The Big Answer

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Liberty is the value of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions). Different conceptions of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways— these conceptions relate to life under a social contract, existence in an imagined state of nature, and related to the active exercise of freedom and rights as essential to liberty. Understanding liberty involves how we imagine the individual's roles and responsibilities in society in relation to concepts of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics. (Source: Human Freedom)

Statue of Liberty

In addition, there are the concepts of autonomy, self-actualization, awareness, and consciousness. A conscious person is self-aware and s/he runs his/her life. A non-conscious person is run by his stuff, his hangups, his past, his upbringing, and the traumas stored in his unconscious. He is unaware of all this emotional baggage running him, preferring to feel that he is the one in charge of his life.

If the person is inner-directed, the values others (like parents) drilled into him run him, not his true, aware self.

If the person is other-directed, he is run by the values peers and the media influenced him with, and he is not run by his true, aware self.

Nonautonomous people think they choose their actions, but their actions are mostly imposed by past hangups

If the person is conscious, self-actualized, and autonomous, however, he runs himself. His actions are chosen, not imposed by his past, his hangups, his engrams, his "stuff." He is a chooser. Nonautonomous people think they choose their actions as well, but unfortunately they're mostly imposed by past hangups. For self-actualization, it is every individual's responsibility to himself to evolve toward consciousness, toward BEing rather than NEEDing. To do this one must create the best possible social environment for oneself, and we do NOT mean Facebook! It needs to fill everyone's needs, especially the children—who require caregiver choice and unconditional love for their beings, not their accomplishments.

A self-actualized, conscious, happy person