Lately, the streets and media are flooded with voices crying out, "Being alone is easier," or "The freedom not to date." If the theory holds true—that love provides human beings with a ‘fallback’ and heightens the elasticity of life—why are so many in this day and age willingly choosing isolation and calling it ‘freedom’? Why do they choose the solitude of their own rooms over the daring freedom of spacewalking tethered to a lifeline?
Hidden here is a fiercely realistic, uniquely modern ‘cost-benefit calculus of freedom.’ To jump straight to the conclusion: the freedom people speak of today is not a gallant, genuine freedom that leaps toward infinite possibilities. It is closer to a state of comfort engineered by a defense mechanism that whispers, "I don’t want to get hurt anymore."
Love Transformed: From a Lifeline to a Shackle
If love in the past was a sturdy lifeline supporting me as I stood on the edge of a cliff, in today’s society—where infinite competition and survival of the fittest are the default settings—love feels more like a ticking time bomb or a high-stakes risk.
It is already overwhelming enough just to keep one’s own body alive and afloat in this world. The material and emotional costs required to fathom another’s feelings, accommodate them, and maintain a relationship have skyrocketed. Furthermore, in a society where trust in eternal relationships has collapsed, tying oneself to an unstable cord that could snap at any moment is a highly perilous gamble. To modern individuals, love is no longer perceived as a stepping stone that heightens the saturation of life, but as a heavy shackle that can drag them down to the bottom at any given moment.
The Dopamine Solace of Fake Secure Bases
In the past, the only entity capable of soothing the freezing ache of loneliness—the only ‘being to listen to my story’—was another human. That was why we had to approach others, even if it meant absorbing the risks.
Today, however, we are inundated with substitutes so sophisticated that we no longer need to risk getting hurt to engage in love with a flesh-and-blood human being. Algorithms analyze our tastes more perfectly than we do, serving them right to our screens, while the world inside our smartphones endlessly supplies a loose sense of connection—one that is safe and maintains a comfortable distance. Without the labor of clashing and breaking, we can enjoy a perfectly controlled, "cost-effective comfort" right from the corner of our rooms. And people have begun to wrap this safe isolation in the splendid vocabulary of "freedom."
Conclusion: A Psychological Victory Named Freedom
A state where you can go anywhere, yet ultimately go nowhere, standing dead in your tracks while mindlessly scrolling through a screen. That is merely an empty freedom standing in the middle of a desert—what philosophy calls "negative freedom."
The real reason modern people evade love is not because they desire to be free, but because they are, in truth, terrified and exhausted. While they unconsciously know that the freedom of spacewalking the wide universe on a lifeline is far denser and more beautiful, they are terrified that the rope will chafe their skin during the process, or that the other person might abruptly cut the cord. And so, they sit motionless in the cockpit of the spaceship, gazing outside, comforting themselves: "I can go anywhere right now, so I am free."
One cannot blame the choices of those who abstain from love. It is, after all, the best defense mechanism chosen by the survival instinct to endure a cruel world. However, we must always coldly question ourselves: Is this sweet, solitary time we enjoy truly "freedom" in its genuine sense? Or is it a temporary relief found inside a "safe zone" we fled to from trauma? For true freedom has always been granted only to those who dare to brave the risk.
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