Security vs Freedom: Which is Your Greatest Value?

July 15, 2022

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Security vs Freedom: Which is Your Greatest Value?

Last Modified: July 15, 2022

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As Benjamin Franklin once famously remarked, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Do you agree? The debate between security and freedom is certainly rampant in politics, but these values also influence our everyday decisions.

Blake Miner

Blake is a social scientist, entrepreneur and full-time traveler who writes about the psychology of personal freedom, exploration, and location independent business. He's the founder of Flâneur Life, an internet home for free range humans.

Security or freedom? My whole life these two values have battled it out.

I still have the notebook from a number of years ago when I went through Tony Robbins’ program Personal Power 2. One of the psychology exercises had you list out your values and then arrange them. Ten lines, ten values in order of importance. In my scribbled handwriting, the word FREEDOM is written on line 1, and SECURITY on line 2. Connecting them to the right is a double-headed arrow with a question mark in the center.

In 2020, the order is a lot clearer in my mind. I’ve seen how these values influence your decisions on a grand scale. Present me thinks about how security can often be an illusion (in work, in marriage, in life) and how life is a series of experiments. After taking enough risks, I believe you eventually find security within freedom. As the reference experiences multiply, a balance is achieved.

The most successful people I’ve met all took a series of calculated risks to get where they’re at. Their freedom was ratcheted up as they took more risks.

As Mark Zuckerberg said, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

Have any thoughts on this? What calculated risks are you taking (or could you take) right now?