This week, our class discussed the views and thoughts of
Jean Paul Sartre. We discussed many of
his points of views and his statements, but the most interesting thought Sartre
had in my opinion was his statement that read, “Freedom is essential to the concept
of responsibility.” In our society,
freedom is something that many people abuse.
Laws are broken every single day, and that city that we live in is prone
to the abuse of freedom. For example,
many people abuse illegal drugs, which is a choice that anyone can make. However, the abuse of illegal drugs typically
causes a lot of problems, such as jail time, assaults, and homicides. While we are all free to make whatever
decision we want, there are plenty of people who are not wise with the decisions
that they make. My question is, if
freedom is essential to the concept of responsibility, why do we continue to
abuse our freedom and act in an irresponsible manner? People could use their freedom in responsible
manners all the time and actively choose not to. For example, instead of abusing illegal
drugs, think if only half of the people that use these drugs turned their lives
around and used their freedom to inform people of the dangers and consequences
of using these drugs. It upsets me to
know that while anyone is free to make whatever decisions that they want to
make, so many people use their freedom to promote bad morals and make bad decisions
while others who may need help look at these people and feed off of them. I think that people need to use their freedom
in an unselfish way. They should begin
to try and help others and make choices that contribute to the well being of
our society instead of making choices that bring our society and other individuals
down.
I agree with you that freedom is something people in our society abuse. When you look at other countries, that do not have the same freedoms as we do in the U.S., we have to remind ourselves that we are lucky to have the freedom that we do. Many people abuse basic freedoms such as freedom of speech to condemn and terrorize individuals who are different from us. When Sartre stated that "Freedom is essential to the concept of responsibility," I thought about how freedom is just handed to us, and how it is our responsibility as you stated to "contribute to the well being of our society."
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