The Freedom To What?

Freedom of choice is acclaimed in our society as something good. The greater the quantity of choice, the better. More TV channels, more species of chocolate bar, more movies to watch, more persons to fornicate with, and so forth. However, I think this acclaim is highly misguided. Freedom of choice is not a bad thing, I just do not think it is necessarily always a good thing. The ability to choose between various options is not in and of itself of any value, especially if those choices are poor (see all those TV channels!) A simple example of this is as follows: in scenario A you have a choice between a thousand poisons. In scenario B you have a choice between two cups of tea. However much you may dislike tea (a highly unrealistic proposition, but bare with it!) the latter scenario would be superior, despite the fact that there was less choice involved. Just having more things to choose does not mean our situation is any better.

So why do we as a society value freedom of choice, spectrum of choice, and quantity of choice as if it were the single most important facet of being happy and human? Why but because we are what we consume, rather than what we create. We have created a society of, if you'll excuse the cliche, nectar obsessed drones and all of us are responsible. Materialistic, individualistic hedonism is the dominator of our Age, and desperate shallowness the engine of growth. The freedom to have desires satisfied has been placed above the freedom to be left alone to develop and create wonderful things. We tolerate ever more intrusions into our privacy from ever more powerful states and corporations (provided we get our banal TV channels and little treats on the weekend). We have willingly given away true power, democratic power, for comfortable pleasure.

For the average citizen what is there to live for beyond pleasure and status-chasing, in this part of the world they happen to call the West? With little sense of belonging to society or to a meaningful narrative; with no natural blossoming of joy from the mastery of skills and creation of art, we must be given false joy by being constantly overwhelmed by material things and fleeting desires. And in order to shift these things upon us we must first feel inadequate, incomplete. An entire media industry exists to this end, trying to make us feel like we are missing out on something someone else has got; perverting our natural competitive streak into something far more ruthless and twisted.

A huge question mark now hangs over our heads: how long is this going to go on for before we are awakened? In truth, we already are waking up. But we are not enlightened just yet. We still have this entitlement to the bountiful gifts of the earth, and feel like we have earned the right to destroy natural beauty and creatures for the sake of an appetite which can never be fulfilled. Desire is still seen as an end in itself, rather than something to be channelled away harmlessly (or in the extreme, to be flushed away like any other bodily waste).

In this age of desire fulfillment, no one has the moral ground to attack any other. Desire is a universal malaise. The poor are just as desirous as the rich, women just as much as men. We are all desirous. The major problem is not that in our current state some people can fulfill their desires more than others. Balancing out the level of destructive hedonism is not going to make things that much better. The problem is that for the average citizen the highest value is desire fulfillment - rather than scientific endeavour, philosophical discovery, artistic creation, natural belonging, and so on. This is why freedom to choose between pleasures is problematic; it is no real freedom at all, enslaving us all to unfulfillable desire.

I am not arguing that freedom is a bad thing. I am not arguing that oppression of freedom, or conservative fear of freedom, is any form of solution to our goalless hedonism. I believe that individual freedom for all should be the end goal of justice. We should be free to be choose, but we should not use that liberty to choose poorly (the maxim 'harm ye none, do as ye will' sums it up perfectly). Nor should we see quantity of choice as important as quality. This doesn't mean that I believe we should never choose pleasurable (or even self-destructive) options, only that it should never be our ultimate goal, nor a regular occurence, nor something to be proud of.

We can be truly glorious -

We are in this part of the world they happen to call the West, perhaps the most imperialistic gathering of civilizations there ever was. The world has imitated our vices and vitues to a large extent, and because of this we are arrogant enough to consider ourselves the centre of the world - which is not entirely untrue. We needn't continue practicing our vices, which fuel wars in distant parts of the world for material enrichment. With a new value system, we could create a heroic individualism of universal Justice, which measures wealth in human cultivation; education, art, philosophy, science, and sees pleasure as a mere sideshow to these more pressing desires. To choose such greatness is to choose wisely. Our highest honour could be to those most virtuous, not those most self-important and parasitic (the rich!) With our power we could lead the world, not trammel it. We could answer the nihilism of God's death with a heroic humanism and environmental belonging, filling the void in our souls with a spiritual reconnection to the earth and its creatures.

