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Elaboration 50
A word about freedom here. First of all, it is impossible to discuss
it with superstitious persons. Those who believe in a god or
sperrits, in influences that have never been proved or demonstrated,
in customs or standards that are of our own making but thought to be
physical facts and so forth, will be unable to understand the very
topic of freedom. It is wholly like the study of stupidology that is
impossible for those who are not free from it. Rationality and
liberty are very closely related indeed. In order to understand
freedom, one must be utterly free in thought himself, a
free-thinker. An animal born in a zoo would never understand a
discussion about a free, open, wild country, and its joys. In fact,
it would think it a very dangerous affair too. It would never know
the joy of 'real' freedom. A man who is a slave of a superstition, a
custom, a drink or a drug, of a passion, an idolization of a person,
object, nation, or group, cannot imagine a freedom from that,
freedom itself. Many indeed, have been the treatises on freedom in
literature, most of them of this typical inconsistency, of not being
free to think freely about freedom. Often they lacked knowledge of
the only drive (unfreedom) of all life i.e. ideation, a lack in true
mind-science. Mill started his essay on liberty on exactly that
basis. His first sentence thus stresses that the essay is NOT on the
subject of free-will, that is, (will being not existent, only ideas
determine what happens) a total absence of vital knowledge. Vital,
life, indeed. About (Sir) Filmer, Darwin's bull-dog Huxley, Locke,
... enfin. As expected, most of the battles have been about words,
about definitions. 'Freedom is when you can do as you like, can do
what you want' is a nonsense definition. What one wants results from
ideas, besides, one may want the impossible (and be very unhappy by
that), and one may entertain the idea of the impossible (and be very
happy while trying to realize it (flying e.g.) ). One may want to
jump 30 meters high, or run through a brick wall. Adopting this
definition implies that freedom does not exist at all therefore the
discussion about it would be senseless. A wild turn may be made by
defining freedom as the absence of restrictions, of restraints
except those of inanimate nature (brick walls, gravitation, etc.).
Far better would it be to explain freedom as a presence, a presence
of choice. Freedom then, would not be an absence (who would fight
for an absence?) but a presence, i.e. a real, substancial thing, a
capacity. Freedom is the presence of choice. By different degrees of
this CAPACITY, this choice-making, plants differ from the inanimate
that has no choice (strict passivity) by a choicemaking, animals
differ from plants in having yet another choice-making added, and
humans differ from animals (while still enjoying plant-like and
animal-like capacities) in another presence of choice added. The
limitations of the brick wall, or the gravitation, are NOT in the
choice-making capacity, but in the ways towards the goals. Aristotle
already knew that choice is never in the goals, (these being fixed
from conception onwards) but in the ways towards these goals. Ways,
so much is clear, already IMPLY restrictions by physics. Finding the
impossible yet possible (splitting the unfissionable atom) does not
alter our goals, but simply add to the ways to choose from. In human
ideation, the not only most free in nature, but also (therefore) the
most complex in nature, it is obvious that only the optimally free
thinking mind can understand this subject of freedom, choice,
restriction, etc. to a certain depth. Equally obvious is it that it
is nature's stringent code, to use this ideational freedom to the
utmost level of perfection whereby happiness is guaranteed. Such a
man, one who thinks utterly free, as Lucretius teaches us, has the
right to walk with his head in upright position. He is the correct
challenge of inanimate nature, and he only, is happy. Imagine a man
who is forced to only eat Brussels sprouts, everyday. He would feel
the restriction in ways (namely to eat diversity in food), not in
goal (being well). He might even rebel and fight. Now, the same man,
but he has been induced (hypnotized) in always 'wanting' to eat
Brussels sprouts, nothing else. The factual restriction (in ways, to
achieve well-being) is still there, only, he now feels very free in
his choice-making. He is, what Wyndham called: 'willed to will'
(Midwich Cuckoos), Brussels sprouts. It is another word for 'ideated
to ideate'. Like the animal, he is quite happy, but the joy of utter
freedom, of total choice has escaped him. He would frown, when we
tell him he is not happy, because he always has to eat the same.
Next: Elaboration 51
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Previous: Elaboration 49
Ven
2007-09-11