[BROOK]

Coming from a jester? or how about a talking about a little existential Freedom.....Jester that I am this should be really funny stuff

Some of the stuff I have contributed of the over 2600 posts here..that you have decided is such a problem here

Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom, from an existential perspective, cannot be separated from responsibility. With freedom comes responsibility. Yet, it is common for many people to seek freedom while trying to avoid responsibility. While, at times, it appears that people may be able to succeed at this, there remains a psychological consequence. This consequence is often not very noticeable, but may find expression through guilt, anxiety, depression, or even anger.

Existential freedom is not the same things as freedom in the political sense we often think of it in America. In fact, political freedom could be view to be a rather shallow, though not unimportant, type of freedom. A person can be existentially free despite not being politically free, and a person can avoid embracing their existential freedom despite being offered great political freedoms.


Ways of Avoiding Responsibility

There are several common examples of how people avoid responsibility in American culture. Conformity is one good example. Americans pride themselves on being autonomous individuals to the point of idealizing individualism. However, upon closer analysis, Americans find extremely creative ways of giving up their freedom. Americans conform through blind allegiance to various organizations and institutions including political parties and religious institutions. This is not to say that being dedicated to either of these are bad. In fact, often they can lead to very positive outcomes. The problem comes with blind allegiance where a person gives up their responsibility to critically think through the beliefs, perspectives, and values of the organization. When this happens, the individual's values are no longer authentic.

When a person gives their allegiance to an external belief structure, they may go in one of several directions. First, they often will become very rigid in their allegiance to the organization or structure to which they have committed. This type of conformity can be seen through various forms of fundamentalism -- religious, political, psychological systems, etc.

Second, they may present as being very committed to a belief systems or organization, but they feel very comfortable bending the rules where it does fit their desires. It becomes easy to bend the rules because they are not really committed to the underlying values system. However, when a person is deeply committed to authentic moral or value principles, they are less willing to act in ways which contradict these principles. The principles are authentic.

Another way avoid responsibility can occur through the belief that one is powerless. There can be many factors which are seen to render a person powerless. A person can perceive themselves as a victim of their environment, of various supernatural or spiritual forces, their unconscious, or a victim of their biology/genes. While an existential approach will recognize that all of these factors may influence a person, none of them render a person powerless or completely control them.