Oh, to be free!
TLDR : I love Armin Shimerman’s voice.
Note : This is a speech given in the style of Andrew Ryan from Bioshock. I will link a youtube video to the speech, so you may understand what I’m talking about.
https://youtu.be/FgLvhyUmrsw?t=66
Below is music that I was listening to this while writing this post. It really is true that music shapes our thoughts.
About a week ago, I came upon a name I had not seen in almost a decade. The details of who and what are irrelevant. What mattered was the fact that I was suddenly transported to the past.
I generally refuse to be nostalgic. Childhood was anything but a series of restrictions that became more and more ridiculous and undefendable, culminating in the period before college, where every student prostrates himself before an examination paper that is supposed to determine his life.
But I remember the optimism of the opportunities that I felt growing up would bring. The freedom and independence that I hoped I would gain after I grew up. Of the brilliance of people I hadn’t met or a life I hadn’t seen.
What would it be like to see the world with such wonder again. To see the infinite possibilities with a childish grin and a determination the gods would be jealous of. Oh, how I wish I were younger!
We all rebel against those above us. It is animal instinct, preserved through our evolution, that allows us to question the decisions of those above us. No man wishes to be a cog in a machine. Of a slave to a system he cannot see yet can perceive. Of chains that grow heavier until one day they hang him.
I challenged all the power structures that demanded my submission and coerced my conformity to the status quo. I refused to bend to a system that demanded my cooperation to subjugate me. And yet I was conquered by the system, with those I deemed to be my allies.
After my subjugation was completed, I was no man. I was only a slave. I believed what was fed to me. I believed that I was a part of a greater whole. I was wrong. I had lost myself, grind into the mud by the machine to whom my soul had submitted to.
Today, I see where I had gone wrong. Today, I see where I had lost my direction. Today, I know I was right.
What good is a life spent in shackles that we do not accept? What good is a life that is forced upon a person? What use is an education if not to build the man you will be tomorrow? What good do the shackles of society do if prevent a man from evolving?
We should not leave our fate in the hands of other men. We are the captain of our ship. We cannot control the weather, nor the waves. All we control is the ship.
Take back what was taken from you. Take back the freedoms you gave away. Take back the life you signed away. Take back what is rightfully yours!
