The tyranny of the procrastiny

No secret police will knock at the door to question my thoughts, no one can enslave me and no one can stop me doing what I want to do or saying what I want to say.

We live in a free country, right? We can do what we choose.

This far into January reminds us of a more subtle tyranny, the tyranny of ourselves. Maybe on 1st January you bought your gym membership, but by now you are wondering whether your £150 year-long subscription and weight loss magazines are enough to lose weight without actually having to eat less or do more exercise.

What does not seem such a bad idea at this time of year would be some kind of student boot camp where checking Facebook would result in 50 press ups.

6am starts would be guaranteed by fog horns and buckets of water. The practice essays we told ourselves we would write will be written because we have no choice and no distraction while we are locked in a dark room without our books and refused to be let out until it is done. We would be ‘forced to be free’, as Rousseau put it.

While one in their lazy depraved self might be a smoker, a drinker, overweight and never get their work done, one’s true self is a hard-working non-drinker who has the body of an athlete and the concentration of a monk.

This boot camp might be a tyranny over us but it is nice to think that it might free us from our corrupted selves. How can we be unfree when we are forced to do what we want but otherwise could not be?

Are we to blame, or is our society, which has to find more and more temping ways to stimulate us that we lose all of our control of ourselves? Instant updates, instant sugar, instant gratification.

Our slave-driver of the ancient world was literal, the one of today is inside. It’s a spiritual battle.

Forget the will to give up smoking, and nicotine patches to bypass our own desires, we could plead for the dictator of freedom, of our true selves instead.

Or perhaps our society will invent ‘Diet Smoking’ the same way it has invented Diet Coke, so we can retain our desire for the object while avoiding the corrupting property.

Or perhaps if we can only be free when we own our freedom, perhaps we will have to find our own inner tyrant to force us to be free?

Just an age-old philosophical debate one might contemplate while in bed in the morning not going for a run, not being at your 9am seminar and while checking one’s Facebook.