draconica | My Freedom Knows

Freedom! Do you love freedom, dear reader? Are you even free? Or are you a prisoner of your body, your situation, your environment, your mind, your happy delusions, your timid convictions, your flawless comprehension, your nice posture, your name, your language, the oxygen in the air?

We're all trapped, dear reader, we're the infinite prisoners of infinite jails. Life is defined by limitations, it's confined within them. The number of things you can't do is insurmountably larger than the number of things that we can.

But freedom isn't born from the lack of confinement. It's born from the act of choice. There are many things we can do any given moment, and that makes us free. In physics, the number of possible axes of movements is even called the degree of freedom. We're all free to a degree.

We're free to be mischievous, to do evil things. Nothing stops you from obtaining a gun, breaking in into someones' adobe and then having your way with those who live there. You may even end it all on the dark note for everyone to avoid any responsibility.

You possibly hated to read the last paragraph as much as I hated to type it. You're free to do so. Or maybe you weren't free to hate the last paragraph, maybe it was your automatic reaction, but at least you're free to suppress it and choose not to. Unless you're principled and wouldn't choose to suppress your feelings. If you're truly principled, that makes you less free.

Freedom is the dark matter. It has weight yet we can't see it. As we grasp it, it slips through our fingers, as the free choice of Now becomes a non-free consequence of Then. What is chosen once is then bound by the chains of the choice. We can break free from the chains, and this creates another set of chains. It's chains all the way down.

Freedom is like the good old rat poison. If your house is infested with rats, feel free to use it, otherwise proceed with caution.