Freiheit und Moral
For 70 years, scientific concepts based on Newton's ideas have become the basis of school education. This has led to the basic imagination of the world as being made of groups of many particles moved and stopped by different forces.
A group can be a nation, a race, a business company, etc. The particles represent individual human beings. The force can be a purely mechanical force, military force, desire, will power, money power, persuasion, etc.
Monarchs and governments used to dominate people by putting them into prison or by killing them. So the idea of freedom was born as people's right not to be put into prison or to be killed without the authority of the written law. This was the original idea of freedom. In countries like South Africa, poor people are still claiming freedom in order to achieve a better life.
In rich countries where most people already have a comfortable life, they do not need freedom to create a better life. Rich countries are connected by a very complicated global economic system which cannot be changed even if one government tries to do so. Then people in rich countries are educated to be creative and efficient to keep their superiority in business, technology and science so that they remain rich. For this purpose people are encouraged to live a life based on what they want.
The meaning of freedom has become to do and to say what one wants. So one individual acts like a particle which moves freely. Physical force is applied to materials and not to humans. The force of money, propaganda, persuasion, debate, desire etc are accepted as the correct force to move an individual. So, if necessary, a government has a right to use physical force on people, using the police and the military.
This difference in freedom between poor and rich creates a fundamental conflict in the world. The Internet is created for rich people. People think that they can do anything they want on the Internet. They can only be stopped by force. One way is to physically stop them by the police enforcing laws created by the government. The other way is by a virtual police, which are programs to stop them downloading from the internet or hacking other peoples' computers.
I do not think people should do and say what they want. One should be educated to live together with others to create a better world, and should be able to stop oneself if necessary. Stopping oneself is called morality. It is unfortunate that religions have used morality to dominate people in Europe. Now people must create morals by themselves and for themselves. I have put videos on the Internet for my students, asking them not to download them. I am not going to stop people downloading them by using laws enforced by the police nor with virtual police in the form of technology to stop people downloading. I want to create morality, at least among my students.
Doshu (January 2015)