After recently finishing the novel, Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, in class, I was brought to remember Plato's Cave Allegory in which Orlando, the main character, is forced to choose between the safety of the Spirit of the Age or the freedom of literature and writing. Last year, my teacher brought up an interesting point in class which was left unanswered after reading the Cave Allegory. His question was "Would you rather prefer safety and security or would you rather have freedom?". This duality seen throughout the Cave Allegory between these two completely opposite ideas was astonishing. The same realization occurred to me when reading Orlando, the forces of freedom and safety had to work together in Orlando's life. Yet the funny thing about dualities, especially in the case of freedom versus safety and security is that they are extremely close in relation to one another, yet are considered to be the complete opposites of a situation.
But what is the relationship between freedom and safety? They both are desired traits by many people, but they get in the way of one another. In the Cave Allegory, the prisoners were safe and sound in their cave, and they never had to worry about being hurt from the outside or anything. But they were not able to see the truth, they didn't have the freedom to go into the outside world and to really live life to its fullest. Freedom and safety are both needed in society, and are forever interlocked with each other. The purpose of the concept of safety is to protect people from the bad consequences freedom can have. An extreme example of this would be: A terrorist wants to terrorize people because freedom allows him to, but safety and security prevents its people from getting hurt. In the same manner certain laws are set up to protect its people, and to prevent the freedoms of others, like hacking laws, etc. Yet to what extent can safety be utilized? Can peoples freedom be cut off so much that their entire lives can be recorded by government agencies, etc?
As for freedom, the concept of safety was probably first created when people realized how much power they had and how frightening it could be if misused. Or maybe circumstances forced people to limit their freedoms because it would hurt more than help them. The fact is that freedom probably came before safety, but safety and security must be put in place to limit the dangerous of freedom and to keep people safe. But what should the ration of safety and security be to freedom? Who should determine this? Why?
Thinking deeper about what life would be like without safety and security put in place is pretty hard. But I'm trying to expand my mind a bit...I imagine a world without these measures put into place to be chaotic (or is it because the nature of the 21st century human brain is that we NEED order in society) and disorderly. That people could do what they wanted to without having to worry about the consequences their actions may impose upon others or themselves. Unfortunately we have seen what a nation is like when safety and security has been imposed heavily upon it, and this is not very good either. Just like you shouldn't have too much of anything, a society should have a reasonable balance between its safety and security. If America really is "the land of the free" then should we still be allowed to impose extensive security measures on our people (like graffiti laws, etc.)?
It also depends on the people within the place whose measures you would like to change. Lets take a household for example (for within each household is its own nation): If their are only young adults in the house/apartment/etc. then they would probably prefer freedom over safety because that's where their mindset probably would be, but if the house hold contained a couple with young children, then they would probably say that they would prefer safety over freedom. It depend on the mindset of the people. I personally, as an adolescent would prefer freedom over security and safety. Other than typical teenage reasons for favoring freedom over safety, I came to this choice because I realized that without the concept of freedom, safety would be non-existent.
Knowing the relationship between safety and freedom opens the door to insight on how our modern day government was formed and may even give us an idea on how to "fix" our government limitations today. Though our nation is young we have had years of influence from other countries on our government (e.g. The Roman Empires democracy taken from an idea of the Ancient Greeks, the pilgrims coming to America had left their country for an escape from religious oppression and to gain freedom, etc.) and to see how our government has been formed and what has and what hasn't worked, as well as working with the spirit of the age, we can find a near perfect solution between the balance of security and freedom in our nations. All of this was inspired from Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando and Plato's Cave Allegory two amazing books which portrayed the duality between freedom (literature, the truth/sun) and safety/security (The spirit of the age, which Orlando always had to obey, and the chains which bound the prisoners and caused them to believe in a fake reality).
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