There's a very curious idea I want to expound on a little and maybe get some ideas in return. It is the idea of freedom. This word seems to contain some elements of liberation, self actualization, personal determination, independence. Most people upon reading those terms would say that sounds positively lovely.
I am going to postulate a few statements about freedom which may make it seem somewhat less attractive.
A free person must necessarily free themselves from restraint of king, country, and affiliation.
A free person must only act as an individual within any collective even when acting for the collective.
A free person may be never owned nor indebted.
A free person must free themselves. They cannot be given it as a right nor born into it as a nationality.
Thinking about these statements makes it hard to imagine oneself in modern culture as genuinely free under any circumstances. You can't have a credit card and be free. You can't own a house with a mortgage and be free.
If you vote in a two party system you're voting as part of some party or agenda decided by the cultures fears and ideals unless you vote for pie. Pie is good. I'm writing in for pie and dammit pie better get elected or I am going to be very cross.
People have written whole bibles worth of books on this idea without confronting the growth of a person as bondage. From birth you are locked by the needs of belly and helplessness to your mother's breast and to dependence. As you learn to walk, you are locked to walls for keeping your balance and as you trot out the door to school you give away the endless potential of your mind in chunks for a hint of certainty and security.
Alternatively if you reject all of those things you aren't given to grow. You die or in the case of the last you are beholden to ignorance.
Okay, we've laid out the basics of this idea of being free and denied it on all fronts. Now lets see how we achieve it!
As a person grows the theory is that you get more self determination. You learn and gain strength, both physical and psychological, from which you are enabled as a person to decide where you want to go and what you want to do.
At age six you want some candy but you can't have it. At age thirty five you want some candy but you decide you want your health more. So you prioritize and you're free to do that.
If you're in prison then ostensibly you aren't free. If your body is imprisoned but your mind imagines it's way into other galaxies then what are you? A nightingale, blinded and singing from it's cage? If your mind can go to more places and do more things than those that decide to shape of the world...does this make you more free than they, despite your subjugation?
A rich man is considered to be free. He is able to make more financial decisions than a poor man. Still, the rich man may not wander the streets and smile at the sunlight without his retinue of expensive bodyguards. As he glares at the impoverished beggar, his clothes ragged, his beard overgrown, the wealthy individual must realize for just a second that he is paying for the priviledge of that blue sky whereas the indigent person gets it without a price-tag.
In that moment he might just realize how deeply his affluence has capitvated him and at what cost.
What do you do with freedom once you've got it?
How do you know you're free?
Here is an interesting shift. In the instance of relationships based on domination and submission the submissive personality (if it is a relatively healthy relationship) can feel more free when they are in a state of bondage because they aren't required to make decisions. Equally the dominating personality (again, if they are relatively healthy) can feel a sense of genuine responsibility.
How is it that someone who is tied to a chair can be more free than someone who tied them to it?
If we look at freedom as purely an abstract based on what actions we take or what circumstances we are in then we all sit somewhere on a spectrum more towards subjection if we live as part of a society. This is pretty much the same way our cells can be said to be servile to the body.
If Freedom is something real and meaningful then what is it? Is it our ability to think? Our willingness to act within our minds but outside of the limiting factors of where we are just now? Do we want to self-determine if self-determination means hacking off the comforts of submission in favor of some great ideal which we can't achieve realistically but can only strive for and move toward, improving ourselves but never reaching perfection?
Is there perfect freedom in perfect submission? In perfect domination?
I do hope that this has presented some new thoughts to people. I am afraid I've stumbled into the trap plenty of philosophers do of asking questions more than I answer and revealing how little I actually know.
I am going to postulate a few statements about freedom which may make it seem somewhat less attractive.
A free person must necessarily free themselves from restraint of king, country, and affiliation.
A free person must only act as an individual within any collective even when acting for the collective.
A free person may be never owned nor indebted.
A free person must free themselves. They cannot be given it as a right nor born into it as a nationality.
Thinking about these statements makes it hard to imagine oneself in modern culture as genuinely free under any circumstances. You can't have a credit card and be free. You can't own a house with a mortgage and be free.
If you vote in a two party system you're voting as part of some party or agenda decided by the cultures fears and ideals unless you vote for pie. Pie is good. I'm writing in for pie and dammit pie better get elected or I am going to be very cross.
People have written whole bibles worth of books on this idea without confronting the growth of a person as bondage. From birth you are locked by the needs of belly and helplessness to your mother's breast and to dependence. As you learn to walk, you are locked to walls for keeping your balance and as you trot out the door to school you give away the endless potential of your mind in chunks for a hint of certainty and security.
Alternatively if you reject all of those things you aren't given to grow. You die or in the case of the last you are beholden to ignorance.
Okay, we've laid out the basics of this idea of being free and denied it on all fronts. Now lets see how we achieve it!
As a person grows the theory is that you get more self determination. You learn and gain strength, both physical and psychological, from which you are enabled as a person to decide where you want to go and what you want to do.
At age six you want some candy but you can't have it. At age thirty five you want some candy but you decide you want your health more. So you prioritize and you're free to do that.
If you're in prison then ostensibly you aren't free. If your body is imprisoned but your mind imagines it's way into other galaxies then what are you? A nightingale, blinded and singing from it's cage? If your mind can go to more places and do more things than those that decide to shape of the world...does this make you more free than they, despite your subjugation?
A rich man is considered to be free. He is able to make more financial decisions than a poor man. Still, the rich man may not wander the streets and smile at the sunlight without his retinue of expensive bodyguards. As he glares at the impoverished beggar, his clothes ragged, his beard overgrown, the wealthy individual must realize for just a second that he is paying for the priviledge of that blue sky whereas the indigent person gets it without a price-tag.
In that moment he might just realize how deeply his affluence has capitvated him and at what cost.
What do you do with freedom once you've got it?
How do you know you're free?
Here is an interesting shift. In the instance of relationships based on domination and submission the submissive personality (if it is a relatively healthy relationship) can feel more free when they are in a state of bondage because they aren't required to make decisions. Equally the dominating personality (again, if they are relatively healthy) can feel a sense of genuine responsibility.
How is it that someone who is tied to a chair can be more free than someone who tied them to it?
If we look at freedom as purely an abstract based on what actions we take or what circumstances we are in then we all sit somewhere on a spectrum more towards subjection if we live as part of a society. This is pretty much the same way our cells can be said to be servile to the body.
If Freedom is something real and meaningful then what is it? Is it our ability to think? Our willingness to act within our minds but outside of the limiting factors of where we are just now? Do we want to self-determine if self-determination means hacking off the comforts of submission in favor of some great ideal which we can't achieve realistically but can only strive for and move toward, improving ourselves but never reaching perfection?
Is there perfect freedom in perfect submission? In perfect domination?
I do hope that this has presented some new thoughts to people. I am afraid I've stumbled into the trap plenty of philosophers do of asking questions more than I answer and revealing how little I actually know.
