Category: Family

Something every libertarian knows is that many people see liberty differently than themselves, and most want to expand the liberty they feel is lacking, not liberty as a general value. Case in point, in my fair country, guns are hard to acquire by civilians, but most to don’t see this as an infringement of liberty.

I wrote a post before about freedom de facto and de jure. There is also the distinction between actual and perceived. I do not smoke marijuana, so I do not see marijuana prohibition as an infringement of liberty. I drink beer and would be outraged at beer prohibition. Most people believe themselves to be free enough, as long as the world seems to be generally how they like it. They feel more liberty with compulsory government healthcare, for example, than without, and care little that others feel their liberty infringed by this. They are, of course, outraged about every little thing they happen to care about and does not go their way.

I was thinking of the perception of freedom by children, which is quite different than adults. A child, as long as he is not an orphan toiling away polishing monocles, sees life–and freedom–as doing as much of what he likes as possible. Often playing. They live in a perfect socialist world–their family–and cares of money or economics are usually distant, relative to adults. This as long as there is a minimum standard of living–and this does not have to be too high, having a roof over their head and food in their belly often is enough. Those from reasonably responsible families, lower middle class upwards, have a special type of freedom, freedom from care. Of course, a child’s real liberty is quite restricted. But the reason this is–their immature mind–is the reason they don’t care about the adult stuff–entering contracts, for example. They, of course, can have a temper tantrum when the freedom they care about–let’s say drawing on a wall–is infringed.

Some left-wingers are much like children in their view–they want the victuals taken care of and want to do what they will with their time. They want to play free from care. Sadly this does not work for adults, wish as they might.  But this is not the point of this post, although I can’t pass an opportunity to mock the left.

I was thinking of my very own childhood as an example of a moment of feeling pretty damn free, compared to now, when I perceive all sorts of infringements upon my liberty. Romania still has a sizable rural population as EU countries go, with many country dweller practicing more or less subsistence agriculture–non-remunerated family laborers, as they are called in government statistics.

There was a rather fast attempt at urbanization during communism, to build the glorious industry of the multilaterally developed socialist society.  Many urbanites had elderly parents in the country, and it was the custom for city kids to spend holidays with rural grandparents. I was no exception. This was mostly due to lack of availability of other things to do with children when schools closed, but also because it was thought to be good for kids to spend time in the country. I agree with this, I can say they were some of the happiest times of my childhood and were actually good for my development. Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never… Moving on.

I had no major trauma as a child. I was healthy and so was my family. While not rich, we never really had to worry about our next meal. My parents worked hard and managed to provide as well as possible in those days. The collapse of communism was chaotic for most Romanians, but as a child, I was insulated from most of the worst stuff. It never touched me; I didn’t even realize a lot of it, beyond the sudden availability of a bounty of goods to buy–although not that much money to buy all of them–unlike the last stark years of the old regime.

My grandma lived off the beaten track–as Romania goes–a village along a small river in a valley surrounded by wooded hills. The comforts were not great, but they needn’t be. No running water and the toilet was a latrine unconnected to the house, which got pretty interesting come winter when the blizzard was blowing between the wooden boards. The TV was a black and white vacuum tube number and it needed a minute or so to warm up before starting. But did we complain? I think not. Kids these days!

Back then we were as free range as it got and had the kind of freedom that only a kids have. We had some chores–all village kids did–but not as many as the local boys, we being holidaying city slickers and the like. So much so that the chores were almost fun. Feeding livestock, drawing water from the well (tastier than anything we got in the city), helping in the garden. Those sorts of things took a few of hours. Maybe an hour of school work was needed–we had “holiday homework”.

After that, the long summer day was ours. Nothing we had to do–except be close to home after dark. Not a damn care in the world. We were a gang of some 7 or 8 boys with little adult supervision. There were, as you can imagine, no play dates in rural Romania. As an adult, I now appreciate the value of unstructured play. We had control of our time, and always found the way to stave off boredom.

At no certain time of the day, we would drift to the unpaved road outside the yard, and find whoever drifted there at the same time. In summer, we would have a daily swim in the river–we had our deep holes in the otherwise shallow stream, no adults, no lifeguards, nothing. We would – like all Romanian kids – play football or just wander the hills and forest. All we had to do is scream “Granma we’re going”. We would jump off a high dike in the water, climb trees, and scale ravines and all the good things reckless boys do. Scrapes and bruises were common, but no one got really hurt – some luck involved, I guess, probably lots of kids got hurt in Romania. But bad cases were rare – none in my memory among my group. We were mostly shirtless, often barefoot; with a tan no beach holiday can ever give. We had bows with reed arrows, slingshots, pocket knives, and access to axes, hammers and more.

In a way, country life spoiled me–all summer and some of the autumn I ate just-picked fruit, straight from the tree, and vegetables from the garden. I do not like fully ripe fruit, just about halfway so to be somewhat more sour than sweet, so I could choose just the ones I liked. Milk came from cows those days, not from cartons, and the chickens ran around the yard eating bugs and grass, and the meat and eggs tasted nothing like 90% of store chicken.

It is hard to find good food in most city stores and markets–although things are improving. I am not going to start praising organic for the sake of organic, but most fruit and vegetables in the city markets are not picked at the right time and spend some time in crates. The stuff in supermarkets, at least in Romania, is inedible to me. I don’t know if it was in my favour to get the taste for the good stuff or, like life-long city dwellers, to think the food you find is good, because you don’t know better. I am a city person now and like it that way, so I won’t go back to live in the country anytime soon. The trade-offs are not worth it. But I can have the odd pastoral fantasy. And I can be amused of urban friends who couldn’t tell a sheep from a goat up close well in their twenties.

In the end, rural childhood was a taste of freedom missing from some city raised kids, and one I won’t likely find again. Maybe it is one of the many reasons urban folk favour government on the bigger side. Or maybe not. As country grandparents start disappearing, new generations of kids will not have access to this. They couldn’t, really. Or maybe they will from a VR headset or the next Minecraft. They will have many things I did not, and anyway you can’t go all Luddite about things, and I do not. But one can occasionally be nostalgic of things past.