I would say that Freedom is the absence of aggression. If you define freedom as the ability to do anything you want then that is deadend thinking. I want to fly, gravity enslaves me.
Sometimes freedom is merely a state of mind. If you allow your external circumstances to define freedom then you will always suffer. Perhaps freedom means the absence of suffering. Suffering is what we do when we resist the current moment.
Proles and animals are free.
I agree here, specifically when we bring agression to its logical conclusion of fear and then avoidence of future pain.
With suffering, even riding the tide can still put you through quite a bit of pain. Then there are the unexpected shicks and challenges of life of course...Some of the Buddhists say that its adversion to suffering that creates it and that binds us to it. I.e. if we say were all about peace, were probably surpressing violence/agression.
On the second point, Ive always found it strange to seek freedom from the only place that teaches us what freedom is. Without suffering in this plane, we cant know what pleasure is. (CS Lewis is great on this in 'The Problem of Pain) Then further, without death we cant know life. We are part and parcel of this enviornment, so to strip ourselves of it seems to be to fight against it...and then to be bound again in the struggle against the flow.
Did that make any sense? Sorry for swervey rambling...