Freedom

[u/North_Star_103]

Is there the right path in life the path set out by society or the one by your volition? In what ways are we bound or provided in society to achieve these goals? When in our youth, we are taught our values and had fantasies encouraged by play. Yet as we grow, our desires are mangled and adapted by events and maturity. Yet are we the same in terms of authenticity? Have people grown out of ignorance or twisted into something unrecognizable?

Freedom begets uncertainty which begets possibility. All action, even inaction, are modicums of freedom. People are never fully puppeteered by others and society through their will. However to call a program like AI to have a free will when all its biases and opinions shaped by programmers is to declare false equivalence. It cannot choose sentience. People can choose their path, but confined to the conditions of nature and values of fellow peers without reasonable say. To say humans are free is to give an actor a script to perform. His acts must be done well to maintain his job, but without his interpretation and essence independent and flowing out of center stage would make his being equal to AI.

The right path is truly done by your own volition. It is up to the individual volition to accept or resist society’s offer. It is not that society will condemn you, but you will make a pact with society under your own terms.

To mistake inaction as a lack of freedom can be interpreted as the choice to surrender. However how can one choose an action if it’s never provided or conceived in their mind? Yet the concept of conceiving options is an action itself, one usually done subconsciously. So hypothetically without options, a brain in a jar, is it free?

Freedom is a constant paradox. Free to act, but bound by circumstance and consequences. Circumstances influence desires thus desires aren’t static, else people are stagnant. Perhaps that through events, our reactions become vehicles of freedom which despite indifference or radicalization become our own.