I want to be free but with more limits in we know in the West as “modern society” I would sound totalitarian but in important things as voting or internet access should not be accessible for everyone.
When these are free and easy to join they end up being flawed. Here in Spain you can vote with just 18 years old. I think it is not useful because a teenager doesn’t know how a State or government works so they will vote whatever they were taught to previously. I consider raise the age at 25 at least.
Internet era is the same and many powerful entities use it just to brainwash people with fake news. Social media as Twitter or Facebook have not a democratic criteria because do not put basic rules of “truths” neither transparency. It is free access so lit any kind of person can join and write whatever they want. It is dangerous and drives to misunderstandings.
I would say these are good inventions but somehow they need to be more restricted.

One of my biggest worries is that we are are on the verge of totalitarianism and I think that it may be a completely unbearable form of existence. I am concerned that all this time of social restrictions is going to make it that much easier to usher in totalitarian regimes because people are becoming used to not being allowed to do hardly anything at all.

The way I have seen life in England in the last few weeks has worried me. People are sitting on steps of shops which are shut, just to eat, like vagrants, because they are not allowed to go inside any public places apart from supermarkets. I was at King's Cross station yesterday and, it was patrolled by police who were walking around carrying machine guns. it felt like an entirely different city to the one of a year ago. I am not sure that it is about the pandemic, or if it is the rise of a totalitarian state. Honestly, I am uncertain what is going to happen in the near future, but I do feel very fearful of what may be coming, but I hope that my fears don't come true.

Extra: I realise that you are talking about the internet, and it appears that we are free but I think that there are some ways we are being tracked when we are online. But, of course, there are so many people to be monitored.

I live in the West, and I maintain that I am as free in the pursuit of my inclinations as my conditions permit, so.....yes.

I wager such a sentiment is the necessary result of comfort. People are too busy enjoying their rights to want to fight for them, perhaps forgetting the hard-fought battles required to bring them into reality. Hopefully the recent authoritarian takeovers of entire societies will jog their memory.

Does anybody in the West still want to be free? — synthesis

Mostly those (not only) "in the West" systemically not free (i.e. alienated by exploitation and/or discrimination) "want be free" – free themselves – from status quo 'systems of control' (re: hegemonic, neoliberal, military-police-prison-pharma-industrial complexes). Too many also do not "want" others to be(come) free either out of a paranoiac zerosum mindset or a deeply indoctrinated inferiority-complex for which some have militarized themselves & scapegoat others to overcompensate for their projected (self)fears-hatreds. Oligarchic 'divide & conquor' strategems are still working (aided & abetted by Stockholm syndromed, reactionary, populist mobs) and accelerating.

Does anybody in the West still want to be free? — synthesis

Your question is directed much more towards the historical figure of humanity, than towards something intrinsically individual.

We have reached the point where our abstract-moral principles and values are no longer balanced with our technological advances. Given that, we enter decadence, because we have the means, but we don't have the right morals to use those same means.

The only result of a fragile and chaotic relationship like this, is collapse.

Freedom is no longer discussed by the sake of freedom, but for the sake of power.

hegemonic, neoliberal, military-police-prison-pharma-industrial complexes — 180 Proof

You make a good point. So how should we view the freedom of the people who control the "status quo systems" you mention?

Exploitive, licentious, gangster ... predatory.

As we devolve into a totalitarianism characterized by intolerance, divisiveness, and massive propaganda/ignorance, you just have to wonder whether the desire to be free has been selected out of Western people. — synthesis

The 'loss of freedom' will, and does, come from unexpected sources. Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al are much more likely to compromise personal freedom than the Centers for Disease Control or the police. How? Commercial Internet companies make a great deal of money by manipulating people through their operating algorithms and content. Tracking your clicks and mouse moves, "scraping" information off the pictures we post, the texts we write, the things we buy, the things we watch (or do not watch) enables companies to profile, and manipulate us on ever deeper levels.

Years before many of us here were born, Marshall McLuhan observed that "the medium is the message". He was talking about television; the internet had not been invented yet. However, the principal applies as much to the internet as television.

