Neither Needed Nor Feared
Published:
When were we first “endowed with” freedom?
While some argue that liberty is an inherent human condition, and others trace its awakening to the Renaissance, historians largely agree that the political reality of freedom was forged during the Dual Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed in 1789: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” This marked the dawn of modern civilization, carrying profound implications. For the revolutionaries of that era, freedom was a hard-won spoil of war; for us today, it is often taken for granted as an innate blessing.
But did it emerge so easily and naturally? History suggests otherwise.
Before the modern era, ancient and medieval cities were neither the bustling market hubs nor the industrial centers we know today. They functioned primarily as “fortresses”—military and administrative strongholds where the ruling elite and their dependents occupied up to 90% of the urban space. This societal structure was dictated by a harsh agricultural constraint: it took the grueling labor of roughly ten peasants to support a single non-producing elite. In such a society of scarcity, the ordinary individual was a mere expendable component.
The power dynamics of the era were absolute. On the medieval battlefield, heavy cavalry reigned supreme. Maintaining this elite military force—supplying the immense quantities of meat, grain, horses, and armor required—was a burden only a centralized feudal authority could bear. The ruling class held an unbreakable monopoly on violence; their power could not be overturned by the agrarian masses.
The Dual Revolution shattered this equilibrium. The Industrial Revolution created new modes of production, allowing common citizens to achieve economic independence outside the feudal system’s control. Simultaneously, muskets leveled the battlefield—a commoner with a gun could neutralize a lifelong-trained knight. This technological shift gave the masses a terrifying new capability: mutually assured destruction, a “lose-lose” deterrence against any entrenched elite.
With both economic independence and armed deterrence, citizens finally possessed the material prerequisites for rebellion.
Yet after the revolutionary dust settled, how did society reach a new stable equilibrium? Why have modern rights and universal values endured? The answer lies in the dual leverage of the common citizen. Modern society is stable because ordinary people are now indispensable for creating economic surplus—the capacity for “win-win” collaboration—while the ruling class must constantly respect their democratized destructive power—the threat of “lose-lose” retaliation. Freedom is not merely granted; it is anchored in this delicate balance of utility and threat.
More specifically, in our modern society, we ordinary people are valued mostly for two things: the ability to rationally operate powerful machines, and the capacity to think across domains and adapt to unfamiliar environments.
So in theory, as long as society needs people to manipulate machines and needs a thinking ability that straddles different fields, we stride ahead as before. Our creativity, initiative, and rationality—our leverage—can be viewed as a kind of game theory. We fight and obtain through this.
In the last industrial revolution, machines amplified what a single person could do. I dare say, though it brought negative aftermath too, people then were far less fearful or puzzled than we are now. Many of us feel it: our safety and common values might be “threatened.”
Why? Because we are no longer the only source of rationality, creativity, or initiative. Machines can drive. LLMs can write expert-level essays. We are not irreplaceable.
So why us? If not us, can we maintain the status quo? As we discussed above, common values are not blessings—they are compromises, and more often, investments. Freedom maximizes creativity; compulsory education is investment: the more literate the population, the more productive the society. What happens to an investment when it stops yielding returns?
I don’t know where we go. We stand on the verge of a potential collapse of the value system. But perhaps the deeper question is not whether our values will survive, but whether they were ever more than a chapter—a set of answers to a specific material condition, which is now changing once again.