For @sagescrub's second challenge he has posed the question “What is holding you back from feeling more free?” This has been proving even more challenging to answer than I first thought!
Somebody once wrote that to be free in this society you need to be incredibly rich or pretty much a nomad or hermit with nothing. For most people both of these things are actually quite hard to achieve. It would be easier to just be able to opt out and choose not to pay taxes and in return not to receive any of the benefits, but that isn't an option.
So why lots of money? I guess with enough money you have the ability to go where you please and do what you please and if you run into problems you can pay for them to go away. Then on the other extreme all you really need to worry about is taking care of yourself. If you own nothing, then you have to pay nothing which means you don't need to be tied to a job and pay your fealty to government. However, even this is getting harder as more restrictions come into place to try and stop people from foraging and hunting.
Everything in this system chains us to it, limiting our choices and freedom. If you want a roof over your head you pay rent, taxes and/or mortgage, which means you have to work to earn the money to pay for it. You'll probably need a car to get to that place of work and that will cost you in fuel, road tax and insurance, but better yet you'll have lots of rules to follow while you're ‘driving' and if you're caught accidentally breaking those rules you'll have more costs in the way of fines. If you end up without work, then you'll have to beg government for some money to try and live, because there are way to many rules and restrictions in place for you to fend for yourself.
So there are a lot of things in place in our system that restrict our freedom, but how much of that comes from a belief that we have to live this way, because that's the way it's done? Do we just live this way because we don't know how else to live and are afraid of letting go of our things and our known way of life? I'm starting to think that my own mind and my own fear might be what's really holding me back from feeling more free. I'm afraid to let go of what we have, but at the back of my mind I also know that people have survived for millennia without all this.
