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Tue 6 Nov, 2007 03:02 am
The end of freedom
I am shackled hand and foot spread eagle on the floor of my cell. I ask my jailer everyday to set me free. Finally he compassionately sets me free.
For days I am exhilarated with the ability to freely pace about my cell. After a few weeks I begin to beg my jailer to set me free. After weeks he, being a compassionate man, sets me free from my cell.
For days I am exhilarated at the freedom to wonder about and speak with other inmates. After several weeks I begin to beg my jailer to free me and finally he relents and releases me from jail. I am overwhelmed with the sense of freedom until I, overcome with hunger and basic needs, seek some work so as to feed myself.
I find a job working on an assembly line and am exhilarated at the new found freedom. After a year I begin to seek other less strenuous and repetitive assembly line work. I wish to free myself from this robotic work I do everyday.
What is the ?'telos' (ultimate end) of this series of ever persistent desire for freedom? Is hunger for freedom similar to hunger for food, never satiated? I don't think so. I think the search for freedom can culminate in an ultimate and satisfying end.
Freedom, I suspect, is a search for self-determination. When we feel that we are master of our domain, when we are free to determine who we are and what we need to be our self we will have reached that ?'telos' of freedom. I suspect this end is as unique as a finger print, it is an act of creation and can be made conscious to me only by me.
I think each of us must learn for our self what we need to secure freedom's ?'telos'. Probably most of us find only a degree of freedom, but if we never stop looking we may continue finding more of it.
there is no slave without a master, have we let ourselves be mastered beyond salvation?
Actually, the state that you are describing has been previously theorized when evaluating human motivation. Maslow dubbed it "self-actualization", and placed it at the top of his hierarchy of needs. I recommend you look into it, it seems as though you might find it interesting.
fungotheclown wrote:Actually, the state that you are describing has been previously theorized when evaluating human motivation. Maslow dubbed it "self-actualization", and placed it at the top of his hierarchy of needs. I recommend you look into it, it seems as though you might find it interesting.
I think our degree of possible freedom is directly proportional to our degree of self-actualization. Self-actualization is a process of extending our horizons based upon our own unique potential. The further we can see the greater is our horizon for freedom.
Do you think self-actualization has any impact on the nature of freedom?
I think I'm having trouble figuring out what you mean by freedom. Freedom to do what we want, as in a lack of restrictions? Freedom from needs?
That's probably because freedom means different things to so many different people.
Two people can be in the exact same circumstances, and one can feel free while the other feels constrained.
Self knowledge is the essence of self-actualization. Freedom and self-actualization feed upon one another. The more freedom we have the more likely we are to self-actualize and as we do we gain more freedom. They share a symbiotic relationship.
To me freedom has many meanings. Freedom to do some things, freedom from some restraints, etc. Then there is the more existential feeling of being unconstrained.
As I see it, the feeling of "self" (ego), of a determiner, can give us the sense of being a free and powerful force, a locus of will. Yet ultimately that locus or center becomes a lonely, alienated, vulnerable being around which "all else" exists.
Fortunately, there is no self; it is an illusion. A necessary illusion to be sure. Indeed the ego is, in its various degrees of felt presence (it varies, of course, with circumstance, personality and culture) is a functional prerequisite of human survival and social existence.
In your private "spiritual" moments, however, you have the potential to realize your oneness with all things (The Upanishads' "tat tvam asi", that art thou), to realize that your expressions of will (even your feelings of being constrained) are actually the Cosmo's/Nature's/Reality's/"God's" will, not that of your illusory little self. Hence freedom exists but it is that of your True Self, not that of your ego/self.
coberst wrote:The more freedom we have the more likely we are to self-actualize and as we do we gain more freedom.
True, and a good point to keep in mind. It's all well and good to exhort people to take up intellectual lives and pursue things for their own sake rather than for practical reasons, but we would do well to remind ourselves as we sit in our armchairs that this kind of life presupposes a certain amount of affluence and material comfort.
Shapeless wrote:coberst wrote:The more freedom we have the more likely we are to self-actualize and as we do we gain more freedom.
True, and a good point to keep in mind. It's all well and good to exhort people to take up intellectual lives and pursue things for their own sake rather than for practical reasons, but we would do well to remind ourselves as we sit in our armchairs that this kind of life presupposes a certain amount of affluence and material comfort.
You are correct. Maslow gave us a hierarchy of needs and self-actualization was the fifth and final need of this hierarchy. Maslow estimated that 4% of the population reaches this level of development. If we had just 0.4% achieving this goal we could change the world.
Past self actualisation, there is inter-relatedness.
coberst wrote:You are correct. Maslow gave us a hierarchy of needs and self-actualization was the fifth and final need of this hierarchy. Maslow estimated that 4% of the population reaches this level of development. If we had just 0.4% achieving this goal we could change the world.
Paradoxically, the increased affluence that you are proposing will help change the world is just as likely to foster complacency, which stifles change. Someone who has achieved material comfort will be unlikely to want to change the conditions that led to his or her material comfort.
Shapeless wrote:coberst wrote:You are correct. Maslow gave us a hierarchy of needs and self-actualization was the fifth and final need of this hierarchy. Maslow estimated that 4% of the population reaches this level of development. If we had just 0.4% achieving this goal we could change the world.
Paradoxically, the increased affluence that you are proposing will help change the world is just as likely to foster complacency, which stifles change. Someone who has achieved material comfort will be unlikely to want to change the conditions that led to his or her material comfort.
You are correct. That is the situation that we are now in and which I am trying to change.
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