The 50th Law - 50 Cent [85]
Keys to Fearlessness
ONE’S OWN FREE, UNTRAMMELED DESIRES, ONE’S OWN WHIM…ALL OF THIS IS PRECISELY THAT WHICH FITS NO CLASSIFICATION, AND WHICH IS CONSTANTLY KNOCKING ALL SYSTEMS AND THEORIES TO HELL. AND WHERE DID OUR SAGES GET THE IDEA THAT MAN MUST HAVE NORMAL, VIRTUOUS DESIRES? WHAT MAN NEEDS IS ONLY HIS OWN INDEPENDENT WISHING, WHATEVER THAT INDEPENDENCE MAY COST AND WHEREVER IT MAY LEAD.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In today’s world our idea of freedom largely revolves around the ability to satisfy certain needs and desires. We feel free if we can gain the kind of employment we desire, buy the things we want, and engage in a wide range of behavior, as long as it does not harm others. According to this concept, freedom is something essentially passive—it is given and guaranteed to us by our government (often by not meddling in our affairs) and various social groups.
There is, however, a completely different concept of liberty. It is not something that people grant us as a privilege or right. It is a state of mind that we must work to attain and hold on to—with much effort. It is something active and not passive. It comes from exercising free will. In our day-to-day affairs much of our actions are not free and independent. We tend to conform to society’s norms in behavior and thinking. We generally act out of habit, without much thought as to why we do things. When we act with freedom, we ignore any pressures to conform; we step beyond our usual routines. Asserting our will and our individuality, we move on our own.
Let us say we have a career that affords us enough money to live comfortably and offers us a reasonable future. But this job is not deeply satisfying; it doesn’t lead us anywhere we want to go. Perhaps we also have to deal with a boss who is difficult and imperious. Our fears for the future, our comfortable habits, and our sense of propriety will compel us to stay on. All of these factors are forces that limit and confine us. But at any moment we could let go of the fear and leave the job, not really certain where we are headed but confident we can do better. In that moment we have exercised free will. It initiates from our own deepest desire and need. Once we leave, our mind must rise to the challenge. To continue on this path, we have to take more independent actions, because we cannot depend on habits or friends to see us through. Free action has a momentum of its own.
Many will argue that this idea of active freedom is basically an illusion. We are products of our environment, so they say. If people become successful, it is because they benefited from certain favorable social circumstances—they were in the right place at the right time; they got the proper education and mentoring. Their willpower played a part, no doubt, but a small part. If circumstances were different, so the argument goes, these types would not have had the success they had, no matter how strong their willpower.
All kinds of statistics and studies can be trotted out to support this argument, but in the end this concept is merely a product of our times and the emphasis on passive freedom. It chooses to focus on circumstance and environment, as if the exceptionally free actions of a Frederick Douglass could also be explained by his physiology or the luck he had in learning to read. In the end, such a philosophy wants to deny the essential freedom we all possess to make a decision independent of outside forces. It wants to diminish individuality—we are just products of a social process, they imply.
Understand: at any moment you could kick this philosophy and its ideas into the trashcan by doing something irrational and unexpected, contrary to what you have done in the past, an act not possibly explained by your upbringing or nervous system. What prevents you from taking such action is not mommy, daddy, or society, but your own fears. You are essentially free to move beyond any limits others have set for you, to re-create yourself as thoroughly as you wish.
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