Orbis non sufficit
Monday, September 05, 2005
Katrina
I've always though Katrina was a pretty cool name. Too bad for the US that she's destroying her cities and killing her citizens. Sounds like New Orleans is a pretty crazy place to be at the moment.
Anyway I havn't posted for a while, so I thought i'd have a rant about the illusion of freedom. But first, I must say that bbq's in the park on saturdays for lunch is a grand idea and we should do it more often. As long as it's a decent day anyway, which hopefully we will be seeing more of now that spring is here. Sausages are gooood.
I had planned to be juggling just at the moment, but the fire twirling and juggling club decided it would be fun to twirl outside today. It's cold out there and I need a wall to practice my juggling against at the moment, so I decided to come blog and catch up on the news instead. Why don't our cities ever flood? Just because our predecessors were smart enough to build our cities above sea level we miss out? I should probably stop my wishing for a large-scale disaster eh? I might get it.
Anyway I have 20 minutes till I can head up to the airport lounge and scavenge free vegetarian food from the good people of Wholefoods, so onto the discussion of freedom.
We all crave freedom, I believe. In many senses it is what drives the human race to bigger and better things: freedom from financial constraints, freedom from physical constraints, even freedom from our own ignorance (A roundabout way of looking at that I know, but it's valid :p) or freedom from helplessness. Perhaps it is not so much freedom as power, however I believe the two things are closely related anyway. Each freedom we gain grants us a little more power over our own lives which is something we all desire.
Now to the illusion. Obviously we don't want absolute freedom (Though really that's a stupid concept, the very idea makes little sense), as we require certain boundaries in order to properly function. I mean, if you had total freedom to go anywhere, where would you go? Think of what such total freedom means first. It means you could get there easily, and be able to spend as much time there as you liked. So really this means that you have no particular reason to be anywhere at anytime. I think a person would really be quite lost if they found themselves in that situation. I think the first thing they would do would be to find themselves a reason to be somewhere, thereby surrendering a degree of their freedom.
Anyway I guess my point is that we don't really want freedom at all, we want purpose.
I've always though Katrina was a pretty cool name. Too bad for the US that she's destroying her cities and killing her citizens. Sounds like New Orleans is a pretty crazy place to be at the moment.
Anyway I havn't posted for a while, so I thought i'd have a rant about the illusion of freedom. But first, I must say that bbq's in the park on saturdays for lunch is a grand idea and we should do it more often. As long as it's a decent day anyway, which hopefully we will be seeing more of now that spring is here. Sausages are gooood.
I had planned to be juggling just at the moment, but the fire twirling and juggling club decided it would be fun to twirl outside today. It's cold out there and I need a wall to practice my juggling against at the moment, so I decided to come blog and catch up on the news instead. Why don't our cities ever flood? Just because our predecessors were smart enough to build our cities above sea level we miss out? I should probably stop my wishing for a large-scale disaster eh? I might get it.
Anyway I have 20 minutes till I can head up to the airport lounge and scavenge free vegetarian food from the good people of Wholefoods, so onto the discussion of freedom.
We all crave freedom, I believe. In many senses it is what drives the human race to bigger and better things: freedom from financial constraints, freedom from physical constraints, even freedom from our own ignorance (A roundabout way of looking at that I know, but it's valid :p) or freedom from helplessness. Perhaps it is not so much freedom as power, however I believe the two things are closely related anyway. Each freedom we gain grants us a little more power over our own lives which is something we all desire.
Now to the illusion. Obviously we don't want absolute freedom (Though really that's a stupid concept, the very idea makes little sense), as we require certain boundaries in order to properly function. I mean, if you had total freedom to go anywhere, where would you go? Think of what such total freedom means first. It means you could get there easily, and be able to spend as much time there as you liked. So really this means that you have no particular reason to be anywhere at anytime. I think a person would really be quite lost if they found themselves in that situation. I think the first thing they would do would be to find themselves a reason to be somewhere, thereby surrendering a degree of their freedom.
Anyway I guess my point is that we don't really want freedom at all, we want purpose.
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