Proposal | reboot10 – 3 comments
FREE AS IN FREEDOM
"Freedom of choice is what we got//Freedom from choice is what we want"
We have this tremendous freedom, unprecedented in the history of mankind, but I have this old Devo song on my mind: "Freedom [of choice] is what we got//Freedom from [choice] is what we want"
Is our freedom really imagined, most people in the developed countries haven't fought for it (in the old sense - meaning basic human rights).
What is left to fight for, and do we really care?
So you exercised your democratic rights, by voting at the last election, GREAT! but what did you do besides that?
Cover of the record by Devo, I'm claiming fair use here, but it is Copyright Warner Bros. Records or the Graphic Artist. Funny: I never noticed the American flags before, the CMS selected a cross-section for the backdrop that only showed the flags, this is how I noticed
3 comments
And I see that you had a very similar discussion @ reboot 9...
...so been here, done that?
On freedom of choice
www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/93
thought on liberation:
I think you cannot be totally liberated from everything (only in spiritual terms of course).
Instead I think you need to have a different agenda to counter being caught in useless choices. You need to have something else that you want or work towards than just being free from. Maybe something to be free TO. Sounds a bit corny.
But I think you need a higher principle to navigate with, in order to give you a perspective that renders the useless choices as useless and gives you a larger model for understanding you actual freedom of choice.
Just a thought.
Choice
It is an old sales trick to give people a choice between two trivial options, to make them not notice that they don't have a choice, or that they aren't really excersing it. "Do you want the blue or the red model?" Same thing in elections. We choose between candidate A and B, who're equally incompetent, but in different ways, and we think we actually had a choice on how the country is run.
It is a hypnosis trick too. Making people say yes to something without quite realizing it. Which could also be done by giving them an unimportant choice. "Would you like to be hypnotized quickly or slowly?" If you answer that, you've already tacitly agreed that you will be hypnotized.
So, yes, how can one really have a choice? What does real freedom look like?
And, yes, how can be be liberated from useless choices in order to make the important ones?