The Unfree Freedom
One day, Mekar was unexpectedly suggested by algorithm on the headline of Youtube to play a content deciphering “freedom”. She suddenly clicked it and started watching it. As a worker in a mid company in a metropolis in her country, she never cared about the problem, what freedom is. She only needed to work, to earn money, to do mundane activities, to go shopping, to spend her time with her friends. Her trivial routines were always done without contemplating, without thinking, or evaluating. She did all of her activities as most people did.
While watching the video, Mekar was thinking of it hard. “How complex this world is,” she murmured. She was faced on a question, “Do you truly believe in freedom?” The simple question forced her thought to reflect on it rigorously for several minutes. She realized that she until now never tried to examine every problem in the world, including the recent problem which she investigated, freedom. She promptly sidestepped her mundane activites, her trivial routines which often alienated her from the act of contemplating.
“Do I really have freedom?” Mekar had tried to solve the question by being aware of what she had done recently. The video of couse did not explain completely, only stimulated its viewers to proceed to think of it. She realized that she primordially existed in the world without her freedom, with no choice, but she kept trying to avoid picking up the simple conclusion. Her mind and her feeling were convoluted. She saw the cause-and-effect things as the substantial tree of the free activities.
Tracking her simple daily activites, when and how she did her biological needs, she arrived at the confusing ideas that she was only prisoner of the mechanical routines — when she took a pee, why she felt hungry, how she uncontrollably fell asleep, and the like. Actually she did not “do”, but she was forced “to do”. Certainly it does not seem as the activities of a free person, but of a prisoner who is locked up in a box of the absurd causality.
On her mind, Mekar rationalized everything, chiefly how the video could be on the headline. She ruminated it. If the video had not been on the headline, would she have watched the video? Surely, she wouldn’t. It really means she did not choose “to want to choose” it. How could she really believe in freedom which all the time she relied on it before? Consequently, she perceived the fact that she could choose what she wanted, but she couldn’t choose which willingness she would want. She cannot do it, can’t she?
Sure, she chose to play the video, and her choice was grounded on her willingness, but why she wanted it was the problem of (un)freedom. “Do I genuinely have freedom?” enquired Mekar.[]