Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Comment on quote, anyone?

Have you ever heard about this quote: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" (J.J. Rousseau) ?
I'll try to make a rough picture about the meaning behind this quote.

Everyone is born into this world with freedom, we are. At the same time, we are also limited by invisible chains around us. These chains will bind us until our death, no matter how hard we struggle. The chains are not necessarily bad; it depends on how we react to them. The chains may force us to think harder in order to resolve a problem or stall us far away from improvement. In addition, these chains know no limit. Thus, place and time cannot erase their existence. These chains take the form of society, environment, religion, and rules, to name a few. All of these aspects are intertwined and together they limit our freedom
In society, we are given a certain role we must play. We play our roles every day without being aware of them. We develop ourselves and play a greater role that has more influence on others. In the end, we are stuck in this cycle. This is how society takes our freedom away; we are forced to do the same thing everyday such as studying, working, and so on. The advantage of this is it can stimulate us to do things better and more effectively. But, once people start to compete with each other and try to be the best, a conflict may occur. That would be disadvantageous.
As for environment, it’s not that much different from society. In nature, certain laws apply to all forms of life. We must abide by the law and try to cope with it. The good thing about this is it will maintain the balance of our environment steadily. The bad news is we are not exempted, so if we can not cope with it we will not be able to survive. We are locked up in the law.
Both religions and rules restrict our behaviors. This is nice because it encourages mankind to do good things and help each other. Religions and rules may be almost the same in term of their positive contributions. However, rules were made by humans; so are religions. Therefore, there is a chance that they can be misguided and corrupted. So, there they are, trapped by rules which are disadvantageous to them.
In conclusion, we do not need to fret about the “chains” at all. This is how things in our world work. We only need to work together and try our best to reach our dreams. We must not let the chains discourage us. We should be able to move freely in the chains. At least, we can choose our own paths freely and do things in our way to a certain extent.

That is my opinion about what the quote means. Any other ideas? :D

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