I spent some time in a philosophical system in my 20s and early 30s that stated with ultimate freedom you ( a being ) gets to choose to what to bind yourself ( oneself). You get to choose your relationships. Different beings may play with choices as big as having a material body vs being only spirit, material in one moment and another state of existence in the next. Even in a system with space as grand as that, there might be space for conversation regarding decisions beyond a great being's control. Maybe a being can choose embodiment or not, but not have the ability ( freedom ) to universe or dimension hop.
In addition, I have been thinking a lot about the definition of slavery as it relates to social death. Being mutated into an un-person by the constraints of the society one is made a slave. Fundamentally not being recognized as a being capable of being in relationship except through the intercession of the other ( master or society - whether the owner of the slave is a person or an organization of people). Relationships with self, family, friends, community and world are what sustain us. Eating, for example, is a relationship between and among us, the earth, and other beings. There are in-between categories in societies, a spectrum between citizen and slave. Many culture have time bound constraints during which people are put out of recognizable relationship categories to be in very specific relationships - with the wild or warfare etc. There are also very hierarchical societies that constrain different groups access to relationship building - we in the west often name this access to resources which are being constrained - but that’s a relationship as well ( as per the food example above ) and the problem is larger than that. Particularly in a world in which freedom is extolled, often this collapsing and limiting of relationship is hidden. It gets even more complicated because as a westerner I desire to collapse into the ability of the individual to build relationship. The individual slave is isolated and eliminated from the world of relationship. However, by definition relationships are never individual. They are the here and there and all the moments betwixt, between and across - the breathe, breadth and maybe even the bread making and sharing that hold us - whether that bread is edible or spendable. The roots underneath intertwine and may suffocate or sustain.
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