But where's the line? Who gets to decide if I'm rational, mature, and wise enough to be allowed to be free?
Sorry, but the very act of deciding who can be free and who can't means nobody is. And if we're talking about the freedom to decide one's personal religious beliefs here, everyone should be free from the start. You'll never budge me on this. They should be exposed to organized education about the religious concepts that are out there, but they should be free to decide what to choose from every last one of them, or when they can make up their own stuff to fill in.
This subject is far "less trivial" than comics indeed.... but that's all the more reason it should be left to each individual to decide for themselves.
Yes, control and oppression can be hugely, overwhelmingly negative. Any history class will teach you that. But freedom can be so too. Absolute freedom can result in chaotic anarchy, where there is no civilisation, only survival of the fittest. But of course, this doesn't mean freedom is
inherently chaotic. Just as organised religion isn't
inherently oppressive.
You're talking as if there are only absolutes. This isn't true.
Being told what to do and how to do it as a default in a culture or tradition is
not mutually exclusive with freedom. It can lead to freedom and liberation. Or it can lead to both - a balance; submission.
You're labouring under the idea that if one is not free, one is enslaved or oppressed. That's not true. There is submission. Submission, in English, has many negative connotations, but it's inherent to Islamic and Buddhist prayer and is a much more positive concept in those cultures.
But the reason the default should be one of strict regulations is because it is most likely safer, and will naturally give people the tools they need to live their lives fully, and allows everyone to continue to grow as the lessons of past generations are taught to the future ones, lest each generation begin anew.
But it's like any form of maturity - the quality of a mentor will affect the quality of the student, but without a mentor, there is no concept of progressive maturity at all.
You ask where the line is, but that's not important. If I said the line is at Point X, what would it matter? Change never occurs by a sudden crossing of a line. It's not "freedom" then "slavery" once the line is crossed, and never is change all-encompassing. Some of it will be free, and some oppressed. But there is no 'line'. The idea of a "line" creating a barrier between positive and negative is never a good one, as it implies that everything is binary - it is either one thing or another. But it's hardly ever true. The Yin-Yang has stark lines between the white and black, yet each contains and flows into the other.
Human nature is more akin to an elastic band. If one stretches it to an extreme, no matter which side you stretch, the other becomes just as taught, and the center threatens to snap. But leave it, and it rests, looping around so there is no side at all.
So I don't agree that if people are taught, disciplined, or even controlled, that it excludes freedom. I would suggest that both are needed for either to exist, and that really, there's very little difference between them. The more intense they are, the more they mirror each other.
There is virtue to authority figures saying you can't do whatever you want. That's what parents are for. :wink:
