This sounds exciting, Jorgen, and thank you for the mention. I really like the direction you’re taking here. As always, I’ll be following with interest.;)
Jørgen, I really appreciate the way you reflect on an important subject as freedom. You’re touching something essential in the human experience, this strange mix of longing, confinement, imagination, and the constant pull between safety and autonomy.
When I read your words, I feel the urge to add a perspective that has become clearer to me in my own development and in my role as a therapist:
Most people are not living, they are merely surviving. They navigate life from fear rather than from freedom. And a human being acting out of fear behaves exactly like the bird you mentioned: Reactive, instinct-driven, constantly alert to threats in the periphery.
Fear is the opposite of freedom.
You’re right: as children we feel free. But that freedom is unconscious, it exists because the child doesn’t yet know the structures, norms, expectations, or invisible boundaries of society. Everything is open because nothing is defined. And typically someone else takes responsibility over you, while you learn - gradually - to acquire this.
But the freedom we can gain as adults is of a different kind: Conscious freedom.
It appears the moment we stop letting systems, norms, authorities, media, or collective expectations dictate how we think and how we interpret our experience. In the latter lies the ultimate freedom, that no one can ever take away (unless you'll let them).
For me, this became visible after a spiritual maturation. My real freedom lies in something very simple:
No one - absolutely no one, can force me to think in a particular way. My attitude toward my own life is mine alone. That inner sovereignty cannot be taken away as long as I remain conscious of it.
At the same time, freedom is inseparable from responsibility.
Can a slave be responsible? Perhaps to a minor extent, but responsibility only exists where there is choice, where there is the possibility to act and to bear the consequences of that action.
In a society where systems increasingly remove both responsibility and choice from individuals, our freedom shrinks accordingly.
And that concerns me, because I believe that human dignity depends on the interplay of both: freedom and responsibility. Never give away your freedom in exchange for safety. If you do, you deserve neither.
You also mention the strange longing that moves us through life, children wanting to be adults, adults yearning for the effortless freedom of childhood. I think you’re describing something true here:
Humans long for that inner place where freedom and responsibility meet. And that place is not found in any external structure but within ourselves. But most of us have never learnt this.
To reach it, we must stop merely surviving and begin living.
That requires awareness (higher consciousness), courage, and the willingness to pull our attention back to ourselves, away from the constant stream of information, away from societal pressures, and back into the inner space where our real choices are made.
That’s where I found the first sign of authentic freedom.
Thank you for bringing this topic up, and for making room to talk about something larger than our usual daily concerns.
Thanks – my head is full of freedom :) That's also why I made that other Substack while thinking about what to do with this one – the one called Free World Dream.
I agree with you that it is common for people to sort of reach exactly far enough out into the world to grab what they need for surviving, and then they are satisfied. Or, actually, they are not. I tend to think of the underlying mentality as a "peasant-mentality", in that it all the time leads to settling with less than the optimal – like if these people were subordinates to a feudal master who had all rights and no duties toward them, and all they could hope for was to survive at a somewhat reasonable level, but never reach any further than that in life.
People are holding themselves back. Possibly because the resistance is getting bigger if you want those extra few percents of life quality. A bit like the sport tractor pulling, where every meter forward makes the burden to pull heavier, until you just can't get any further, because your engine isn't strong enough.
People are those tractors, or their drivers, but in a less competitive way, never even trying to see how far they could pull, if they really tried.
I think that freedom is the "full pull", as it's called in that sport, when a tractor manages to go all the way to the end of the track – where the continuously increasing load can't prevent it from reaching the goal.
It's a hollow freedom, though, because it only means that someone has shown that it was possible. There might be a prize of some kind, put it is not about sitting at the end of the track forever, now having conquered it, and enjoy having reached that point. The point is itself without value, just symbolic. But it gives that moment of emotional outburst when genuinely feeling free, in the sense of not being stoppable.
So, it may be about responsibility, which I think is closer at hand than tractor pulling to most people, but it is also about feeling that it is possible to reach something further away than is typical. When your wings can carry you further than you thought, to get back to the bird.
But that leads to the next logical thought: that freedom isn't just one thing. We probably feel and think about freedom in several different situations, and there is freedom in all of them. The freedom to put the worm in the aquarium, or indeed, to just see it and pick it up from the ground in the first place. And the freedom to decide ehat you want to be responsible for – such as, deciding which people could possibly be around you to limit your actions.
Maybe sensing that you can move your boundaries is essentially the feeling of freedom? Almost no matter what the topic is – if you can push things, change the schedule, the target, the speed, or anything else, you feel free. Or somewhat free, as the freedom probably will not extend in all directions at the same time. Not always, at least. But that's close to what you describe as conscious freedom.
Awareness is needed, yes, but also courage – which is easier to have, the less you can lose on it. Like that old song goes: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". It's not all wrong; definitely not. If you have one coin left, you won't be prone to put it into a game with the possibility to win 10 coins. But if you have 10 coins, you might gamble with one of them – that's how we traditionally think.
However: if you have 10 coins, you are not likely to attempt stealing another 10, because you are already wealthy and will be afraid of losing what you already have in the attempt to double it – but if you have none, you might feel the need to try, as the "price" for not trying is poverty, the potential price for doing it, if it succeeds, is wealth.
If you feel safe, you might be more brave, or perhaps rather more careless. If you are under pressure, you are willing to try – you are, actually, in that situation, more free.
It's not about responsibility, it's about need.
So, at least two reasons for feeling free, plus the one from the tractor and the worm, the one about moving the boundaries, expanding your limits, as a result of your own will, that makes it three. I wonder if we can find freedom in even more places, if we look carefully?
Jørgen, thank you for expanding on this. It’s beautiful how your mind branches into multiple dimensions of freedom. I can feel that you are mapping the terrain as you go, and I love that you see freedom not as a single thing, but as several experiences that arise in different situations.
Let me respond to your reflections, but from the perspective I was pointing toward earlier, because I think we’re talking about different layers of the same phenomenon.
You seem to describe three kinds of freedom:
1. The “full pull” freedom - breaking through resistance, gaining momentum, pushing your limits.
2. The “boundary-moving” freedom - being able to change direction, adjust the pace, alter the schedule, make things flexible.
3. The “nothing left to lose” freedom - the freedom that comes when pressure forces you to act because the alternative is worse.
All three are real, but all three share the same foundation:
- They are dependent on circumstances.
- They arise from survival logic.
- They disappear the moment life changes.
They are beautiful - but they are also fragile.
Your freedom may depend on the weight on the tractor., the height of the boundary, how many “coins” you have left to risk and on whether the pressure is high or low. But these freedoms are reactive freedoms, they arise because the environment permits them.
But the freedom I am speaking about is not reactive. It is inherent and more proactive.
It does not care about conditions.
It does not depend on whether the load is heavy, whether the boundaries can move, or whether you have 1 coin or 10 coins left. It is the freedom that remains even when the world collapses - because it does not come from survival impulses.
That is why I said earlier:
Most people are not living - they are surviving. And a surviving mind will always measure freedom based on external conditions.
Your reflections are brilliant, but notice something important:
Every example you gave describes how a person behaves when:
• they want something
• they fear losing something
• they avoid risk
• they respond to pressure
• they navigate constraints
• they push their limits through resistance
• they calculate what they can afford to lose
This is all survival psychology.
It is not wrong, it’s just not the deepest layer.
The freedom I’m pointing to is something else entirely:
A person is free the moment their inner state is not controlled by outer conditions.
A person is free when neither fear nor desire dictate their choices.
A person is free when the world cannot alter their attitude unless they allow it.
A person is free when responsibility is embraced internally, not assigned externally.
A person is free when their boundaries come from within, not from circumstances.
You don’t achieve this freedom by doing a “full pull”.
