Freedom and virtue

If life is compared to a river, then its two streams are named freedom and virtue. Analyse the evolution of human society, and these are the two phenomena, which dominated history. The great conflicts of life are nothing but the tension between rectitude and restraint. The revolutions, wars, inquisitions, crusades, blasphemy, protests, all things, which have ruffled the river since the time immemorial, are results of contradiction between freedom and virtue.

From the Initial Fall to the Final Redemption, the human destiny has unfolded in that contradiction. Adam abused his freedom and transgressed virtue by eating the forbidden fruit. His expulsion from heaven marked the beginning of a catharsis for the entire human race. If man wants to return to heaven, he has the freedom to become virtuous again.

Plutarch tells us that the Spartans were abstemious in public but privately coveted wealth and luxury. Virtue is to abstain but freedom is to covet, one is denial and the other is desire, the two fringes of mind, which contract and expand. Freedom is the surging tide, while virtue is its undertow. Virtue is like frugality, while freedom is like extravagance.

The conflicts arise from the clash of these two ideals. Sayyid Qutb, who has been called "the brain behind bin Laden", argues that the West is a society based on freedom while the Islamic world is based on virtue. According to him, virtue is a higher principle than freedom. The scholars of the American society would react to it, extolling the virtues of a free and prosperous pluralistic culture where women are given the same rights as men, and even men are allowed to consummate marriage between them.

The classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believed that virtue, not freedom, was the ultimate goal of a good society. Freedom generates materialism, triviality, vulgarism and sexual promiscuity. Freedom gives an option of evil for every good, but human flaws and weaknesses ultimately exacerbate it. Freedom becomes its own limitation as high crime rates, violence, corruption and licence become restrictive.

The finest virtue of freedom, however, is tolerance. People must tolerate each other if freedom has to translate into action. The Hindu must tolerate the Muslim, the Jews must tolerate the Christians, the rich must tolerate the poor, and the beautiful must tolerate the ugly, so forth and so on. Freedom treats society like a highway, where every individual is free to drive within the speed limit so long as he keeps an eye on the blind spot and avoids collision.

Freedom is therefore the absence of hindrance, when interference, intimidation and intersection don't disturb the momentum of life gathered in passion. It's like the free fall of an object in an airtight room, where friction with air doesn't slow it down. Freedom is absence of barriers, restrictions, compulsions, impediments, and exclusions. Freedom is when one follows one's heart and doesn't need to worry about consequences so long as one doesn't infringe upon the freedom of another individual.

This is where freedom has a string of virtue attached to it. Virtue after all is conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles. This is where freedom overlaps with virtue. The threshold of freedom is virtue because one can be carefree if one isn't careless. Freedom lasts only when there is consideration for others.

Thus inconsiderate freedom is undesirable like coerced virtue, because freedom is necessary in virtue as much as virtue is necessary in freedom. Consider a man who is compelled to say his prayers, whether he is a Christian, Muslim or Jew. Or, consider those untouchables in India who are coerced to carry their own spittoons around the neck so that they would not spit and defile the ground. These are but extreme measures, which violate the rights of an individual in his freedom to be virtuous and in his virtue to be free.

Freedom and virtue, if stifled, destroy each other. Religious arrogance and political audacity deflect life as the crumbling banks deflect the course of a river. The purpose of religion is salvation of the soul, the ultimate freedom ensured through the rituals of virtue. Politics does the opposite, its ultimate goal being to ensure virtue through the rituals of freedom. To die for one's country is martyrdom, which is political freedom

anointed with religious virtue. Martyrs are promised heaven, which still finds recruits for suicide bombing from Palestine to Moscow.

The conflict between the East and the West is a conflict between freedom and virtue. The Eastern religions go as far as preaching that one cannot find moksha until one breaks the cycle of karma. Freedom from the repetitive agonies of this world doesn't come unless one has performed virtues. At times the sacrifice of human lives before deities was considered an act of virtue, which could bring freedom of the multitude from the wrath or curse of gods.

In the West, freedom is the big thing. The American soldiers die in faraway countries for the sake of freedom. Many of them carry the Bible and they certainly cherish the hope to enter the heaven. But that is not what puts the fire in their veins. They don't die to defend any virtue unless freedom is virtue unto itself.

If you closely look at it, virtue is a kind of freedom, the freedom from vices. Similarly, freedom is a kind of virtue, the virtue of being freed from bondage. A born-again believer, for example, would know what it means by the freedom of virtue, and an indentured labour would know what is the virtue of freedom. Osama Bin Laden and his warriors are fighting for virtue. They are fighting a "holy war" against the "infidels" of the West. On the other hand George Bush and his allies are defending freedom. They want to protect the world from terrorism, and they believe they have "liberated" the people of Iraq from the "tyranny" of a dictator.

In a way, freedom is the backward somersault of virtue. One is the freedom of choice and another is the choice of freedom. The world is engulfed between these two extremes, which are expressed by sheer rearrangement of the same words. Words constitute speech and speech enunciates belief, which evokes emotion, which consolidates passion. If people must die for freedom, then they must also kill for it. The same thing is true for virtue, which starts with a belief and then turns into passion. Freedom starts with passion and becomes a belief.

Often it's imperative to do away with freedom in order to preserve virtue. Ferocious animals are confined to cage and deadly men are put away in jail. Often it's important to destroy virtue to keep freedom. At times people sell their honour to ensure their freedom from hunger and privation. These are but a few examples of how freedom and virtue have locked horns.

If life is compared to a river, it's constrained by its two banks called birth and death. The stream of freedom starts with birth and ends with death. But what happens to the other stream, the virtue? It grows as long as the river flows, and then takes an elusive turn into the grave. Whether you believe it emerges on the other side or not is the crux of the dispute. It determines your freedom and your virtue.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.