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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.
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Next: Elaboration 51 Up: Elaborations Previous: Elaboration 49
Ven 2007-09-11