You don’t achieve it by gambling coins.
You don’t achieve it by reacting to pressure or opportunity.
You don’t achieve it by expanding the radius of what you can get away with.
You achieve it when:
• the mind becomes calm
• fear loses its grip
• external authority loses its privilege
• you no longer outsource your thoughts
• the need to win disappears
• responsibility becomes self-chosen
• you stop negotiating with your own integrity
Then freedom is no longer an experience. It becomes a state, a baseline and a way of being. That is the difference.
You’re mapping freedom horizontally - across situations. I’m speaking vertically - into the depth of consciousness.
Your models are insightful, but they belong to the external architecture of life. Mine refers to the internal architecture.
And that is where the transition happens from surviving by reacting to living by choosing
This is why I appreciate your reflections - they are doors. But there is something behind those doors that is still untouched: Freedom not as movement, not as momentum, not as pressure, not as opportunity… …but as sovereignty.
And that freedom remains, even when the tractor doesn’t move at all.
'Longing for childhood'... Just as we longed for adulthood as children. Your post describes beautifully the tension we all experience between where/what we are and where/what we want to be. As children, we long for the day we're autonomous and independent; as adults we yearn to be more carefree and for less worries/responsibilities. What you illustrate so nicely is that essentially, we spend our entire lives simply wanting to be free and those of us who take the time to reflect realise that we never truly are.
Yes, when freedom is such an essential thing for us, how can it be that we never get it? We do things ourselves that prevent us from being free, but we also prevent others. Almost everything we do in society is for that purpose.
Who – or what – in this world is truly free?
A bird? Flying around as it wants, singing a song when it pleases, eating from your hand or staying at a mile's distance from you – as it wants. It must be free! But it has to pay attention to cats and bigger birds, predators, and needs to eat a lot, so it often has to do what it would otherwise not have done, just to survive. Hence, not at all free.
A shortcut to a conclusion could be that anything that is capable of thinking about freedom as something wanted, isn't free. It wouldn't be a topic at all for the one who truly is free, is my guess.
So, is there some level of relative freedom that would satisfy us? Or is it a moving target?
The problem is (as with so much else) that freedom is subjective. It means different things to different people...
I guess the one thing humans all have is free will, meaning we can choose one way or the other, regardless of the consequences, but we have to accept the consequences of our (free) choices... The bird doesn't have free will, it lives solely by instinct (I assume)...
The concept of freedom is definitely a moving target. The question is can we all be 100% free without it negatively impacting society? There comes a point where our own freedom will impose upon someone elses's. If my neighbour is 'free' to blast their music at 3 AM in an apartment building, yet I'm 'free' to sleep at night, our perceptions of freedom will clash and one will have to give up a part of theirs so that we can co-exist. Complete freedom is and will probably always remain an illusion.
Society ties us up, definitely. And since we couldn't survive at any reasonable level without society, we'll never become completely free.
Another thing I see as strapping us up, is knowledge! That little child that knows nothing about the world is free of any bonds from all that it doesn't know about. Maybe not completely free, but it doesn't know about the restrictions either, so it feels free. And as everything is open to discover, it is free (or feels free) to build a world and an understanding of it.
Hence, the freedom to gain more knowledge is possibly the closest we get to the freedom we felt as children. Anything we do that restricts us from that, will feel like a loss of freedom.
Perhaps the reason for the information abuse we all suffer from today? When we frantically switch between several news channels and social media streams during the day – to catch every bit of new information that might be there for us.
Maybe that freedom to gain more knowledge would actually be stimulated more and better by not hoping that information would come to us automatically, but instead realizing that we could go for a knowledge expedition – dive into an archive of information, like a library, or just a single book at a time, to catch details we never noticed before, about new or known topics.
We might be bound to society, but with elastics, so we do have some freedom to move around if we really want to. And by that, the freedom to learn and develop, the freedom to behave like children.
Yes, I guess being 100% free also means being completely on your own because complete freedom can't be sustained if you're part of a community...
