Sammy, you win the Longest Comment Ever award. :)

Actually, I was careful to say 'sense' of freedom. You know, like in the Matrix, where everyone who doesn't see the Matrix THINKS they're free...

I don't trust my Senses, they seem foulable. These glasses i wear are a representative token of my life, filterd before light hits the eye. In this limited sensible set, i have choices, and in these choices, an impression of Freedom. How much do we make of our choice and volition? Mediated news sources offer select opinions we can 'choose' from. We have the vacillating ability to pick which of the two dominant political parties, or cola varieties, we prefer. But are these choices freedom? It seems the masks of socialized culture present us with a brief series of mass accessible, acceptable, choices. These three or four cards we are free to pick from. And who sets these cards before us, who generates the agendas which frame the timelines and rites of passage of our lives. No where within do we have the actualized ability to make a living free choice. The structures which raise our livelyhoods and economy in technological corporate facism act as cognitive binds which, while supporting amazing high standards of living and damning poverties, close around to bind our minds. We are free to choose TV news stations, each more defeating, morally vigilant, and socially defamatory than the next. We have the free choice between plastic bottled corn sweetened caffeinated beverages, as if socially sanctioned drug use is based in the choice of an individual. We have the choice between competitive cellular phone companies, but how in these short two (three to be polite) decades of decadence and visceral pervasive point to point communication have we been brought to NEED to choose a cellular phone. The only other option being disconnection. I have a choice of corporate jobs in this city of glass and concrete towers, where we all need jobs. Going to college to get a degree in order to land a job which will pay the debt of going to college; this is not a choice, rather a fractured fairytale, a mass hallucination, social requisites that trap us, leading our minds to homogenization. These are Forms which we are bound to, some visible and malleable, others transparent yet pervasive, understood though never seen or affected. We have a limited set of choices laid out before us which support, and in tandem create, the vast mediascape and active social lives we live. Beware of necessities, and as they arrive, determine if you are Free to Choose, to accept or decline items and actions found requisite. Responsibility, participation, acknowledgement, accountability, and growth. If I somehow find the freedom to not participate, I am left unsupported, outcast. Watch as my singular tiny voice becomes garbled and bathed in the banter and noise of blithe millions, the sheppard’s flock. Perhaps I have the freedom to choose. Perhaps you have some freedom to choose. Please understand the masses have no freedom, and wouldn’t be qualified to make a representative choice if the opportunity was ever presented to them. There is interconnectivity as we live, we are codependent, bound. We are all in this together. And can you TRUST an unknown stranger to make a choice which may affect you? Thankfully you don’t have to, for there are no real choices for anyone ever to make. Just a new product or sanctioned opinion for us to champion, to consume, to inherently advertise. The idea of freedom, of choice, is viral in our society, and never for a moment requires us to have actual freedom, actual knowledge, actual choice.