Are you scared of freedom?
Most people who have been married, and then un-married, will know the difference between being controlled and being free.
The same may be true for those who have escaped overbearing parents, or who have freed themselves from an unreasonable boss – the individual experiences a transition from controlled, to free.
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
And yet there’s a line of thought that suggests that many of us may prefer to be controlled.
Esther Villar, for example, in her book The Manipulated Male, portrays men as beings who willfully give up their freedom in order to place themselves under the control of a dominating woman.
Mussolini, who led Italy under fascist control, reportedly said that “the people are tired of their freedom”
There may be, even, people that you and I have met, who seem to prefer being controlled than being free.
Why may this be?
According to Villar, men are conditioned to be controlled at an early age, by their mothers. Any act of submission and compliance is met with approval – a pat on the head – by the mum, and so men go out into the world seeking similar pats on the head in exchange for their submissiveness.
For Villar, this represents a shame, because man gives up the opportunity to live a life he could otherwise obtain, a kind of higher existence - a life of freedom.
The problems of compliance within a fascist system are obvious.
And we may will our friends to break free of someone or something controlling their lives, but should we really do this?
If the controlled state is one that so many choose to be in, why argue for anything else, why argue for freedom?
I think the argument for freedom over control may begin like this:
If we are controlled, we may find ourselves doing things we don’t want to do.
If we are free, we may have the opportunity to do things we do want to do.
And if our lives are the sum total of our actions, and the feelings the produce, that’s a pretty big distinction.
That the logical stand point, at least, but is logic enough to enable us choose being free over being controlled?
Villa’s suggestion that may be conditioned from an early age to choose submission over assertion is one chain we need to break.
Another is the limiting belief that we don’t deserve to be free. It takes a confident individual to believe that they deserve to be happy, to be able to do as they please, to measure their life by their own standards… and if we’ve already been controlled at some point in our lives, you can be sure our confidence isn’t at a level it should be.
And then there’s the fear.
It’s the fear of being on the verge of something great.
We may ask ourselves, “What will I do with my freedom?”
“Where will I go?”
“What will I see?”
“How will it feel?”
Why don’t we find out?