Freedom

On a second thought, who could be really free ?

Lovers of philosophy would recognize this has been an eternal question. The traditional analogy is: a falling stone would believe it is free to move - although in reality everything it does is because of gravity.

And, for the same reason, I could be blinded and my view could be inadvertently affected by my background, position, knowledge, or ignorance on a particular subject. When I laugh at someone for blindly following Karl Marx or Adolf Hitler, could it be the result of my reading too much Adam Smith and Winston Churchill ?

On this, until very recently, I was head-to-toe against Spinoza, who argued that even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. After writing this blog for 18 months or so, I find myself seeing things slightly differently, and become more close to the lens polisher.