Hey, I've been following your channel for a bit over a year now. You're content is great and I very much appreciate this video. I like how you come with an academic approach that doesn't feel like you're specifically trying to sell me your views. It's a breath of fresh air
A: we will never be free it is not natural rule of law, rule of capital, and rule of nature, rule of consciousness. Freedom is a perception of one's self and the restrictions we can observe. How can we ever be free with the chains of space and time and the shackles of a morale compass... you are free to starve but you are also free to eat.
It’s almost as though for most there is an innate reliance on interaction and being deemed as a good person so for that, we are willing to sacrifice our freedom to appear satisfactory in the eyes of the world
Hey Sisyphus, would you consider putting the sources in the video description? Sometimes you mention a philosopher who I want to look up more on and I end up having to try and catch the name when you say it and I hope I spell it right in Google lol. Would be really helpful :)
Creativity is often born of constraint within a medium. But if that constraint is applied generally, it becomes restrictive. I do agree that most people don’t want freedom. It is too horrifying a thing to be able to do anything we want. Best to have to stick to the daily grind
Freedom is impossible. We exist within our bodies which have needs such as food, water, shelter. We work to keep ourselves fed and secure, to keep going until we can't anymore. To be free would be to reject life itself and seek enlightenment beyond human limitations
Reality itself is the one entity that is truly free. Those who live within, aren't and can never be. But that still doesn't mean that we should give up entirely on our quest for more freedom-that act is still significant in itself.
Personally, I'm so used to a rigid schedule and structure to my interactions with the world that sometimes freedom is jarring; it upsets me a bit that it feels like that. Not to say there's no joy in a more rigid life, it definitely lifts a burden when you know what you have to do.
Habits when used responsibly in a sense can be liberating, especially if it’s trivial things. When you make things like paying bills, brushing your teeth, etc a habit, you are moving it from conscious to unconscious thought. This frees up your more active conscious mind to consider things that are important to you and not easy to automate like creative thinking and art. There is of course a balance as habits can also be restrictive if it ends up being all you do every day. But that isn’t so much a problem with having habits at all but rather having too many habits that you don’t have time for anything not habitual
"Freedom signifies a relationship." Thank you for this commentary on freedom. Here are excerpts from the writings of Marshall Vian Summers on the topic of freedom. "Let me learn to be free so that I may join. Your independence from the past--past judgments, past wounds and past difficulties--gives you independence in the present. This is not to solidify your separation...but instead to enable you to join meaningfully in relationship. Let this be a tacit understanding. You can do nothing in the world without relationship. You can accomplish nothing; you can advance in no direction; you can realize no truth; you can contribute nothing of value without relationship. So as your independence from the past grows, thus does your promise for inclusion in the present and the future grow as well. For freedom is meant to empower you to join." (MVS, Steps to Knowledge)
"Relationship is not two bodies together. It is not two minds sharing the same ideas. It is spirits touching through minds and bodies. For what can be more valuable and more essential than when two people truly touch each other and give to each other even in the simplest of circumstances, in the simplest of gestures? This is the high point of human achievement." (Relationships & Higher Purpose, Marshall Vian Summers)
this is a SUPER interesting topic. thanks for covering it in such detail! The idea that every individual is their own slave/owner and how that plays into progressing capitalism is really crazy to think about! I also really love how simple yet sensible the analogy of our phones and social media being a new form of worship. quality video as always, thanks for helping me start my day off right :)
Great video on an interesting topic! I think the false consciousness created by neo-liberalism that we are the masters of out own destiny is an incredibly fascinating area. Definitely the book you have described seems to link to the idea that we ironically detach ourselves from our participation in capitalist society; it’s not even that we’re 100% brainwashed into believing capitalism is good, we are fatalistic about ourselves and our chance to overthrow capitalism as our own “personal project”. Because of this we continue to work within the system. It’s obviously a silly argument when right-wingers say things like “oh you hate capitalism but own an iPhone, hypocrite!”. However, there is a serious apathy towards attempting to change capitalism from those who are against it because they are necessarily constrained to participate within it just to subsist. I’d be curious to see how Byung Chul Han reacts to Zizek’s claim that buddhism is a vehicle for capitalism now, as the detachment from the self allows the individual to participate in capitalism without scruples.
@@handsomeboi3767 I disagree! I think it must be overthrown, personally, as reformism isn’t working. Highly recommend having a look at “social reform or revolution?” By Luxemburg and “what is to be done?” By Lenin if you want an idea of why reformism away from capitalism isn’t preferred.
There is no such thing as capitalism. You will always be subordibated by someone else. I think your obsession with the false notion of controlling one's destiny is very interesting in a childlike way though. Also, Zizek is basically just a liberal and admits as much. Then again, all "marxists" are just crypto liberals obsessed with "human liberation"
I completely see this system as fine. In fact, i dislike the current system because it doesn’t go far enough. Being the master and the slave empowers you to make your own decisions. Individual freedom is good because… well… using force is wrong.
