# Only the educated are free Created On: 10-24-2022 03:53 pm Tags:: #note/literature📖 #note/evergreen🌲 #thoughtful Topics:: --- ## Literature > Only the educated are free > > — [Epictetus](Epictetus) ## Notes - I think this is [[Epictetus]] as a master at work taking exceptionally complex thoughts and just absolutely distilling their meaning down to a masterful pith. - To be free is to understand the systems, especially [[Institutional structures]], that surround us and constrain our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The act of education enables us to acknowledge that and improve them, ideally, for the benefit of us all. But I think the Stoic individual angle here is that this enables a separation of self. - This feels highly biological nature, implying that’s it an evolutionary trait, meaning that, with breeding and refinement, we actually do become hyper away as species to an infinite possibility. - That is the ultimate awareness as a species - Are we actually implying that we will, in a paradoxical way, be creating ourselves as a God? - Representing the paradoxical thought that we were actually ever worshipping ourselves? - We will be the only reason we fail. The is the maxim of perpetuating evolutionary theory for humans. - So I think there’s a formal theory about this: [Open individualism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism) - Which is a broader [Philosophy of self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self) concepts. - As told through this story:[ The Egg Short Story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egg_(Weir_short_story)) - And on the most interesting theories I encountered touched on the idea of [[Narrative self]] as the subject of [[Narrative identity]] ([external](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_identity#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20narrative%20identity,unity%20and%20purpose%20in%20life.)). - TL;DR, we craft stories to give our existence form, with it otherwise being conceptually and objectively formless. - There feels like an interesting [[Stoicism (MOC)]] crossover here on the matter of [[Perception]] being the lens at which crafts one’s stories. - Additionally, because perception is evergreen - always changing, due to concepts reflection and behavior modification, it also touches on the famous [[Heraclitus]] quote: [[You never step in the same river twice]], because we hardly ever see the same story through the same lens at different times because of the evolved story that we’ve told ourselves: - What’s interesting to me though is that they seem not to talk about story crafting being a not so “past” concept, as opposed to present - now - and how we plan ahead for the future. Yet, reflection recolors the past to enable the present and future: - Maybe we’re simply making --- ## Reference(s) -