Absolute freedom is not liberation. It is bondage in disguise.

No Total Freedom anyway

 Thinking Out Loud! 

 

When freedom is unregulated, the powerful trample the weak and call it competition. The corrupt steal and call it survival. Politicians weaponize ethnicity and religion and call it free speech. Social media amplifies ignorance and calls it expression. In the end, the common man is left more trapped than before—economically, psychologically, and morally.

Ironically, absolute freedom often births tyranny.

Hard-Hitting Editorial  for Sights and Sounds of Ndon-Eyo II

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ABSOLUTE FREEDOM IS BONDED SLAVERY

 Hard-Hitting Editorial  by Sights and Sounds of Ndon-Eyo II 

There is a lie that has quietly gained popularity in our age: that freedom is best expressed when it is absolute—when nothing restrains desire, speech, behavior, or power. It sounds revolutionary. It sounds progressive. But history, culture, and human experience tell us something far less flattering.

Absolute freedom is not liberation. It is bondage in disguise.

Every society that has worshipped unrestrained freedom has paid dearly for it. When everything is permitted, nothing is sacred. When everyone insists on their “rights” without responsibility, justice dies silently. What replaces order is not equality—but chaos, where the strongest voice, the richest man, or the most violent group sets the rules.

Nigeria knows this reality too well.

We cry for freedom from oppression, yet many demand freedom without conscience. Freedom to loot without shame. Freedom to insult without wisdom. Freedom to lead without accountability. Freedom to follow blindly without thought. What we are left with is not emancipation, but a nation held hostage by its own excesses.

In truth, freedom without restraint enslaves the human soul.

A man who claims he answers to no law soon becomes a servant of impulse. Desire becomes his master. Ego becomes his compass. Anger becomes his language. Addiction becomes his routine. Such a man may boast of independence, but he is deeply chained—to appetite, to validation, to power, to fear.

Even our ancestors understood this paradox better than we do today. Traditional African societies did not define freedom as “doing whatever you like.” Freedom was exercised within communal responsibility. One’s liberty ended where another’s dignity began. The village survived because restraint was valued more than reckless individualism.

Religion, too, echoes this wisdom. Whether through divine commandments, moral codes, or spiritual discipline, faith traditions across the world agree on one thing: discipline is not the enemy of freedom; it is its foundation. A society that abandons moral boundaries does not become enlightened—it becomes ungovernable.

Look around us.

When freedom is unregulated, the powerful trample the weak and call it competition. The corrupt steal and call it survival. Politicians weaponize ethnicity and religion and call it free speech. Social media amplifies ignorance and calls it expression. In the end, the common man is left more trapped than before—economically, psychologically, and morally.

Ironically, absolute freedom often births tyranny.

When chaos overwhelms a people, they begin to beg for order—any order. That is when strongmen emerge, promising stability at the cost of liberty. History has seen this cycle repeatedly: unrestrained freedom collapses into authoritarian control. The chains return, heavier than before.

True freedom is not the absence of rules. It is the presence of just rules.
It is not lawlessness, but lawful dignity.
Not recklessness, but responsible choice.
Not noise, but meaning.

A road without traffic laws is not freedom—it is a graveyard.
A nation without moral restraint is not progressive—it is fragile.
A people without discipline are not liberated—they are vulnerable.

If Nigeria must rise, we must abandon the fantasy of absolute freedom and embrace the harder, nobler task of responsible freedom—freedom guided by conscience, law, culture, and compassion.

Because a society that refuses restraint does not become free.

It becomes enslaved—by itself.

— Sights and Sounds of Ndon-Eyo II