Poll: Do you feel free?

[Professor James]

From any kind of philosophical or legal or societal standpoint, do you feel your life is "free." I personally don't; mainly, because I'm still not a grown and independent man, but also because I feel always affected by the actions or consequences of something else. Whether it is other people or something divine or even just plain luck. That said, I'm not upset that I don't have full control over my life; I just have to hope for the best and deal with any obstacles in my way.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Nope considering that I still lived with my parent therefore I had to put up with their ways like the times they go to sleep/ wake up, the meals they eat and them entering my room whenever they want etc. Yeah I deeply missed my times during University when I was living in student halls.

Granted one of my goals in life is to finally lived out on my own even if it's mean putting up with getting my own food, cleaning and paying taxes and bills etc.

 

[Queen Michael]

Today I'm going to eat ice cream for dinner. I'm going to eat ice cream for dinner just because I feel like it. You betcha I feel free.

 

[Johnny Impact]

In some ways.

My thoughts are my own.

I make enough money to buy pretty much any small item I want. My PS3 quit the other day (an original fatty! I was sad to see my chunky friend go), an hour later I had another one, basically just snapped my fingers. I spent $2500 on a vacation and didn't trouble myself with words like 'cost' or 'budget.' Couldn't do that every week or anything but you get the idea.

I am physically healthy, apart from being lazy and overweight. I don't have conditions or diseases tying me down. I was able to complete a fourteen mile hike in the Grand Canyon.

I can say a lot of things, if not right out to the person I want to say them to, at least to friends. Well, I *could* say them straight out, but it would be kinda hard to get along with those people after.

I'm not tied down by a wife, kids, girlfriend, alimony, etc. I know guys who make payments, they wear it like a friggin' battleship chain around their necks.

I am free in the sense that technically I could decide at any moment to quit my job, close my bank accounts, and move to the Himalayas. A choice with consequences, but it's a choice I *could* make.

I read a lot. In my mind I have watched the first fish-creature haul itself from the sea to the primordial mud. I have fought necromancers beside Harry Dresden, thwarted interplanetary conspiracies with Miles Vorkosigan, observed the crushing furnaces in the hearts of stars, stared aghast as Conan grappled with unnameable beasts, untangled (at least a little) the madness that is quantum theory, starved and shivered next to Solzhenitsyn, begged Macbeth to turn from the road of horror and destruction, and talked philosophy with Plato. I've been around. And there's a groaning shelf full of books I have yet to read.

 

[VanQ]

Besides my 9-5 5/7 job I feel like I'm entirely free. I go to work but when I go home in my free time I do what I want. Games/friends/alone time/whatever pleases me at the time. I am not in a relationship and have zero dependents so I could up and leave the country to join a boy band or be a roadie or something if that pleased me at the time.

Basically, the biggest anchors that take away freedom from a person, that is the wife/husband and children, I don't have. So for at least the moment, I'm free to be whoever I want to be wherever I want to be within the standards of local public decency laws. >.> So don't worry, you don't have to worry about a naked VanQ running around the Brisbane CBD anytime soon.

 

[leberkaese]

I'm at university right now. I wouldn't want to go back to live with my parents or school etc. You're bound to rules from parents and teachers there. Just recently I watched a school class having a field trip in my university. It's just silly how they're supervised by their teachers. It's amazing to be an independent student.
I'm still living from the money my parents send me, but right now this only covers food and my apartment. I'm earning some money myself to cover the "free time"-stuff and hobbies etc. I'm still used to the thought 'I want to buy this, but in theory this is my parents' money...". Earning money myself to buy all this stuff also feels good.

The other kind of free: I'm living in Germany and I don't have the feeling to be unfree in any way because of politics in my home country. There are some questionable decisions made by politicians, but sadly, this is the case in nearly every country these days.
If I look at countries like the UK or the USA, where anti-terrorist laws - in theory - are able to greatly reduce my freedom... I'm glad that we don't have laws like this. And hopefully we never will. Last time, Germany introduced laws like this, a certain austrian lunatic drove Germany into madness. (I don't want to start any political discussions here, this is just the way I feel. Of course, I don't want to say that the UK or US are in any way 'unfree'. There is just this historical reason why Germans dislike the US & UK anti-terrorist laws)

 

[White Lightning]

FREE? bby I cost more than everything you own combined.

