Freedom

   Only when man loses everything he becomes actually free. Freedom is about
   letting go.

   Freedom denotes the possibility to act as one desires without suffering
   negative consequences.

   TODO: more

   People who seriously look for attaining mental/spiritual freedom often
   resort to [1]asceticism, at least for a period of time (e.g. [2]Buddha) --
   this is very commonly not done with the intent of actually giving up all
   materialistic pleasures forevermore, but rather to let go of the
   [3]dependency on the them, to know and see that one really can live
   without them if needed so that one becomes less afraid of losing them,
   which is often what internally enslaves us. Without even realizing it we
   are nowadays addicted to many things (games, social media, overeating,
   shiny gadgets, ...) like an alcoholic is to booze; it is not necessarily
   bad to drink alcohol, but it is bad to be addicted to it -- to free
   himself the alcoholic needs to abstain from alcohol for a long period of
   time. Our chains are often within ourselves: for example we often don't
   have the freedom to say what we want to say because that might e.g. ruin
   our career, preventing us from enjoying our expensive addictions -- once
   we don't worry about this, we gain the freedom to say what we want. Once
   you rid yourself of fear of jail, you gain the freedom to do potentially
   illegal things, and so on. Additionally going through the experience of
   letting go of pleasures very often opens up your eyes and mind, new
   thoughts emerge and one reevaluates what's really important in life.

   Freedom is something promised by most (if not all)
   ideologies/movements/etc.; this is because without further specification
   the term is so wide it says very little -- the very basic thing to know
   is, of course, that there is no such thing as general freedom; one kind of
   freedom restricts other kinds of freedom -- for example so called freedom
   of market says that a rich capitalist is free to do whatever he wants,
   which leads to him enslaving people, killing the freedom of those people.

   What kind of freedom is [4]LRS interested in? Basically the freedom for
   living beings to do what makes them happy -- of course this can't be
   achieved 100% (if one desires to enslave others, their freedom would
   disappear), however we can get very close (make a [5]society in which
   people don't wish to enslave others). For this goal we choose to support
   such freedoms as [6]free speech, [7]free software, [8]free culture, free
   love etc.

See Also

     * [9]FreeDoom
     * [10]freedom distance

Links:
1. asceticism.md
2. buddha.md
3. dependency.md
4. lrs.md
5. less_retarded_society.md
6. free_speech.md
7. free_software.md
8. free_culture.md
9. freedoom.md
10. freedom_distance.md