The highest praise we might bestow should be upon the astronauts who risk everything to ascend to the final frontier, the scientists who work toward the nuclear fusion which will end our energy needs, the philosophers who help us make sense of a rapidly changing world and our place in it, the great artists who bring these human achievements to light, and everyone who ever lived for more than just themselves. We must turn away from the vapid, empty, soulless celebrities whose mere mention is enough to soil the whole of this newsletter, and who will leave us empty in our graves if we do not turn away from their sick light. We would have wasted it all for nothing.

The problem is that this transformation of our values requires us to challenge the comfortable, shiny, glamourous world we are fooled into thinking actually exists. I think this would take a heroic departure from evolution's path, the reversal of the natural instinct from danger to security, familiarity to newness, pain to pleasure. We would have to let go of all of our most comforting myths. We would have to be brave to even begin such a change, but brave in an intellectual sense, more than a 'run into a burning building to save a child' sense.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Freedom and Meaning

I) Imagine you wake up in a white box outside of conventional space-time. A drip feed is keeping you alive by pumping nutrients directly into you, with absolutely no waste products. What would you do? How would you decide what to do? Nothing you do would have any context; there would be no means of discerning one choice from another. For eternity you would be trapped. Perhaps the only choice available to you is whether to tear off the drip-feed and wait to die, or hold out for the hope of escape (which is of course futile, as this is an evil analogy!)

A less evil analogy could be as follows. Imagine you have been invited into the control centre of the universe by an omnipotent being. Before you is a vast computer containing a million switches. There is no way of knowing what any of the switches do, and no way of seeing the aftermath of pressing them. Again, there are no meaningful choices to be made here, and you may as well leave.

A final (slightly more evil than the above but less evil than the first) analogy could be as follows. Imagine you are a sentient mind in a vast box the size of a star, with thousands of liquid-metal tentacles spiralling out from your core. The universe is now your oyster, but would you return to Earth? Would you seek out other creatures like you? What would you do? How would you decide?

II) Context is necessary for meaningful choice, and thus for freedom. We cannot choose without a context to act within. This context is not only our environment and space in the narrative of the world, but also our physical limitations. We understand the universe through our bodies. We are creatures which were generated out of the cosmos and this puts us in common with other creatures. We are human beings, and though we may take this obvious fact for granted, it is an essential part of how we choose and what we choose. Simply put, choice is not something “pure and detached”, but “messy and involved”.

The context common to all of humanity, for all of history, is that we are in relation to nature. The natural phenomena of Earth is a gift which exists before we do, and which we have played little part in generating. We have followed plants and animals through time, and they have intrigued us, given us something to fear, impressed us, or all of these things at once. We have always lived in a world with nature.

A world without nature would be disastrous in and of itself, but also for its effect on us. It would deny us the intuitive pleasure gained in just observing, say, a tree, with no conscious purpose as to why. We cannot articulate why it feels meaningful, but this does not deny its meaningfulness. It demonstrates the remaining mystery of our being, that we are not only the mind which perceives; there is more at work inside us. If we were to destroy nature in its entirety (a scenario which is possible as our technology and greed grows exponentially) we would be destroying the background of every human civilization in history.

III) We are forced into the world, naked and hungry. We are forced into the small personal narratives of our day-to-day lives and the meta-narratives of breathing empires, woven so tightly together that without intending it we can effect distant narratives. We are forced into a language, which creates for us a boundary, or foundation, of word-thoughts. We are forced into a morality, absorbing the values drummed into us whether we like them or not. We are forced into a world-view consisting of all the information we uncritically absorb in our pre-philosophy days. As children we make decisions despite our lack of understanding, and this is our original sin, not some spiritual fall, but our immature actions.