 

[DocJ]

I'm a high school kid. With a parent of Asian heritage. Right now I'd feel the same as if I was locked in a car for hours. Because that's essentially what it is. Driving everywhere to go to lessons and classes and stuff.

 

[Pyrian]

When I was about 30 with a steady job and no family obligations, I felt quite free, even including the workweek. Now I have a wife and child, so freedom is mostly replaced by responsibility. Still, I made those choices and I do not regret them. The shackles are more comfortable when you make them yourself.

...because I feel always affected by the actions or consequences of something else.

I don't think that's about freedom, at least not as we normally define it. Freedom from consequence would be practically a prison in its own right.

 

[L. Declis]

Well, I have financial obligations, educational obligations, a relationship which is likely to go into marriage, a mother I shall need to support, two part-time jobs and multiple projects, and I am constantly going to various checks with the Chinese government.

However, I feel free because I have chosen every single of them. I have the choice to not give a shit and do nothing, if I so please. While these things I've chosen have, therefore, limited my freedom, they are only limiting as long as I choose to have the benefits of a good job, a good fiancée, a good family, a good education and a good future. I can withdraw from any of them if I please, and I have the freedom to get every consequence of doing so.

Philosophically? I believe in a kind of true love thing, in that mathematically there must be someone who fits in the top end of the bell curve of affinity, and so there must be a person out there for you (I believe I've got mine), but destiny and such? I wish, it means I wouldn't have to take responsibility for how well I do, I can just hand wave my laziness or lack of ideas and blame it on God, destiny, luck or predetermination.

 

[Aesir23]

Yes and no.

I live in a relatively safe place and I don't have to worry about being killed or imprisoned for my beliefs. I've received a decent education and I have easy access to healthcare which is more than a lot of people can say.

The ways in which I don't feel free are a little more personal and right now it's more to do with financial stability. Right now I'm unemployed and I have to pay back my student loan. However, I'm having difficulty finding a job because of the amount of competition versus the available jobs in my field. Even more so because I'm new to the field and so lack the same experience that a lot of my competitors have.

I really should have gone into trades.

 

[zerragonoss]

Freedom is a far more complex concept than people give it credit. It feels horribly inaccurate to simply say free or not free it has to be something more done by degrees. For example if you lived by yourself in the woods,(while having everything you need to survive magically around) their are no restrictions on doing whatever you want, but that does not mean you actually have more choices. You could not hangout with friends, read a book, or play video games as those things don't exist without other people.

Living in society is all about exchanges on you freedom. You have to do something productive to earn money, but in exchange you can buy the things you want form other people, who made the to earn money themselves. You don't get to randomly murder people, but you also don't have to worry about them murdering you and so on.

As for people saying having a spouse or children reduce your freedoms, its your choice to have those, and if having to care about other people is such a hindrance on you life feel free to avoid it.

 

[Barbas]

Today I'm going to eat ice cream for dinner. I'm going to eat ice cream for dinner just because I feel like it. You betcha I feel free.

This is something you mention fairly often in such threads . Would you describe yourself as an aficionado of whippy iced treats at this point? Do you like coffee-flavoured ice cream?

OT: I can walk more or less where I want in my neighbourhood without fear. I have no reason to fear my family or neighbours, or the police or military. My life is free to take almost whatever direction I want. I have some education, some talents, interests and money.

I'm free to question, think or speak about anything without fear of sanctioned murder. I don't have freedom from consequence, but that's a freedom I can't have. I think I'm about as free as I want to be.

EDIT: To me, poll options 1 and 4 are more or less the same.

 

[Rattja]

Not at all.

