When I signed up to write for Odyssey, I was told that I would have nearly complete creative control over the content I chose to produce. Indeed, I was given an offer that I could not refuse. The possibilities wheeled out before me like the expansive night sky, with its millions and millions of twinkling stars being possible stories and topics from which I could choose. But suddenly, my enthusiasm and excitement turned into fear and dread, those aforementioned endless possibilities became shackles that turned my hands into stone. What would I write about? Would I be ridiculed as a substandard writer that did not deserve this opportunity? Such is the paradox of endless choices, when everybody has absolute freedom, no one has freedom.
Society, and the individual, structure their lives so as to limit their choices and their freedoms. That BMW across the street looks nice, but college ate that money up long ago. Keira Knightly is beautiful, but she is way out of my league, and so on. The choices we make in life may seem like our own, but I have come to the conclusion that for most of us, they are not. Very few of us are willing to accept the true nature of our freedom, or indeed, of our very existence.
The media, our friends, authority figures, marketers, et cetera exert an over-sized influence on our decision-making process. The fear of taking responsibility for all the actions we choose to commit leads us to live, as Jean-Paul Sartre says, an inauthentic life. Sartre states further, “This total freedom that man faces often throws him into a state of existential anguish, wherein he is burdened by the hardship of having to choose all of the time. Thus, there ensues the temptation for man to live a life of inauthenticity, by leaning on preset rules or guidelines and objective norms."
The republican form of government that we have in the United States is highly conducive at aiding us in living an inauthentic life. We are able to secretly choose our representatives and leaders for a specified time period and thus wipe out hands of the responsibility of governing. The bumper sticker that one inevitably sees toward the end of the presidency that states, “Hey I voted for the other guy” clearly demonstrates this phenomenon. The bumper sticker should instead say, “Hey I voted for the other guy, so that cleanses me of all responsibility at how the country has been governed for the past four years.” As politicians so often say, an educated and active citizenry is the lifeblood of democracy, but in our present situation, that just does not seem true. Rather, they should say that an apathetic and lethargic citizenry allows us to govern in a corrupt manner without consequences.
I knock on doors quite frequently for an aspiring politician in the St. Louis area and when I deviate from the list given to us by the state party, I find that most people are not interested in the upcoming election. I was shocked by this lack of concern for who would govern. This first-hand experience with the somnambulant American public leads me to the conclusion that Senator Sanders’ talk of a political revolution is not that far-fetched if we were to awaken the great mass of people who have become indifferent to who are leaders are, and how they govern.
The possibility of creating, or at least encouraging, an active and engaged citizenry is greatly increased by the democratization of information given to us by the internet and social media. Odyssey is a platform meant to be a voice for millennials, so my message is this: it is time to open our eyes to our true power. Democracy affords us the opportunity to have our voices heard, so it is time to shout it from the rooftops that we are going to take this country back!The future is ours.