None of this means that our personality is decided for us, nor our choices. For if you accept that context is necessary for there to be meaningful choices, and thus some form of choosing will, the fact that we have circumstances is what grants us freedom.

The fact that we cannot decide entirely what our “fate” will be, that we cannot immediately overcome subconscious forces and bend the world around us is all a necessary part of our freedom. Our will to choose may be messy, it may contradict itself, it may be ponderous and take time to unfold, but it is there. Indeed, it is precisely the time that it takes our choices to manifest inside a context that makes our choices meaningful. Rapid choices which are instantly fulfilled run against our nature. Rapid choice, like rapid change, eventually exhausts all possibilities and leads to a stagnation from which nothing good might be salvaged.

IV) What happens in this nightmare scenario of too many choices, too many entrances, all of them leading nowhere? What happens when we have infinite expectation, no boundaries, no real communities? We are living it.

It is known as Consumerism, although this is a euphemism for materialistic nihilism. Obsession with commodities, rampant and endless desiring, with no meaning even within oneself. This mindless hedonism is divorced from any narratives, it is atomizing, separating, and fundamentally unrewarding. It is fleeting, empty, unattached, and nothing sticks inside the soul. It is the bad form of individualism, an unhealthy individualism where the individual is defined by what they can have and not what they are, a mark so staining that it makes all individualisms seem wretched. Taken to extremes it destroys all connection to the past and all concern for the future, all meaning divorced from its context. The worse it gets the more powerful it becomes; this goallessness is what keeps the wheels of consumerism turning; it thrives on the void inside us and spins an illusion of symbolic rewards to account for it. It is the destroyer of narratives, the generator of irreverence, whose war-cry is “I don't care about anything but my own little buzz”.

It is a negative form of nihilism, where all paths lead nowhere, and there is not even a personal notion of truth. If we say that free will needs to be utterly free to be called free, then we are paradoxically left with the destroyer of freedom.

V) True freedom, therefore, requires a narrative, individual self-discipline, patient cultivation, a rock to push against, harmony with nature, a community to belong to, a great but not infinite variety, a little wildness, a cause to fight for, a truth to seek, a foundation to stand upon, and, of course, a lot of philosophical thinking.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

TWELVE YEARS OF SLAVERY

This story of one man's plight, kidnapped from his family home and forced into a life of slavery, reawakens one to the horrific acts that may be committed in the shadows of a sick mind.

This shadow casts an ideology of power, fear and evil, that unites men and women of the same colour, and divides them if they are of a different colour. Yet there are other divisions cast in the same way. Of great importance are such stories, which vividly demonstrate and show just how base we can become within a delusional narrative.

When such a narrative spreads into the minds and the actions of people, one enters into a false dialogue. One becomes seemingly ensnared by theatre, as a character who cannot see any other alternative unfolding of events; frozen and fixed within a self-fulfilling nightmare of which one partakes. When freedom of choice is limited within the parameters of such a story, it appears there is no way out. Permeating the unconscious behaviours, we so-called thinkers become enslaved to it, only to be awakened to drives pushing us into a direction none of us wish to go.

How can that be? It simply would not, if there was at one's disposal, a true, fair and moral tale. If there was more than one set of parameters, more than one theatrical performance, likewise there would be more than one script. However, who will narrate, produce, combust into a flame of flickering ideas? Becoming stuck in the thick slime of beliefs which allude to no other option but this one, one fails to do so.

Any sparks of creativity are quickly extinguished by the dominant powers, whose very foundation of truth contradicts any rebellion against them. From fear of retribution, the rulers, or benefactors, will conceal and destroy the tools of creativity and freedom. Passion and creative thought is quickly curtailed as folly, even by those who may be freed by it. Scared of the vengeful violence that occurs within such a paradigm, the nightmare deepens, reinforcing a fixed monologue of shit. What then, can awaken one from this evil reverie, when reason may ride the wildest dreams, and a fiction may be perfectly logical?