Between causality and things like the chinese room I am basically just a single domino in a long chain or a reactive zombie with no more free will than anything else in this world, with no hope of ever really doing anything else than reacting to stuff based on what came before it.
Everything I have done is because of something, and so is everything I ever will do. There is no such thing as random, it's just our inability to calculate and take into account all the factors out there. If we could do that we could easily predict the future based on the information available, so just because we can't does not mean that it's there.

Outside of that I am confined to this body, this pile of flesh and bones which also have its limitations. There may or may not be something beyond this life, but in my current state I am not physically free. As long as I live I need things like air, food and water, and I will never be able to fly without aid.

Even further, for what my physical body is actually capable of just a certain number of those are actually allowed or possible because of all the other people around me, limiting it even more.

I may be free in the sense that I am not chained down, where I can go outside right now and anywhere I please. However if I say, not show up for work tomorrow or walk into someones house, that will affect me negatively. Not only that, but things I do, or choose not to do even when supposedly free to do so, can ruin someones life.
I *could* do a great number of things, but some of those things would make me even less free than I already am.
Hell you are not even free to end your own life if you so choose, YOUR OWN DAMN LIFE!
So I am more or less free to do whatever I like IF! it does not harm anyone else physically or emotionally.

On the other hand you could argue that I am more free than most people out there, with a health supply of money and living alone I can do many things others can't. But to me true freedom is basically impossible because I will always be a slave to life and humanity as long as I live.

 

[cleric of the order]

I've been flipping in and out of Existential despair.
So it's hard to say.
I was raised an Existentialist first and foremost and yet i have no purpose ascribed to myself.
No meaning in my actions besides that of the attraction to baser urges and the immediate.
I am free, in body, under the law and everywhere else.
But what is freedom if you are on auto pilot.

 

[kasperbbs]

In a way i suppose. I have to go to work every day to pay my taxes, pay off my loan and buy food. If i don't then i'm obviously screwed ,so i'm tied to that routine for the rest of my life unless i win a lottery or something. And i won't even get to all that psychological nonsense with my limited English skills.

 

[kurupt87]

Hah, you're not worried about not feeling free because you're not a grown independent man yet.

Mate, you will wish you were as free as you were when you're a kid, when you're an adult.

 

[Angelous Wang]

Sometimes?

I mean sometimes I just realise "I can" do anything. If I just wanted to get on plane and fly to Japan (? why not) tomorrow, I could.

Of course there might be some backlash/fallout from work ect, but nothing is actually going to stop me.

On the other hand I am completely at the mercy of myself. Meaning that I have pretty much stuck myself in my self created routine which I am unlikely to break out of any time soon.

Which is both good and bad ... and I'm not sure which it is more right now.

 

[Kolby Jack]

There's a great quote I like from Samurai Champloo: "Freedom cannot be forced into existence, nor can it be won through painful struggle. Freedom cannot be bought or sold. It has nothing to do with one?s social status; one?s profession is of no consequence. In order for you to accept yourself as you are and live with your soul at peace, you must simply teach yourself to let it be, only then will you discover freedom."

I could be chained to a wall in the darkest dungeon of the cruelest regime, but I will never NOT feel free. Claustrophobic, maybe. It'd be unpleasant. But freedom is a realization; once you see how truly free you are, there's no going back.

 

[CrystalShadow]

No, but that is largely a philosophical point. How can one be truly free, when life by it's very nature imposes so many difficult limitations on existence.
I wish to be free at times. Free from the tyranny of physics, biology, and other stupid rules.
But such is not to be.


On another note, I have a bone to pick with this whole 'freedom' thing the west, (and america in particular 'land of the free' hah! yeah right!)

Has going on, because in some ways it seems to be a rather messed up and pointless definition of 'free' that is anything but free in many regards, and demands a kind of 'freedom' that for the vast majority of people is quite damaging.
Yet if you value actual people, and what their lives are like, you very quickly run into an argument with these people that push this very specific inane definition of freedom.
A 'freedom' that is sacrosanct, no matter what the consequences, and will trample over many other kinds of 'freedom' without a second thought, because those don't matter, apparently.

Eh.

Freedom. What a joke that is.