CHOICE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF CHAINS It was a passionate session earlier in the day with so many people defending their points of view just like the steamy days of discord between the liberal theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the conservative theorist, Francois-Marie Arouet (alias Voltaire) when the former put forth his "Social Contract" theory.
One of the major points that people kept raising was that man is not in chains since he is free to choose whatever he wants to do but that choice is there, in fact, because one is actually contained. A dog wants to break free from the leash because she realises that she is restricted. If there were no chains, there would not be any need to choose. Succinctly put, no cause, no effect. While I do not disagree that we all can choose to either go to school or not, go to church or not, follow a religion or not and what have you, those choices came to be because man is, ab initio, expected to follow some paths and even sometimes, socialized into them. Hence, choices are ruse to escape chains and not tools to deny the existence of chains. The irony of choice, however, is that it leads to more chains. It masks the chain initially to denote freedom but it leads you inevitably to more chains. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear people say that we have the choice not to go to school if we think man is in chains by being compelled to acquire education. "You have the choice to drop out, become a conductor, whatever you like", they usually say. But I ask, to what end? You become a tout and tomorrow you become poor, penniless and even find yourself in another chain called poverty. Hence, we have an infinite loop of chains, masked chain, chains, masked chain... Whether the chains are good or bad is a discussion for another day but I opine that we are in chains; and choice(which, unfortunately, we purport as freedom) is just a pathetically clever tool to escape these chains or more accurately, postpone the chains.
BY: OLOTO, KENNETH CHIMEZIE
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