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Hard bondage is coerced and abusive, while soft bondage is when we choose our imprisonment, restricting ourselves, or self-enslaving.
Often there is an aspect of survival in subjugation (soft bondage): the position will help me emotionally, socially, or economically traverse the world’s hardships.
It is familiar to imagine a destitute wife reliant on a callus, abusive husband. But we can also consider the Knight or Soldier, who offers allegiance and loyalty. In both positions, they must self-abnegate and tolerate 1,000 cuts against their personhood to maintain their status.
While the examples are extreme ranges of context, disposition, and agency, we must consider what is voluntary versus compulsory (or obligatory).
The knight undertakes strife for God and King, gaining personal valor, purpose, and authority: the tribe promotes the sacrifice. The dominated individual’s sacrifice is seen not as a sacrifice but as permitted subjugation or failure of choice, thus not a gain or loss to the tribe.
In either case, the role of the submission (self-bondage), according to Erich Fromm, is a choice to escape freedom; that is, the freedom from making choices.
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While uncertainty is a hallmark of rational thought, people and institutions crave bold confidence and decisive action.
Socially, the repercussions of slowing down, pondering, and thinking are seen as indecisive and wishy-washy, which undermines the authority of a leader.
Making wise decisions requires time, and quality forecasting involves information. Which leaders cannot afford lest they lose their leadership.
Unfortunately, humans persistently promote hubristic myopia because we cannot cope with indeterminacy.
(“Acting on pretend knowledge is often the preferred solution.” Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast, and Slow)
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The “dizziness of freedom” produces anxiety, according to Kirkegaard.
When you can do anything, you open access to a surplus of choices, “the possibility of possibility,” from which uncertainty blossoms: which decision will lead to happiness?
Kierkegaard says empowerment comes from ownership (taking responsibility) and making a choice: to restrict your “freedom” by choosing frees you from anxiety. This can be called a “leap of faith,” when you realize that more pondering of the problem is a problem to decide and act creates relief.
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If you know the past and the present, your chances of predicting the future are strong.
However, when you don’t understand the past, and the present is chaotic, why would you -metaphorically- till your fields or build new things? Why make a long-term consistent effort?
You may be equally well off speculating if no sense can be made of the world: it is all risk and chaos.
Choosing to labor without high odds of success versus not laboring with an equal likelihood of success proves the creator insane to toil in times of upheaval.
Some people reduce the world. Logically, their frivolity makes sense, yet the absurdity of the creator will be the ones building our future, even as the gambler leeches from productive men and machines.
As well, there will be some who do neither: neither risk nor build, but remain frozen, perhaps intellectually dense and action sparse, abiding in the currents.
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There is another probable version of you that you could choose. This is the other you, the potential you.
You could continue choosing the most unlikely version of yourself until you move into the improbable: you choose your way out of reality. Yet, we tend to have elasticities that snap us back into a recognizable self.
It is only the courageous, or the crazy, who can continue beyond the probable to become something entirely other.
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In our society, we don’t “do” things in a classical sense of taking action to “make something.”
We “choose” things in order to become ourselves, we don’t “make” ourselves.
We don’t discern, so much as decide and then have consumer regret. And then choose anew.
{from Matthew Crawford}
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We think we are free because we recognize an impulse to do something and then choose whether or not to do it. If so, then we are choosing to fulfill our desire, which looks like a choice freely made.
Did we freely choose our desires?
If they are manipulated and controlled at a subconscious, libidinal level, to be truly free we must rewire our desire.
From Yuval Noah Harari
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You can gather advice, hear out your friends and family, see where the weather blows, and heed your gut. At some point, you decide, mainly because you can no longer deal with the indecision.
It is easy afterward to use a personal decision as an alignment tool: return to those whose advice aligned with your gut, and endear them to you by praising their wisdom.
They may feel endearment, a warm glow, and then start advising you constantly.
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An analogy to life through art: the path to completion is always more effort, more thinking, more networking, and, of course, more rebuilding and refinement of the object and practice. And yet sometimes you simply fail, and the unfinished piece is the archive of failure.
There is a moment that tells you this process/object/relationship can never be salvaged, and yet some of the greatest works are when you irrationally push through.
Yet, this is also a recipe for burnout.
Distinguishing between the two is the art.
True failure is not recognizing when failure is inevitable.
