Athens & the Instability of Freedom

[Xoria]

Athens taught us that free will and critical thinking go together...Free thought, by contrast, requires us to look reality, including unfortunate reality, in the eye.

To discover one's freedom is to recognize a capacity for self-intoxication and self-deception, and thus to condemn oneself to doubt.

Thought question: what do you do with this doubt? Does/should it lead to action or passivity?

In the remaining 9 minutes of my lunch break I'll attempt a brief answer.

About a dozen years ago I experienced a realization about self-deception. Without going into details, let's just say it was about personal matters rather than broader philosophical/religious/political issues.

In my case, it lead to substantial passivity. Actually I'd call it closer to stagnation or immobility, and it lasted for a number of years. Doubts finally had given way to allowing me to view the full gulf between my conception of reality and what reality actually was. And so I sat down on the edge, put my head in my hands, and tried to figure out how to navigate my way back to reality. As it turns out, that didn't work very well, for a long, long time.

Finally, after several years of this, I decided that there were no answers that were reachable as long as I stayed where I was. I'm not entirely sure at this point if there are any reachable answers from my frame of reference anyway. What I am sure about is that the answers don't just come to you, you have to go to where the answers are. And that means getting to your feet, and deciding to march off into the darkness, certain only in the knowledge that you don't know exactly which direction you are going in, don't know where you'll end up, or when you'll arrive. You may not even know it when you do arrive. But you WILL get somewhere eventually, and chances are it will at least be different from where you are, if not better or worse. Different, at least, may provide some perspective that helps you find the correct direction to the destination you want, if you've managed to figure that out yet.

Does doubt lead to passivity? Unfortunately yes it can. But passivity is, in my view, the worst of all possible options. Remember that three-fold passageway ahead in the Mines of Moria in the Fellowship of the Ring movie? You could die while sitting there waiting for an insight. You ultimately just have to pick one path and follow it until you know where it goes. Our legs are more useful than our posteriors when it comes to solving just about anything.

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