Freedom in the 21st Century (or should you have gotten out of bed this morning?)

Albert Camus wrote that, “there is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide”. At the tie, he was right. But in the 21st century, where information and experience move at the speed of life, that question is outdated. Today, the only really serious philosophical question is whether to get out of bed in the morning.

You see, we are the first people in the whole of human history that staying in bed is a real possibility for. If you live in a technologically advanced society, you can earn money and spend it from the comfort of your sheets. The most basic business of being a human in society is accessible from bed–food, sleep, income, social interaction, clothes, and shelter. If you don’t want to, you no longer have to leave. Even twenty years ago, I would have had to get up to attain those things. Now, I don’t.

Except…I have spent all day in bed. Easily attending to my wants, lazily fulfilling any need. And the crippling feeling of atrophy is horrifying. It’s miserable. I could never permanently exist that way.

Hamlet asked “to be or not to be”. In Shakespeare’s monologue, the Danish prince is asking Camus’ question. Is the suffering and absurdity of existence worth it? Should we go through the trials and tribulations of life and take the rewards and pitfalls as they come? Or should we opt out and get rid of all that messy want and complicated need?

In Shakespeare’s time, if you picked the first option, you lived. You continued to be. And if you picked the second option, you ceased to be. You died.

But in our time, the circumstances are different. We can pick the second option. Easily. And without having to do it permanently or having to face the consequences of not getting what we bargained for (either hell or non-existence). We do opt out. We spend days in bed. Addressing our every want immediately, totally free of trials, tribulation, and suffering….but it makes us all miserable. Does that mean that today’s people have collectively decided to be instead of not to be? Or did we just shorten the issue from a lifelong problem to a day-to-day dilemma and start asking ourselves “to do or not to do” instead?

If we just shortened the dilemma, getting to make that choice everyday makes 21st century humans more free than we’ve ever been in society before. But that same choice tricks us into thinking we are not.

Freedom is a lack of a sense of inevitability. And for the first time in human history, doing something is not inevitable.

The new question, the “to do or not to do” question is still a question of whether suffering is really worth it. If you get out of bed, and go out and do something with your life today, you are more free than the person who stayed in bed. Your day is less inevitable. But you are also a lot less safe. Your comfort, your security, your happiness–none of that is inevitable either. Wants and needs and desires are snarling in your face, with you holding a chance of taming them instead of a guarantee. So you are forced to ask yourself, daily — is your freedom really worth the possibility of suffering?

Freedom is a tantalizing word all over the world, but especially in the USA. People salivate over it, tattoo it on their arms, declare on their Facebook profiles that all they want out of life is to be a truly free man. That being a free man is the same as being a happy man, that only through freedom can someone really thrive at being.

A truly free person is someone whose life isn’t inevitable at all. But there are some aspects of my life that I, personally, want to seem inevitable. I want it to seem inevitable that I will have food on my plate tomorrow and the day after that, that my best friend will be my maid of honor, that I will graduate from college. These are inevitabilities I have set up for myself, inevitabilities I thrive under. In fact, getting to set my own constraints on my freedom is one of the reasons I choose it. It’s one of the reasons I get out of bed in the morning.