This video hurt because oppressed can be oppressivor without changing the system that we have. The neoliberal economic system is designed for competition against each other. Sadly, we need an human empathy to make a system for everyone.
I've been following this political/philosophical Instagram account for a while that has, on more than one occasion, pointed out that in regards to work, spare time, and ties to local communities, the peasants of the ~10-15th Centuries had it a lot better than us living under feudalism than we do today in democracies. Farming itself did not take a 10+ person family 40 hours of working each week, communities were tighter, the Catholic Church had many feast days and combined with the kings kept society relatively well structured and peaceful (about as much as we can hope for today with high rates of crime and mass shootings, etc.), other than wars of course. This of course is a picturesque view of the medieval era and we are obviously much better off in terms of sanitation, medicine, and technology. That being said, it is interesting to consider that humans were had more of the "meaningful" freedoms and benefits of a closer-knit society under emperors and kings for thousands of years than modern humans living in small apartments and working 40 hours a week to break even each month.
Not to mention the average life expectancy of around 35 years. Or the rampant disease and filth that even the very rich lived with. Like your teeth? Back then you might actually get to enjoy having them, until you were about ten. No dentistry. No doctors, either. Or, how about the fact that 90% of the population was uneducated and had no skills to speak of other than farming, which was all done by hand? Does that sound groovy to you? Landowners could kill peasants for almost no reason. The church stole the people's money by selling them dispensations for their sins, which only the church could offer. 4 out of 5 babies never reached the age of three. Jolly old times, indeed. But then, if you ever read more than a few lines of text at a sitting, you'd likely know all of this. You. Are. An. Idiot. But that's okay, slick. Your generation is, almost to a certainty, already doomed. I'd much rather see you pay the price of losing your freedom, seeing as how inclined you are to offer it up so willingly, than any who come after you. That way at least three or four generations that follow you will not have to suffer the way you and your ilk likely will. FFS!
I find the ideas in this video strangely hopeful, despite the bleak description of the human subject under neoliberalism. These ideas describe a specific historical situation - our own - and do not try to describe any sort of human essence. They pose the question - this is what neoliberalism has done to you, what are you going to do about it? The fact that this question can be asked is the opening hope needs. We live in history and the future remains unknown. Neoliberalism will not last forever, no matter what its devotees think. Can we choose something better? To answer in the negative ignores the very structure of this description of what binds us. There are no guarantees. But there is possibility.
I've been ready to break this shit since I had to see people go hungry at my job. If I could I would let them take everything but, I bet they would look as shocked as if no one was there to check them out.
Really glad I stumbled upon this channel. Most of your videos make me think a lot, and I feel that's a positive change on my side. Gotta say, that analogy of mobile devices as 'mobile confessionals' really hit home. There are multiple times where I read about certain things and then to show solidarity with them, I pressed like. It's like saying 'I am supporting such and such, therefore anyone who sees this act in their front page should recognize me as a good person'. Really interesting train of thoughts. I still pressed like on your videos, though.
One time I had a dream that I woke up and realized everyone was being drugged to basically be ignorant to “what’s happening” I stopped taking my pill , and anxiously tried to convince my family to stop taking theirs. Then I started running. I ran and ran, and I got over a barb wire gate. When I jumped the gate, I looked around and saw emptiness, fire, a dessert of nothing. I turned around to see security guards calmly welcoming me , to take me back home. It’s like they allowed me to see that there was no life beyond the one I was forced into. I can’t escape. I wondered what it meant for about a year. One day I realized that it means… despite whatever’s going on in the world, or the universe, I just have to go with it. To use what I have and make a life of it. Enjoy it, even if I have to take the pill of ignorance, and give up freedom. Because freedom is nothing beyond what we already know. A void. Ignorance is truly bliss.
The short answer is "no". This immediately brings to mind "Why?" To which the short answer is "Complexity." Therefore, in the absence of being pressured to take on responsibility in order to retain freedoms that we enjoy we generally avoid it. This brings about the age old consequences of allowing such power to rest within the hands of a ruling class. When they take things too far people react with revolution which is always either squashed or becomes worse than the system that it usurped. On a long enough timeline people are going to have to learn that anarchy is the only solution but we need to be mature enough to not all kill each other when we get there. That's unfortunately impossible, it is kill or be killed out there, survival of the fittest and we didn't make the rules. We are basically nature's test subjects and she likes to watch us fight because it's how she improves herself.
