Freedom

      I recently finished reading The Age of Reason by Sartre. I'm telling you this because if I don't tell you that I'm reading Sartre you won't know I'm reading Sartre, and a pretentious feeling of intellectually superior douche-baggery is half the fun of reading Sartre. On the subject of shamelessly bigging myself up, I'm also reading a book called Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, albeit very slowly.
      Anyway, now that you fully realise I'm all smart and with philosophy and stuff (and not at all one of those long haired pricks who think reading a couple of texts means they're suddenly enlightened), I'll get to the subject of today's post, which is freedom. Anyway, just so I don't look like a total dick I'll explain that The Age of Reason has a central theme of freedom, so I wasn't just randomly mentioning it. Quantum Computation and Quantum Information on the other hand has nothing to do with freedom, mentioning that was just me being a dick.
      So, what is freedom? Wiktionary defines it as "The state of being free", so that's not hugely useful. It goes on with some more definitions, but they're just as useful. I have always aspired to be as free as possible, particularly from responsibilities. But does the act of avoiding constrictions of my freedom in itself constrict my freedom? Urm, probably. You see, if I avoid marriage due to the implied responsibilities then I am less free than someone who does not avoid marriage. However, existentialism states that we are, in fact, profoundly free and hence responsible. One is always free to walk in front of traffic, staple one's toes together or lick the floor of a public toilet. We don't because it would be bloody stupid, though I don't think that's the phrasing existentialists tend to go with. But as bodies who have existence more fundamentally than essence, we are truly free. But being free to do anything means that not doing something is as much of an action as doing nothing, so avoiding marriage (and hence depriving some metaphorical poor person of my awesomeness) is an action that I am just as responsible for as if I did not.
      So, I might have got a tad lost somewhere in the middle, but basically you're free and responsible, but mostly you're free from having to read this train wreck of a post I'm responsible for.