Another Thought

Yes, you can, if you renege on your promise to be free.  But first, let's talk about Reason. The importance of reason in democracy is often talked about in academic circles and is not lost on us in today's time. While reason was, one of the great re-discoveries of the enlightenment period, our protagonist, Jean Jacques Rousseau wasn't quite on its' side. Instead, he is considered the founder of Romanticism. The founder of a body of ideas that preached feeling,  passionate activity and radical liberty, over the mundane and calculated, a whiff of which we may get towards the end here. He is also credited for the rise of modern nationalism and we all know what passionate nationalism looks like.  So much for Rousseau's "sensibility", his work on political theory in the book, The Social Contract lent itself a lot more to reason. He sets out a primary problem, one very similar to the questions posed by the famed duo, Hobbes and Locke.  Not another Social Contrac...

Why do we do, what we do? It's usually what the society wants us to do, an act of conformity. Be it your mother's insistence on sticking to your job or your friends' persistence on leaving it, its rarely a purely self conscious act. Of all the actions we carry out everyday, the most onerous and time consuming of all are our economic activities, or the ones we do to make living, get a house, buy some food. Our economic activity , whereby we engage in the sale of our labor in exchange for money, is the most essential act for survival. Money is unavoidable, imperative and is something for which many trade even more than labor, their dignity and freedom. While economic activity may fill the tummy and rent a shelter, who do we share it with? Who do we rejoice with about our prosperity? One hence, spends time in social activity too. In talking to our family and hanging out with our friends, the social sphere is very essential to our well-being, once our survival is taken ...