Thlog Life

Just finished my WP#1, 'twas tough. Don't want to talk about it. The thing that is most drilled into my mind from class is the concept of freedom. Zac was talking about how some people found the freedom that we were given in the WP overwhelmed people. Personally I didn't see "That Much" freedom. There was more than a typical essay but less than what I would consider an overwhelming amount. However, the concept of being overwhelmed by freedom is interesting. I have felt this before. When I do I typically think:"What is freedom if not a prison that we created for ourselves that prevents us from following our destiny." I know it's a stereotypical angsty teen thought, but I think it's kind of an interesting one. We grow up in an environment that celebrates and glorifies freedom, yet there are times in our lives when we wish that someone would just tell us what to do and give us a sense of purpose. At least I do sometimes. Life is complicated; freedom further complicates it. "Give me liberty or give me death"(Patrick Henry I think.) "You can take our land, but you can never take our freedom."(Mel Gibson?) We love that shit. However, one would have a hard time arguing that life wouldn't be easier if our paths weren't pre-determined. To give some perspective, I would consider myself a libertarian politically. I can trace most of my political stances to the writings and ideas of John Locke, so don't call me a fascist. It's just sort of a strange though. Just like some of us were overwhelmed by the freedom that the WP provided, a lot of people(I think) are overwhelmed by the near-limitless freedom that life provides us. Sure, we don't have unlimited freedom anymore(thanks Obama), but we are told from birth that we can do whatever we want to do in life. The flip side is that some people don't know what the hell they want to do, I sure don't. It makes you question why we have this glorification of freedom in our society. I think that is is two-fold. One, selfishness: freedom gives us the right to be a dick, which we all want to be a dick sometimes. Two, hope(this is the more romantic version): looking into the stars and thinking that we are masters of our own destinies is a lot better than knowing that we will be remembered as the 17th best aglet-checker on our assembly line by the time we are 20(if our paths were determined). However, if you think of yourself in geological time, then our lives might as well already be over, with our fate sealed by death. No matter how/when we die it's going to happen a certain way. No one can really change how they are going to die since the process of dying happens only once. It's like trying to change how you are going to wake up tomorrow. Since you won't wake up tomorrow twice, you can't change the result because until you actually wake up the result isn't sealed into place. So once we accept that we can't change how we are going to die, we accept that our method of dying is predetermined. Working backwards from that through induction we might realize that our whole life is predetermined. We can change our past behavior the present time, but never our future behavior since it is yet to happen. What was I talking about again? Freedom I think? Well I think that's enough for now(heh).