Ourselves? Our Country? Pick One. What’s more important: Our individual freedoms, or the well-being of society? This is just one of the many interesting discussions we had in my humanities class the other day. A lot of opinions were thrown out there, but it was an enlightening conversation nonetheless.

My response, however, wasn’t black or white, and it wasn’t ‘either, or’. You might say they go hand in hand. But what if they conflict with each other? Both individual freedoms and the well-being of society are important, but what if they start to clash? What do we do? Would you be willing to give up your freedom of speech for the well-being of society? This is what I believe, if what you do and or say is honestly, and genuinely hurting or harming someone, physically or mentally then you should not be able to say or do it. If an action of an individual is detrimental to the good of society then it needs to be taken care of.

Another question was asked to my classmates and I: What happens to countries that start giving up too much of their rights for the safety of society? I answered sarcastically, “Oh my god, if we start caring too much we might actually become humans…humans who…who…who actually care! And then we might start treating each other like equals, God forbid.”

The problem isn’t caring too much, the problem is when we start thinking we are so free that we stop caring. Everybody is getting so bold and bad we throw manners, and kindness out the door. We took this thing we call Freedom of Speech for advantage. I’m not willing to give up my freedom of speech for the well being of society but I am willing to modify it. I think we have to have modified rights in order for us to still feel free but still protect the security and state of our nation and its people.

After I made that point, a lot of the people agreed with me, but my friend pointed out it was still a good idea. But knowing how our government works if we give them an inch they’ll take a mile.

If we give up some of our rights, they might take all of our rights. I agree with her. But, then, what is a society to do when stuck with this dilemma?

Another one of my classmates pointed out that we need to set personal boundaries within ourselves, if we know something is wrong we must not let it happen. Another student, made a point saying, we need to start trusting each other. Its like we’re saying we don’t think that we as a society are smart enough, or can’t be trusted to make the decisions for ourselves.

So, that’s another big question we have to ask ourselves; can we trust ourselves to treat each other fair, right, and just, without giving up our rights that made us able to treat each like human beings in the first place? I think we have the chance now to exist with humanity, but do we? No, people need direction because “…fairness, righteousness, and justice aren’t just words—their perspectives…” (V from Vendetta). You can’t run the world on everyone’s perspective, that’s impossible. If we tried to run the world by waiting for other people to do the right thing, we wouldn’t get anywhere. Trust is earned and we as a people have not earned that trust just yet.

Markeda Ann Cottonham