Indeed, a great author with a turbulent mind is needed to rage against such systems. A new story needs to be written. One which will encourage the minds of people to believe in something completely different, and so set them free from partaking in a play where only misery, loss, and fear is injected into all of our hearts; even those of the powerful. Lest their hearts have already burned out, surrounded by no light by which they may be guided out, let them be reignited by the imagination. The freedom to write and to think outside of such a dialogue presents a dash for freedom beyond the maze.

Do not believe, any of you, that there is no way out. Do not believe, not for a single second, that there is no alternative. For as long as human beings preserve the ability to tell stories, especially those stories which may find different assumptions, assumptions which lay the foundations for better conclusions, then it simply is not true that there is nothing we can do. It is wrong that you must play the role of the slave, or the master. Reject such notions as having no place in your story.

Once you have done this you may tell others, who also must reject such notions. And only when enough people have realised that they have been entranced and hypnotised by a persuasive lie, may they break out of it.

However, the lie is not the hardest part to accept, it is the fact that one may believe that they chose such a life. But no, this is not true either. It is only when one is made aware, when one understands they have been tricked, that they have any power to choose otherwise. But unless one wakes the others, one's own attempts to break out of such a narrative will be rife with booby traps, and zombies.

Ellese Elliott

Desire and Individualism

“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” - Epicurus

How better to start an article on desire than with a quote by Epicurus - called by many the happiest man who ever lived. And before we continue, let us not equate the 'man' in his quote with an actual, male man. Epicurus was one of the few ancient Greek philosophers to teach women and slaves. Now, to deploy some counter-intuition!

The culture of desire we find ourselves in is often labelled 'individualistic'. This seems intuitive - a desire fulfilled means someone is getting what they want. Yet desire is not an individualism. Desire comes from outside of the self, and depends on an intrusive external object to manifest itself. It is not a creative flourishing or self-expression; desiring something and getting it does not make you a unique individual. We do not choose to desire things, we merely choose between desires. This means that desire can, and is, engineered from without.

If the ability to desire something were determined from within me, I could look at, say, a tissue and desire it! Yet the tissue is already mine, it is not separate from me. In the shaky language of property, I 'own' the tissue. Where is its mystique, its appeal? The tissue has none. I desire only the superior tissue - the iTissue 5G, with its multivarious (but ultimately futile) gadgets. This new, special tissue lies beyond my grasp, and that is precisely its appeal. Once something is claimed, tasted, possessed, it loses appeal, revealed as the charlatan it is. So, it cannot be said that my desire is individualistic, because once obtained the desire creates no inner-fulfillment. It is only when a desire is unclaimed that it can promise fulfillment.

By comparison, if I wanted a lute I could get one, but I would need to work on playing it. The lute would be the beginning of an endless journey of self-discovery and creation. My desire to become better at the lute is vague, an adventure through mist. It is a journey that can be entirely unique to myself as an individual. My creative urges on the lute would be spontaneous, seemingly emerging out of nothing; out of my self? Only I can fulfill this want to become a master-lutist! Whereas the desire for the iTissue 5G is direct, highlighted and colourful like the petals of a flower. Like a bee I would have to buzz along a certain prescribed path to then obtain the snazzy tissue of my dreams. Most people can fulfil this desire, ending up in the same place as everyone else, and so it does not differentiate them from other desirers.

To continue on from the previous point, the word 'individualist' is bandied about and hurled at those who are possessive of material objects. Yet to participate in rampant desiring (i.e. consumerism) is not 'greed', it is artificial 'need'. It is the lack of individuality, rather than an expression of it. It demonstrates the individuals inability to complete themselves. It is the most obvious form of conformity available to us today! It may be disguised as an individualism - promising uniqueness or identity for example - but this is a mere deception. Desire operates at the level of 'Man the herd-beast'. Desire is encouraged by our environment, it is generated by masses (if I had to simplify the history of Man into a single sentence, I would proclaim: 'He has one. Therefore I want one!')