The point about our knowledge restricting us is definitely interesting and true. I think it's why so many people choose to not to read historical depictions or critically reflective accounts pertaining to current events. What we don't know can't harm us?! We have the freedom to be selective about the information we soak up. Most don't seek true knowledge, only little tid bits of it...
Bound by elastics is a good metaphor. We're 'free' to move, but only within a certain range... I honestly have to say if being 100% free means existing somewhere on the outskirts of society all alone, I'm not sure if it's that desirable or even sustainable. No one can survive a lifetime that way.
Good point! The sometimes too strict focus on only wanting good news and beautiful things around us – while keeping a "safe distance" from any potentially negative person – is likely connected with avoiding the risk of having to deal with problems, hence, staying clear of it = maintaining a level of freedom.
We don't want total freedom, obviously, but we want to feel that we have as much of it as possible? I wonder if this perhaps is about feeling that you expand your freedom – that you stretch your elastics – more than it is about the actual reach of it?
Maybe we simply need to feel the stretch to feel free? So, if you tighten up someone more than it is normal, they'll be happy for any tiny chance they find to move any tiny bit at their own discretion?
That would fit a lot of those situations we see in society, with tiny apartments to live in, strict rules everywhere, at school or at work, and a law complex that hardly allows anyone to think anymore – all the time stricter and stricter – and yet, people agree on it, because they still have a chance now and then to stretch something a bit: buy something without a receipt, hence, no sales tax, or sneak 5 apples down in the bag when paying for just 4.
Tiny freedom. That may be enough for Homo sapiens.
The question remains are we really free if we isolate within our comfort zones (mentally and physically), just to avoid any form of disturbance or discomfort? We're actually restricting ourselves again by doing that, meaning we're much less free...
I think that's the foundation of any totalitarian system - keep the elastics tight, but allow for a bit of movement to create the illusion of freedom...
Maybe it's the same for domesticated animals that we keep as pets?! 🤔
This sounds exciting, Jorgen, and thank you for the mention. I really like the direction you’re taking here. As always, I’ll be following with interest.;)
Jørgen, I really appreciate the way you reflect on an important subject as freedom. You’re touching something essential in the human experience, this strange mix of longing, confinement, imagination, and the constant pull between safety and autonomy.
When I read your words, I feel the urge to add a perspective that has become clearer to me in my own development and in my role as a therapist:
Most people are not living, they are merely surviving. They navigate life from fear rather than from freedom. And a human being acting out of fear behaves exactly like the bird you mentioned: Reactive, instinct-driven, constantly alert to threats in the periphery.
Fear is the opposite of freedom.
You’re right: as children we feel free. But that freedom is unconscious, it exists because the child doesn’t yet know the structures, norms, expectations, or invisible boundaries of society. Everything is open because nothing is defined. And typically someone else takes responsibility over you, while you learn - gradually - to acquire this.
But the freedom we can gain as adults is of a different kind: Conscious freedom.
It appears the moment we stop letting systems, norms, authorities, media, or collective expectations dictate how we think and how we interpret our experience. In the latter lies the ultimate freedom, that no one can ever take away (unless you'll let them).
For me, this became visible after a spiritual maturation. My real freedom lies in something very simple:
No one - absolutely no one, can force me to think in a particular way. My attitude toward my own life is mine alone. That inner sovereignty cannot be taken away as long as I remain conscious of it.
At the same time, freedom is inseparable from responsibility.
Can a slave be responsible? Perhaps to a minor extent, but responsibility only exists where there is choice, where there is the possibility to act and to bear the consequences of that action.
In a society where systems increasingly remove both responsibility and choice from individuals, our freedom shrinks accordingly.
And that concerns me, because I believe that human dignity depends on the interplay of both: freedom and responsibility. Never give away your freedom in exchange for safety. If you do, you deserve neither.
