Freedom Implies Responsibility, Not Anarchy
Freedom (Including Freedom of the Press) Implies Responsibility, not Anarchy.
Occasionally it’s hard to draw a line between the two terms: a freedom and an anarchy. It is easy to take liberty of doing anything you would like but it takes a lot of bravery to claim responsibility for your movements. A freedom implies the responsibility, not «anything». For example, you want to kill someone you do not like. Anarchy allows you to do it: no one above tells you that it is wrong. A freedom gives you rights but delegates the responsibilities at the same time. That’s the main principle of all laws and religions to know a distinct which you can’t cross over. Great Emmanuel Kant sad: «Treat people the way you want to be treated»1. He had a special theory about how the people can make their social order just. He thought that it’s possible only if people will work up the rules of social behaviour and just laws. At the present time we have laws but the new trouble appeared – ethical. Ethical rules are not unavoidable and there is no special document for them. Religion can be like a direction for many people but there are some differences between devotional duties. Besides a lot of people over the world consider themselves as atheists and agnostics. We are (and particularly our society) in a situation of ethical haze and separation. The most important thing now is to develop and follow some common (exactly common) moral rules which can work for all people, including journalists. We can’t delegate authority to control journalistic work to our government (according to one famous economist, the government has more than enough authority) but it’s impossible to have no rules at all. Here we turn back to responsibility which unfortunately plays very humble role in Russia. In accordance with FOM’s statistics on 21 November of 2002, 56 % of people surveyed think that our journalists must censor themselves. It does not mean that journalists have to
Occasionally it’s hard to draw a line between the two terms: a freedom and an anarchy. It is easy to take liberty of doing anything you would like but it takes a lot of bravery to claim responsibility for your movements. A freedom implies the responsibility, not «anything». For example, you want to kill someone you do not like. Anarchy allows you to do it: no one above tells you that it is wrong. A freedom gives you rights but delegates the responsibilities at the same time. That’s the main principle of all laws and religions to know a distinct which you can’t cross over. Great Emmanuel Kant sad: «Treat people the way you want to be treated»1. He had a special theory about how the people can make their social order just. He thought that it’s possible only if people will work up the rules of social behaviour and just laws. At the present time we have laws but the new trouble appeared – ethical. Ethical rules are not unavoidable and there is no special document for them. Religion can be like a direction for many people but there are some differences between devotional duties. Besides a lot of people over the world consider themselves as atheists and agnostics. We are (and particularly our society) in a situation of ethical haze and separation. The most important thing now is to develop and follow some common (exactly common) moral rules which can work for all people, including journalists. We can’t delegate authority to control journalistic work to our government (according to one famous economist, the government has more than enough authority) but it’s impossible to have no rules at all. Here we turn back to responsibility which unfortunately plays very humble role in Russia. In accordance with FOM’s statistics on 21 November of 2002, 56 % of people surveyed think that our journalists must censor themselves. It does not mean that journalists have to