This even connects to the process of fascist revolution, as well. Fascism only comes about in a society where rights are assumed to always exist, and where we don’t have to fight for them. And thus fascism grows without ever being addressed, using fear of an arbitrary subject for which people to explain their debt to and throw away responsibility. Love it when philosophy ties into other topics
I find myself agreeing with you, except when it comes to anarchy. It can't be the solution if it's unsustainable. I imagine it'll lead to a dynamic where it's those of us who aren't violence versus those of us who are more violent... eventually leading to a kind of the system we have now. I think an ideal system would be one that (actually, genuinely) serves the best interest of the majority not the few. But again, there are always assholes out there so it's probably impossible
I say fuck that. True anarchy or whatever utopia you subscribe to is probably impossible, but we should be getting as close as possible or just abandoning the societal experiment.
@@en7070 I think the point of anarchy is to discuarage assholery as much as possible, which honestly is the best goal to have. It's unsustainable because of moral qualms like "is it an asshole move to kill an asshole?" That make it so that any "true" anarchist society can't actually do any asshole fighting. It's why I'll never call myself an anarchist, but still follow all the tenets. We just need something slightly worse than anarchy so it can prop itself up permanently but still be a moral system.
You're ready to surrender your own purpose for someone elses? Merely to reassert what others do, following obediently along with the customs and presuppositions of your culture? This is fine, it seems to be what popular religion has been directed towards, where mythology is merely sociological and pedagogical rather than mystical. However there seem to be an urge within many to break free from routine of monotonous and stagnate living, from the deplorable and soulless cycle of alarm clock - shoving down breakfast - sitting in traffic - coffee in order to stay awake during labour hours - to getting home and sitting infront of the couch watching endless of entertainment of noise. To follow ones own bliss, in the words of Campbell, rather than the socially conditioned, preordained way, to enter the forest from our own individually chosen path, instead of the secure and well-trodden highway.
I definitely cant play valorant and listen to sysyphus at the same time. BTW love this type of topic, we can even correlate to the american gods argument. We change our gods from time to time
So breaking it down, we have disassociated our pursuit of happiness for the pursuit of capital in believing it leads to freedom (neoliberalism). And in a way, we have identified with the projects of chasing capital over the systematic and ultimate pursuit of actual free will. Similar to another video where our goals aren’t truly intrinsic, but extrinsic.
Liberty and freedom are like free will: a convenient way to ablate the perception of oneself as a brief vessel, doomed to die. Our agency in this world is laughably narrow and ineffectual. We're on a ride we didn't buy a ticket for, and we are firmly strapped in our seats, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times
People “want” to be free but don’t want the responsibility. They’ve been fooled into thinking they can pass off the responsibility to the government and continue to be free. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
I think that a lot of people want to have an illusion of freedom,but at the same time they are aware that they are responsible for bearing the weight of their own choices.If anything goes wrong,they have no one to blame but themselves and their own decisions.In my eyes,freedom is truly terrifying.It is unknown and full of potential.To not be shackled by others and your enviroment.That it why it is infinitely easier to just accept everything as it is.It is easier to criticize the misdeeds of society than to take active measures to change its structure.
Personally I'm fine with being free even though that means I have to take responsibility for my own actions because I think freedom is more valuable than being able to blame something else for my actions.
@@izzymosley1970 Short answer: By living in society, you forfeit some freedoms. Even many you feel you don't forfeit, the very perception of what you want is influenced by others, or even yourself, from your interactions with, or perception of expectations of, others. Freedom is best thought of on a spectrum. One can be more or less free but never truly free nor ever fully subjugated.
@@Unsensitive yes I do agree that by choosing to live in a society you do forfeit some of your freedoms but you still have free will and therefore take responsibility for your actions and that's the kind of freedom I was referring to.
Marx was really painting with a broad brush when we described the entrepreneur as someone who sees all relationships as instrumental. Though that may describe some people, my perspective is that having good relationships with people is a hallmark of success.
I really relate to the idea of "being in debt to capital". I often feel like I've been born blessed and society has given me many things but I have not given anything back. I am in debt with society, ... and the only way to pay this debt is by working. (is how I often feel) But the problem is, I am an ADHD boi, I can't have schedules and I can't do the same thing over and over, both things are essential to creating a career. For this reason, I'm not generally useful as a tool to generate capital. I'm a burden to my family. (is also how I often feel) Should I accept my freedom, and liberate myself from the debt I have with the capital, Or should I find a way to pay my debt?
No one really knows if they want freedom cause no one has ever really experienced freedom, and idt anyone ever will have true freedom. There will always something to bind us
But we cannot be truly free, we are constrained to the physical laws of our worlds. Even if we get rid of any mental constrain or debt, we are still trapped inside of a decaying body. Perhaps spiritual transcendence is the closest we can get to true freedom.
