On morality and freedom

Morality is the distinction between good and bad and naturally something against personal freedom. The balance between these two and the limits each can go are important philosophical issues. For many (and I mean many) years morality left no room for personal freedom. It was what it was: accept it or go to hell. Religion was, and I think still is, the pioneer in totalitarian morality. But as we went forward more people accepted the differences among our societies. Going through articles on homosexuality and incest on Wikipedia shows examples of how we change our minds over time and in different places regarding moral issues and how this can be against personal freedom: while people make no harm to others but still their acts are unacceptable or even punishable.
Looking back at the definition of morality I believe unwritten social norms, simple things like greeting others, returning phone calls and getting together and be nice, fall in the same category and this relativity applies to them too. In other words these norms are moralities of small groups and societies and are not really sacred at all.

We need to take sides all the time in the fight between our personal freedom and the limitations imposed by our society. I think there is no general rule that we can stick to in order to make the decision process easy. We need to decide case by case and have good reasons so we can convince ourselves that we are making the right choice. (I really don't care about people who have the urge to convince others.)  The problem arise when we can not easily draw the line between what we want and what we think we want. We do things out of habit and out of fear. Many times the fear of alienation is so strong that we don't even consciously understand that the decision we are making is not our decision but dictated by our society. Not that its necessary to go against the norms all the time but it is important to know the roots of our actions. Thats when the freedom find its true meaning. The distinction between pure self decisions and being reflections of outside norms is not easy. It needs experience. We need to see literally what happens if we don't follow the norm and then decide if we want to obey particular rules. 

And as the final word, we need to give room to these experimentalists.  Questioning actions that we or norms of society do not accept is another form of limiting other's freedom. We have no right to judge others just because they do something we don't like or in most cases they just don't do what we like.

Experimenting with limits of personal freedom and social norms needs courage and strong motivation. Sometimes we need to take a rest.