THE CONFINEMENT OF FREEDOM
“Freedom is the state of utter liberation from any driving or suppressing force, wherein one has full control of their actions and will as long as they do not inflict harm on another’s freedom.”
OK, now that we have established an overall idea of what we were thought freedom means over the years, we can start demolishing pre-set ideas and find the truth for ourselves.
The problem with this definition of freedom is that it is a definition, a cluster of words put together to restrict the meaning of a word and reduce it to something much simpler. Noticed an irony in the sentence? Good, now let’s dive deeper into why our futile ways of comprehending freedom are problematic.
The notion of freedom was born out of people’s desperate search for a peaceful state of mind in which they could dissociate from the burdening things they did not enjoy. While most people were easily contented with cutting themselves some slack from the physical world, some others wanted to become free in a mental sense as well, but failed terribly. This is when they realized that this concept of freedom, with which they defined their power over their worlds, is not as easy to grasp as they thought. The incoherency between society’s firmly defined freedom in the physical world and the lack of freedom people managed to achieve on a mental level urged people to build boundaries around the word ‘freedom’ and its connotations, since fathoming the real meaning of freedom was too scary for our simple minds.
Now, let’s investigate cases, in which we become slaves of our own minds, that make will make you question your perception of freedom. Ready to see how chained down you are? Great! Let’s begin with the most mind-wrecking one…
The fear of death is one of the cases that totally messes up with one’s control over oneself and impairs judgement. Tom Pyszczynski, a world-renown psychologist, suggests that all the anxious, aggressive and irrational reactions a person displays root from their constant fear of an impending death, be it subconscious or conscious. One’s ideal sense of freedom and their supposedly utter control over themselves are shattered by this death anxiety, for it can lead to certain periods in one’s life such as ‘teen angst’ and ‘mid-life crisis’ in which unreasonable mood swings and terrible decisions are commonly observed. The way this dread of the inevitable takes over one’s life and psyche restricts one’s freedom; thereby proving that ‘free’ will is not that free after all. In simpler words, the grim reaper is always controlling one’s actions like a puppeteer controlling his helpless puppets with infrangible strings made of the fear of death.
Another case in which one’s control over their actions and the concept of ‘free will’ becomes blurred is originated by our inner urge to interact and connect with our environments in a meaningful way which compels us to join a society and adapt to its rules. As far as William Swann is concerned, every single form of existence feels a powerful innate desire to be understood entirely and correctly and if people cannot find a way to be understood and acknowledged in their community, they start detaching from the reality and their environment. A real life example of this would be when you feel numb and invisible when you are doing a presentation in class and nobody seems to be listening.
Ever wondered why Holden Caulfield bullied everyone to agree and empathize with him?
However, Swann’s theory of self-actualization within a society meets a paradoxical end when it is realized that no two people can ever feel, think and understand exactly the same due to varying personal approaches and backgrounds. Therefore, we are basically isolated into our solitary confinement cells that are our own minds, enclosed by insurmountable barriers of consciousness. This feeling is called existential isolation since it influences a person’s motive to either continue to exist or to wither away. Yet, since withering away is strongly against our survival instincts, an impetus is derived, which forces people into blurring their differences to seem relatively alike, reaching beyond their worlds, and being accepted. This impetus leads to the phenomenon of conformity because we feel threatened by ostracism and being left all alone, losing all our chances to be understood in the first place.
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul. –Montaigne
To demonstrate with an extreme example, even monks who climb up to alienated monasteries and live disconnected lives in orange robes go through existential isolation (if anything, theirs are much worse). Although they do not live in a conformity-driven society, they still feel the innate desire to be understood. As observed by researchers, this leads the monks to obsessively write hundreds and thousands of pages of journal entries and essays and since nobody ever reads those pages, their existential detachment worsens, causing them to write even more pages and so forth.
Love stems from this well. Both lovers want to fully understand and be understood by each other and it is the extra effort put into the relationship that makes it unique, or the lack thereof that leads to a break-up.
In simpler words, our addiction to other people and self-actualization through their acknowledgement triumph over our freedom over our choices in a society. We become prone to conform to the norms of a community even though other people make us depressed by never being able to communicate with us on a perfect level we crave for, since not being around those people would leave us all alone and make it worse.
Existence and how it both creates and demolishes the concept of freedom is the last case we will investigate. Through existing, we may be given a questioning mind to create notions like freedom, love, sorrow etc. and a physical form to apply and share them. Yet again, by existing, we are confined to a human form with a limited capacity to hold and process information. It is by primarily existing that we enclose ourselves in the impassable borders of one single consciousness that fails to fathom its very own mechanism, let alone to dream of the possibilities beyond. Freedom in this sense is best by JeanPaul Sartre who suggests that freedom is to be able to think and cognize what is thought with no ‘human nature’, no defining essence and no definition of the reality into which one is thrown. Therefore, every other second of existing shackles our minds to our tangible bodies, corrupting it with bias, past experiences and the fear of denying what is incomprehensible.
When dreaming of being free, most people only go so far as being able to go to a concert, express who they are openly or travel around the world. However, all of these examples blatantly ignore the true potential of imagination and remain confined
within a restricted world or universe that is assumed to have an inherent, constant design. We are essentially programmed to desire a pre-set structure in which we feel safe, we shape our own external reality, space and time in accordance with that ultimate structure. Nevertheless, Irvin David Yalom suggests that it is our ability of self-creation where the fear of freedom dwells, since once we manage to accept the notion of utter freedom, we will realize that everything we did not build for ourselves and everything beneath us is merely nothing.
It is the clash between our yearning to become free and the fondness of a safe, pre-determined ground and structure as well as the fear and the curiosity we feel regarding this sheer groundlessness that creates the main existential conundrum:
Can anyone be truly free?
I hope I was able to broaden your perception of what freedom is, is not and may be. Consider this article as a food for thought (hopefully a very delicious one) and ask yourself, whether it is possible to be free and think beyond your own reality and everything you identify with? Is it possible to slough away from the confinements of your own consciousness? Even if it is possible, do you think you would be able to explain such a beyond-comprehension experience to others and expect to be truly understood?
