Freedom of choice : What does it mean?

In any country which proclaims itself as a semblance of true democracy, the veracity in such a claim can be validated by a simple observation - of whether there exist the freedom of choice or otherwise.

Freedom of choice is a not a privilege nor a luxury in a country that calls itself democratic. It is an entitlement, no less. Under the assumption of capitalism when the average citizen has the benefit of choice extended to all areas in the country, the integral part lies in the autonomy of the citizens to exercise their right of decision over crucial matters in their life. Each and every citizen can lay claim to his or her right to such personal discretion, since the consequences or outcome of such decision undertakings are bore by none other than the individual himself. Of course, this is assuming the absence of the commons.

In my opinion, I believe that each and every individual should be accorded the rights to choose whatever they deem fit, because to assume that other individuals are so incapacitated as to lose the rationality to make a personal decision is to demean and debase the intrinsic worthiness and value of humankind. Of couse saying so risk oversimplicity, but the bottom line is clear - in the absence of thirty party implications, the inherent rights on an individual to choose and to decide shall be preserved. Every individual is a personal, unique scenario. In many nooks and crannies of society, certain issues are awfully simple, but mankind has made it out to be confoundingly challenging. The issue is clear cut - No one can claim to have more rights over others in making a decision, or claim that his decision is more "correct than the other". Simply because it is a matter of choice. Some people like to eat with utensils. while others prefer the company of chopsticks. Even if 99% of the society eats in the same manner as the former group of people, does it mean that the latter group is subversive and misanthropic? Is this aberration truly malignant or is it no more than just a difference in choice expressed in our daily actions?

It is hard to outline the demarcation - when should the individual freedom of choice be restrained, fettered and circumscribed? Right now, I have for the sake of convenience precluded the case of externalities implications. My focal point is regarding decision made by individuals on events taking place in the privacy of the individual himself and that has no effect or implication on others. Of course it is not too difficult to satisfy the criterias - except the last one -" has no effect or implication on others."

Let us for the sake of argument bring in two controversial issues, pornography. There are the puritannicals who argued that pornography should be destroyed and all sources be razed, eradicated and snuffed out. For purportedly pornography presents the female body and the notion of sex in its most erotic, adulterated form and this would mislead and defile and taint the mind of the average viewer. Moreover, pornography is, so they claimed, an unmitigated outrageous insult to both the anatomy and dignity of women - something which they claim has been smeared and inappropriately displayed in all forms of pornography.

Now let us hear the otherside of the story. A group of rare liberals have propounded the notion of individual right of choice, especially when pornography is consumed within the privacy of 4 walls, entails the average viewer a considerable level of utility ( in terms of sexual gratification), and unlike what is commonly asserted, private consumption of pornography has little effect on the rest of the society.

How true is that? Is pornography really that pervasively and supercedingly decadent? Can the contents of pornography really permeate through the 4 solid walls and perpetrate the rest of the society? In my opinion, the intangible, ethereal form of harm principle that many has put forth is indeed thought worthy. But in this society, how can we ever alienate the variables from each other? A crucial question that is missing : pornography truly the be all and end all of social decadence? Are there no other tools that are just as responsible?

The nuanced, somewhat subtle idea of harm explains that the distorted contents of pornography - including caricaturizing the act of sex itself, as well as imparting subversive values such as multiple partner sex and unnatural sex acts which can result in great transmission of diseases and more broken families. The former, very possible. The latter, I wouldnt be too fast to agree with them. But is the effects and extent truly so far reaching and so plain penetrating? Has not the prevalence and the improvement of education mitigated, or nullified such effects of pornography? If anything ,pornography might be just the tool of enjoyment, the means to sexual gratification, and not an end in itself. People who are educated, are discerning enough to understand that pornography is just avenue for the derivation and manifestation of pleasure, and cannot be a substitute for real relationships. Can we accrue the presence of unnatural sexual acts to pornography, especially since such acts, emprically and evidently proven, has been existent since time immemorial ? What esle could have contrived to such a culture as we see of today - greater infidelities, casual sex and less observation for the proper rules of game? Is pornography the all encompassing pivotal point that drove such a change or is it merely a by product of something larger at work? I am perhaps lost.

Pontification about the validity of equating pornography to cultural downslide aside, one must always remember though that the human right is not a boundless ideal; as of many other things in life, this right of choice has to be juxtaposed against the welfare and wellbeing of the society. it is never easy to configure the society in such a way that all of our rights can be unreservedly retained and exercised wihout wihout, in a lighter tone, posing " inconvenience" to the society as a whole. but it is not impossible. so we must at least try, because we all know, every greater thing that has happened to us starts with a tiny step.