SELF-IMPOSED RITUALS ARE FREEDOM

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The political science perspective of freedom and liberty is to assume absolute autonomy within Individuals and to provide it with basic civil liberties within the paradigm of state. It basically gives the individual full authority to decide what is best for him and then act upon it. But a philosophically engaging question to ask would be how one can know what is good for oneself? 

One answer to this is blind Hedonism. Immediate gratification. But is it always the good choice is obviously a debatable question. Another answer to this is delayed gratification, The path of moralism. But, to what extent one should delay one's gratification is a debate again. Finally, a highly spiritual answer would be what Shrimad Bhagvat Geeta is to not think about what is good for yourself at all. Rather to engage oneself in an action which is your only right. The action to be guided by a collective consciousness called Dharma, which decides what is moral in a particular situation. 

A lot of questions and answers regarding freedom but there should be a starting assumption that can be used as a starting point. Let us assume that Life as it is, and its quality, is to be valued and the more it is valued, the better it is for an individual. 

What makes a life better quality-wise? Let us take physical health and mental health to be the paradigm of quality of life. A sound physical health and a sound physical health is the parameter of good life. Then, Actions that one should do is exercise and meditate perhaps. Notice, how the language shifted from "can do" to "should do". And that is the subject of philosophy.

There are two aspects of Freedom. There is absolute decision making about life by individual and then there is contingency. Contingency is when there is no option available to you and you have to ask in a particular way. The basic assertion I am doing may be, we are never ever fully free when we have options to choose from and then we choose something. Because Choice is never a choice independent in thin air. One's choice is informed by one's biases, one's socio-economic conditions, one's experiences and one's material reality. So, it seems really that you are choosing to sleep till late, but it is not really you but your social conditioning. 

Then What is Freedom really? If even in the most free-looking decisions, you are bound to choose the social conditioning, when we can say that we have made a truly free choice. In my opinion, A truly free choice is so true that there is no choice involved. It is really the contingent option, that makes us free. It is the ultimate discipline of not choosing at all and opting for something which is an absolute necessity is what makes us free. 

In other words, Freedom of choice is really valuable when it is freedom from choice. Freedom is truly a bondage and the desire to be free is really in itself a bondage. The truly free individuals act upon a discipline. To call it a discipline might seem too harsh. It is really ritualism. True freedom is following a self-imposed ritual. It can range from having a small cup of coffee for your head early in the morning, to some more rigorous rituals like reading to training or anything else. True freedom is not anarchy, True freedom is actually a state like feature with highly flexible nature of state. Anarchy is where all freedoms are suspended by virtue of its own internal contradiction of the concept of freedom. 

Freedom has an internal contradiction that absolutely free choice does not exist. Then, only contingency or self-discipline can take the place of Freedom. Ritualism is freedom. The rituals should be self-imposed, variable in time and space and they should respect the basic tenets of quality of life, that is physical and mental health. 

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