Leadership and Change

I start by wondering how Sen would react to substituting the word “right” for his word “freedom.” I’ve often thought of access to health care as a right in the United States. Sen describes that access as a freedom and says that low income may create an “unfreedom” (his word) vis a vis health care. Thinking about it a little further, maybe “freedom” is one step short of a full-scale “right.” Maybe this is a question of values – I don’t value health care quite enough to call it a right so instead, I’ll call it a freedom.

Freedom also carries an empowerment connotation to me that can make responsibility for that freedom slippery. I think it’s possible for a person to shirk their responsibility in a matter by calling something a freedom: “People are free to choose access to health care but instead, they have other priorities that they exercise. It’s not my business what those people do – they’re free to choose as they see fit.” Does that mean that we shouldn’t try to understand the situation better and get to the “root” causes of those decisions (which may in fact be factors such as low income?

Early in his introduction, Sen talks about how people may influence means to freedom by engaging in the dialogue that makes those means. I can walk right down to City Hall and testify in an effort to influence policy one way or another. But what if in spite of my freedom to be able to do this, I choose to stay home and accept come what may? Sen doesn’t talk at all about a free person’s responsibility in this chapter. I’d be interested to know what he would say about responsibilities that come with freedoms.

Toward the end of this first chapter of his book, Sen tells a story of how upon emancipation, ex-slave owners could not reconstitute “work gangs” made up of the same slaves as they once commanded. Not even seemingly strong economic incentives were enough compel these now-free people to do the requested work. This goes back to last week’s O’Toole article, which described people’s resistance to change because (or when) another person’s will is imposed on them. I don’t have any idea what would have been “good” or “better” for recently free slaves, but there’s no doubt in my mind that even if the economic incentives for re-forming that work gang had been compelling or “good” enough, the slaves would not have participated because they were just beginning to have access to freedoms for the first time. This is a tough question for me to ask because it no doubt shows my privilege and some of my ignorance: Is it possible that had these groups of slaves stayed in their work gangs and made more money that they would have subsequently been able to secure and exercise more freedoms than history allowed them?

Sen had many other tantalizing thoughts but it may take me-of-average-intelligence a lifetime to digest them and make them understandable…

--scott marshall