Freedom - Robert Rice

A different perspective of life has humans the author of their own destiny with life's organic evolution instead of having been born with unchangeable construct but with a clean slate with the ability and freedom at the creation of one's own engagement in the evolution of living. Instead of qualifying a human being with concept such as faults and qualities which he or she inherited at birth a human being is born with potentiality at becoming a person he or she chooses to be. I am not referring here to  choice of profession or trade which surely refers to aptitudes but to the quality of one's life.

Freedom has to do with becoming or being what we are as individuals not as a group although our manners, jobs and taste share common characteristics to our milieu we nonetheless are unique and different in various ways from other members of our group. If freedom is reached partly or wholly when we attain that which make us unique it follows that indiscriminate conformity to values and norms extrinsic to our real self may become a serious obstacle to the attainment of this goal.

It is one thing to know of teachings and precepts and another to be restricted by them in one's preferences and alternatives. Unless each action or decision is treated as a new experience requiring as well a novel decision there  is an unstructured or unplanned act. We are relentlessly and unconsciously mandated to apply tutored values without question. Self reliance is something of a sin. It is easier to copy others and not not fret about becoming one self.