Deep need

Our history, that of the human race, is ultimately the story of how we tried to take it away from those we intended to enslave. It is written in the Bible where we can read of invading peoples animated by a desire to conquer and subjugate, of sovereigns eager for power and dominion who have always been ready to replace the gods in order to have total dominion over their subjects. We find it in the history of humanity. Despite the alternation of eras and historical periods, men have always fought for supremacy over each other.
Without discounts.
And yet, despite the fact that men have always shown themselves to be "wolves of other men", in recent centuries the belief has developed - at least in Western culture and not without uncertainty - that freedom is an inalienable good.
A fundamental right, a profound need of human life, so tied to our existence that we cannot think of it without it.

Freedom, a universal good?
Thinking of freedom as an inalienable good does not mean possessing it in its entirety and living it authentically. Freedom by its nature cannot be taken for granted, but it is the possibility of what is not yet expressed and defined, it is an opening that allows us to go out of ourselves to encounter new and different situations, people and horizons. Someone wrote that we are born free, it is very true, but it is also true that we become free.
Unused, unlived freedom withers, deteriorates, is confused with spontaneity.

Is it possible to educate freedom?
Freedom is a universal good in which we all participate because every man has the possibility of going out of himself. What we experience are political regimes, economic and social conditions of poverty and deprivation such that they prevent the exercise of freedom but cannot eliminate it at the root.
History is a master in this, it is the story of how humanity over the centuries has suffered the tyranny of authoritarian thought and practice and how it has tried to emancipate itself from these.

Freedom where, for whom?
The discourse is never abstract, freedom is revealed in the choices we make every day. Freedom is a daily good that, as with all daily things, is always embodied in a social, political, religious, family context... and takes into account the reality that can be that of the person both at an individual and community level. Freedom then implies a responsibility first of all towards ourselves and towards the context in which we find ourselves living.

Are we free today?
Apparently yes, at least in the Western world, but there are many "tyrannies". A great work of thought is needed that translates seamlessly into coherent actions to make our daily world stable.
In an era like ours made of wars, what are the tools to educate - and educate ourselves - freedom? In the current time, the primary responsibility for education in freedom passes first and foremost from each of us. Specifically, the responsibility today lies in the communities that make up for the fragilities of individuals and increasingly tired families and can show society new paths. Above all because education in freedom cannot be separated from the exercise of democracy, from ecological awareness, from the protection and creation of work, from the guarantee of care and health, from access to education, from the responsible use of resources.

When no one will be a victim of incurable diseases, dictatorships, wars, injustices, hunger and diseases ... we will finally have an educated freedom.

Renato Bonomo and Claudio Picco
Focus
NP March 2025