You also mention the strange longing that moves us through life, children wanting to be adults, adults yearning for the effortless freedom of childhood. I think you’re describing something true here:
Humans long for that inner place where freedom and responsibility meet. And that place is not found in any external structure but within ourselves. But most of us have never learnt this.
To reach it, we must stop merely surviving and begin living.
That requires awareness (higher consciousness), courage, and the willingness to pull our attention back to ourselves, away from the constant stream of information, away from societal pressures, and back into the inner space where our real choices are made.
That’s where I found the first sign of authentic freedom.
Thank you for bringing this topic up, and for making room to talk about something larger than our usual daily concerns.
Thanks – my head is full of freedom :) That's also why I made that other Substack while thinking about what to do with this one – the one called Free World Dream.
I agree with you that it is common for people to sort of reach exactly far enough out into the world to grab what they need for surviving, and then they are satisfied. Or, actually, they are not. I tend to think of the underlying mentality as a "peasant-mentality", in that it all the time leads to settling with less than the optimal – like if these people were subordinates to a feudal master who had all rights and no duties toward them, and all they could hope for was to survive at a somewhat reasonable level, but never reach any further than that in life.
People are holding themselves back. Possibly because the resistance is getting bigger if you want those extra few percents of life quality. A bit like the sport tractor pulling, where every meter forward makes the burden to pull heavier, until you just can't get any further, because your engine isn't strong enough.
People are those tractors, or their drivers, but in a less competitive way, never even trying to see how far they could pull, if they really tried.
I think that freedom is the "full pull", as it's called in that sport, when a tractor manages to go all the way to the end of the track – where the continuously increasing load can't prevent it from reaching the goal.
It's a hollow freedom, though, because it only means that someone has shown that it was possible. There might be a prize of some kind, put it is not about sitting at the end of the track forever, now having conquered it, and enjoy having reached that point. The point is itself without value, just symbolic. But it gives that moment of emotional outburst when genuinely feeling free, in the sense of not being stoppable.
So, it may be about responsibility, which I think is closer at hand than tractor pulling to most people, but it is also about feeling that it is possible to reach something further away than is typical. When your wings can carry you further than you thought, to get back to the bird.
But that leads to the next logical thought: that freedom isn't just one thing. We probably feel and think about freedom in several different situations, and there is freedom in all of them. The freedom to put the worm in the aquarium, or indeed, to just see it and pick it up from the ground in the first place. And the freedom to decide ehat you want to be responsible for – such as, deciding which people could possibly be around you to limit your actions.
Maybe sensing that you can move your boundaries is essentially the feeling of freedom? Almost no matter what the topic is – if you can push things, change the schedule, the target, the speed, or anything else, you feel free. Or somewhat free, as the freedom probably will not extend in all directions at the same time. Not always, at least. But that's close to what you describe as conscious freedom.
Awareness is needed, yes, but also courage – which is easier to have, the less you can lose on it. Like that old song goes: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". It's not all wrong; definitely not. If you have one coin left, you won't be prone to put it into a game with the possibility to win 10 coins. But if you have 10 coins, you might gamble with one of them – that's how we traditionally think.
However: if you have 10 coins, you are not likely to attempt stealing another 10, because you are already wealthy and will be afraid of losing what you already have in the attempt to double it – but if you have none, you might feel the need to try, as the "price" for not trying is poverty, the potential price for doing it, if it succeeds, is wealth.
If you feel safe, you might be more brave, or perhaps rather more careless. If you are under pressure, you are willing to try – you are, actually, in that situation, more free.
It's not about responsibility, it's about need.
So, at least two reasons for feeling free, plus the one from the tractor and the worm, the one about moving the boundaries, expanding your limits, as a result of your own will, that makes it three. I wonder if we can find freedom in even more places, if we look carefully?
Jørgen, thank you for expanding on this. It’s beautiful how your mind branches into multiple dimensions of freedom. I can feel that you are mapping the terrain as you go, and I love that you see freedom not as a single thing, but as several experiences that arise in different situations.
