This week in Democratic Citizenship class two groups made exercises from the book "The If Machine".First exercise was about having a ring of invisibility which made us invisible when we wear it, we were asked what would we do with the ring if we were 10 years old whether we would use it for the good of other people or just use it for ourselves and what would be the right thing to do with the ring.
Most answers were about the things like stealing candies, watching tv with the parents instead of sleeping. But I would use it to sneak around bad people and prevent them from hurting other people. While it sounds like I care about other people it was more about being the popular kid.
For me the right thing to do would be destroying the ring. Because if we take history in the consideration if people have too much power it is really easy to be self-righteous.
The second exercise was interesting because it was about freedom.
We were asked to draw a prison room with everything we wanted in it with one person that we chose. I've picked everything that I do when I'm on my own, a guitar, music, books, and may be my best friend or Baron Davis the veteran basketball player who said that he was abducted by aliens. The question was if we would be happy in our prison cell with all those things. As you might expect no one said that they would. This sounded to me like a reduced prison sentence where a person who has done a really bad thing but is not aware of it, but is restricted to not hurt other people. While I can't imagine living in a prison cell and being happy, I wonder what would I feel if I grew up in a prison and didn't know about the world outside.
Some people said that to be happy was to have the freedom of speech. If we think about a medieval society where common people don't know about human rights and freedom of speech, people could still be happy and content with their lives.
For me happiness can not be measured with the amount freedom we have. While being free raises the odds to be happy there are other things that I feel that are necessary, like friends, family, health. I think freedom also includes security. I don't think freedom is possible without being secure. If you don't feel secure walking in the street like in a third world country where crime rate is high, your freedom is restricted.
