Is True Freedom Possible Without Community?

This is the third article in the "Freedom in Crisis: Navigating Systems from Global to Personal" series. Having explored economic systems and democratic institutions, we now turn to the social fabric that shapes our daily experience.

I've watched the rhetoric of freedom intensify as our communities disintegrate.

"Freedom" has become the battle cry of those refusing masks during a pandemic, of those defending unlimited speech even when it dehumanizes others, of those claiming their right to pursue self-interest regardless of collective consequence.

I say this not from a place of judgment but of recognition—I was one of those non-masker people.

I embraced the rhetoric of personal freedom, believing that my individual choice outweighed collective health concerns. It's embarrassing to admit now, but it felt like a principled stand for liberty at the time. What I couldn't see then was how deeply I had internalized a definition of freedom that prioritized my autonomy over our interconnection.

The irony doesn't escape me: As our social bonds weaken, our claims to individual liberty grow more absolute. As we lose our capacity for mutual care and responsibility, we double down on personal autonomy as the highest value.

This has me questioning a fundamental premise: Can meaningful freedom exist when society fractures? Is individual liberty possible without social cohesion? Or is freedom itself a relationship rather than a personal possession?

The Mirage of Isolated Freedom

The notion of freedom as purely individual—as my right to do what I want without interference—is relatively recent in human history. For most of our existence, freedom was understood within the context of relationship and community.

Indigenous cultures often see freedom not as independence from others but as right relationship with them. Many non-Western traditions understand liberty as the capacity to fulfill one's responsibilities to the collective, not to escape them.

Even in Western philosophy, the earliest concepts of freedom weren't about individual autonomy but about collective self-governance. The "free person" was one who participated in shaping the shared life of the community, not one who stood apart from it.

What if the extreme individualism we now call "freedom" isn't freedom at all, but a form of isolation masquerading as liberty?

This plays out at every level. Nationally, we see countries retreating from international cooperation in the name of sovereignty only to find themselves more vulnerable, not less. Individually, we see people claiming absolute freedom from masks or public health measures during a pandemic, only to end up more constrained by a virus that thrives on our disconnection.

I've begun to wonder if this fierce attachment to individualistic freedom is actually a response to trauma—the wounded product of living within systems that inevitably dehumanize us. When capitalism reduces us to our productive value, perhaps the instinctive response is to assert radical autonomy as protection against further exploitation. We mistake the impulse to escape pain for the pursuit of actual liberty.

The tragedy is that this escape attempt often leads us deeper into isolation, not into freedom. We mistake privilege for liberty, confusing the capacity to ignore interdependence with actual autonomy.

When Social Bonds Break

History offers sobering lessons about what happens to individual liberty when social cohesion collapses.

When communities fracture beyond a certain point, the result isn't more freedom for individuals but less. As trust erodes, fear grows. As fear grows, control intensifies. The vacuum left by cooperative social norms is filled by authoritarian structures or chaotic violence—neither of which expands human freedom.

We can see this pattern repeating today. As our sense of shared reality and mutual obligation weakens, both authoritarianism and social chaos gain ground. The promised freedom of radical individualism delivers neither security nor liberty, but a strange combination of isolation and conformity—disconnection from others alongside pressure to align with increasingly rigid ideological tribes.

Those who benefit most from this fracturing are rarely individuals but systems—economic, political, and now technological structures that thrive in the absence of collective action and shared purpose.

The uncomfortable truth is that some capacity for social cohesion is a prerequisite for meaningful freedom, not its enemy. Without basic levels of trust, shared reality, and mutual care, individual liberty becomes either an empty slogan or a weapon wielded against others.

Freedom As Relationship

What if we reimagined freedom not as something we possess individually but as something that exists between us?

Freedom in this sense isn't just my right to act without constraint but our capacity to create conditions where everyone can flourish. It's not the absence of obligation to others but the presence of mutual care that makes genuine autonomy possible.

This relational understanding of freedom has deep roots. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of being "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality" where "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Ubuntu philosophy holds that "I am because we are." These aren't limitations on freedom but recognitions of its actual nature.

I taught and preached individual freedom for basically my whole life in varying ways. The most recent was in the context of New Age teachings—the freedom to create your reality, to manifest your desires, to transcend limitation through personal transformation. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that perhaps the freedom of one without the freedom of all is not freedom at all.

This blind spot wasn't a personal failing so much as evidence of how deeply conditioned we all are by systems that profit from our separation. The individualistic understanding of freedom is woven into the very fabric of the cultures many of us were raised in—reinforced by education, media, spiritual teachings, and economic systems designed to keep us focused on personal escape rather than collective liberation.

