As a child of the liberal-humanist Enlightenment, I did not realize how peculiar a thing personal liberty is until well into adulthood.
Our hunter-gatherer forebears were free to do as they chose, although their choices were severely proscribed by the necessities of survival, and probably by deference to their elders.
Then as now, the personal liberty of children is necessarily curtailed by their parents and elders, for children (especially the very young) do not understand consequences, and infants are too undeveloped to even have agency. The lone infant is free to die from hunger or exposure if not taken into someone's arms. The toddler is free to crawl into an oven, if not for an observant caregiver.
The development of villages and (soon after) agriculture caused humans to cluster together in groups larger than the family units exhibited by hunter-gatherers. For around ten millennia, the march of time has placed many of us into larger and larger groups, until today the majority of humans live in cities, many of them holding over a million. With ever-larger populations, we are exposed to ever-more strangers; those who aren't kin. A farming village; a cluster of a few clans (see image below) is a good way to organize a small community based on Dunbar's Number, better known as the Monkeysphere.
Everybody knows everybody in such a village, and everybody has their place. You know what people don't have much of in these settings? Personal freedom. Much waking time is dedicated to agricultural labor, although agricultural success is still often dependent on vagaries of weather. Thus, these societies tend toward religiosity and conservatism, as any disruption of the social order becomes apparent quickly, either socially or supernaturally (which can be considered the same thing).
The monkeysphere isn't the perfect theory to explain human behavior by any means, but the monkeysphere theory's estimated optimum size for human groups (150) is a reasonable size for a lot of horticultural/agricultural societies. Anyone outside the "monkeysphere"/social network isn't really considered a "real" person. An effectively-universal human trait is Xenophobia, fear of "that which isn't us." An unknown quantity is a potential threat, and can be treated as such. How much of folklore and mythology concerned with fear of the stranger? Enough that the parable of The Good Samaritan, or the reminder "For you were strangers in the land of Egypt" stand out as truly extraordinary, and often forgotten in practice.
"Western Civilization" is largely beyond that organizational level, as can be potentially connected to anyone, anywhere (intentionally or otherwise). However, we are forced to interact with strangers constantly - driving on the road with them, using products made by them, learning of distant events through them, reading blogs by them, etc. The fundamental terror of Civilization is that one (or more) of those strangers is a threat, and we won't know it until it's too late. You could call it the "They Live!" phenomenon. It's probably one of the reasons why city dwellers have higher rates of mental illness - we're constantly alone, lost in a crowd.
On the other hand, we are pretty damn free to do as we please:
- Fail to obtain the necessities of life? The social safety net intervenes.
- Run in front of a car for fun? You're taken to a hospital and treated.
- Say something horrible about the authorities? No legal consequences.
Of course, all these situations have caveats, but there are exceptions to every rule. By a number of standards, we are historically fortunate. However, I'm not sure how long it will last.
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