Hey, Scott..., you sound like the average Canadian, including me with a few alterations! :lol:
O.k., all those are minor things and could be turned around, IF you (and I) really wanted to! So, mind over matter - change the things you can change. Stop whining!;-)
I accept the things I cannot change
You would rather be free than in control?
I have the power to choose
I am a free Spirit
I think you missed my point. I was sarcastically commenting on the Canadian governments propaganda machines efforts to control our thinking. I was lamenting our slide into totalitarianism where people are routinely being charged with thought crimes in this country and every fifth TV add is telling us what to think, what to care about, what is killing us, etc. My meaning was that, though people have the idea that they are free, they, in reality, are far from being free. This is classic double-think where someone can hold two conflicting ideals. Namely, they think they are free but they also hold to beliefs that were put there by government and NGOs. They hold firmly to the beliefs as though they had real personal experiences behind their thinking but, in reality, they are derived from unauthentic experience. So while they can list off hundreds of things they "can't" do or shouldn't do, because they saw an add somewhere with a crying mother or child, they can likewise think they are free.
So while a person can list all the reasons they shouldn't do this or that thing they have no real experience that explains why. They have testimony and questionable statistics and accept the message without examining the evidence. By not examining the evidence they are able to hold conflicting beliefs.
If enough people do this (don't examine evidence), then a concept say like "speed kills" (speed is a factor in fewer than 10% of accidents - alcohol and speed is the real killer) then the concept will become an accepted social norm without evidence. Then insurance companies and government can implement all kinds of controls that make no sense whatsoever in the face of actual evidence. That is not freedom - it is totalitarianism; the control of what and how people think.
But, really, what do people care if they are going along with it all because it "makes sense" to them and so they are choosing to behave as they do, so in reality they are free?
Except for one small problem: they aren't actually free.