This herd mentality obscures the true quality of the things we desire. Desire obscures quality, it does not indicate it. Things that are desired are desirable because they are desired. A thing will be talked about because it is talked about. This is herd, not an individualism. Furthermore, things can become ultra-desirable by virtue of being exclusive, to make one feel special for obtaining them. This is an equally spurious reason to desire something. To bring these general claims into reality, let us consider the following.

Advertising in the previous era would emphasize that by obtaining a product, this would raise one above all competition; towering over the meagre herd, offering a step-up into this dream-world of glamour and envy. Today's advertising tends to be different. It promises to share an experience with our herd (such as a party-inducing bucket of factory-farmed chicken) and to demonstrate just how much one is enjoying oneself among said herd. Both are deceptive ploys, and both are overly concerned with the herd. Again, it does not sound terribly individualistic to me.

This demonstrates how desire is dependent on what others think and feel. It is thus further removed from 'individualistic greed'. Intuitively, it is much easier to explain rampant material possession as an individual not considering what everyone else thinks. This I believe to be the wrong way round; it is someone all too conscious of what others think and feel who wants more than everyone else. Yet there is another reason why desire cannot exist within a healthy individualism: self-control.

For desire is not 'used up'. The faster one fulfills desires, the more one wants. For instance, suppose I desired a pair of new socks once every week. I would become accustomed to obtaining one new pair of socks a week. Without that one pair of socks, I would feel frustration, and emptiness. Yet suppose that one pair was not enough and I lost my discipline. I now purchase two pairs of socks a week. I now need more socks, and more, and more. When the novelty of two pairs falls away, I will need three, then four. Eventually, I am obtaining five new pairs of socks a week, and I become accustomed to this. Obtaining more socks hasn't made me want less socks, it has made me want more. Desire operates in cycles of wanting, followed by acquiring, followed by brief fulfillment, before returning to 'want'. Paradoxically, being able to get what one wants faster, simply leaves one desiring more, as the cycle of 'want' and 'acquire' is shortened.

These cycles of desire cannot be overcome in their entirety - we are desiring machines. For this reason, I do not call desire an individualism; desire does not represent our individuality (and to paraphrase Max Stirner somewhat, they hardly belong to us at all). An understanding of ourselves as creatures of 'yesterday-today-tomorrow' could help us understand where our desires come from, and such an understanding provides us with greater self-control. Yet nothing can extinguish desire itself, no matter how much we wish to. The pursuit of relinquishing desire is itself a painful task. The biblical saints used to go out into the desert to escape material temptation - something even I would balk at! Desire in and of itself is no evil, no guilt, nor shame. As imperfect beings we are bound to have a few vices. It is merely the means of obtaining our desires - namely how much harm they cause on the way - that should provoke ethical alarm.

My conclusion is simple. Being surrounded by desire is not an indicator of individualism. To be put-upon and judged is not the breeding ground of self-development and a healthy individualism. Freedom to be a self-mastered individual is freedom from rampant desiring. We should not measure happiness in how often we obtain what we desire; whoever dies with the most toys dies the emptiest.

How soon once one has possessed something, is one possessed by it?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Art - By Eliza Veretilo

This weeks artist was Eliza Veretilo: http://neonsuitcase.blogspot.co.uk/

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 48 'Freedom'

Freedom, are you free? - By Eliza Veretilo

Freedom, are you free?

My heart yearns for a promise,

That is not an actuality.

Inside of me,

There is a point that doesn’t break...

Wants to observe it all. I want to be myself.

Freedom is the promise,

Time is the price.

The clock reminds me that this dimension has its ties.

Freedom Lite - By St.Zagarus

Freedom Lite

Freedom is the most highly vaunted thing there is. Material gain and the social status attached to it are close competitors, but the people who get those things like to think they have done so by their own free effort.

