For a few moments it was just paper; with it a fleeting sense of freedom, no longer bound by its fundamental triviality. But fleeting it was, soon drowned out by the realities of us, what we chose to build, how we decided to operate. A curious word ‘freedom’, so nebulous yet so vital in the conception of the self. Being free; free beings. Is freedom having the cage bars far enough for the canary to choose never to fly farther? Bound by fear, perhaps inadequacy, ravelling in its bordered freedom, singing its pleasure. We sing of it too -what we can say, what we can do- the freedom to be who we are. Yet is that not our cage, who we are? Eric Blair understood this; force and brutality can suppress the few forever, but the many for only a while, and a restless one at that. Thus real control is harnessed by those who let the many be free to be who they are moulded to be. Shape the self and let it stifle the mind, let who they are smother who else they could have beens. Power is the power to mould the self, that flux product of the nature/nurture duality -the grinding plates of the innate and the socialised. Herein ties the Nietzscheian bootstrap; it is at the fault lines that freedom can be gained, wrestled from the grasps of the ‘is’ by the mind’s emancipation. Let not the self restrain the mind, rather let the mind be free to form. Let it evaluate and revalue everything; beliefs and disbeliefs, loves and hates, virtues and vices. Let it view the self for what it is; a part of the greater else, a product of that which binds it. And let a decision mark its liberation, a single decision; a choice to accept what was rejected or deny what was held, a choice to denounce a loved or embrace a hated.The self looks at the shadows in Plato’s cave passing judgement on what they do. But the mind freed recognises one’s own shadow entangled in their midst too, its causes and effects; only then can one gain control of their part in the puppet show.
~Alarm set to 8:03 exactly~
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