suddenly and run for a long period cannot do that because they would crash into a wall. Yet, some argue that animals who do not like to move such as koalas may be more suitable for a zoo. This is because their active radius is very limited and therefore a zoo can imitate their area perfectly; koalas spend most of their life on a tree. Also, weak animals can benefit constantly by having zoos completely eradicate predators by separating them. However, a zoo is still not beneficial even for koalas or sheep because a lot of people are continuously watching them and most importantly, the animals are not given choice. Whether they are eaten by predators or die naturally, animals always have a choice in the wild. This is important because living things are the happiest when they do things that they want to do and keeping them confined in a zoo takes away that. Yes, wild animals’ life expectancies are shorter than those in zoos usually with many more variables. However, even if life might be shorter and more dangerous in the wild, at least the animals would have been happy. Lastly, humans just need to ask a question to themselves to understand animals; is it better to live a short yet magnificent life or is it better to live a long but painful and dreadful life?
Research on Animal Freedom
We will never be able to fully grasp what animals are feeling inside because we cannot communicate well with them. However, we can hypothesize and guess the likeliness of whether they prefer the zoo or the wild using statistics. Above is a survey done throughout the United States of America for people in all age groups. One thing that the graphs show in common is that they unanimously think that animals are happier in the wild since the “much more happy” (blue) indicates that animals are happier in zoos and “much less happy” (green) showcases that animals are more content in the wild.
Another way that animals confined in zoos are probably more despondent than those in the wild is by checking the credibility of the zoo. Unfortunately, out of the 2400 publicly known zoos, less than 240 of them were the only ones approved by the American Zoos and Aquarium Association. This means that the unapproved zoos will have a tendency to not follow caging size regulation or maintenance guidelines, restricting even more freedom from them.
Around 1994, the World Society for the Protection of Animals showed that only 1200 of the 10000 zoos worldwide are registered for wildlife conservations. 26 years later, in 2020, the number of zoos have significantly increased, but the ratio of the wildlife-caring zoos to regular zoos still remain similar. Although some zoos that are not registered may care about the animals, it is sadly a fact that zoos tend to make animals live in poor surroundings to enlarge the profit margin.
Humans
Come to think about it, humans are also animals, so it is quite similar to the case of zoo animals — humans are more likely to be happy by having the freedom and doing what they want. Humans are slightly more complicated, though, because our societies are much more intricate and intertwined with more variables. For instance, when we are in our adolescence age, adults, who have experienced that stage of life before, gives us advice and educates us to make sure we are prepared for the adult stage. Examples of them would be getting enough exercise, being academically educated, working hard, and not being online a lot. They are sort of like guidelines and tips to pave a smoother pathway to succeed and do what we want to. The thing, though, is that a lot of adolescents will not follow those suggestions and deviate sideways. I even see it among some of my peers; they don’t do work, are not motivated to do anything, and play video games all night. In fact, the number of teens who understand the importance of listening to adults while developing their passion is very few. The ones who do not listen to adults are understandable, though, because it is difficult and even boring to do what they tell you to do. Here, certain portions of freedom are limited for teens and they have to deal with suppressing their urge to play or slack off. For those who choose to do what they want to do and have their freedom, they might be happier than the other teens at the moment. Yet, in the long-term, they might not be happier and actually restricted from freedom later due to the lack of financial stableness (cannot buy things they want to or eat what they want to), etc.
Another example where freedom leads to no freedom occurs among criminals. With their choice, the criminals went against the law (like the guideline from adults) to do what they wanted to do. This might have made them content for a while because they have achieved what they desired, but this act would lead to restriction of freedom (prison), resulting in unhappiness. These two examples show that humans are definitely happier when they have freedom, but if their freedom of choice is exploited to cause a negative consequence, they will become unhappier. Therefore, it should be known that there are a certain range and boundary until where freedom acts as a positive factor and when that line is crossed, it becomes negative. For teens, that may be playing videogames and slacking for only a while (not all the time, so only partial freedom) while doing things they must do even if they do not like them. For criminals, this may be not causing crime even if they had their own reason to do so.
Why Freedom Is Not Always the Best for Humans
Freedom means that a certain being can literally do anything that they want to. Among these decisions, what might have been done by someone to give them joy could actually, in turn, be harmful to them. For instance, consuming sweet food and drinks was done on someone’s will to give them happiness in life at first could possibly turn in to woe such as chronic diseases. This can also happen socially for humans as there are cases where friends get in a major fight and terminate their friendship because of a joke. The joke was probably aimed to give laughs and fun to both the friends, but when one friend deviates from its purpose and feels offense, it could turn into a fight. As explained previously, for animals, it is much more simple than humans even if they make mistakes. This is because in the world of animals, there aren’t many things that they need to care about — animals focus mostly on escaping their predators and hunting the ones weaker than them. In other words, all they need to do is survive. Humans, on the other hand, cannot just be satisfied by surviving. Instead, they care about how WELL they live. People in poverty or affluent people can all survive in the world; unlike animals, humans are not killed just because they are weak and instead others try to help the poor. Yet, the quality of the living circumstances between a rich person and a destitute person is vastly different. Now, what does this mean? For animals, if they made a bad choice with their freedom such as stepping into an area where their predators live, it means that they will likely be killed. The pain and restriction when they die only lasts for a few seconds. Yet, if humans make a bad decision with their freedom like being in huge debt because they wasted their money, the restriction of future freedom and pain lasts. On top of that, they will also experience the fear and agony of dying since they will die someday no matter what. It is manifest here that freedom gives happiness to living things, but they also can result in negative outcomes that may harm them or restrain their future freedom, which is especially intensified for humans solely.
Verdict
This article is not to order people to stay locked inside their homes and not do anything on their own. That would be absurd because as many say, you only live once and the fun part of life comes from doing the things that you love. Therefore, it is great to have all the freedom in your life! Yet, freedom is like fire because it is very useful usually, but when exploited in a wrong manner, it can become deadly. What is meant by this is that people should have freedom in a certain boundary and that you cannot do something if it crosses that limit (laws, rules, etc.) Lastly, whenever you take action to do anything, think about the consequence of that action as you may be deprived of your freedom next time you want to take action.
