metonymy4u

Too often we hear that people were raped, or are depressed, or are suffering from being a certain religion, color, gender, or orientation as a matter of choice. To say that suffering of any kind is a matter of choice is one of the most absurdly invalidating notions I believe I have ever heard. No one chooses suffering. Suffering, for the most part, is a result of history. Heritable and learned factors that we encounter as children, long before any developmental hint of “choice.” The good news is that what can be learned can be unlearned. Even if we never encounter true “freedom” we can learn what is healthy (to do more of this) and what is unhealthy (to do less of that). That’s science. That’s escape from culturally learned absurdity and invalidation. That’s what I call freedom.