The See-saw Principle

 

The Quetzalcoatl, Gudalajara, Mexico

The Smith familyⁱ had been meeting in St. Onk’s Provincial Park near the village of St. Onk every July long weekend for a dozen years now, long enough for the gathering to qualify as a tradition. In 2023, a remarkable dry spring meant that the Province of Saskatchewan was forced to issue a “no-fire” prohibition for all provincial parks and the Smith family had to rethink the bonfire barbecue that had until now topped off their reunion.

They decided to go ahead with their plans, but when the final evening arrived, the opinion that since they were always careful with fire, and that the government had no business regulating what was a private and personal tradition, they were justified in having their bonfire barbecue. The most vocal purveyors of this opinion used the word “freedom” as the centrepiece of their argument.

Since this story hasn’t happened yet, I can’t end it. I imagine that frustrates you, my reader, who may be hoping that, a) the fire gets out of control, burns down 1,000 hectares of forest plus the village of St. Onk, thereby proving that community well-being trumps personal liberty, or b) that nothing untoward happens as a result of the fire, thereby proving the opposite.

Separating community responsibility and personal liberty into independent categories is a foolish mistake. The two are bound together like the ends of a teeter-totter. Absolute personal liberty is achieved only at the expense of the exercise of community responsibility. Being absolutely bound to only that which benefits community comes at the expense of personal liberty. The see-saw is never guaranteed to be at absolute equilibrium; from time to time and circumstance to circumstance, the position changes. In wartime, for instance, personal liberties are foregone in the interest of community survival. In times of peace and prosperity, individual liberties can expand in proportion to the well-being of the community.

There’s no doubt that current crises like the COVID-19 Pandemic or climate change have put their thumbs on the individual-liberties end of the see-saw. That a proportion of the population would resist the reduction in personal liberty is nothing new. During the World Wars, eligible men by their hundreds refused the call to do military (community) service, refused to give up that personal liberty falling under the rubric of religious freedom. The Trucker’s Freedom Convoy occupying Ottawa in January to February of 2022 was not much different from the conscientious objection in wartime; participants refused to be drafted into what the governments had declared to be a community war on the virus. In both examples, the “conscientious objectors” were dealt with relatively leniently in Canada (there were no forced vaccinations and war resisters had to pay with alternative labour). In both cases as well, the non-cooperators remained a minority and paid a price in lost esteem in the broad community, which sensed that the refusal to participate in a communal struggle meant the dissenters owed the community an unpaid debt.

I began with the thought-experiment of a bonfire episode during a hot, dry summer’s day. I’m sure others can dream up better examples to illustrate the see-saw connection between individual liberty and community responsibility. The long and the short of it, though, is that humanity has as its only home one single planet. If life is worth anything, then preserving it is too. As populations rise and resources shrink, we need to understand the see-saw principle well and learn to live with the rise and fall of individual liberty when the human community’s very survival is at stake.

iNames and places are fictional.