Many of you don't have free minds. why?

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I think that's a bit of an assumption. I don't really feel human... I've often felt like an alien, an outsider... someone who may look like everyone else, but will never understand what it's like to be human. Like a changeling child, maybe.

I think that you can't possibly understand our point of view. You choose to be a rebel, as it were, whereas we are stuck with what we are. What for you is easy for us is difficult, if not impossible.

Last edited by glebel on 01 Aug 2015, 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What exactly is a "free mind"?

If that is a picture of you then you clearly very much care what other people think of you. Otherwise, why the nail polish? That entire presentation is ubiquitous of just one format of "rebelliousness."
Just because someone is "keenly aware" of something doesn't mean it runs their lives -as this seems to suggest. I'm keenly aware of trucks when I'm crossing the road, but I don't sit at home thinking about them.

Ignoring "social order" is as risky as ignoring lions or tigers or bears (oh my!); the more powerful can and may destroy you. Literally.
Unless you spend your life hiding the more powerful will destroy you eventually... unless you can figure out how to "fit in."

Besides, we are all bound by social rules. Even legal rules are simply a formalization of social rules.
Do you wait in line to purchase something at the grocery store? Even more, do you purchase it rather than just taking it? Those are social rules baby! Sheep and wolves and mosquitoes don't buy things.

Your entire phraseology shows that you don't yet have enough self-awareness or mental feedback (or maybe just self-mockery) to know how preprogrammed we all are by our brain physiology, dynamic metabolism, biological and social evolution as well as countless other things that limit our thought and behavior responses to just a handful of "choices."

Of course "many of us don't have free minds," be fair -neither do you. You even demonstrate excellent spelling and grammar usage, thank you! If you weren't bound by those social rules we wouldn't even be able to communicate.
Don't try to claim that you "chose to this time," I'm pretty sure you didn't even think about it, you simply conformed. Just like the rest of us.
Nobody has a "free mind."
You are special because you have a questioning mind. No other animal does, and neither do most humans.





P.S.
Be careful, a human pretending to have a "free mind" is itself a "better-than-thou" social behavior attempting to increase one's status within their group.
And it shows.

Agreed

I've stopped caring about the rules and lofty expectations that society has for me. Gender related rules in particular. I know that some members might want to shoot me for what I've just said. I've also stopped worrying about other things like working class and age groups as well. I don't worry about expectations related to age, gender and generation, anymore. I haven't since I was 9. I don't let such categories determine what I like or how I act. I like a variety of things, many that are not age appropriate and many that are not gender appropriate. There are a few things that I like that are age appropriate. Freeing my mind has also given me a wild and vivid imagination as well.

Loaded words used here i.e. 'bound' and 'rules'. A lot of the 'societal rules' you mention are simply doing what works well, and efficiently.

If you were to rebel against everything, you'd also have to rebel against rebelling - which would be conformity.

What is your definition of 'societal rules'?

Do you take a s&*t in a toilet? If yes, I could say you're 'following societal order, and trapped'.

Where does it end - or begin?


Many possibly are. I think a distinction should be made between respectfully questioning certain aspects of a system, and 'not giving a damn'.

And that is exactly why I am not really satisfied with having a "free mind." If I don't care about the social order I'm almost certainly going to be a social outcast, and ASD or not I am human and can only experience life at its fullest if I have relationships with other people. The times in my life when I have been the closest to other people have been the most emotional and fulfilling- in other words, the times when I felt the most alive.

I think it's a challenge for most everyone to connect with other people and be genuine at the same time, some more than others.

No. I think that's impossible

Most of us are deeply embedded within a context that is controlled by the hive mind.
We are far from free.
Resistance is often met by an immune response from the hive mind. People become conditioned to avoid this response or punishment.

It's impossible to live life to its fullest, or it's impossible that I'm human?

LOL

Well its not that terribly hard to observe people, for instance just because I am aware of certain social rules/norms doesn't mean I agree with or follow them all....but with observing people and having them point out the things about me that cause me to not 'fit in' its not that hard to figure some of it out.

