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Is There Really A Trade-Off Between Personal Freedom And Social Responsibility?

By B Hopkins

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 17Dec2008 Word count: 660 Viewed: 251 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

There are a few articles on the trade-offs between personal freedom and social responsibility, which state that one must compromise between the two. The more personal freedoms you have, the less socially responsible you are, and the more socially responsible you are, the less personal freedom you have. In reality, it is actually the complete opposite. The MORE personal freedom you have, the MORE socially responsible you are. In fact, it is your personal duty to live as freely as you choose.

How is this so you may ask? It comes down to a change in the paradigm of how we view our place in the world we live in. The paradigm used for this article is found in the cutting-edge personal transformational course, The Choice Is Mine. One of the principles of this course states, "if it is honestly good for you, then it is honestly good for me". Using this principle, we can conclude that when you are unconditionally living the life you love, you are contributing to society at the highest level you can. What can honestly be better for you than living what you love? When you are living what you love, all those around you will benefit.

Living what you love is the highest form of personal freedom. When you are living what you love, you are being your true self and you are giving the gifts you were meant to share in this lifetime. Just think of how sad is the situation where an individual isn't living their life, but the life they think they should be living because of familial or societal self-induced pressures. How sad is it that no one in this individual's life gets to experience the gift of who they really are because the people in their life have expectations about how their life should be, and what they should do.

Let's take for example the role of a parent. The parent's responsibility is to raise emotionally healthy children who have the skills required to be successful in life when they are adults. This can happen in a number of different ways. If the parents are locked into a certain way of parenting and they will follow that way come hell or high-water, no matter how miserable they feel, or how much they feel they have to sacrifice, what effect will that have on their children? The children never get to see parents who are living a life of joy. They will associate parenthood with sacrifice and drudgery, and when they get older, they will repeat the pattern and pass that onto their children if they haven't found a way to change their beliefs of how parenthood should be.

How does society benefit from a nation of people who feel they have to decide between having children and fully living a life they love? Even if people don't have children, they still have grown up being conditioned to life being hard and drudgery.

When we use the key "if it's honestly good for me, it's honestly good for you", we can see that when people are operating from the truth of who they are, they open themselves up to living life in ways they never dreamed of. They find solutions to get things done that they can't even begin to reach when they are focused on the "drudgery" of day-to-day tasks. They become inventors, scientists, teachers, poets, musicians, engineers, gardeners, nannies, and a whole host of other professions both common and unheard of that greatly benefit society.

In conclusion, there is no trade-off between personal freedom, when you are living in your truth, and social responsibility. The trade-off is illusionary and comes when you separate self from society. If you are one who wants to be a socially responsible citizen, find your passion, and live it like there is nothing else to live for, for the sake of yourself and of society.

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