The Chains of Liberty

Yara M. EL Banna

Ms. Dania Adra

English 203

10 October 2015

The Chains of Liberty

                     Jean Jacques Rousseau says in one of his books, “We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man”. The man that Rousseau talks about in his book has his liberty discussed in another. “Man was born free and he is everywhere in chains”, he says. The Social Contract explains how man had to ditch his “instinctive” nature in order to be a man of society. Becoming a man of society is exemplified by signing a “social contract” that obligates man to several “limiting” rules.

Ain El Mrayse. 17 February 2013. Yara M. El Banna

                     The picture I chose is a picture I took for a photography assignment that asked us to take pictures of expressive faces.The face of this beggar was more than just expressive. It told me stories. We were asked to take pictures that meant to make us feel something. I felt all the pain and all the innocence. This child, entitled to live in such humiliation, portrays one of the several angles that Rousseau’s Social Contract reviews. In order to stay alive in the current society, this child, as well as many others, had to give up many basic rights that they deserve. They gain the privilege of life, but lose all what's truly exquisite about it. Following the liberal law was not for this child's sake; she possesses nothing, she's on the margins of society. 

                 In a world that is considered "liberal", one can find humans stripped from many rights. These humans are losing, by time, all their simplicity and what makes them human. The more, what's so called, "privileges" in this concrete life we gain, the more we lose, morally. Men, by this contract, become slaves of the liberal law. I personally refuse to lose my natural liberty for the sake of gaining the ownership of what I possess, things that are merely materialistic and won't go to the grave with me. I am a child of nature, and I will always belong to it. The only hope I possess is that humans won't lose themselves gaining the privileges of this law. Or else they'll become "Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts" (C. Chaplin). 

Works Cited

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "Book IV - Age 15 to Age 20." Emile, or On Education by Jean Jacques Rousseau:. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.

  Rousseau, Jean Jacques. “The Social Contract“. Shifting narratives. E.d. Zane S. Sinno, Lina 

     Bioghlu-Karkanawi, Dorota Fleszar, Najla Jarkas, Emma Moughabghab, Jennifer M. Nish, 

     Rima Rantisi, and Abir Ward.  Consolation and Research, Educart, 2015. Print.