Essay, Research Paper: The Relationship Between Freedom And Civilization

The Relationship between Freedom and Civilization
Freedom is defined as “a being able to act, use, etc. freely”. Civilization is defined as “the peoples considered to have reached a high social development”. This essay will discuss the relationship between both freedom and civilization, by showing how a increase in one will lead to a decrease in the other and vice versa. With a civilization comes a decline in freedom due to religious and government made laws that restrict certain doings and beliefs.
For a group of people to be considered Civilized they have to have “Complex Institutions” one of those being Religion. With a religion comes beliefs and rules to follow that a man must take in if he wants to follow that religion. In these beliefs alone there is probably 100 different things alone that a man can’t think. That alone restricts his freedom. Along with these things a man can’t think, there is probably 1,000 actions or doings he can’t perform without breaking his beliefs. So civilizations just with religious laws alone would almost destroy a mans freedom. But without religion no culture of people would be considered civilized. So just with the religion inside of a civilization, a man’s freedom is taken from him. But in most civilizations there is more than just religious laws there is also government or man made laws (But these laws are also said to be the word of the gods but there is no proof of this)
Imagine a civilization where there is no thought of a higher being or any type of religion. Of course there wouldn’t be any religious laws then but there would be government made laws to help keep order amongst the people. Freedom is again defined as being able to act freely (Thus meaning no rules, laws or restrictions can be put on the people about beliefs, actions.). Some call the U.S. the “Land of the Free” but how can we consider ourselves to be free with all the laws that limit our actions in public and in our own homes. But if we had no laws chaos would reign and with that how could we consider ourselves to be civilized. People would do whatever they pleased this including killing, raping, stealing, etc. So calling ourselves free is the last thing we should do considering all the thousands of laws we have here in the great old USA. So far this essay has only showed two different attributes of any civilization, religion and government. But most early civilizations are very different from how things are now. Today in no way are religion and government related at all except for the religious beliefs of the people in the government. In early civilizations the whole government was controlled by religion.
In these early civilizations the government could control the people to make them do or think whatever the government wanted. They did this with food surplus. Not only did the government decide how much you were taxed but also how much of the food surplus is given to you. So if you didn’t believe in what the government wanted you to or if they thought of you as threat the society (threat meaning that you would impose your newly founded beliefs on to the followers of the government). You would probably be killed or starved or the government would tell the rest of the people you were crazy and they’d probably make an example of you to show the others to never go against the government. So in these early civilizations the government or the men inside of it controlled all, they really tried to almost become the gods. These men could give or take lives and do whatever they really wanted and they could justify it with religion. So in these early civilizations that were controlled by religion, as the civilization grew the freedom of its people decreased until was inevitably demolished. They had no freedom they were almost like slaves of the government or the “priests” that would claim to have talked to the almighty. The worst part of it all was that they could justify this by claiming it had to do with the words of god and the people couldn’t possibly be questioned by a normal person for that would be a insult to the priest.
So inevitably wherever a civilization is seen religion and government are seen and due to these things a mans freedom is taken away slowly until its all gone and he is considered a slave to the government or the religion. So if you have a group of people that are considered civilized they cannot be considered to have their freedom. But is you have a group of people that are totally free they cannot be considered civilized. So with civilization comes a absence in freedom due to religious and government laws that restrict a mans doings and thus so demolishes his freedom.


Word Count: 824