We attempted to discuss the topic: How Are We Free?  The topic is perennially compelling.  A sense of agency is what it means to be a self.  To the extent that one is a self, one feels his or her own agency, — one believes that one is free.

I recognize that I’ve prejudiced the matter, put my finger on the scale.  In truth, to say anything, to utter a single word about this or anything else presumes that the speaker is asserting a linguistic description of phenomena, — and that is an exercise of judgment, of freedom.

Our discussion was frustrating none the less.  Every one lives a life that is  prolific with the exercise of freedom, and yet there is the materialistic point of view that entails no respite from the hegemony of cause and effect.  If that were our only means of describing reality, freedom seems to be ruled out. Every moment, every act would be entailed in its predecessor.

Our discussion was encumbered, frustrated by materialist vocabulary that cast doubt on the bare possibility of freedom.  Is that feeling that one is free identical with the fact of freedom?  Or is the feeling merely a necessary illusion?

A writer of one of our prep essays opined that we are manifestly unfree due to the number of decisions, those actions which we have taken over time, by which the bounds of our life have been shaped.  Every decision  is causal narrowing the scope of future possibilities

A reasoned argument can be made that genuine choice is ruled out.  Similarly reason may be used to show that unanticipated outcomes, serendipitous results often accrue from chains of mundane life decisions.

Here is the list of concatenating effects that inexorably restrain one’s freedom according to the writer.

The moment I consider freedom, I think of myself as trapped in an elaborately locked cell:

I have a job I cannot leave

I have children I love

I have a wife I love even more

I have a mortgage

I have an injured knee

I am scared of change

I am ignorant of many things

I believe in God

I have friends, family, and an elderly neighbour.

Each of these is a lock I have placed on my cell.

I would say that if one desires, exercises one’s “freedom” of self- understanding in the mode of unfreedom, — then that is what one will get.

I’d respond to the writers lament of life in his locked cell:

1. Does not your job feed, clothe and shelter you?
2. Your children are a your legacy that you could be proud of.
3. Is not your wife your best friend, and companion?
4. The mortgage makes you a stake holder in your community.
5. The injured knee means that you are human, as vulnerable as any other mammal.
6. Fear of change can be productive, motivational.  After all everything that lives, will die.
7. Chafing over your ignorance?  Since you are not a god, there are many things you will never know.
8. Speaking of God, any deity worth the designation is the unknowable, utterly unlike you.
9. Friends, family, and elderly neighbor mean that you need never be alone.

In conclusion I offer this superlative tune as a final word on the exercise of freedom:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2py56b

Desperado

By The Eagles

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
You been out ridin’ fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow

Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can’t get

Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late

Writer(s): Glenn Frey, Don Henley

This song was the last one which the band performed live. They played it as the closing number of their last concert during “History of the Eagles” tour. The show took place in Bossier City, Louisiana, on the 29th of July 2015. Glenn Frey died six months later.