Freedom Today: The Self and Choice in a World of Strict Standards, Paperback/Fabio Couto

Descriere

Description From the day we are born we are taught beliefs, values and adequate behavior. We observe living standards and we are exposed to common sense. We learn the collectively established meanings of right and wrong, punishment and reward, of failure and pleasure, of success, of happiness. Our parents, extended family, teachers, friends, religions and the media start shaping how we see the world and ourselves. Those views-their views-will ultimately go on to determine our aspirations, our judgment, and our perception of value. We look, dress and talk in a certain way to identify with our social group. We establish a career, preferably a stable, traditional one, and progress in it. We make money, eat healthy, own a house, travel on holiday and make more money, and we must meet someone by the time we are 30 or 35, at the latest (the threshold is stricter if you're a woman), marry them and have children. We should not dye our hair blue, or pierce our nipples, or wear crocs. We should never let go of ambition and the drive to be more and better. We shouldn't live like hippies, we shouldn't watch reality TV, we should not grow old alone. We look out to the world to understand how life should unfold and go on a path laid out with absolutely no regard for our individuality. Everyone, everywhere is planning their lives, making choices and measuring the importance of their achievements without listening to our hearts. We are free individuals in a free world but chained to a collective understanding of how our lives should be lived. Unfulfilled and full of anxiety, we are the unhappiest generation in human history, ignoring that there is no way to find happiness chasing goals that are not ours. That is the freedom we all need today: to rise above the collective understanding of good and bad and the script that was written for our lives, to live unrestrained and liberated to connect with our own nature. From the backdrop of the author's own early life growing up in a small