Yet when confronted with the ultimate freedom, that feeling of being a living-feeling-thinking individual (a place we often end up in existentialist philosophy), you cannot gloss over the hole-filled road of life with easy answers.  Eventually, you must stare death itself in the face. You must come to grips with the very fact of your mortality and fully comprehend that you will someday cease to exist, becoming nothing. All of your personality ends at that terminus point, scattered into the winds. The body is broken down into tiny fragments and devoured back into  nature. In the eye of cosmic time, you were not even the batting of a lid - you were a slight twitch! What then confronts you is the sheer scale of this existence, and the grand context we human beings are thrown into. Just to continue breathing becomes a choice; each inhalation, each exhalation, is passed through a valve of thought and feeling. Why, breath in, why, breath out.

Understanding Freedom - By Sean Ash

Understanding Freedom

Freedom cannot truly be explained or put into place without a better understanding of what it actually is. For any individual trying to grasp the concept of freedom, it is always best to begin by overcoming fear so that one can find the courage to question, “Is this my prison? Is this my cell? Are these my chains?”

If freedom is to become more tangible, where it is completely felt and understood, then one must first experience and undergo the greatest extents of captivity to appreciate and better understand it. That is why most people never experiencing certain hardships will have no genuine understanding of the freedoms they have themselves. Instead, they will either abuse them or take them for granted. But this works both ways. Take an individual begging on the streets for example. You may have encountered someone experiencing severe hardships and they will beg for change and then use this money to buy alcohol, drugs or often, both. No matter what way you put it, freedoms have been abused.

When freedoms are abused, fear is created. We see the most unfortunate in society and we do not want to end up the same. We begin to blame others for their own misfortunes. We create scapegoats and the fear we harbour, which then evolves into ignorance. Unfortunately, being in a place of ignorance closes many doors that enable us to think critically -- doors that enable us to see what is behind them. We are easily duped because our fears are played on.

We become divided and placed into separate classes. We start to see the world in duality rather than oneness. We are constantly being mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) – I am sure many of you have been buggered by these guys! We are coerced into giving up certain parts of our freedoms in exchange for better security. Well, so we are told. Instead, they beat us with their batons and do with us whatever they will. A war kicks off 5,000 miles somewhere else and we are being fed a security story of why we must go there and deprive these people of their freedom.

The more this starts to happen, the greater the chance that you either fall so deep into fear that you become entirely dependent on the state and others; leaving you closed off, distrusting of human nature and buying into abstract things that govern your everyday life because you have consented.  Or, you start to question the prison you are in. You start to see the bars before your eyes and all these thoughts you've been having, are the thoughts you have been engraving on the wall the entire time. Everything is now starting to come together so you can see the map – You can see the way out. You become enlightened, so much by truth, that you pick yourself up and stand firmly on your own two feet and consent to autonomy – You consent to the right to self-govern.  Now, when we are presented with the options of:

a) The Free market

or

b) Government Intervention

Already, we crave freedom but paradoxically fear it at the same time. We start to fall back into our shells, like a snail finding cover. We live our entire lives with our heads in the sand because we are scared to hold our heads up and to see the world. We fear abuse rather than challenge it. We fear action rather than taking it. Because we fear, we make rash decisions.

We always tend to think from our own perspectives. We see the other as the enemy because we have formed profound relationships with our chains. We have built safety nets that are held in place by the ideologies we have been taught and so we say, “Oh yes, that is why! That is why it must be!”. We build up pride that is instilled along the way. A pride that is instilled by fear. The fear to challenge, the fear to think critically, the fear to question.

Our greatest enemy is ourselves and unless we can step out of our own bodies, out of our own chains and out of our own prison cells, we can never understand what it truly means to be free.

