Freedom vs. Confinement
Freedom is all about options and choices. Confinement is about no choices. I have spent time in Riker’s Island and mental institutions and there is nothing to choose. Your meals are picked, what time you sleep is picked and the TV shows you watch are picked. Freedom means you are allowed to make mistakes and I have made every mistake in the world.
I have been a true addict in terms of non-stop sex and know nothing about intimacy monogamy, commitment, attachment and love. But at least I had the opportunity in my freedoms to fail. I failed again and again but at 71 (my birthday was January 10th), I am still not dead.
Time will decide whether future choices are good or bad. But at least I know the difference. The excitement for an addict is that your sickness is so overwhelming that you don’t have the freedom you think you do. You become a zombie on autopilot. All my mistakes, all my apologies and all my failures, at least they are mine. I made them. I frankly hope that I have learned something.
The point of censorship, fascism and religions are that these choices are precluded from your palette of choice. The great advantage of freedom is fear, anxiety and always being on the precipice of complete disaster, which I relish.
posted by Al Goldstein @ 10:35 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
It sounds as though you managed to find a bit of wisdom in your 71 years, Al. Congratulations...many never slow down long enough to reflect on these matters.
Mazel tov on your birthday!
Good article. Life is an experiment, and it is true that there are those out there who would like to make our choices for us....feeling that they know how to divert us from dissaster. But really, as you allude to, that's not allowing the individual to experience the essence of living. People like you and I can become slaves to our ids. We relish pleasure and can lose our power to choose when we become obsessed on obtaining that next kick. If we addicts are brought low enough...it's easy for religion to come in and start doing the thinking for us to get out of our self induced mess. So as Dirty Harry says "A man must know his limitations." We need be cautious and put money in the bank while we go about our adventuring. Since, really the adventure is what keeps us with the will to live.
hookerexperience
mmothra,
one of my favorite college writers was a guy named erich frome. he constantly wrote about the chaos of free choice verses the stability of nazi like stormtroopers who have no room for diversity but know what is best for you. although my life is hell at least i am not a patient in a mental institution who cant pick his dinners or favorite tv shows. thank you, AG
dear hooker,
if we want to march in lockstep with military precision we have the words of religion and the responsibility of being right or wrong. the freedom to not be a machine is why cryonics can never capture our souls. we exchange efficiency for the chaos of our humanity. though i have blundered with my lives and my business at least my failures are my own. thank you for your thoughts.
AG
Al Goldstein, sage and seer of (late) middle age.
Congraulations on reconciling with your son.
Ed
Al,
I have looked up to you all my adult life. Your work has been an inspiration to me since I entered puberty.
I also cannot stop fucking anything and everything in front of me. I am not gay but if I am horny enough I will actually jerk off to thoughts of hairy men.
May god continue to bless you and your lifestyle.
Sincerely,
Mitch Haase
San Francisco, CA
Al, who's to say just because one has free will, that one is not controlled? Doesn't a media agenda dictate the status quo so that a pornographer is a "sleaze", an old man is "undesirable" and 3rd world "terrorists" are the cause of all our problems? Freedom is relative. We are free to invent ourselves and become a stereotype that we can't escape the image of when we go broke or get old. So in essense, free will is an illusion clouded by the respect of youth and money and brought down to earth by father time. That is why we trust in the simple things when it is too late. Because we never smelled the roses when the best times of our lives were in full bloom.
The only freedom we really possess is the need to restrict ourselves, to control our body with our mind. It is this classic view of virtue that provides happiness, not the pursuit of pleasure as proposed since the renaissance. The proof is in the consequences.
Jean-Paul Sartre would be proud...
ed foley,
thank you. after eight years i didnt realize how much i missed my son and how incomplete it made me. it was a by product of how howard stern and imus fed my pathetic ego into saying bad things about him and my third wife. i still wonder how i can be so self destructive.
AG
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