From this perspective, claims to freedom that undermine others' liberty aren't really about freedom at all. The "freedom" to pollute isn't freedom but externalized harm. The "freedom" to hate speech isn't freedom but dehumanization. The "freedom" from mutual obligation isn't freedom but abdication of relationship.

This raises profound questions: Does my freedom increase or decrease when others become less free? Can I be truly free in a society where many are not free? Is freedom a zero-sum resource to be hoarded or a collaborative project that grows as it's shared?

Balancing Individual and Collective

I can already hear the objections: "But doesn't prioritizing community inevitably lead to conformity? Isn't there a danger in subjugating individual rights to collective demands?"

These concerns aren't unfounded. History is replete with examples of communities that demanded uniformity and punished difference. But this criticism often conflates two fundamentally different approaches to community: one based on domination and conformity, another on reciprocity and mutual flourishing.

The key distinction lies not in whether community matters, but in how it's structured. Communities built on rigid hierarchy, exclusion, and enforced sameness do indeed constrain freedom. But communities organized around reciprocity, consent, and celebration of diversity can actually expand individual liberty by creating the conditions where more people can exercise meaningful choice.

The question isn't whether to value community or individualism, but how to create communities that enhance rather than restrict the freedom of all their members.

Building Freedom-Enhancing Social Structures

If freedom is relational rather than individual, how might we rebuild our fractured social fabric in ways that enhance liberty rather than restrict it?

I'm increasingly drawn to communities and movements that navigate this tension—that create strong social bonds while expanding rather than contracting individual freedom:

Mutual aid networks that strengthen material security without creating dependence. Restorative justice practices that address harm through relationship rather than punishment. Cooperative economic models that balance individual initiative with collective benefit. Digital commons that share knowledge freely while protecting privacy and agency.

These aren't perfect models, but they suggest possibilities beyond both the forced cohesion of authoritarianism and the atomized "liberty" of extreme individualism. They point toward social structures built on reciprocity rather than domination, on collaboration rather than competition.

The principles behind these examples might guide our approach to rebuilding social bonds that enhance freedom:

Prioritizing consent over coercion while recognizing that meaningful consent requires certain baseline conditions. Designing for accessibility rather than exclusion, ensuring that social structures don't privilege certain bodies, minds, or identities. Distributing power intentionally, creating systems where decision-making authority is shared rather than concentrated. Maintaining permeability, allowing for entry, exit, and adaptation rather than rigid boundaries. Valuing difference as essential to collective wisdom rather than a threat to uniformity.

These aren't abstract principles but practical orientations toward creating what adrienne maree brown calls "liberated relationships"—connections that free rather than constrain, that expand possibility rather than narrow it.

Freedom In The Spaces Between

As we navigate from economic systems through political structures and now into the social fabric, a pattern emerges: Freedom exists less within any particular system than in our capacity to question, challenge, and reimagine it. Liberty lives in the spaces between fixed structures—in our ability to create new possibilities rather than merely choose among predetermined options.

True freedom may not be possible within a completely fractured society. But neither does it exist in forced uniformity or uncritical acceptance of existing social norms. It emerges in the creative tension between autonomy and connection, between individual expression and collective care.

This understanding of freedom as relational connects directly back to what we explored about economic and political systems. Capitalism frames freedom primarily as consumer choice and absence of regulation, while obscuring how economic precarity fundamentally limits liberty for many. Political systems that focus exclusively on formal rights while ignoring substantive inequality similarly offer a hollow version of freedom.

What emerges across these domains is a pattern: systems of power benefit when freedom is defined narrowly as individual choice divorced from collective context and responsibility. This framing keeps us focused on personal escape rather than systemic transformation, on accumulating private liberty while accepting the unfreedom of others as inevitable.

As we move next to examining technological systems and their impact on freedom, this insight becomes crucial. The algorithms and digital structures increasingly mediating our lives aren't neutral tools but active shapers of both our individual choices and our collective relationships. They're redefining the very nature of social connection—often in ways that fragment rather than strengthen our capacity for meaningful relationship.

The question isn't just whether we can maintain freedom as individuals within fractured communities, but whether we can create forms of connection that expand liberty rather than constrain it. Not just for ourselves, but for all.

What forms of relationship in your life expand freedom rather than restrict it? How do you navigate the tension between individual autonomy and collective responsibility? What becomes possible when we understand freedom as something that exists between us rather than within us?

Next up: "Do Algorithms Serve Us, or Do We Serve Them?" where we'll examine how technological systems shape not just what we see, but how we relate to each other and ourselves.

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Creating frameworks for understanding freedom in times of social fracture requires sustained effort and independence. If these explorations resonate with you—if you value perspectives that challenge both rigid conformity and extreme individualism—your support makes this work sustainable.