The Lannister News Network

The only people who seemingly don't have freedom are those who have convinced themselves they don't have any, but even they are free to change their path at will. There is always a choice. Without freedom there would be no good or bad choices, but only people acting out predetermined paths.

There can be good and bad choices without free will. Unless you're talking about morally judging the person, in which case, no, there isn't. Hitler was not a bad person. He was simply a person, who was destined to do bad things.

People who do bad things should still suffer consequences, and people who do good should still be rewarded, but the only difference in these people are their genetics and their life experiences. Given the same exact genes, the same exact experienced in the same exact world with the same exact perspective, we would all do the the exact same thing.

Thing is, there are trillions of variations. Even between two siblings their experiences quickly become quite different. Being born the oldest or youngest can affect your personality and future decisions and that is just one of countless factors.

I am a big believer in destiny, but I also believe we have a choice... the choice to discover and achieve our destiny, or to not do so. I believe that many people in the mistaken belief of free will simply choose the latter, never daring to achieve what they are fully capable of, living a day to day existence.

Freedom has become the biggest deceit of them all... an impotent freedom of rights and morals, of artificial social barriers. Our destinies are laid out before us in our genes and in our environment, the only choice we have is whether we will pursue them.

We are deceived and confused by the muddled "freedom of choice," when we should really be striving for freedom of potential.

No matter which theory you choose to believe to, either destiny, free will, freedom of choice or freedom of potential or anything else, you choose to believe it. You can only be free: free to do whatever you choose to do.

The point is about knowing that you're choosing, i.e. to be rational and aware. My recommendation is to choose what you think will make you happy of your choice.

In my case, I choose the freedom to be myself. It's a theory that works even when wrong...

Technically Jerdge one can also believe they can fly when they jump off a building. So from a rational perspective all choices and all beliefs are not equal.

I was talking of what you believe about your freedom, i.e. if you think you have it, you don't, destiny rules etc.

There are degrees of freedom. True freedom can never be acquired because it would require absolute mastery over all aspects of the universe. True control/slavery is simpler to obtainl because rather than controlling the universe, only the individual must be controlled and there's a number of ways to do that with psychology, physiology, social and intellectual constructions such as the economic and political systems. In my world, no person is near "being free".

What happens in vagueness,stays in vagueness.

Tywin, do you drive a Prius?