Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

What is the true meaning of freedom?

Freedom is commonly understood as autonomy from external constraints, the ability to do whatever you want, to resist power structures, and to act without restraint. Such understanding of freedom makes it a highly idealistic (and ideological) concept, and it’s enshrined into national constitutions, government slogans, education, and culture, making it a part of our everyday lives.

However, what about the freedom from one’s own habits? Could it be that the true free will is to go against one’s desires?

What if, to be fully free, it is necessary to give up our attachment to ourselves? That may be a much harder feat than doing what one desires. It is easy to follow the needs predetermined by biology (thirst), evolution (sex), society (recognition), and culture (achievement). It is much harder to resist those temptations and to let the desires pass through and dissipate. It takes years of meditation practice to become consistently good at this (anicca, anicca). But this type of freedom is achieved through detachment, which may become a very strong habit in itself (avoidance).

How can one then be free without detachment? The freedom to act on one’s desires is related to the idea of habit, which is mostly about maintaining a certain degree of comfort. Such freedom is comfortable, but it’s also very predictable. We know the motivations, so we can calculate the outcomes. That may be one of the reasons why this notion of “freedom” is implied in the slogans of so many countries. Free to consume, guided by the forces of market and desire. Freedom of (self-) expression, guided by ideology and 15 minutes of fame.

A possible way to counteract this tendency is not react in a predictable way and to do something differently, to avoid a habitual pattern, to truly surprise oneself.

We can even take a step further and see the limitation of freedom as the ultimate opportunity to be free. If somebody told me to do something, I could feel “free” to refuse. But what if that something proposes a completely new experience that I wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to live? My habit is telling me to refuse and to continue doing whatever it is that I’m doing, but that has little to do with freedom, rather—with reiterating a certain pattern over and over again.

A true freedom could be to actually give in and to do what you’re told in order to surprise yourself with the outcome that you did not expect.

 
 

Freedom, Entropy, and Probabilities

When we encounter a situation, our habitual response is to immediately categorize it based on past experiences. This gives us a sense of control and understanding, but it also limits our perception of what’s possible. True freedom might be found in the ability to see each situation in its unique context, free from the predetermined categories our habits have created.

Consider how differently we might act if we could approach each moment without the weight of these categorical assumptions. Instead of asking “Am I free or not?” we might ask “What possibilities exist in this specific context?”

This shift from categorical to contextual thinking might be the key to a more authentic form of freedom.

So how can one be free from one’s habits? And does it need to be radical? It seems that the ultimate freedom equals maximum entropy: no order, no information, random white noise. This may be an interesting primordial state to go into, but it is not compatible with life. Therefore, it may be absolutely fine to not be completely free. Then there’s a question of what this freedom implies. Being free from societal constraints can be interesting to a certain degree. Liberating oneself from one’s habits can also be a unique learning experience, but if we stop drinking water or sleeping, we will also die. It’s not only about death: some habits are instrumental for us to achieve our objectives, to cohabitate with others, and to maintain our lives. So it is perhaps about changing some of them sometimes rather than doing it all the time. For example, if somebody is used to working for 5 hours in a row, it could be interesting to break that pattern multiple times to see what happens. If, on the other side, there is a constant flow of distraction, it could be interesting to focus on only one thing.

Rather than getting rid of the habits, we can play with them and entertain alternate realities where our behavioral patterns temporarily don’t exist or take a different shape. This can help us question the underlying reasons for acting the way we do and explore multiple pathways and alternate realities. This can also make us free from the routines that we did not invent and that we did not question.

The notion of freedom becomes especially dubious when we think of the way human motivation works. First, there is a pattern of optimizing for the status quo and comfort. An evolutionary circuit that has been developed over hundreds of thousands of years to prioritize safety over risk. That’s what habit is optimizing for. Then there is a dopamine reward cycle. If we expect a reward, we feel motivated and encouraged to do something that we think we want (and even better so if we don’t always reach it). It seems like that’s the real freedom, but what about our expectations and desires? These are also learned patterns and habits that keep us restrained. In this context, to do “what you want” is to do what you’ve always done, and that does not always imply acting freely.

Instead, one follows their habits and desires, guided by brain chemistry, evolution circuitry, culture, morals, and comfort. When we’re free in this way, we act out what we “truly” feel, but what we truly feel is a predefined equation with predetermined inputs and outputs.

Therefore, there must be a certain degree of freedom in acting against the odds, bypassing predictions, and diverting away from the most likely outcomes. Doing it over and over again for a period of time and then changing strategy to avoid falling into a habit. Randomness followed by order followed by metastability and complete disruption that goes back into randomness again.

 
 

Freedom, Protest, and Transcendence

The most common understanding of freedom implies being free of others but not from oneself. This paradox has been addressed by philosophers such as Aristotle, Epictetus, Nietsche, James, Sartre, Krishnamurti, Foucault, and Ouspensky who have talked about the relationship of freedom and habits. According to them, there is an important aspect of freedom that lies in the conscious effort to transcend habitual patterns and internal conditioning, enabling us to live with greater autonomy, self-awareness, and authenticity.

However, it’s very easy for transcendence to become a habit itself. The most extreme case is a recidivist criminal. He may be acting his freedom, but as soon as he cannot resist, he is not free. A rebellious teenager is another example. The desire to resist authority becomes so predictable that it loses sight of the original objective.

Protest movements are a special case of this habitual transcendence. On the surface, they are fighting for freedom. But many of them are based on an antagonistic view. Anti-zionist, anti-woke, anti-war, anti-capitalist. At some point, it becomes so anti that it is intricately attached to the thing that it’s fighting against. Not free at all.

A more extreme case: a protest movement reinforced with a feedback loop of likes and shares. Enter the reward cycle where you get paid for transcendence. An act of dissent becomes a societal habit in itself. It is trapped in duality while fighting for one of the extremes.

An even worse outcome: people can go on the streets and make their (anti) stance known, but this emboldens the opposite force to become even more extreme. So the impetus to be free, in this case, only leads to the worsening of conditions.

In this context, to be truly effective, a protest movement has to transcend any duality, embrace asymmetry, and avoid falling into a stasis. The links have to be constantly shifting (and sometimes not). The nodes have to know how to let go of the center and extend beyond the periphery (and sometimes not). Intermittent resistance.