Explaining the Possible and Impossible

DP section 1.1 (pp. 2-20): "Explaining the Possibility of the Impossible"

The main idea stressed in the article is arguing if life is truly what it seems, do we really live life as we want to, as independent as we want to, or are we just following most others saying we still do things that we believe or that we want to. Or do we even have a choice? The fact that it may or may not always seem that we are living how we want to be living usually isn't the case. The argument(s) here claims that we are not always in control of our beliefs no matter how strongly one may think so.

As we live under the roof of our parents, we follow by their rules and beliefs for at least the time we become an adult or move out of their house. Until then, we grow up accustomed to studying the same beliefs and honoring their rules. But how are we to study our beliefs and questions with out actually pursuing them as an individual (not just following our parents). We are told when we are younger that we will learn such things, as we get older. Do we actually learn them, or do we just follow what everyone else is doing. If we don't seek out the actual answers to our own questions, we are just following the beliefs of everyone else that we're living by. Thus defeating the purpose of having "our own beliefs". Seeing how I have lived in NH my whole life and we up north live by the phrase "live free or die", technically speaking, it is not necessarily living free to be living by someone's beliefs other than your own. It also has a contradicting meaning that may come across as nice and promising, in reality, it's just the way of life. Take the term, "live free or die" and break that down. "Live free" is what they want us to think we have the ability of doing in New Hampshire, but do we. As I will later go on in detail, we are not free to do anything. Free will (as they like to call it) is just moments in time playing off other moments in time, leaving us to make our own decision in life. Is that really living free or merely taking what is given to us and trying to play the cards to our favor? And in return to that, "or die" simply answers it. If you try to live against the way life runs it's course you will not make it on your own. Life will go on either way, with or with out you and it you wont stand in its way. So what most people do, instead of trying to fight the world, more or less play the hand they are dealt, as some like to say, and hope it all works out in the end.

Free