Our Statue of Liberty currently stands as uncompromising and resolute as it did the day it was built on our soil over one hundred years ago. It was not just a relic meant to inspire a sense of awe and beauty for the art of sculpture, the Statue of Liberty also was considered as a symbol, a beacon, to inspire American values of freedom, enlightenment, and helping others achieve the same. In fact, the Statue of Liberty was meant to be a physical and permanent testimony to America’s dedication to our values. It was a gift, but it was meant to be evidence that we aided another country in need because it was a part of our values to view it a moral obligation to help them and strengthen our relationship with an ally.

And over one hundred years later, it would be reasonable to conclude that the Statue of Liberty should inspire the same symbolism and same abstract values that it symbolized at its birth. However, only a shared population can decide what abstract values that this statue should embody. One person can subjectively decide to attribute certain abstract values to an object or lack thereof, but our country decided at the statue’s birth that it should decisively be an emblem of a specific set of values. We can all personally choose to acknowledge the importance of the statue or ignore it. Therefore, even if the Statue of Liberty was important when it was built, people can choose whether they want this monument to have personal meaning to influence them.

The Statue of Liberty has been ignored, and it should be brought back into the limelight with its own American tradition to remind us of who the ideal American is in a time when we must enact justice. It is not meant to symbolize a constant, rigorous attention to liberty, it is meant to remind us of how we must maintain justice that is inextricably tied with liberty.

One hundred years ago, France gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States of America because the sculpture acted as a symbol of what the leaders of France believed was the definition and personality of liberty and American leadership in their international relations. Liberty was purposefully embodied by a woman because it was meant to symbolize that liberty is not only a construct, but also a mental state. That is why the Romans depicted liberty as a goddess named Libertas.

We may all live personal lives, but when justice becomes a question of whether we should act, we chose Lady Liberty to help us embody our values to seek justice: enlightenment at its height to find the right footing with the law by our side to maintain our freedom.

The tablet that the Statue of Liberty holds is the Declaration of Independence. The tablet is a “tablet ansata,” which means a tablet that holds the law. She has 25 gemstones that represent the 25 gems of the Earth. The crown has 7 rays, which symbolize the 7 seas and continents of the world. It represents an aureole, also known as a halo, signifying the connection with the heavens. The elements of Earth and Heaven were crafted in the crown on purpose to symbolize how if we wish to achieve a heavenly height of accomplishment and human dignity, we must realize that no one is free unless everyone is free. Liberty is being able to reach out to whole Earth, and perhaps we can only do so with law of a higher power to guide us.

To expound on the previous point, the torch symbolizes enlightenment. The reason why the Statue of Liberty is also called Lady Liberty is because she was based on the Roman Goddess of freedom, Libertas. Her right foot is held forward to signify she is on the right path and on the right footing. This is because her torch lights the way as she walks on the path of righteousness. There are broken shackles at the bottom of her feet to show she is not restricted from following her path. She is one lady, which symbolizes that only each individual can see his/her path by means of liberty. We all need liberty to individually find our own paths.

The Statue of Liberty is depicted as a person. Liberty is not just a mental state designated to remind us that justice is protecting liberty and the liberty of others. In fact, liberty is a prominent trait of the personality of the face of America. It symbolized that our country emphasized protecting the liberty of other countries as well as our own citizens. It symbolizes that our citizens would continue on the path of enlightenment for generations to come.

The Statue of Liberty is still important for our culture today. Men and women can choose to ignore the implications of this monument, but the point of the monument is to show the embodiment of an ideal that can help us all reach self-actualization individually and together. If we ignore this ideal, we will regress into primitive mental states and values that our country fought to both extinguish and mitigate, like a symptom of a disease of the personality. Liberty is a mental state, a personality trait, a continual beacon to remind us all of how we can achieve our own sense of utopia. Without liberty, we cannot define justice because only with liberty can we think critically without restrictions of oppression.

We need the Statue of Liberty to remind us of why we should be proud to be Americans and what it means to be an American. We need a sense of grounding, like a monument, to show us when we are confused or unsure, of how to proceed to seeking justice. The Statue of Liberty was made in the likeness of the Roman Goddess for Liberty because our Western civilization has long recognized the necessity of liberty. We cannot ignore it in this culture of easy and quick gratification and constant distractions of technology.

In a culture constantly battling to achieve and grow in the midst of an environment that has constant convenience and temptation to superficiality, we need to remind ourselves that the Statue of Liberty stands for a psychological prosperity that cannot be created or maintained without high quality culture.

The reason why in the past we had a culture that appreciated these types of monuments is because they embodied an abstract ideal that we can psychologically appreciate. The past did not have television or heightened technology. Our past generations did not have the conveniences or the entertainment that we have now. Currently, we live in a culture that can forget the importance of psychological strength and liberty. We have forgotten what it means to be able live with our own selves regardless of technology. We have forgotten that the abstract may seem “up in the air,” but our thoughts and ideas are real entities in our minds. Abstract concepts are real in our minds, and that is where we can ultimately make and maintain our own sense of self. Abstract concepts inspire us to create the real technologies and works of art now.

We need the Statue of Liberty.