RTopper

It has come to my attention that man has a variably restricted will. That his natural state of mind is of a free will, but that he has used his free will to block much of his freedom, resulting is a situation where he finds himself with almost no free will at all. He manages this amazing feat simply by deeply confusing himself with frightening irrational beliefs. While none of the beliefs are true, their being causes the mind to close up and close down. Surrounded by walls of beliefs, the mind is trapped and can go nowhere.One might wonder how a mind is capable of adopting irrational beliefs. Well, the truth is that it's quite easy. Once a false belief is adopted, it makes the next false belief easier to adopt. As false beliefs are adopted, more false beliefs quickly take root. This is because false beliefs tend to support each other. And of course, the first false beliefs come to us when we are quite gullible, as infants. As infants we absorb false beliefs quite easily. Infants are quite apt to believe what they hear. In fact we are still this way. We still tend to believe whatever we hear, if we hear it enough. The mind is more like a tape recorder than an actual rational or logical instrument. Advertisers know this, and make use of it. So there you have it. We have free will, but we have used our freewill to limit our will considerably, by adopting beliefs that restrict our freedom. We are not robots damned to respond accordingly to forces beyond our control. There really are no forces beyond our control. We merely believe their are, and so we believe we are without freedom of choice.It will be interesting to see if you question this, or simply reject it based on your erroneous beliefs. If you question it, you will be exercising your freedom. If you reject it, you are but a prisoner to your beliefs.…

RTopper

When I was 18, I was very suicidal. I was drinking and drugging. I would pull out in front of big trucks and let them just barely miss me. I was reckless and desperate. I would spend hours in bed staring at the ceiling. I hated school. I hated being broke and I hated the idea of getting a job. I had had many jobs already and was not at all looking forward to working for the next 40 or so years. My mother was mean and my father was already going senile. It was a very stressful and depressing time.One night I had a dream. The dream was that I was a fortyish year old cop in a town of less than 1000 in a tree filled little hick town in the late 50's. I had been a cop there for 20 years or so. I became a cop because I didn't want to be drafted back when WW II had started. I guess cops didn't get drafted back then or something. I had a bit of a gut and rather enjoyed my easy cop life. I was married to an introverted wife and we had a son and daughter both in high school. I grew up in that town and had known my wife since I was a small child. I had a lot of pride. I had a strong sense of morality. I wanted to treat everyone fairly and I prided myself in never having removed my pistol from the holster. I felt that most of the people of the town respected me, but I did have some issues I was struggling with. For one, the town butcher used to park his delivery truck illegally and I would over look it for the most part because I didn't want him to hate me. I liked to eat meat, and he gave my wife good deals and cuts. I'm sure it was so I would let him slide with his parking. It was not an agreement I had with him, but I "got it". It bothered me quite a bit, due to my sense of morality and fairness, but I didn't want to pay a lot for bad cuts of meat either, and I didn't really want to confront him on the subject either, because he did have a bit of a point, in that it was an unnecessarily long walk if he parked legally and only a minor inconvenience to other(see part II )…