Let me respond to your reflections, but from the perspective I was pointing toward earlier, because I think we’re talking about different layers of the same phenomenon.
You seem to describe three kinds of freedom:
1. The “full pull” freedom - breaking through resistance, gaining momentum, pushing your limits.
2. The “boundary-moving” freedom - being able to change direction, adjust the pace, alter the schedule, make things flexible.
3. The “nothing left to lose” freedom - the freedom that comes when pressure forces you to act because the alternative is worse.
All three are real, but all three share the same foundation:
- They are dependent on circumstances.
- They arise from survival logic.
- They disappear the moment life changes.
They are beautiful - but they are also fragile.
Your freedom may depend on the weight on the tractor., the height of the boundary, how many “coins” you have left to risk and on whether the pressure is high or low. But these freedoms are reactive freedoms, they arise because the environment permits them.
But the freedom I am speaking about is not reactive. It is inherent and more proactive.
It does not care about conditions.
It does not depend on whether the load is heavy, whether the boundaries can move, or whether you have 1 coin or 10 coins left. It is the freedom that remains even when the world collapses - because it does not come from survival impulses.
That is why I said earlier:
Most people are not living - they are surviving. And a surviving mind will always measure freedom based on external conditions.
Your reflections are brilliant, but notice something important:
Every example you gave describes how a person behaves when:
• they want something
• they fear losing something
• they avoid risk
• they respond to pressure
• they navigate constraints
• they push their limits through resistance
• they calculate what they can afford to lose
This is all survival psychology.
It is not wrong, it’s just not the deepest layer.
The freedom I’m pointing to is something else entirely:
A person is free the moment their inner state is not controlled by outer conditions.
A person is free when neither fear nor desire dictate their choices.
A person is free when the world cannot alter their attitude unless they allow it.
A person is free when responsibility is embraced internally, not assigned externally.
A person is free when their boundaries come from within, not from circumstances.
You don’t achieve this freedom by doing a “full pull”.
You don’t achieve it by gambling coins.
You don’t achieve it by reacting to pressure or opportunity.
You don’t achieve it by expanding the radius of what you can get away with.
You achieve it when:
• the mind becomes calm
• fear loses its grip
• external authority loses its privilege
• you no longer outsource your thoughts
• the need to win disappears
• responsibility becomes self-chosen
• you stop negotiating with your own integrity
Then freedom is no longer an experience. It becomes a state, a baseline and a way of being. That is the difference.
You’re mapping freedom horizontally - across situations. I’m speaking vertically - into the depth of consciousness.
Your models are insightful, but they belong to the external architecture of life. Mine refers to the internal architecture.
And that is where the transition happens from surviving by reacting to living by choosing
This is why I appreciate your reflections - they are doors. But there is something behind those doors that is still untouched: Freedom not as movement, not as momentum, not as pressure, not as opportunity… …but as sovereignty.
And that freedom remains, even when the tractor doesn’t move at all.
'Longing for childhood'... Just as we longed for adulthood as children. Your post describes beautifully the tension we all experience between where/what we are and where/what we want to be. As children, we long for the day we're autonomous and independent; as adults we yearn to be more carefree and for less worries/responsibilities. What you illustrate so nicely is that essentially, we spend our entire lives simply wanting to be free and those of us who take the time to reflect realise that we never truly are.
Thanks.
Yes, when freedom is such an essential thing for us, how can it be that we never get it? We do things ourselves that prevent us from being free, but we also prevent others. Almost everything we do in society is for that purpose.
Who – or what – in this world is truly free?
A bird? Flying around as it wants, singing a song when it pleases, eating from your hand or staying at a mile's distance from you – as it wants. It must be free! But it has to pay attention to cats and bigger birds, predators, and needs to eat a lot, so it often has to do what it would otherwise not have done, just to survive. Hence, not at all free.
A shortcut to a conclusion could be that anything that is capable of thinking about freedom as something wanted, isn't free. It wouldn't be a topic at all for the one who truly is free, is my guess.
