Has There Ever Been a Truly Free Society?

I recently joined Skippy Mesirow from the Healing Our Politics podcast for an Episodelette, where we touched on a wide range of ideas—from political systems to the nature of community and social cohesion.  You can listen to the full conversation here:

One of the questions we discussed was deceptively simple:  

 “Has there ever been a society structured on freedom—not just the illusion of it, or the messaging, but one truly oriented around freedom?”  

In response, I paraphrased Winston Churchill by saying something like: “This is what they say about classical liberalism—it’s the worst thing out there in terms of government, except for everything else.” Classical liberalism, I explained, is a system that attempts to balance everyone’s freedoms. And while no society has ever truly succeeded at that balancing act, liberalism provides a structure for the attempt.  

That answer was true, but incomplete. Since the live recording, I’ve been reflecting on what I wish I’d said instead—especially from the perspective of my academic work on defining community and how human societies have always navigated the costs of belonging. 

Here’s what I’d add to that conversation now.  

The TL/DR version is that … there is no such thing as a free society. If one person is totally free, all others are subject to a tyrant. Instead, the best humans can do is to moderate individual freedoms in the fairest way possible. And that’s where classical liberal democracy comes in. 

If you’re willing to dig into the nerdy stuff for a minute though, step right this way: 

Community as the Social Body 

In my work on late antiquity, one of the concepts I keep returning to is the idea of the social body. It’s a metaphor that describes the community as an actual human body. You see it in phrases we still use like “head of state” and “our society is sick.” But it wasn’t just a metaphor that ancient thinkers used—it was their way of understanding how communities functioned.  

For the Greeks, Romans, and many other cultures throughout history and across the globe, society wasn’t seen as a loose collection of individuals, but as an actual living organism. A flock of sheep wasn’t just a group; it was a body of sheep. The same logic applied to human society.  

From empires to provinces to families, every human group was understood as a whole made up of interdependent parts and they were often nested within each other. 

A family, particularly in the Roman context, might include hundreds of people—relatives, enslaved people, workers, and dependents—all considered part of one household body, with the paterfamilias as the head. The concept of structure and hierarchy wasn’t incidental; it was foundational. Just like a physical body, there were heads and hands, hearts and feet. Each part had a role. If the feet walked on thorns, that wasn’t seen as unjust—it was simply their function.  

More than anything, this view reinforced the belief that to be part of a body was to accept limits. To belong was to bear a cost.  

This is where we get the language of “membership.” “Membrum” is the Latin word form “limb,” so to be a member of a group, whether it’s a nation, a faith community, or even a gym, is to be a part of something. A digit. A leg. A contributing piece of a whole. And to be a member is to relinquish something: absolute autonomy, self-direction, sometimes even comfort.  

I recently joined Stories Change Power for a webinar exploring this concept of the social body in greater depth: how ancient understandings of shared identity can help us think differently about belonging, responsibility, and the costs of community today. If you’re interested in how these ideas apply to modern politics and pluralism, you can watch the full conversation here. 

The Hidden Costs of Belonging   

This idea of the social body might feel ancient, but it’s not foreign. We navigate these tradeoffs all the time, often without naming them.  

We soften our tone to preserve a relationship. We share resources with our neighbors. We follow rules we may not agree with to keep public life functional. We vote, we wait our turn, we hold our tempers. These daily acts are not abdication of freedom, they’re the fabric of society.  

The tradeoffs look different depending on the structure of the community, but they always exist. The Amish, for example, are often held up as an example of strong social cohesion. And in many ways, they are. They have a tight-knit support system. If someone is in need, others show up. If a barn needs building, everyone pitches in. There’s a clarity and solidarity there that many modern societies lack.  

But it comes at a cost. Boundaries are strict. Rules are inflexible. If you break them, you’re excluded. And yet, the Amish don’t hide this. They ritualize it in the practice of Rumspringa, a period when young adults leave the community, experiment with “outside” life, and then choose whether to return.  

To rejoin is to accept the constraints, knowing full well what’s being given up. There’s a certain honesty in that. And a lesson.  

No society, no matter how cohesive or values-driven, is ever truly free in the absolute sense. Because community itself demands restraint.  

This doesn’t mean freedom has no place in our political lives. It means we need to approach it with realism.  

I’m also not justifying the abuses that Roman society inflicted on the social body’s working parts, or suggesting that such abusive systems shouldn’t be challenged. But I do want to be careful about the vision we cast about what society should be, because the pursuit of total personal liberty—freedom without constraint or cost—is not only impossible, it is absolutely destructive. Societies that chase that ideal often end up unraveling the very connections that make shared life possible.  

The question isn’t whether freedom is good or bad. It’s how we structure it. What kinds of freedom do we protect, and for whom? What tradeoffs do we make, and how do we ensure those burdens are shared fairly?  

The answers will never be simple, but they matter deeply. Because no community, ancient or modern, has ever functioned without asking its members to give something up in order to belong.  

What I Wish I’d Said   

If I could revise my answer in real time, I would’ve said this:  

No, there has never been a truly free society because human beings are not built for that kind of life. We are inherently social. We need one another. And in needing each other, we give things up.  

The work of politics is not to eliminate that reality but to manage it. To ask: What do we owe each other? What are we willing to surrender in order to belong? And how can we ensure those costs are justly shared?  

That’s where classical liberalism comes in, not as a perfect solution, but as the best system we’ve developed so far to navigate these questions. It acknowledges the tension between individual rights and collective responsibility. It creates space for dissent, debate, and revision. It doesn’t promise utopia, but it does offer tools for holding competing freedoms in balance.  

Freedom isn’t something we arrive at. It’s something we constantly work to balance—together. 

So no, there has never been a truly free society. But there have been societies that strive to manage freedom with honesty and care. That’s where the real work is—and where our best hope lies.  

All of these lessons transfer into all the facilitation, strategic collaboration, and conflict transformation work we do at Cohesion Strategy. If your organization is struggling to navigate internal tensions or to meet the moment, and you’d like some support, get in touch!