1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another
So what is freedom then? I stumbled on this question while reading about Freud.
What is real freedom? Am I really free for being American? Our country loves to tote around a large over sized gold chain necklace with the word “FREEDOM” encrusted with diamonds around it’s neck. But are we really?
See, if I have an urge, an impulse, to eat or drink or do this or do that or fuck or sleep or take or give what usually happens, and what we use to distinguish us as a higher life form from other creatures (which in my opinion is a crock of shit) is our ability to distance ourselves from that impulse. Take a primitive motive and dissect it. To scrutinize it and judge it, to ask, “do I really need this, want this, have to have this? What will others think if I do this, what will be the benefit? The punishment?” That voice that everyone has, call it reason or Jesus or Sam. It judges every action you take, every thought that runs through your head, and it can be mean!
But where is it from? A combinaiton of nature and nurture? Years of conditioning and education and society threading its morals and fashions into your life from the day you start to really interact with it. What to eat, what to wear, what to say, what to think! It blows my mind when I try to wrap it around this idea.
So maybe we aren’t free. I watch animals mull around their lives, and there is not an inkling of what I could see as a judgment of action. Its all impulse, jerking their heads this way and that, leaping in a moment for food or shelter. You don’t see a squirrel staring off into space, reflecting whether or not to shove that acorn in its mouth, “God, it will go right to my hips.” Are we better off for this? Or are we all slaves to the little voice in our heads.
I think this is why the idea of instict interestes me so much. No judgment, no second guessing. Pure Freedom…
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