In Continuum.

It's true what the introductory video about Sociology said about our society you know, it raised some questions that I haven't really asked myself before. I like how, as we move on to more advanced levels, things are looking to become more interesting and, may I say, exciting at the same time. I know, words like that aren't usually associated with school in my books, but things are certainly turning out pretty well at school for me, or at least the content of my studies. Reading into the sentences and the words, you can't help but take a step back from your life and observe as a bystander at times, and see just how absurd our society really is at times. Suddenly, all that you have taken for granted are not incredibly and unbelievably ridiculous and stupid. Wait a minute, you were a part of that crowd as well, mindless drones just going through the motions at the conveyor belt. I haven't really gotten deep into the subject yet, but I predict myself to see a lot of absurdities around me, to not take everything I see and hear on surface value, to think more people as being retarded. Yeah, I totally see that happening. 

The concept of free agent isn't exactly new to me, I suppose, after digging into the whole concept of free will and determinism. They are slightly different though, we different external factors. But the basis is still pretty much the same: whether or not ordinary human beings have the ability to tell apart what is influencing us externally and if we have the ability to make our own conscious decisions. I don't believe in free will, however, beautiful the concept may be. Democracy is not free will, there are still rules to control you one way or another, just so that you do not run out of your house naked when you feel like doing something outrageous. The Bible, or any other holy books do not preach about free will either, although they'd like to think that they do. I mean, if a superior being knows what happened in the past, what is happening right now, and what is going to happen in the future in regards to every being on earth, then what free will can we speak of? Nothing we do or not do is going to prevent the inevitable - whatever it is. Nothing will change, because it has been decided, and that God has his plans for you. It has been determined, so why bother making decisions in the first place. 

The concept is the same, are we really individuals, or are we just individuals like everybody else? I remember the birthday card I received last year, it said "Always remember that you are unique, just like everybody else". So much for uniqueness I suppose, but that is kind of true if you think about it. We are just individually composed units of external influences. The clothes that we wear, the kind of music that we love, our values, everything has been influenced by something else. Even if you subscribe to the emo culture, or the punk culture, they are still external factors, right? You like the culture because you have read about it somewhere, saw it somewhere, and you figured that the frequency works fine with yours. So you follow that culture, and you stand right out in the crowd but you don't quite fit in. Being a minority doesn't necessarily make you a free agent, I feel, it makes you a conformist of the non-conformists. It's kinda like being different for the sake of being different, which in turn makes you pretty much the same as those people who are trying to be different. 

The lecturer then mentioned something about "choice", and that we are in fact free agents because we always have that. You know, it's not like we are forced to wear a certain kind of clothes, neither are we forced to listen to a certain type of music. There isn't a guideline for us to follow, this isn't some kind of apocalyptic view of the future in a science fiction novel. We always have a choice, or so they say, and we always have the choice to make our own, unique, individual decisions. Or, do we really? The idea of "choice" is just such an abstract idea anyway, it is hard to say if we really have a free choice, or free will, in anything. Religion aside, our decisions are pretty much governed by fundamental physical laws, right? If we decide to reach out and grab a pencil, the brain sends electric signals down through our arm and to our fingertips for us to reach out for that pencil and grab it. The idea of choice is rather vague, simply because it is so easy to convince ourselves that we have made a mindful choice when we really haven't. How do we know that our decision to vote for a presidential candidate hasn't been influenced by their half truths and whole lies? You may think that your decision is based on your own analysis, but you really haven't. What choice do we have, really, when the powers are be controls everything. 

It kinda made me think about my childhood, at which point did this whole "free agent" concept began to intercept. I bet it began a few hours after my birth, when I was wrapped in a blue blanket because I am a boy and the girls were wrapped in pink blankets. Babies with little penises between their legs were automatically given the blue blankets, it doesn't matter if they eventually turn into homosexuals or transexuals in the future. You can't tell, so you just kind of assume anyway. At home, we were given toys for boys while the girls were given girly toys. You know, I played with Voltron and Transformers when I was growing up, while my sister stuck mainly to Barbie dolls and cooking toys. It was all working normally until I started playing with her Polly Pockets as well, and my sister started playing with my Legos. Of course, just the Polly Pocket wasn't enough, I had to invade their perfect little plastic homes with monsters from my Mighty Max collection. My sister built houses with the Lego bricks, and moved her love for miniature homes in the Polly Pocket collection into a somewhat bigger version of the houses. Our toys blended, toys for boys and toys for girls, and there really wasn't a problem. 

That was until my neighbor, Ben, came downstairs to play this one time. He fell crazy in love with one of my sister's Barbie doll, the one who wore a black and white striped top and with blonde curly hair. It was a little strange, to see a boy be fascinated with a toy for girls, and we joked that because he was secretly gay. Come to think about it, I wonder who dictated what little boys should play and the little girls should play. I don't suppose there is a part of our brains that tells us whether or not we like trucks or dolls. Our parents were the one who dictated the toys we played, and their parents probably did the same to them as well. It isn't something wrong or something right, it is merely how the society has forged this vision of norm, to have this group of people do this and this group of people do that. Ben probably saw that as a young child, and decided to break away from what everybody else wanted him to do. So he fell in love with a plastic doll that belonged to my sister, who is to say that he was being a strange kid? 

We play with specified toys, we go through specified education systems, we have ordinary careers, the story of our lives. We do the things we do now, not because we really want to do the things we want to do, but because it just seems right. Everything down to the things that we eat in this culture is dictated by the society as a whole, what everybody else is telling you to do. It is disturbing sometimes, if you think about it, of the implications involved. We become enslaved to this system, by working most of our lives away, by being valiant soldiers for an imaginary cause, to be leaders of our future and all that kind of gibberish that they inject into your system. Being free agents is a fairy tale, it isn't going to happen in our lifetime, or any lifetimes I dare to wager. It's just sad that we are probably not going to find a way out of this system, even if we are puppets who know about the strings that control us. We are helpless, aren't we, we have nothing else to do but to follow these subtle orders and instructions. Every individual and mindful choice may seem that way at first, it may seem like you made a free choice. But seriously, are you really free?