16 March

People sell us the idea that we need to be free ‘from’ things. Free from rules, free from taxes, free from work, free from obligations, free from gravity, free from uncomfortable emotion, free from challenge. But...I think it’s our connections and ties that make us free. Nobody is less free than somebody whose connections and ties to others are cut away. It’s why the worst punishment for most humans is solitary confinement. Which if you believe the freedom-from people, should be paradise. Put another way, it’s another false opposition, freedom and obligation. Our obligations make us free. You don’t have to choose between selfishness and altruism. What is good for you is, at the same time, what is good for others too.