freedom

we hear about it from rioters.
my best friend hollers it back at his mom when she grounds him.
its the term we express when people pass away.

everybody talks about freedom - but what is this omnipotent entity that everybody so longs for? and do people actually want it?

freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose - janis joplin

for me freedom is like the sun. stay far enough, but in its presence, and it supports life. get to close and scorch to death.
pure, unadulterated freedom would be one in which a person is completely uninhibited by social norms, political agendas or even personal constraints. a person without the ability to consider consequence. a person so detached from everything around him that he is neither influenced by, or influences his surroundings. a sate of constant, eternal oblivion.
and a world full of completely free people would be like a world full of drifting entities. aimless wanderers, occasionally bumping into one and another but moving along unaffected.
but who would want something like this? who would want to be so free, that his actions have no consequence. his presence makes no impact. his existence would be so reclusive and so independent it were almost as if he never existed.

when ever i hear about freedom i always think back to the season II finale of Greys Anatomy, in which Burke leaves Cristina at the alter. he says that if he truly loved her he would let her go... he would let her be free. the episode ends with cristina standing in her white gown yelling 'im free... im free..' but there isnt a trace of happiness in her shaky voice as she begins to rip her clothes and jewelry off her, whith meridith supporting her from the back.

the most basic of all human needs is to want and be wanted.
god was concocted to place a power higher than ourselves - so that we could surrender resposibilty - be a slave of fate
we spend our entire lives in the pursuit of happiness. but a truly free individual would be one that looked within himself for this. his journey would end with his own self discovery.
by our very nature we are individuals who dont enjoy freedom. we detest it. we shun away from it. we spend our entire lives cowering from it.

so when i hear people screaming for it, i cant help wonder whether they have completely understood what they asked for.... and then, if they truly want it.

the unwanted ideal

the past few weeks have culminated in me reading ayn rands 'Atlas shrugged'. her philosphy of objectivism and philosophical capitalism has transcribed into characters in all her books. they are her ideal people. they are what she feels the ideal human should be. truth be told, i agree with her.
these characters are usually, smart, attractive people. they believe, that there is nothing higher than personal gain. there is nothing higher than the self. ones self pleasure and survival exceeds everything. (before i have ayn rand fanatics tracing my IP address, let me say here that i am a huge fan - of her philosophy more than her books, and how they make me think)
but the more i read (I've not completed it yet), the more the characters scare me. not in terms of their propaganda and attitude but in the way they make me question myself and what this 'ideal human' means to me.
and then the question comes in, do i actually want to reach this ideallic state? do i want to be so aloof and indifferent? the only way to be insensitive to, and im not using this word flippantly, change, is to not let people into your life (realistically speaking - im sure there are other higher ways of dong so). to be devoid of personal human contact would be the only way to achieve this form of ideal. the only way to put yourself before anybody else would be if there were no one else in your life, of importance.
the sacrifice for the ideal seems too much. there are people in my life whom i would not let go off.. whom i refuse to let go off. the reason i am who i am today is no doubt because of what iv made of myself, but also because of the people around me. people who took out time to talk to me. people who put me before themselves. people who's ideals, then obiovusly, differed from mine.
so then are people simply born ideal? is ideal something your born into.. something that cannot be attained?
i cannot help feeling weak when i read this book. weakness. this is what seems to bother me more than anything else. anyone who isnt ideal (and that seems to be something you need to be born into - an aristocracy of the intellect if you may) is weak.
the other alternative is that she is wrong. (my interpretation ie.) i think a middle ground is the way to go forward. to be detached, yet attached. to be independently dependant (if that makes any sense). a sort of quasi-state.. a limbo. i wonder however, if thats possible.

PS: everything said here is naturally my interpretation. she could have meant something quite the opposite.

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