Do you have the means to choose freely?

Do you have the means to choose freely?

Freedom should be considered not as an abstract concept on the general level but as an empirical choice of the individual at each moment of decision making. Freedom is a matter of means and end. We always seek freedom as an end but we make decisions in life that can constantly erode our freedom because we constantly diminish our means needed to remain free.

Essentially sapiens are neither good nor evil, neither greedy nor altruistic, but a contradiction. This constant contradiction forces a constant search for new solutions, which in turn create new contradictions. We can answer these contradictions in a regressive manner or in a progressive manner. Humans are like the dog chasing its tail. It cannot capture its tail but it can occasionally catch it but immediately loses it and must take up the chase once again. This is what Fromm means when he says we are a contradiction.

Regression to animal existence is one answer to the quest to transcend separateness. Wo/man can try to eliminate that which makes her human but also tortures her; s/he can discard reason and self-consciousness. the choice results in action, which is dictated by reason or by irrational passions.

Me and Fromm think that "most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot live a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see where they stand at the fork in the road and have to decide."

Most people fail because they do not recognize the nature of momentum that accumulates with each decision we make in life. We constantly face the fork in the road to decision making and each decision builds a momentum toward bad momentum, good momentum, or better momentum. The character we build step by step through out our life creates the momentum favoring decisions that are bad or good.

Life is a chain of causality wherein we take the baby-steps that finally lead us to the point that we haven't the momentum and force necessary to be free men and woman but have become robot-like when facing the decisions we must make.

Parents and teachers recognize that character is destiny. Each baby-step taken throughout our life places another bit of momentum toward a matrix of character traits that will make it possible for us to make free choices later in life or places us in circumstances whereby we haven't the strength of momentum to be free from the determination into which our character traits have lead us.

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Quotes from "The Heart of Man" by Erich Fromm

Questions for discussion

Freedom should be considered not as an abstract concept on the general level but as an empirical choice of the individual at each moment of decision making. Do you agree?

Freedom is a matter of means and end. Does this make sense to you?

Can you be free today to choose but not free to choose tomorrow?