In my opinion, even though the state performs many important protective functions, it can be extremely pressing on a person as an individual. Since Athenian democracy, forms of government have been linked in one way or another to the concepts of captivity and limitation. The state is inherent in the leverage of containment in one form or another, and it can be used both for the benefit of the population and for the purpose of holding power over people. The state should proceed from the principles of freeing a person from strict restrictions; however, there is a problem: a person’s demand for self-regulation can become excessive, such that the desire for individuality exceeds the common sense and capabilities of the individual. Self-government in the modern world is a controversial concept since it is simultaneously possible in some aspects but not completely achievable.
From the point of view of rational philosophy and neuroscience, a person is the result of cause-and-effect relationships and does not actually control their own life. The dependence of human decisions is predetermined by the structure of their brain, the organizational chain of instant decisions and monitoring of the external and internal situation and atmosphere (Churchland 2006). The context determines the surrounding reality and the behavior of a person who is not free even while defending freedom since their action is predetermined by unfreedom and, therefore, a deterministic order. However, people need to strive for self-control, and the task of the state is solely to encourage self-regulation and provide an adequate financial, social, and ideological platform for this. The state is a way to subordinate the life of the whole of humanity to a hierarchy. This is what Plato (1943) is talking about when deducing an ideal class system. In his utopian hierarchy, there would be no extra people since everyone would be pre-assigned to a specific class.
The concept of statehood is largely based on the problems experienced by society during its most primitive stage of development. Violence and various forms of cruelty gave rise to the need to create laws and apply measures that would contribute to their strengthening and non-violation. The state system is based on a tribal one, in which the inviolability of taboo is the basis of order and legality. It can be assumed that, at the moment, the degree of cruelty in human psychology has significantly decreased, and therefore, the control measures necessary to pacify crime are no longer relevant.
However, opposition between different social groups and religious or political castes destabilizes adequate and secular-humanistic interaction between people. The use of violence and terror has a shocking and paralyzing effect on the people of our time, who are not ready for this at this evolutionary stage. That is why people trust the state as a kind of guarantor of reliability, but at the same time this decision is essentially contradictory (Cahn 2009). In essence, in an information age overflowing with low-cost digital technologies in the service of the state, people sacrifice their privacy in the name of security.
Worried about possible violence in their direction, people give up their freedom by providing all the information about themselves to the state. The problem with this is that states can use comprehensive information about their citizens against themselves in the name of maintaining control over society. Moreover, the most brutal and fascist state systems can use information to commit targeted acts of terror. Statehood, in its most rigorous application, is capable of taking away freedom from people even without coping with its main tasks of serving the people. The freedom of the people is the loss of control over the people by the state and the more disastrous it is when it tries to return people to its spheres of influence.
Works Cited
Cahn, Steven M. “Freedom or determinism?” In: Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Oxford University Press. 2009.
Churchland, Patricia. “Do we have free will?” New Scientist, 2006, vol. 192, no. 2578, pp. 42-45.
Plato. Plato’s The Republic. New York: Books, Inc., 1943.