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Every now and again I like to make one of these videos where I explore a little bit more of the philosophical side if you will. I mean Law is what it is. In a lot of ways the day-to-day of the Law when you are dealing with it in a business context or as a practical context it does not seem to be an overly noble thing at times; it just is what it is and you deal with it. But there are policies that even go above general policies that may come down in the spur of the moment based on the situation on the ground. There are overarching themes to notions of law, and humanity from time to time forgets these things. They do seem to revert back, if you read history, now the reversion may take for example in the case of the Soviet Union, may take 70 years for things to go on a tangent and then kind of come back to something that looks like a relatively reasonable thing to deal with. 

In this video we are talking about "negative liberty" and this is something I don't think a lot of people really understand. I really kind of hate how this was put into an almost Hegelian sort of dialectical it was framed in sort of a "positive liberty- negative liberty" because people then don't really understand what they are talking about. I also have often wondered when I have read for more philosophical kind of themed content on these topics, it almost seems like especially in an academic context, negative liberty gets short shrift but as someone in the trenches where the philosophy embodied in the law, that rubber hits the road so to speak of real life. Believe me “negative liberty” is pretty important and this is not me talking in a purely Thailand context or purely US context, this is just my observation around the world. People when they don't understand a) what it is and when it is in short supply, things get pretty unpleasant, pretty quickly, let's put it that way. 

So let's get into what it is and this is just from Wikipedia, this is just a quick and dirty definition. Wikipedia.org under "Negative Liberty". Quoting directly: "Negative liberty" is freedom from interference by other people. Negative liberty is primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint and contrast with positive liberty, the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential. The distinction was introduced by Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 lecture: Two Concepts of Liberty." Again, I have always kind of seen this stuff in a more academic context and I have often taken issue just personally, with this notion that it is two things. I would argue it is sort of all one thing, we are just looking at different facets of it. I just don't like the appellation "negative liberty" that it is somehow negative but I do understand how you can use it in that context because in a sense it is "freedom from" it is not "freedom of" or "freedom to". In a very fundamental way, it is the right to be left alone. Again, quoting directly: "It is freedom from interference by other people", and what is society at the end of the day than just other people oftentimes in institutional form. That is really what you are getting down to and the thing that concerns me, I have just been reading about the US and kind of seeing things evolve here in Thailand, although I will give the Thais credit they do have more of a Live and Let Live attitude and I will get to that in a minute, but it is just this overall notion that somehow it is okay, "okay" is the wrong word, that people seem to be forgetting, there is a I think it is a French philosophical I think it came from a film, there is the saying "hell is other people" and I am not saying that in a cynical context but the point of the quote is freedom from other people's interference in a sense can be kind of pleasant; it can be kind of heavenly. In this age we are getting into where it seems to be far too commonly accepted to poke and prod everyone for everything; for just to live their lives to go about their business. I really think we should kind of be looking at this and it is one of my favourite things about Thailand. It is why I came to Thailand; it is why I stayed in Thailand; it is why I became Thai. I love Thai people's Live and Let Live attitude. People that don't live here really don't understand how the Thais can be very conservative and simultaneously very tolerant. When I say that people don't believe me from abroad especially when they come in and they see the party areas and this and that and I say no well 97, 98% of people are really conservative. A huge number of folks in Thailand don't drink which is a staggering number when you compare and I don't have the statistics with me, but a staggering thing when you compare that to Western jurisdictions. 

The point I am trying to make is Thailand had “negative liberty” down good and not to get into politics or anything like that, but just your day-to-day life here in Thailand some two years ago going back to Jan of 2020, you could pretty much do as you needed to do within reason. I mean do what you want, go where you want without a lot of outside interference and the same could be said for the United States I think although there are some arguments to be made especially in terms of travel that some things changed toward the beginning of this millennium and I don't want to get into all that. As practical matter, just walking around living your life, not a lot of interference from other people. Again this gets back to this notion of "Negative Liberty this kind of "freedom from interference". I am not talking about "oh I don't want to pay taxes", "I don't want to have to get a license" or "I don't want to have to get a Work Permit”, I am just talking about being able to walk into a place and eat a sandwich without anybody bothering me. That is at its basic level "Negative Liberty" and we haven't considered that enough if I am just voicing my opinion here; we haven't considered that enough. The US, folks in the United States, the UK, Europe, around the world, we all including Thailand, need to kind of be thinking about these things because is it really a world you want to live in where you have got to be poked and prodded and bothered and hassled and just generally made to feel uncomfortable to just undertake basic tasks. I don't think that is a world anybody wants to live in.