True Freedom: Not All it's Cracked Up to Be
Free·dom – Absence of subjection to foreign domination
If I asked what your favorite thing to do is, and you told me it was to go fishing, I’d believe you. If you told me that nothing ever gets in the way of you and a fishing trip, I’d believe that, too. But if you told me that this combination in some way makes you free, I’d have to disagree.
Why? Well, it all hinges on one question: Why do you go fishing? The answer is more telling than you think.
If it’s “because you love it,” then I’d say you’re not really free at all. If the definition of freedom is “the absence of subjection to foreign domination,” then going fishing simply because you like it is not real freedom at all.
Where did that desire to go fishing come from? Did you wake up one morning and say, “Today, I’m going to start enjoying fishing because it will make me a better person”? Or, did you fall into it over years of practice and habit building—things that, perhaps, were impressed upon you by someone else?
If you can’t say that the things you do are a result of conscious decision making—acts done from a self-imposed duty—then you also can’t say that you’re truly free.
Acting on impulse is not freedom, it’s more akin to slavery.
Here’s another example:
People who follow their dreams and carry out big things are the freest of the free, we like to say. They saw a path defined in front of them and, instead of following, chose their own way. They acted on their own impulses and not the rules set for them. We all want to be more like them.
But what of the serial killer or child molester who has impulses of his own that he obeys. Do we call him free or do we call him an unfortunate slave to a disease of the mind?
Pedophilia and philanthropy—two impulses that come from the same place, formed in the same way, in order to achieve the same goal. The only difference is how they’re expressed.
Where do impulses come from? Are they chosen? No; we’re born with them. They’re given to us from somewhere else. So how can acting on them—acting on something that is not truly our own—be considered freedom?
I climb mountains. Why do I do it? Honestly, I don’t know. The more I try to reason it, the further I get from reason. I climb mountains because I like to; simple as that. This probably has something to do with the fact that my dad, my uncle, and my grandfather liked climbing mountains.
The urge to climb is not my own, but I do it anyway because it makes me happy. When I’m on a mountain I feel happy, but I don’t feel free.
Ask almost anyone who loves the outdoors why they spend so much time in it and the most common answer is “because I feel more free there than anywhere else.” It sounds nice, but I think it’s more likely delusion than actual freedom.
Does that mean you should stop fishing or climbing mountains or doing anything else you love because it’s not true freedom? No, please don’t—that would not make the world a better place.
But understand that true freedom is not how we like to think of it today. True freedom is a conscious choice, not an impulse. It’s the decision to do something you don’t necessarily want to—to forgo something that makes you happy in exchange for something that might not. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do.
That’s true freedom.
So what do you think? Are you truly free?
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Image by: The unnamed