Constraints within activity domains paradoxically expand effective freedom of action

Evidence

There is no absolute freedom. Paradoxically, to gain freedom, individuals have to negotiate rules of behavior for certain activities that require them to relinquish some autonomy. Without traffic laws, for example, driving would be chaotic, perilous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable for everyone. Sensible traffic rules provide predictability and an increased measure of control over getting safely to one’s destination and knowing how long it will take. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 102

Categorization

• XREF: Connect to the vault’s authoritarianism and social-conservatism claims: rules as enabling rather than merely restraining may bear on how people justify coercive policy. — connects to: Blocking formal entrenchment hydraulically increases functional substitutes — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 431; Determination constrains but does not eliminate individual agency — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 38; Human slowness in these games reflects effortful inhibition of automatic imitation — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 100 (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 102
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Blocking formal entrenchment hydraulically increases functional substitutes — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 431; Determination constrains but does not eliminate individual agency — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 38; Human slowness in these games reflects effortful inhibition of automatic imitation — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 100 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom depends on overcoming negativity and constraint #complicates (0.78) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 147
• Restricted experience produces the one-dimensional, manipulated individual #complicates (0.74) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 672