Ethos Alliance boss: It’s a good time to reflect on freedom

In an opinion piece published on several major newspaper websites in New Zealand this month, Ethos Alliance chief executive Alex Penk said “festivals reveal what our society holds sacred”.

“In contemporary New Zealand, we talk a lot about freedom. That’s mostly a good thing. Freedom is essential for a well-lived life; we need it to make meaningful choices, to be fully human. But we can also make freedom into an idol,” Mr Penk said.

“In fact, we too often act as though life is about projecting our personal sense of who we are onto the world. Look inside you to discover who you are, and live your truth: ‘you be you’. Attempting to make this possible, we turn freedom of choice into something like a sacred right; we say we need maximal choice to fully express our sense of self.

“Among other things, this means we avoid commitments that would limit our self-expression, or we choose only those that confirm it.”

Mr Penk criticised “narcissistic individualism”.

“This is a view that treats rights, choice, and empowerment as sacred, and makes them into fig leaves for selfish and self-regarding beliefs.”

“These aren’t the beliefs that make it possible for men to leave their landing craft and advance into enemy territory, or to carry a cross onto a hill to die.

“That takes a character forged over time to do something good even when it’s hard or apparently self-defeating, even when there’s a choice not to do it.”

Mr Penk said “the intermediate space between the holidays of Easter and ANZAC Day is a good time to reflect on virtue, and to let that challenge our culture’s all-too-common sense of the sacred”.

“Courage, love, and sacrifice – these are the kind of transcendent virtues that our freedom is meant to be used for, and for which others freely gave all they had.”

FULL STORY

Days between Easter and ANZAC Day a good time to discover what freedom is for (By Alex Penk/Ethos Alliance)