Freedom

 I came away from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Fannie (see last week's post) with mixed feelings. Of course, I was moved by the story of the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer—how much she suffered for her work, how brave she was to face hatred and bigotry in order to register black people to vote and even to run for office herself. That she was doing what she was doing in the name of freedom for black people was a great tribute to the concept of freedom. 

    But these days the word disturbs me. It is easy to see what it means if people are enslaved. It isn't hard to understand "freedom" in terms of Jim Crow South. What I don't understand is people who march today demanding "freedom," meaning "You can't make me wear a mask." In France people made the outrageous analogy between having to wear masks, and Nazis making Jews wear a yellow star. In some places in this country, people are crying out that a requirement to be vaccinated in order to work or go to school is an infringement on their freedom.

    In a way that's true—in the same way that there is a law that we have to drive on the right side of the road, for instance. Why can't I drive anywhere on the road I want to? Because it is dangerous for other people. Likewise, there is a danger to others for those who won't get vaccinated and yet want to interact in large groups. It is not reasonable to let people be free to do as they like in public places if what they are doing could endanger others. There are certainly some "freedoms" we are willing to give up in order to have a safe society. "Freedom"finds its footing only in relation to other entities. 

    I have just finished reading The Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard, and, before that, David McCullough's biography of John Adams, making, with Fannie, a tripod of concepts of freedom for me to contemplate. That John Adams fought for our freedom from English tyranny is such a truism of history by now that we have lost the nuances of the arguments—people still held as slaves, the international relations, the nasty political battles. Suzanne Simard wants us to understand that trees are sentient, caring beings, as she has proven in her meticulous scientific studies. Shouldn't we, then, curtail our "freedom" to slaughter trees by the thousands? As morally responsible people, we find our freedom to act as we please hemmed in on all sides. For us all to live well, we must be willing to share our freedoms and bear their reasonable restrictions.