Freedom Theorem.

[Ketsuyin]

Ok, I heard this talked about somewhere, though I can't exactly remember where:

The idea is that absolute freedom as a state of existence is impossible. Think about it this way. In order to be really ultimately free, you would have to be a being without a physical body floating in empty space. If you had a physical body, that would give you limitations. For example you couldn't be in more than one place at the same time. If there was something around besides empty space, say for example, a flat surface or something equally simple, that would also limit your freedom. You couldn't pass through the surface, if there was gravity you would have to walk on it and could no longer go wherever you wanted. From this point, anything else you do may give you some freedom, or something to interact with, but at the same time it limits your ability to do anything. It may not be an idea that you can apply to have use in your life, but it's still good food for thought.  

[27x]

It is very vague, the way you use freedom. I would say I am free. Though my body is bound to rules, those rules don't bother me, so they really arn't binding me at all.

The freedom I have, is disconection to the world. There is a mental world and a physical world

Mental world: Stocks, bonds, news, maps, towns, dictionary, language, tv, airport, government, books, thought and memory, past, future

Physical world: plain existence, where there is no past or future, just change.

In the physical world, the rules of the mental world only apply if you play along. If you don't believe in a stock, or the future, then it can't affect you. If you don't play along, and if you don't depend on it, then you are different from the other people.

I can free myself from the physical world, by simply examining my body, and see that is seperate from my own existence.

I can free myself from the mental world as well. Sure, I have memories, but if I don't play along, and if I am no longer John, then noone can take me back to my life. I can be bob, or dave. I can free myself from thought, by simply going through buddhist medetation.

Freedom is just a word. There are many types of freedom. But you can have it. Ultimately, you can never find all of these awnseres from philosophy.

Philosophy teaches you alot. It takes all of your most important question(provided that they can be awnsered), and gives them awnsers. Not absoloute awnsers, but subjective ones. After that, it gets kind of boring. After that you just have to deal with life. After that you have to find your own freedom, or it will ineed drive you mad.  

[Lawliet Yushira]

I believe it is impossible to truly be free. Freedom also means that you get a right to many things. It also means we will get most things for free. We can NEVER get anything for free. Someone may something is free, but you're paying with something else. Not money, but maybe with energy, thoughts, or words? So complete freedom is truly impossible to achieve.  

[27x]

Lawliet Yushira

I believe it is impossible to truly be free. Freedom also means that you get a right to many things. It also means we will get most things for free. We can NEVER get anything for free. Someone may something is free, but you're paying with something else. Not money, but maybe with energy, thoughts, or words? So complete freedom is truly impossible to achieve.

Well, complete freedom is the maximum. Not everybody goes for the maximum. Going by that logic noone can be completely rich. Noone can be completely healthy. Noone can be completely wise, or foolish. Noone can be completely dead, or alive. Etc...

I agree, nobody can have complete freedom, but nobody can have complete anything. You just have to deal with it. I mean at a certin point does it really matter if it is complete freedom? Isn't mostly free enough?

Suppose there is no freedom in this world. Arn't we still happy. Don't we still consider ourselves free?

Finally I would like to say, that Complete freedom, is just as vague as freedom. Please define it, or give a couple of examples.  

[whynaut]

Freedom? It is a weird concept to be sure. While we all admit that we have physical limitations, are we or can we be free of mental ones? Like Baudrillard's fatal strategy, if we simply choose to believe mental constructs do not exist then they should have no power over us. But let us consider Foucault for a second.

He basically said that we are always act according to the rules of some institution no matter what. An example would be that you can be an American, and if try to escape America then you become Mexican, Canadian, etc. You could try to adhere to no country, but then you would be a dissenter or a traitor. You could wander the world running from place to place, but then you would be a nomad. No matter what institution you try to escape from, you immediately enter a new institution each with its own set of rules.

On the other hand, if one looks toward absurdism you could see that every action can have an infinite amount of results. When an action is forced on you, you can act in any way not dictated by rules. For instance, if someone gave you money and expected you to participate in capitalism, you could (if you so chose) to cluck like a chicken and then do the limbo. Likewise, if you gave someone else money that someone could do the same thing. But this raises another question "Is it Freedom if you can perform any action you chose, but have no control over the result of that action?" But I digress.

I personally think that things just happen all the time all around us that we have no control over. We can try to change things, but we have no say into what our changes will actually do.  

[27x]

Firstly, controll over the world is impossible. Moreover, trying it is foolhearted. It's good to learn to accept what the world deals you.

Secondly, if you don't want to have a nationality, you could to go antartica, or burn your passports and birth cirtificates.

Lastly, even if you are in another country, if you become a shaman in the middle of nowhere, that is uninhabitited by anyone, and will be so long after you dead, then the country you are in doesent matter.

Lastly, who will remember you? Most of us here are from prosperous countries. We see ourselves as tied to our nationality and identity because we have things like airports. Marco polo traveled across asia in his lifetime, without ever using a plane. Imagine how many people he met, who forgot him. They had no idea who he was, and didn't care. Other people where interested, because he was rich, or he helped them, etc.

But if you just walk as a nomad, then you make no difference. If you are in the jungle, inhabitited by one tribe of whoever, then they will spot you immediately if they see you.

If you live in the city, then you can be more free than anyplace else. So many alleys you can hide. So many places to go. So many options you have.


Complete freedom in anything, is impossible. But we are free to a certin point. And most of us create boundries that don't exist.

