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Iain Hunter: We weren’t born free, and freedom comes with chains

If Jean-Jacques Rousseau were to come to town, he would pause on Pandora Avenue in wonderment.“Man is born free and everywhere he is in lanes!” he would have exclaimed.

If Jean-Jacques Rousseau were to come to town, he would pause on Pandora Avenue in wonderment.“Man is born free and everywhere he is in lanes!” he would have exclaimed.

The sight of all those signs and lights and painted lines would have brought on his social contractions. He would recognize that Victorians who stay so meekly inside the lines are far progressed from the state of nature into which they were born free.

J-J would have liked to sit in on a meeting of the mayor and councillors and watch how those worthies pass bylaws and proclaim rules claiming to reflect completely the popular will of Victorians.

They don’t consider the impossibility of this, for we are not peas in a common pod. Some of us drive, some pedal, some shuffle along, hunched over handheld devices. Some of us are carnivores, some herbivores. Some of us are male, some female, some none-of-the-above or all-of-the-above.

Undaunted, Mayor Lisa Helps declares that she has had it with “tinkering.” It’s time for “bold action” — as if she ever lacked boldness.

Some of the things the city’s draft plan for the next four years includes should be pretty simple — such as finding a place to park the apparently offensive statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, giving everything a Lekwungen name and replacing flowers with native weeds in city beds.

But encouraging folks to put sheds in their back yards to rent for less than $500 a month or making coffee addicts slurp from stained and cracked mugs as they wander at will in the middle of Government Street might require a bit of work.

So will persuading old folks with a spare bedroom to put up strangers declared “eligible” and forcing developers to fill their green spaces with broccoli and stuff that people, not just deer, can eat.

The trouble is, people such as Helps are busybodies. They believe that because they are elected, they must do things for, or to, the people who elected them.

They know that man — or woman or other — was never born free at all. They know that freedom must be granted and that if individuals aren’t susceptible to unfreedom, they can’t be called free.

Governors and their institutions can grant freedom — or freedoms, as our Charter does. It comes, and they come, with chains, though.

The chains are imposed by governors at all levels who imagine a common interest — civic, provincial, national — and declare it so. They are surprised when the chains rattle angrily in the streets.

We should not be hard on our governors. Often they seem the personification of corporatism. But they can be afflicted sometimes by compassion that is said to be a uniquely human attribute.

They can be sensitive to the disquiet of citizens who lack the devices and accoutrements that others acquire to secure their comforts and display their status and good fortune.

They can be sensitive to the slights that freedom of speech encourages, the hurt of souls afflicted by current and historical wrongs.

A social contract between governors and the governed should be an opportunity for compassion to guide the governors and provide the basis for the rules they make, thereby granting freedom.

Of course, it’s politically impractical. Too many of us have too much to lose.

Occasionally, our political practitioners go so far in addressing concerns and perceived slights of minorities that they are accused of pandering to peculiarities — and people who are required to tolerate this shoot out their lips and laugh them to scorn.

Just now, people around here are proclaiming defiantly their observance of a Christian festival: Folks who believe in other gods or none should just chill out.

But, at this time of year especially, compassion surely can be allowed to inspire governance.

Rousseau, even with his reservations about an established religion, advocated religious toleration.

He would marvel at the Christmas lights and decorations downtown for everyone to see, and be glad.