Fifth: idea three — the individual and the group (freedom inside the frame)

05Fifth: idea three — the individual and the group (freedom inside the frame)

The problem

• Many claimed that the individual's share in a collective effort clashes with his freedom to choose his own path.

The writer's opinion

• There is no clash if we distinguish between the frame (al-iṭār) that sets the rules of the road and the steps taken inside that frame.
• The frame is shared by everyone; the movement inside it is free.

The examples

• The players of football and chess: one set of rules that no one may break, yet each player is free to move the ball or the piece as he wishes.
• The rules of grammar: a writer may not make the subject accusative or the object nominative — and still he freely chooses his subject and his style.
• The principles of logic: one may not claim that a traveller covering two hundred kilometres in two hours is served by a train running at twenty kilometres an hour, nor that a plan costing two hundred million is covered by fifty million.

The summary

• The citizen is free in his way of going and his style of life, so long as his activities keep to the principles and goals set by the group — of which he is one member.