You could have no passport, birth cirtificate, or drivers lisence, and you could get a job, find an apartment, and buy books, and noone would be the wiser. You could live in the city, without anyone ever noticing you.  

[Lawliet Yushira]

If freedom didn't exist, then we'd all be happy because no one has it. We all have different quantities of freedom. My neighbor could be free to go out and walk around in the streets, while I'm not. Thus he has more freedom, but we get ways to achieve that freedom or satisy ourselves with what freedom we have.  

[27x]

Lawliet Yushira

If freedom didn't exist, then we'd all be happy because no one has it. We all have different quantities of freedom. My neighbor could be free to go out and walk around in the streets, while I'm not. Thus he has more freedom, but we get ways to achieve that freedom or satisy ourselves with what freedom we have.

Yes but what I am saying, is that if you're a person who likes to stay inside all day, then it doesen't really matter weather you go outside or not. To most people though, it would be like a prison. That is what I am saying, part of freedom is subjective.  

[whynaut]

I was thinking about freedom some more the other day and a scenario popped in my head. At some level we like to believe we have freedom in our actions, but is it possible our "choices" are affected by outside influences like society, capitalism, religion, government, etc.?

To use a metaphor: let us pretend that you do not own a gun nor have any particular interest in guns. Then one day you are mugged on the street, also you happened to see an advertisement for a gun that was affordable, and you saw a documentary on firearms recently that portrayed guns as a safe home protection option. So, from all this information you decide to buy a gun. You have a choice under these circumstance, and you choose to buy a gun.

Now pretend that I am another person stalking you in the shadows. I staged the mugging on you, I placed the gun advertisement in your favorite magazine, and I somehow hijacked your TV so that the gun documentary would play when you were already watching. From this scenario, the question is raised whether it was your choice to buy a gun, or was it my choice that you bought the gun?

In this metaphor, I set into motion all the events that made you reach a decision with the intent of making you make that decision.

In many ways our culture does this to us already. It stacks the cards before you are even born to get you to think and act in a certain ways. This doubt this is not intentional or even conscious on the part of culture, but still affects the way you make your choices. And if something narrows your ability to see choices than it is not true freedom.

I personally need to ponder this idea a little longer. I hope I am wrong. sweatdrop  

[27x]

Propaganda, is what you are trying to say.

When we are little boys, and little girls, we are the same, but then the braidy bunch and GI Joe tell us differently. From that day on Girls like pink, and talking to their friends, and guys like brown and blue and black, and like monster trucks, and guns and knives.

No way to avoid propaganda. If you jsut avoid tv then you'll be bored. Just teach yourself and your kids what you want them to believe and know, and don't worry about propaganda.

Even if everything is chosen for us, and we have no choice, then it's just like watching a movie. We still enjoy a movie, and sometimes wish it was real. VUALA!  

[x3 SuGarr CoOkiie]

That is an interesting thought and it makes sense to say that such physical and natural restrictions like being in two places at once is condemn one of being free, but there is still freedom. If we let such impossible things disallow us to be free and persue freedom from whatever oppressors (unless of course one believes the oppressor are those things deemed impossible by physics), there would be no freedom for the individual. I believe that man in himself are born free.  

[27x]

x3 SuGarr CoOkiie

That is an interesting thought and it makes sense to say that such physical and natural restrictions like being in two places at once is condemn one of being free, but there is still freedom. If we let such impossible things disallow us to be free and persue freedom from whatever oppressors (unless of course one believes the oppressor are those things deemed impossible by physics), there would be no freedom for the individual. I believe that man in himself are born free.

My point is, that you can't be dissalowed freedom, and you can't LET anyone dissalow you freedom. You can only dissalow yourself freedom.  

[x3 SuGarr CoOkiie]

Indeed. That is what I was trying to get at as well.  

[emperor_Hikaru]

Firstly, whynaut, have you been delving into the Ionesco again? You know that's not good for you.

Now, it seems to me that there are two things here that need to be defined: absolute and freedom.

Neither of them are possible to define completely. We, as humans, cannot comprehend absolute. But for the sake of argument, let's say we've defined it as complete existance of something. Or not, because that's in even more need of definition.

Freedom can possibly be defined, but not completely. The difinition would change from person to person and from moment to moment.

But let's stick with freedom as you seemed to have assumed it was defined in your first post. Then it would only be possible to be free if you were omnipotent.  

[whynaut]

emperor_Hikaru

Firstly, whynaut, have you been delving into the Ionesco again? You know that's not good for you.

Actually I was thinking of Foucault, but it all amounts to the same thing smile .

I wonder if omnipotence would give "absolute freedom," as we have defined it? As I have mentioned in previous post in this guild, people are not only defined by themselves, but by their environment, other people, and culture to name only a small handful of influences. I cannot say for sure if this would limit freedom, but such restraints would limit thought. This raises another question, "Is it freedom if you don't know all your options?"

For instance, if you have omnipotence and could rewrite the world in anyway you saw fit, would you do you any good if you did not know how to make the world better? You might be able to change the surface problems like ending all murder in the world, but what would be the repercussions of such an action? Perhaps world population would sky rocket, or people would become reckless with their imagined invulnerability. A more clever god would instead try to alter the conditions that cause murder in the first place. But again, if you did not know how to do this then your options have become limited.

However, because I always like to present two sides to every argument (it gives the illusion that there are only two sides), even with a limited amount of choices we still have the freedom to choose. Even when we are left with no options, we still have a Hobson's choice: the choice to simply not choose.