And to an extent worrying about other peoples view is silly, but I don't see anything wrong with attempting to improve interactions with people you do give a damn about and just general being civil rather than aggressive towards everyone. Like I am not such a narcissist I think anything I do should be ok, if I do things that upset other people I'd ideally want to attempt to avoid doing that...but not to the extent of obeying all the social norms and what not and always sticking to what the 'norm' is.

Well that and I've studied psychology and sociology in college, which is about human behavior and discusses things like social norms and such.

Make an effort, get nicely dressed, in my opinion,
then comes my "ex"; "have you put your pyama's on?"

That's just to say..
expectations, projections, accusations
anything to keep you below down.

.....I think you're kinda missing the point here.

"Free mind" is merely a phrase. I can sorta see what the OP is *actually* getting at, and "free mind" doesnt QUITE describe it fully accurately, but that's how words and phrases are sometimes. I know I sure end up representing what I want to say with the wrong phrases pretty often.

The bit about legal stuff, for instance. Pretty darn sure that's NOT within the scope of what the OP meant. What I got out of the original post was that they were questioning why many here easily go along with (or feel that they HAVE to go along with) the entirely OPTIONAL aspects of society. In other words, things that have exactly less than zero to do with laws or instincts or any of that crap.

For example, the idea that you have to drink in order to have a good time. That has a whole lot of nothing to do with any law telling you that you HAVE to, and EVERYTHING to do with society trying to tell you that you SHOULD. Many, many things in society are like that, and I think what the OP is asking is why so many just automatically give in to that sort of thing. Or, perhaps, why they feel they need to.

By "free mind", I'm pretty sure they meant the lack of a desire to follow any of those trends or do any of that, or make decisions based entirely on what society thinks. As opposed to what the individual ACTUALLY truly wants.


Me, I'm rather like the OP myself, in that I seriously dont give a damn. If society dictates that I *should* do something? Pah. If I genuinely and for my own reasons WANT to, I will. If I dont, well, "society" can take a long walk off a short cliff edge that hangs over an active volcano. I generally make decisions based on my own screwball internal logic, and often not only do I not CARE what society thinks, I often dont bother to exactly "research" and find out what they think in the first place of such things, often only hearing about it after the fact. Which doesnt change future decisions.

But yeah, if I do something and it happens to mesh with the "norm", then... yay? And if I do something and it's the direct opposite, that's fine too. To me, anyway. If anyone else has a problem with it, well... tough. I'll bloody well do it anyway. I tend to be very strong-willed in this manner.

And I know people often do things along with society in order to get/keep friends, but to that, I say this: Is a friend ACTUALLY a friend if they only like you when you're acting as this persona that you created JUST to follow along with society's "rules" that you dont ACTUALLY agree with? As far as I"m concerned, if a friend doesnt like you when you are WITHOUT that persona, then... they are not a friend at all to begin with.

Yes, that type of view can make it harder to get friends. But I've found that by looking at it that way, I get friendships that *last*. Permanently. Wheras the other sort.... often doesnt. If someone can like you for who you really are, you both are MUCH better off for it than if you have to hide behind a facade that you put up to blend in.

I believe in the credo: "Treat people like you want to be treated."

For the most part, I am fortunate to be able to do what I want to do.

Obviously, I can't do what I want all the time. I can't just up and fly off to Vietnam!

I believe being clean and neat is important for yourself, as well as those around you. I don't find "conformity," in this sense, a confining thing.

Otherwise, I really don't care what people think of me. I would hope that people think I'm a decent human being with decent morals. If they don't--well, that's their loss.

What about taxation? I like paying taxes, but I don't always agree on what the tax money goes toward. I'd rather pay for schools, not military, for example. But if I'm in the minority and my money goes to the military, I can either pay the taxes or go to jail because I didn't pay the taxes. Not exactly a very free choice. I could argue that I give a damn about not going to jail, rather than giving a damn for society's preference, but does it really matter in the end?

I think the more important point is that there is no such thing as freedom. We all need an environment to be part of, and certain things to exist. Our "freedom" is dependent on that, and our "freedom" of expression is based on our physical and psychological makeup. If I avoid high-crime areas I could say that I do so because I'm free to make a choice about valuing my safety, but the decision is more a reaction to what's around me than some sui generis revelation I'd had about my abilities as a living creature.