The notion of freedom is not what we think it is

Who has watched a cellphone commercial that advertised limited texting and data? Who has been upset at Chick-fil-A for not being open on Sundays or Chipotle for not being open all night? If Netflix or Hulu had a time limit — you could only watch a certain number of shows per week — would people subscribe? Would there be protests if Amazon imposed a delivery ban past a certain time or if you ordered multiple packages within a month’s period? Or if buffets and “have it your way” food services became extinct? What if the internet shut off globally at 10 p.m. every night, what then? How would we respond?

I wonder if many people would want to live in such a world, where limits and fixities are voluntarily and cheerily submitted to. The notion of the unlimited is a bedrock of today’s culture, it seems. Take advertising and commercials: An appeal is never made to sell a product that inhibits our consumptive freedoms, but an appeal is always made to instead broaden our consumptive horizons. Apple does not make flip phones anymore; instead, it seeks to grow the cellphone’s capacity for limitless and high-quality entertainment.

In short, our culture is one of choices and possibilities. Do I buy shoes at Foot Locker, Payless, Champs, etc.; food from McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, etc; do I shop at Sears, Dillard’s, Macy’s, Target, Wal-Mart, etc? This is what our culture says is freedom: the capacity to determine one’s own life without restrictions. We offer unlimited data, streaming, culinary possibilities and consumptive power, because freedom today means the absence of constraints or limits. We see the individual’s capacity for self-determination of what he or she prefers in life as the highest good, and we chop down any sort of restriction that gets in the way.

But does freedom really mean the uninhibited capacity to determine one’s preferences in a culture that seeks to provide endless preferences to choose from? I think this runs counter to the very notion of freedom and, maybe more profoundly, to nature and reality. What about the young and promising pianist who could be out with his friends but is instead chained to his piano, learning Debussy? Certainly some days feel like prison to the boy, and the ivory keys are the last thing he wishes to see that day. But maybe some days are strangely and inexplicably joyous and pure, when he discovers something deep about the nature of music, himself and the cosmos. Those days feel like a breeze. Would our culture consider this boy truly free?

My point is this: At the heart of freedom is sacrifice, which entails the submission of the individual to a principle, person or craft, and so on, which he deems more important than himself. The young pianist forsook the countless hours of leisure and play a boy has in his life and dedicated himself to his music. And now, because of that sacrifice, he can perform, create real beauty and engage himself and others in the deepest parts of the soul, like only truly good music can. Through the sometimes painful and other times cheerful acceptance of a limit on his life — the piano — the young boy achieves in turn an incomparable freedom that only a few can claim as their own. And this theme applies to all of life: an old man who diets to stay healthy for his grandkids, a boyfriend who gives up time with his friends to be with his girlfriend, a student who stays in the library an extra hour.

The common underlying theme in these situations is not our culture’s notion of limitless freedom to determine what one prefers in life, but sacrifice to a higher and more important good than one’s self. That is true freedom.

Scott Stinson is a UF English sophomore. His column appears on Wednesdays.