Who Are We?

Freedom is a simple concept - the power of determining one's own actions. However, it seems that though this is an easy concept to grasp, one is never actually free. There are laws to obey and rules to obey within laws. If one had the rights to experience freedom completely, this would infer that all laws would be obliterated. The question to ask yourself about freedom, is whether or not freedom should mean you are completely free to make your own decisions or if we should have restrictions.

The fact is that not only do we have laws that restrict us from making our own decisions, we also have ideals embedded into our morals that suggests what is right and wrong and what we should and should not do. These things are our restrictions. Our parents teach us what decisions we should make and though as we grow older, we also grow out of some of them, we still base our actions on those beliefs.

Habit is also a factor in our freedom, it suggests to us subconsciously that we really don't make our decisions. We drive to the grocery store the same way every time, without even thinking about it. We put our pants on the same leg first every time and chew on the same side of our mouth. Its one of the factors in the scheme of things that force our minds to make certain decisions.

Our surroundings also decide how we should behave. Obviously when we are around our parents, we will decide to do things that we wouldn't do in front of friends and when we are with friends we will do things that our parent would look down upon. It is simply a way of keeping people from getting certain impressions of us that would be seen as negative. When we are around our superiors, such as a boss or a teacher, we reserve ourselves. We force ourselves to seem intelligent and act as a well bodied adult. However, that does not mean that this is our true face. We may be loud and vulgar but presenting ourselves as mature adults allows the people around us to perceive us as though we are something we might not actually be.

We are not "free". Freedom would suggest that we base our actions, decisions, and thoughts on our on basis, not the standards and regulations that have been set by our families, friends, and even government. It can be assumed that even though we grow older, we will still never be as "free" as the definition of freedom. We are only free in the sense that we are allowed to make only a certain choice that is a part of legality, belief, environment, and morality.

If there is one school of psychological thought that agrees with my beliefs, I suppose it would have to be humanist perspective.

I don't believe there is a probable way to increase ones freedom. There will always be others that would have different view than yours and try and force them on you. The only possible way to increase ones freedom is to live on a deserted island with no other human beings around.