Thursday, June 11, 2015

On Freedom

I don't know what kept me from writing for so long...i guess it was the lack of readership or rather lack of interaction which disinterested me in writing posts.And i think it hits everyone who blogs at some point of time when  you don't seem to have the motivation to blog but here i am giving it another go.
For some time now i have been thinking about freedom and what is it actually.Now it being an abstract concept it is very difficult to come up with an exact definition for it and yet wars have been fought, massacres have been committed, people have have been killed  for this very abstraction.

But are we really free??Us the people who are supposedly free now that the British have left(Obviously i am referencing India only because it is unlikely that the six people who would be reading this post would have a US passport).Do we make the choices that we want to make?Or are we just following the existing structure of the society because that is what we are supposed to do and that is what is easy to do??In that respect are our choices the function of our surroundings and if so than where does the freedom lie?Isn't it all an illusion of freedom under the chains of societal norms.?

What i believe is that freedom is a huge responsibility.Freedom makes us feel lost.Freedom makes it difficult to decide because there is no guideline to follow.Freedom can make life hell.And so we have devised several contraptions to give us a path to follow which includes religion.Now religion in itself can be a very broad term but the one here is the ugly organised religion of evangelism and conversions.This is the religion of the priest in the grand inquisitor(Brothers Karamazov) where the priest rebukes Christ for having given the curse of freedom to the people and says that he is no longer needed.The chains of church would provide the salvation to the common man.

But i don't want to go into how freedom is suppressed.I want to talk about are really free???anywhere at all??anyone at all??what is true freedom?I think true freedom would lead to us gratifying our needs.And in all possibility in the order of Maslow's pyramid.But to be able to know ones desires,that in itself has become a big task because of the years of influence of the existing society wherever we live.To be absolutely free of the shackles of society that is something that i think about.The people who meditate possibly Buddha or Mahavira might have come across this only.They might have been able to delve deeper into themselves and see beyond what was being projected on them by their times.

If we make free decisions,where would that lead us to?Not just big decisions the daily life decisions that we make.How do we spend the 24 hours that we are provided daily?Eating ,sleeping, performing daily routines beyond this how do we decide what to do with our time?Most would be doing a job.But ultimately it is something that we do for money?So is that what should be our driving force??Is that what our freedom has led us to??And there is no denying the value of money.But if we are free to do anything what would we to do?

4 comments:

  1. Very nicely put through thought provoking questions. I guess , if we come out from the "roti,kapda aur makaan" kind of thinking surely it is going to help.

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    Replies
    1. the point is where does freedom leads you to?to roti?check.... to kapda?check..... to makan?check..what after that.....there is a vast landscape of nothingness it appears at times where it becomes difficult to make decisions.....

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  2. Nicely put! Language bloopers here n there but never mind.

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