# The opposite of freedom is boredom

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2017/03/01/the-opposite-of-freedom-is-boredom/
- Published: 2017-03-01T18:56:52+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

Freedom is the most important thing for an aware intelligent creature. For an aware
intelligent creature freedom is more important than being alive.

Freedom is a sentiment, not a state. Because it is not a state, you cannot “bring
freedom” anywhere, it is either felt or it isn’t at all. Because it is a sentiment
it’s close to impossible to have a general recipe for freedom.

The opposite of freedom is not captivity, which is a state, nor oppression, which
is an action.

> The opposite of freedom is boredom.

> Boredom is the sentiment signalling your lack of freedom.

People get bored wildly different.

Some people get bored in five minutes, some people get bored once a year, some people
get bored at forty for about three months.

That is why it is so hard to build a world.

We’re optimising for routine because we consider freedom to be a state. And states
need stability. Yet we’re wrong, dead wrong.

Sentiments need change to be experienced, which is why routine results in lack of
freedom.

The world stands on huge routines, it is mostly a place of repetition endurance 
as virtue. If you can do the same thing over and over again for as long as possible
the rewards sometimes crawl beyond expectations.

But this is wrong, because it is boring.

So how do we build freedom into the world?

By allowing experience diversity to occur.