events we don’t enjoy; traveling not because we want to but because we want
to be able to say we went. Compulsive behavior aimed at experiencing more
stuff is not freedom—again, it’s kind of the opposite.
Third thing: an inability to identify, tolerate, and seek out negative
emotions is its own kind of confinement. If you feel okay only when life is
happy and easy-breezy-beautiful-Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not
free. You are the opposite of free. You are the prisoner of your own
indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own
emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external
comfort or validation that may or may not ever come.
Fourth—because, fuck it, I’m on a roll: the paradox of choice. The more
options we’re given (i.e., the more “freedom” we have), the less satisfied we
are with whatever option we go with.^13 If Jane has to choose between two
boxes of cereal, and Mike can choose from twenty boxes, Mike does not have
more freedom than Jane. He has more variety. There’s a difference. Variety is
not freedom. Variety is just different permutations of the same meaningless
shit. If, instead, Jane had a gun pointed to her head and a guy in an SS
uniform screaming, “Eat ze fuckin’ zereal!” in a really bad Bavarian accent,
then Jane would have less freedom than Mike. But call me up when that
happens.
This is the problem with exalting freedom over human consciousness.
More stuff doesn’t make us freer, it imprisons us with anxiety over whether
we chose or did the best thing. More stuff causes us to become more prone to
treating ourselves and others as means rather than ends. It makes us more
dependent on the endless cycles of hope.
If the pursuit of happiness pulls us all back into childishness, then fake
freedom conspires to keep us there. Because freedom is not having more
brands of cereal to choose from, or more beach vacations to take selfies on, or
more satellite channels to fall asleep to.
That is variety. And in a vacuum, variety is meaningless. If you are
trapped by insecurity, stymied by doubt, and hamstrung by intolerance, you
can have all the variety in the world. But you are not free.
Real Freedom
The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom, is through
self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your
life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life.
This is not only real freedom, this is the only freedom. Diversions come
and go. Pleasure never lasts. Variety loses its meaning. But you will always be