Freedom Is the Luck of Buying a Pig in a Poke
In a world in which risk is reduced to the absolute minimum and the business of fear generates billions in profits, people search for the experience of freedom.
Yet what supposedly sets them free — such as the addiction to gambling or alcohol — binds them once again.
Even the pursuit of pushing beyond boundaries, which they experience in extreme situations such as running a marathon, free climbing or parkour, makes them dependent on the next thrill.
True freedom, however, does not reveal itself in calculated encounters with limits or artificial intoxication. It reveals itself in the courage to choose something whose outcome is uncertain. Freedom is the luck of buying a pig in a poke.
Thus, it is not the person who chooses their studies according to the greatest probable benefit for the life that follows who is free, but the one who follows their inner desire.
Is freedom unreasonable? I would say, to the highest degree, yes. Even though Immanuel Kant stands diametrically opposed to me with his statement: “Freedom is insight into necessity.”
Is it not the case that reason, which dictates how we are to protect and prepare ourselves against the impositions and vicissitudes of life, deprives us to the greatest extent of the luck of freedom?
But by freedom I do not mean blindly following my desires and needs. Freedom means the luck of encountering the unexpected. Life is an adventure, and only when I allow myself to face the vicissitudes of life without a safety net or a second line of defence, without thereby taking the risk of harming others through my life, can I truly experience freedom.
For that is the crux of what addictions offer: they destroy the experience of the luck of freedom because what they offer belongs to the realm of the predictable. However deeply the addict may be dragged into the abyss by their addiction, they still hope for a good ending. Yet that is precisely the fallacy of staged freedom. For freedom is not a guarantee of a good ending, but permission for a free beginning.
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