Adlai Stevenson, 31st Governor of Illinois and United Nations ambassador, said, “The definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” [1] In this world of labels and name calling, where every term is subjective, so is independence. For example, independence for someone might be to choose their own life partner while independence for a victim of human trafficking might be to just escape from that ruthless place. Thus, independence is a subjective term that cannot be completely attained as we are restrained by societal and financial restrictions, prejudices and stereotypes that further leads us to the process of labeling and dehumanizing humans.
The primary restriction for an individual are financial limitations that base up Maslow’s pyramid of the Hierarchy of Needs. It is the most basic restriction in attaining freedom as a person cannot be expected to act independently in life if that person is still desperate to find ways to survive. To attain individual independence, we must at least have the basic needs to not worry about. As income inequality increases in the world, so does the path to individual independence narrows down. Therefore, we must overcome abject poverty as it brings along the shackles of social perils that need to be broken.
However, societal limitations are the most binding as they prevent people from being their ideal self or their actual self, even after having good financial conditions. Therefore, as humans are social animals, an individual’s restrictions are set by the society and whenever we cross the limits, we are termed as “mad”, “crazy”, “outcast”, or “outsiders”. For instance, when Galileo was exercising his intellectual independence, he was punished by the Church. Furthermore, the opponents of Hitler in the Hitler regime were demonized as the evil form of “intellectuals” and so were stripped of their intellectual independence and freedom. Even today, as people act completely independent in a so called “free society”, they are out-casted or are unpopular. Especially, the people who suffer from mental health issues are marginalized in society around the world as they act differently and independent of the society’s norms. Thus, to gain complete independence from the societal limitations as to exercise full-fleshed individual independence, we must not label the “outcast” or those who act differently from the society’s norms.
Thus, individual independence cannot be completely achieved as it is a quasi destiny and if individual independence in the world is not achieved, global independence is like a drowning Titanic ship. At last, to overcome the obstacles of the destiny to global independence, we must curb abject poverty and refrain from labeling and name-calling people.
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[1] Stevenson, Adlai. “A Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson II.” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/98067-my-definition-of-a-free-society-is-a-society-where