Why bother with truth??? Why bother with freedom...???

I think as my first post I have to clarify some general themes that I will explore here, even if not everything that I will be writing about will be related to that. This should help clarify why I argue for certain things and why I believe they should be argued for.

Truth, I shall not bother defining it, there are many philosophical models trying to define it, each with its advantages and disadvantages and I think most of us have a idea of what it is. But why is it important? Well, I think that it helps us in decision-making. If someone wants to invest funds, it is helpful if he knows the facts about the current economical situation and, even better, if he knows how other investors and companies will act. Or similarly if a physician is making decisions regarding a patients management, it is good if he knows the current state of the patient, trends of the development of his condition and all the available procedures that he can use to treat him. It is even more obvious why knowing the truth is important for judges who make decisions in court and one hopes that the police and other agencies involved in the cases are trying to uncover the truth, to allow the judge to make the right decision. And lets not forget that a massive part of work, that people engaged in scientific research are doing, is figuring out the truth of how the world works. Our everyday decisions are based upon us knowing what the current state of affairs is, knowing if e.g. our spouse is faithful or whether our favourite TV show is being screened on the same time as always. I think that this gives a nice outline for why truth is important, although unless you were a compulsive-obsessive lier or hardcore relativist, that was probably clear from the start.

But what about freedom? Why should we care about it at all? Couldn't we just live in the security of a state controlled society, that seems to be doing everything for us; kind-of like hamsters living in cages and relying on their owners to provide them food for just being ‘cute’ (and you wonder why they ever try escaping from their cages), and then dying if the owners forget to feed them or put them for a prolonged time by a hot radiator... Well to keep it short, but this theme will be explored later on - what do we have if we do not have freedom? I appreciate the fact that even when you have freedom, stuff can be taken away from you by force (but that requires someone wanting to do that and succeeding in doing it), but if you do not have freedom, you do not posses that stuff in the first place (I know that we could start arguing, about how much freedom there is and go into arguments about specific issues, but for the moment lets keep it general). Now if you are not free to make your own judgements and decisions, how can you be ‘fairly’ (I know this is a bit vague) judged? How can you be deemed responsible for a variety of things if you do not have any influence on them? Can you express yourself or develop as you wish if you do not have the freedom to do that? Can you do your best work on helping others, if you are not allowed to share your knowledge, skills and possessions with them?

Now what has truth to do with freedom. Once more I’ll try to keep it simple-stupid. You need to know the actual state of your surroundings to make appropriate judgements and decisions e.g. you need to know how long was the cake in the oven and at what temperature to make a good estimate on whether it is ready or not. Since we base our decisions on the information we obtain, controlling the information controls influences our decisions and, quite likely, restricts them, affecting their outcome and individuals dependent upon the information presented to them.

I am aware that this is not a detail analysis of the concepts, but, God willing, that might come later. I hope though that you dear reader, gained a general idea, about what I mean when talking about those concepts and why I think that they are important.