Sean Ash

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 48 'Freedom'

Freedom

Determinism - By Rudy Mcnair

A number of Ancient Greek philosophers from various different schools once concluded that, for everything that happens, there are inescapable conditions that determine its occurrence.  Diodorus arrived at logical determinism, I think, as a consequence of belief in signs, omens and portents from which can be discovered what is going to happen and why.  However, in the development of Western philosophy, “antecedent causes” and “initial conditions” are still useful clues to the workings of “reality” and what is logically necessary.  Materialist philosophers of the Enlightenment maintained that men are stranded in nature and can govern neither themselves nor anything else.  Even Schopenhauer accepted that irrational forces influence human events.  A.J. Ayer  decided that all significant statements are “scientific”, or are nonsense. This means that value statements (socially meaningful, ethical terms, like “good” or “wrong”) are thought to violate this philosophy. Logical positivism has consequently sought to distinguish between ‘logical’ concepts (which are true or false) termed “nonmodal” and problems of what might and might not be possible or “fulfilled”.

Freedom

Only “God” is free - By Samuel Mack-Poole

“None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free.” -- Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

What a topic! Freedom is something that I’ve thought about in quite a lot of detail. I’ve really considered it; the implications it has, its definition, whether humans can be truly free. However, I think it is my duty to define what freedom is:

1.    the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint

2.    exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

3.    the power to determine action without restraint.

4.    political or national independence.

5.    personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.

The Limitations of Freedom - By Sean Ash

The Limitations of Freedom

 To understand the path to absolute freedom, it is paramount for the individual to first understand 'what is prison?'. If freedom is to become more tangible where it is completely understood and fully employed then one must first experience and undergo the greatest extents of captivity. This is because one must experience being held captive so that they can truly understand what freedom truly is in its entirety. It is exactly the same principle applied for one experiencing life to understand death. If you have not yet existed, you cannot understand life. Just because someone knows the culture in the West and has read of the culture in the East, it does not necessarily mean they will absolutely know the culture in the East. They will know and understand some truths but never the absolute Truth. It is the same for those of the educated; one is simply not born educated but they become educated. Ergo, one must first be uneducated to be educated; unconscious to be conscious and dead to be alive. Being 'not' something is imperative to becoming something. There has to be space to find movement.

      This same principle can be applied to absolutely anything and everything because it is a principle that works in every case. For words it is the synonym and antonym as a dialectical process to the synthesis of synantononym. Clearly there is no definition of 'synantononym' and it is the same with the after life; we prescribe our own beliefs as to what it might mean. It is possible that absolutely anything could be ascribed to this word. However, it would deduct the blood line from which it came. Therefore, it can only come to life through the genes of both parents, and something that represents two different things. The after life must then be a make up of both metaphysical and physical as we are moving forward in time and not backwards. If evolution is the case, it makes no sense going back to a state we have already existed in as it is not productive and contradicts any purpose of movement thus making it arbitrary. Therefore, if purpose is to be Truth, then it can only manifest our moving from non-existence to existence which means that within the third must exist both. This means that when we die, we are made up of both existence and non-existence at the same time. We will no longer B(-eing) but we will C (see).

      For many, freedom is something that is fought for on many battle fields but freedom cannot be truly explained or put into place and it never will. It simply cannot function here. It is like a man going into space without a space suit. Freedom cannot exist here in this reality as it simply does not belong here. It would be like looking around and trying to find God. We have the concepts of such things, that is true, but we must await the next life to find the answers. As for now, we simply make the answers up so that we can put to rest dead-end philosophy. Dead-end philosophy is a type of philosophy that simply cannot be answered as it is like starting at a point of A to then ending back at A without ever reaching B, and B does exactly the same so that no truths ever clash. They have only stayed within their own prison cells to remain live.

      To end, man lives out his life trying to escape the inevitable. He has the freedom in his sight only he does not have a clue what it truly looks like, what it feels like to have and what such a word could mean. It is a contested concept that can only ever be explained outside the walls of prison. We are prisoners to our own bodies while we live in this reality and so we can only ever experience a state of freedom when we are dead. For those that convince themselves to be either governors or prisoners in life, whatever you should convince yourself to be in this life you shall be the opposite in the next. It's not so bad being a prisoner, should this be the case, just as it is not so bad to experience darkness as the only thing that can possibly come from it is freedom and light.

By Sean Ash

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 30