In Search Of Freedom Or A Better Life?

Human beings have an inherent nature for freedom. They love freedom as a social state and demand it as their right. The society they live in requires that they respect the freedom of other people.

Whether man can be truely free or not is a question that seeks answers from a religious or philosophical perspective, depending on which side a person stands. Human beings are endowed with free will to choose their actions and they are held resposible for them.

People living in a communist or totalitarian state have freedoms that are dictated by the state and the state decides what political and social freedoms people ought to have. The state has a monopoly over ideology and morality which they enforce upon their people by strict rules and regulations.

In countries that embrace democratic forms of government, their people have more freedom through their participation in the political process. Thus people have political , social and economic freedom and choose to live the kind of life they want within the bounds of the law which is made for common good.

If look back into history, we find numerous cases where countries and their people have fought for freedom against colonization and other forms of subjugation. Sometimes the battles and wars have been bloody with untold misery and millions of lives lost. Amid the horror of wars, we do have examples of people who stood against unjust laws and human brutality.

Mahathma Gandhi's name comes as an example of a person whose passive resistance against the British rule India, eventually won independence for his country without a single bullet being fired from his side. His did not have an army and did not seek weapons to secure peace. But he was able to bring profound political and social change through non-violent means.

Gandhi drew inspiration the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy whose works include " War and Peace" a novel depicting the Russian society and is regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. He too believed in nonviolence as a tool to achieve political and social goals. Martin Luther King, Jr. the famous US leader of "The Civil Rights Movement" believed in nonviolence and for his work as a peacemaker he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964. Thus, it is not only large armies and an arsenal of deadly weapons (including chemical and biological) that can win over causes and resolve conflicts, but the power of nonviolence and resistance has proved that it too is equal to the task.