To humans, freedom is a blessing, but simultaneously, it is a massive “existential dread.” To accept fully that no one decides for me, and that every outcome of my life is solely due to my own incompetence or error, is a weight too heavy to bear. The possibility that “I can do anything” paradoxically gives birth to the acute anxiety of “not knowing where to go.” Religion pries into this “terror of freedom,” offering a “comfortable prison” called the “Answer” to humans lost in the chaos of infinite choices.
The Transfer of Responsibility: Handing the Burden to a Being Greater than Oneself
The greatest pain experienced by a free, solitary individual is the “responsibility for failure.” If I shipwreck while rowing alone in a vast ocean, it is 100% my fault. However, a “part” that has boarded the Divine fleet has no need for self-reproach even in failure. This is because a sophisticated alibi is already prepared: “This is God’s will,” or “This is a trial for a greater plan.” People purchase “liberation from guilt” at the cost of surrendering their subjectivity. The relief provided by a grand authority that picks me up and gives me an excuse when I fall is more seductive than the noble agony of carving out one’s own path.
The Narcotic of Belonging: The Price of Erasing Solitude
Freedom inevitably accompanies solitude. The moment I deny God and establish my own truth, I become utterly alone in the universe. In contrast, religious constraint integrates me as a member of a “special people” or a “chosen community.” The moment I insert myself into a narrative shared by thousands of years of history and millions of comrades, existential loneliness vanishes like magic. Humans are far more vulnerable to the “feeling of belonging to a group that shares the truth” than to the truth itself. They choose to be “children of God” fed within a fence rather than “free individuals” starving in the wilderness.
Intellectual Laziness and Existential Deferral
Establishing one’s own values and making moral decisions at every moment consumes an immense amount of intellectual and emotional energy. Religion replaces this cumbersome process with a manual called “doctrine.” There is no need to agonize over what is good or evil; one simply believes and acts as written. This is a form of “intellectual outsourcing.” By handing over the heavy homework of the “meaning of life” to God, one remains in a state of “existential deferral,” simply performing a given role. For the majority of people, life is not a territory to be pioneered, but a garden to be safely managed.
Closing Thoughts
The confusion you feel may be evidence that you possess an inner strength capable of enduring the “weight of freedom.” Sadly, however, the majority of humans are not that strong. To them, freedom is not a right to be enjoyed, but a “hot potato” they wish to return to someone as quickly as possible.
Religion accurately perceives this weakness and sells “subordination” wrapped in the glamorous packaging of “salvation.” To answer your question of whether there are many who fear freedom: beyond a simple “yes,” it must be said that the history of humanity has been a struggle to decide to whom to dedicate that freedom just as much as it has been a struggle to obtain it.
From your perspective—having refused to be a part of the fleet and chosen the solitude of the open sea—religious constraint cannot help but look like a massive regression. Yet, the fact remains that the comfort provided by that regression is the sweetest temptation humanity has been unable to quit for millennia. That is the sorrowful landscape of human nature that the intellect must face.
Freedom belongs to everyone, but those who hold onto it and take responsibility to the end have always been the minority. Because you walk the path of that minority, the “comfort of constraint” chosen by the majority feels bizarre to you.
The Intellectual Property of Min Jinseong
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