@@Zikato There is this author concerned with the topic of freedom. His name is Sommerset Maugham, and many of his works are focused on the attainment or liberation of the self. A particular book that touches on the subject is “Of Human Bondage” where a Philip Carey falls in love with Mildred. Is a sort of coming of the age, but thought the mains characters journey he is exposed to the idea of freedom in art, in spirituality, and through love. Is an interesting read and perhaps you can come to your own conclusions.
@@elierreyes9287 I don't see why people are shitting on spirituality. There's a major difference between having a spiritual code of honor and conforming to what other's demand we conform into.
I loved (and hated) this video. Im reading a lot of things related from different autors, but with this video it kindda all just clicked together. Thanks ;)
Freedom is a fleeting feeling. It’s that sense of ultimate satisfaction from discipline, self-control, and sacrifice in the pursuit of nobility and truth. We shouldn’t rely on government or others to give us freedom. We can only achieve it through our individual actions guided by our value structures.
As one of the Ascended Masters once said, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" Nana na nana nana nana na de da. Me and Bobby McGeeeeee
One thing I want to be freed from is myself. I'm the worst enemy of myself. I hold myself back. I know full freedom in this life is impossible, but I just want to be beyond myself a little. And being that makes me happier. I don't want to die with regrets only. That's it.
I was that edgy teen you always mention when I was younger. But I think it was an important part of who I am today, its part of the reason why nihilism and Fredrick niches theory have become a big part of what I believe and who I am.
You talk of the only signs of class antagonism being weak exclamations of platitudes but class antagonism goes both ways, mass austerity being legislated by governments to pay for recessions for example are extremely violent and destructive class antagonism from the top onto the poorest! From the other end just in the last few years we have seen the largest strike in human history (the Indian farmers against Modi's neoliberal reforms) and the most mass insurrectionary activity in the US in history (BLM) Love your videos and thought it worth mentioning!
I think if you enjoyed Han's idea, it would be better if you check out his book "The Burnout Society" and the accompanying documentary here in youtube.
I find that work indeed instills the worth. It’s almost obvious any leisure we haven’t earned we can’t enjoy. See in my eyes it’s a virtue to be both owner and the laborer. to be the bearer of your own fruits. nothing compares to that, not even being a dictator.
I have been living as what I would consider somewhat free for a couple of years now and I dislike it. I have dropped out of college two years ago and have been living quite freely ever since. Being quite privileged financially means that I don't have to work or find a solution to monetary issues. This whole time spent reflecting on what I want to do and what I want to be has been productive yet discouraging. Trying to find my place in this capitalistic system has taken a toll on my mental health. I have wondered if partaking in it was even worth it. I have wondered if my own interests even mattered in the grand scheme of things. I have wondered if I should rather choose a humanitarian job rather than one that pays well and that I like. The freedom I have had, the never ending time thinking has taken me to many places philosophically and spiritually. Being aware of all of these intricacies you cite in your video makes you feel powerless in front of this huge system. It resonated with me when you spoke of our self projects and blaming ourselves for the state of this world we cannot change alone. I believe our society has influenced us to become self involved, self serving and too individualistic. We all feel alone and small in the face of the many issues our world faces. I have often wished to have been forced by my parents into a certain career, I've wished of circumstances that would force me to do things instead of wondering what I am doing and why. This subject is incredibly difficult and fascinating to learn about, this video was amazing. You have opened up my mind to do even more thinking than usual.
We want to have the illusion of choice, but we don't want to be free. We want the freedom to transfer the blame to a superior being or supernatural phenomenon when we do wrong.
I would argue that science has done a topnotch job of harming more people than religion. Hell, there are plenty of godless people in positions of power who have done the same thing. The vax comes to mind..
Freedom from what is the question. There is no such thing as perfect freedom, in the real world gaining one type of freedom always requires sacrificing another. Being a loner frees you from the difficulties other people can cause, but takes away your freedom to form potentially good and fulfilling relationships. Quitting your job might free up your time but take away your freedom to afford things that make life more enjoyable, or to care for your loved ones. Achieving any difficult goal requires giving up much of your time and energy, but might free you from the pain of failure or regret of having never tried. Getting anything that you desire will always require voluntarily binding your existence in one way or another. To have total freedom from everything would be to have a totally empty life (which, knowing human nature, would ironically leave you bound to boredom and depression, so perhaps total freedom truly cannot exist). So the key in my mind is not to pursue the fool's errand of total freedom, but to figure out which specific things you are happy or at least willing to be bound by and which things you desperately want to be free from, then pursue a life that fits those priorities.
Can you talk about what your background is/what you studied/ or what you do for work cause I'm astounded how you're so knowledgeable on all these topics.
What’s the chance you know the song Panopticon by Silent Planet? Edit: if you haven’t, the lyrics ring very similarly to a segment of this video. If you listen to the song, be warned, it’s quite heavy metal.