So, is there some level of relative freedom that would satisfy us? Or is it a moving target?
The problem is (as with so much else) that freedom is subjective. It means different things to different people...
I guess the one thing humans all have is free will, meaning we can choose one way or the other, regardless of the consequences, but we have to accept the consequences of our (free) choices... The bird doesn't have free will, it lives solely by instinct (I assume)...
The concept of freedom is definitely a moving target. The question is can we all be 100% free without it negatively impacting society? There comes a point where our own freedom will impose upon someone elses's. If my neighbour is 'free' to blast their music at 3 AM in an apartment building, yet I'm 'free' to sleep at night, our perceptions of freedom will clash and one will have to give up a part of theirs so that we can co-exist. Complete freedom is and will probably always remain an illusion.
Society ties us up, definitely. And since we couldn't survive at any reasonable level without society, we'll never become completely free.
Another thing I see as strapping us up, is knowledge! That little child that knows nothing about the world is free of any bonds from all that it doesn't know about. Maybe not completely free, but it doesn't know about the restrictions either, so it feels free. And as everything is open to discover, it is free (or feels free) to build a world and an understanding of it.
Hence, the freedom to gain more knowledge is possibly the closest we get to the freedom we felt as children. Anything we do that restricts us from that, will feel like a loss of freedom.
Perhaps the reason for the information abuse we all suffer from today? When we frantically switch between several news channels and social media streams during the day – to catch every bit of new information that might be there for us.
Maybe that freedom to gain more knowledge would actually be stimulated more and better by not hoping that information would come to us automatically, but instead realizing that we could go for a knowledge expedition – dive into an archive of information, like a library, or just a single book at a time, to catch details we never noticed before, about new or known topics.
We might be bound to society, but with elastics, so we do have some freedom to move around if we really want to. And by that, the freedom to learn and develop, the freedom to behave like children.
Yes, I guess being 100% free also means being completely on your own because complete freedom can't be sustained if you're part of a community...
The point about our knowledge restricting us is definitely interesting and true. I think it's why so many people choose to not to read historical depictions or critically reflective accounts pertaining to current events. What we don't know can't harm us?! We have the freedom to be selective about the information we soak up. Most don't seek true knowledge, only little tid bits of it...
Bound by elastics is a good metaphor. We're 'free' to move, but only within a certain range... I honestly have to say if being 100% free means existing somewhere on the outskirts of society all alone, I'm not sure if it's that desirable or even sustainable. No one can survive a lifetime that way.
Good point! The sometimes too strict focus on only wanting good news and beautiful things around us – while keeping a "safe distance" from any potentially negative person – is likely connected with avoiding the risk of having to deal with problems, hence, staying clear of it = maintaining a level of freedom.
We don't want total freedom, obviously, but we want to feel that we have as much of it as possible? I wonder if this perhaps is about feeling that you expand your freedom – that you stretch your elastics – more than it is about the actual reach of it?
Maybe we simply need to feel the stretch to feel free? So, if you tighten up someone more than it is normal, they'll be happy for any tiny chance they find to move any tiny bit at their own discretion?
That would fit a lot of those situations we see in society, with tiny apartments to live in, strict rules everywhere, at school or at work, and a law complex that hardly allows anyone to think anymore – all the time stricter and stricter – and yet, people agree on it, because they still have a chance now and then to stretch something a bit: buy something without a receipt, hence, no sales tax, or sneak 5 apples down in the bag when paying for just 4.
Tiny freedom. That may be enough for Homo sapiens.
I wonder if the same counts for other animals?
The question remains are we really free if we isolate within our comfort zones (mentally and physically), just to avoid any form of disturbance or discomfort? We're actually restricting ourselves again by doing that, meaning we're much less free...
I think that's the foundation of any totalitarian system - keep the elastics tight, but allow for a bit of movement to create the illusion of freedom...
Maybe it's the same for domesticated animals that we keep as pets?! 🤔