Can Freedom and Order Coexist?

In his play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller wrote, "It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom." This balance that  Miller describes through this statement has not yet been, and will never be, achieved by society. Simultaneously, order and freedom are not cohesive, the two concepts are contradictory. Order brings guidelines and rules which every person must live by to establish complete order. Therefore, with order, there cannot be freedom and visa-versa.

In The Crucible, the supposed order which the court was bringing to the town of Salem caused extreme fear in the citizens of Salem. The women were afraid to walk outside of their houses and avoided angering anyone of the girls working closely with the court for fear of being accused of being a witch. The court proceedings which worked towards freeing Salem of the devil caused those "against the devil" to do the devil's work, killing and condemning innocents like Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor.

Today, education is an institution which provides an example of the contradictory relationship between freedom and order. Schools encourage us to take advantage or extracurricular activities and socialize. However, with activities like sports comes the need for discipline, many students find a freedom in sports, allowing them to forget the stresses and focus on something else for a short time. This situation allows for freedom to have order, just not completely. The freedom is found but order is more important in the execution of sports, otherwise the sport would never be concrete. Either freedom or order is always more important than the other, never on the same level.