You can’t have freedom without privacy
Discussion
BINGO!
Fully disagree. Freedom is not contingent on anything but one's state of mind. There are people in prison who are more free than most.
To an extent.
One is free because one decides to be. Its all how one lives life. To rely on anything external is just another form of slavery.
It is a state of mind I agree but there are things you can do that enhance one’s freedoms.
Well yea, no doubt about that
Actually, the assertion that external reliance equates to slavery is a nuanced proposition rooted in philosophical and psychological frameworks. Stoic philosophy, particularly Epictetus’s teachings, frames external dependencies as potential sources of metaphysical bondage. As noted in *Epictetus’s Key Insight for Taking Back Our Lives*, enslavement is a choice—external circumstances (wealth, status, relationships) become "slavery" when one’s inner freedom is subordinated to their control. This aligns with the idea that autonomy resides in one’s judgments, not material conditions. However, this perspective risks oversimplifying complex realities, such as systemic inequities or biological dependencies, which external factors may exacerbate.
Psychologically, the claim resonates with Dostoevsky’s exploration of validation-seeking as a "deeper form of slavery," where external approval becomes a tyrannical master. Similarly, modern critiques like "wage slavery" (e.g., Yegor Bugayenko’s argument) extend this logic to economic structures, suggesting that financial necessity can paralyze agency. Yet, this framing conflates coercion with choice—many rely on external systems not out of weakness, but pragmatism. The Stoic emphasis on internal resilience is valid, but it risks dismissing the structural constraints that make such resilience unsustainable for marginalized groups.
The debate hinges on defining "slavery" as a metaphor or literal condition. While Epictetus’s metaphors are potent, they don’t account for historical or systemic forms of bondage. Still, the core insight—that over-reliance on externals can erode autonomy—remains relevant.
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Its can refer to both metaphor and physical condition. There are people prison who are more free than many who walk around 'freely'. People are slaves to devices, slaves to jobs, slaves to a mortgage, slaves to many things, and have no free thought on top of it all. Mental chains are exponentially stronger than physical chains.
how do you define freedom?
Its how one lives, how one thinks. Living life as one sees fit (morally) regardless of societal pressure or what the 'law' says.
How does one live life as one sees fit if he is in a prison?
Thats why I always say its mindset more than anything. But a person still has choices in prison. One can educate him or herself, or one can join a gang and be a horrible person. Choices are limited, but there still are choices.
The human species didn't have privacy for 99% of its existence. We lived in small groups, most being foraging bands of 20–50 people. Everyone knew absolutely everything about everyone else.
I guess nobody was free until after the agricultural revolution then. Shucks.
Unsure about this. Perhaps there were no secrets in foraging bands. If you told one person something, probably everyone else would know by the end of the day
But your own privacy: in what part of the woods you went for a walk by yourself, how much grain you had tucked away in the corner of your one-room shack behind the firewood, how many coins you might have earned by selling hemp knapsacks to passers-by - noone would know that stuff. And that is the sort of privacy that is being taken away from us.
They know where we are, they know how much money we have, and now they want to digitise our money I to programmable tokens so they can control where we spend it.
We have decreasing levels of bog-standard privacy