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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power. It so follows that in order to truly secure the freedom to "do what you want", the only real long term viable solution is to attain power. Try telling those living under an autocracy that they should give up any hope for power and just be happy doing whatever they want. Nietzsche describes this perfectly in On the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil. The only way to truly be master of ones destiny is in creating the circumstances under which one will exist, not simply living at the whims of another. Those who think they are achieving true actualization through the shunning of power are simply deluded, or lucky enough that their local circumstances have provided a modicum of stability and freedom.

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If you can change what you want (downshift) then you can gain freedom (from the almighty $). I actually do not want a car (and I am not just telling myself that), I do not want to live in a nicer apartment (well, maybe a little). What I do want is to do what I want, I have made many major decisions based on that principal, unfortunately neglecting other factors. I learned programming because I had an idea that I thought would allow me to be my own boss, I went to grad school because it allowed more freedom than work, I learned another language b/c I thought I could move to that country and retire earlier, etc. etc. If I could go back in time I'd probably not do any of that shit, at least not the way I did. Sometimes I wish I were better at conforming, or at least wonder if I would be happier.

Depending on the context, this might mean changing whether you want food, a roof over your head, not to be in jail, not to have someone else dragging your family members off to prison for saying the wrong thing..

And some philosophies are completely OK with this. Attachment is the root of all suffering, etc. Me, I'm pretty attached to not being hungry or cold or injured, and to nothing bad happening to my friends and family, and I think that's healthy.

" not simply living at the whims of another"

We all live 'at the whims of another'.

We are inherently social creatures because we can only flourish as a group.

There is no escaping one another.

The missing bit about power is that it's self-oriented as described in the article, but in reality, power is a responsibility, a burden, not an escape.

Powerful people usually get a few nice things in return for having to do a lot, and worry about a lot, and make heavy decisions.

It's wrong for anyone to suggest that being the 'king' or 'CEO' of anything is an easy job, it's usually a brutally hard job. If those people wanted 'freedom' they'd have retired early, lived on the relative cheap.

And of course most people simply don't want that kind of power anyhow.

Power is great at lowering stress, actually. A sense of control goes a long way to alleviating it.

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/44/17903

What's interesting about this study is that they non-scientifically conclude that 'control' is the reason more powerful people are less stressed.

But the reality is, most powerful people do not have 'control' over much.

CEO's who were not founders have very little control.

The 'general' layer in the Army, my god man, it's extremely political.

The reason I suggest is a degree of psychopathy: they just don't care. They accept their status, look upon other people as ants, and are mostly concerned with gaining favour from people at their level or higher.

Secondarily, it could be because they are mostly financially secure - unless something drastic happens, they won't have to worry.

Earning only $500K/year is a different zone than $80K. You can do the golfing, skiing, travel, day spa - i.e. whatever gets you in a happy place. You have the 'second escape home' and can send your kids to college without too much worry.

There's probably multiple factors. My guess is high social status. Having high social status confers a high degree of safety, especially evolutionarily, and yields good reproductive success.

there's a difference between power to attain freedom and the ability to carve out your own space, even in an oppressive environment. Nietzsche himself, as a wandering stateless man is a pretty good example of this.

As an individual with a limited amount of resources carving out autonomous spaces and avoiding whoever is bugging you, which is fundamentally a creative activity, is almost always more fruitful than trying to engage the powers that be in some sort of struggle to obtain the upper hand.

Hacker culture is a pretty good example of this. Cyberspace was never really about challenging authorities as much as it was about avoiding authority all together by moving into some other space that was up until that point unpoliced and opened up the possibility to create new things in an environment that wasn't full of hierarchies and established rules.

> The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power.

I don't think so. Find something you want to do and others need or want from you.

> Find something you want to do and others need or want from you

If one is truly powerless, the latter will be taken without thought to the former. This is why tights are fundamentally empowering (and lacking in autocracies).

I assume you mean rights, but tights is far more intriguing in this context.

This scenario was (sort of) depicted in a line of dialogue in the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler. The main character (a struggling pro wrestler) asks for more work hours at his side job, and his boss jokes “Why, did they raise the price of tights?”

You’re confusing power over other people and power over your own circumstances.

The very beginning of the article asserts that they're essentially the same. In a world with more than one person alive and interacting, it's true.

I disagree. There are many forms of power (including F*v) but what we commonly confuse is power that is the means available to accomplish a task, and political power that represents ones altitude in a social hierarchy. And though I agree with you that where two or more people gather together there will be competition over who is dominant (AKA politics) I disagree that those of higher social status can have %100 control over anyone. After we make our requisite displays of subservience to the overlords, we can still carve out a lot of freedom needed to accomplish our own goals, if we are smart and discrete about it.

The beginning of the article says the exact opposite.

Yes and its wrong

In a sparsely populated world everyone can have their own place and do what they want. In a highly populated world that's not possible. People will share space and have differing views on how things are to be arranged there.

Even (and especially) in sparsely populated worlds, people have to share space. Look at Antarctica, the desert, etc.

The two are one and the same. If you have no power over other people you can't stop them from impinging on your own circumstances.

He also said that he'd require slaves.

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