The medium of the internet is no more liberating than television was/is--I'd say even less so. Television is much more a mass medium than the internet, which can be individualized by those background algorithms--toward purposes we are mostly not consciously aware of. That's how we get sucked in.

Exploitive, licentious, gangster ... predatory — 180 Proof

Exactly!

It has often been suggested that the great lesson of the 20th century was that the most efficacious method of controlling populations was not through coercion ala the USSR, Nazi Germany, or Communist China, but instead, by giving people EXACTLY what they desire.

IOW, people will gladly trade their freedoms for perceived securities. Let's consider pornography (sexual security?) as an example. I am a guy, I get it, but how it is possible that society allowed free access to pretty much EVERYBODY? Are people out of their f****** minds! Doesn't anybody care? And I could possibly understand how guys could "overlook" this idiocy, but how about women? Why haven't women been saying anything about it?

You can go down a very long laundry list of absolutely bizarre things that have been going on and almost nobody seems to care. Could the schools get any worse? Does anybody in public life ever tell the truth anymore? Could political polarity be any worse? Could the fact that the health care system is corrupt beyond your wildest dreams be any more evident? So on and on and on...

People need to do some think'in...

It has often been suggested that the great lesson of the 20th century was that the most efficacious method of controlling populations was not through coercion ala the USSR, Nazi Germany, or Communist China, but instead, by giving people EXACTLY what they desire. — synthesis

No doubt a corollary of William Burrough's "junk equation" (à la Nietzsche's decadence, Adorno's culture industry, Arendt's banality, Deleuze-Guattari's desiring-machines, Chomsky-Herman's manufactured consensus or Žižek's ideology).

Growing up in America, one kind of assumes that the default setting is that people (more than anything) desire to be free. I would imagine that most of us in the United States (and in the West) thought that everybody would want to live in a "free country" if they could. But maybe that's not really the case. Maybe most people are just as happy to live under a set of authoritarian edicts as long as they can have access to things like cheap junk food, lightening quick internet, 2-day free shipping, and free pornography, you know, the essentials of life.

As we devolve into a totalitarianism characterized by intolerance, divisiveness, and massive propaganda/ignorance, you just have to wonder whether the desire to be free has been selected out of Western people.

Does anybody in the West still want to be free? — synthesis

John Adams in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The dominating need in the West is the struggle for prestige. Only a moral and religious people can provide values which contend with the dominating need for prestige. The descent into secularism must invite tyranny in the attempt to keep the peace; the peace of slavery.

The problem with these sources are that we enter into relationships with them voluntarily. One need not use Google or Facebook, whereas we see what happens if you do not comply with police or government. So I cannot see how these entities can be a source of any denials of freedom, let alone anything on par with those who possess the monopoly on violence.

You must be referring to the several "tyrannical slave-states" of (e.g.) very secular Scandanavia ...

Could the schools get any worse? — synthesis

Yes. There ARE good schools with good students getting a good education. These schools produce the next generation of cadre that the ruling class needs to keep society functioning in the desired manner. Maybe 20% of American students attend these (usually suburban) schools.

Yes, there are some fairly good schools left, and a lot of schools that have won the race to the bottom. That's OK because the students attending the crappy schools were never going to be very useful, anyway, except as consumers -- which they'll do well as.

Does anybody in public life ever tell the truth anymore? — synthesis

Yes, Somebody, somewhere, is telling the truth in public. Why do you expect people in power to speak the truths that would probably result in their not being in power any more?

Could political polarity be any worse? — synthesis

Oh yes, much worse. Think Germany in the 1920s-1930s. Bloody street fighting between Communists and Nazis was a regular and frequent occurrence. @Go Reds, Smash State! The Communists as well as the less radical, centrist parties were brutally suppressed as soon as the Nazis took power in early 1933. The recent storming of the US capital building was very widely condemned by both sides of the shallow groove that marks the shallow political divide.

The US doesn't really have much polarity -- we are a unipolar political system, the two poles are both capitalist.

We could, we should have more polarity -- workers of the United States, Unite -- then revolt. We have a small amount to lose, and a lot more to gain.

Could the fact that the health care system is corrupt beyond your wildest dreams be any more evident? — synthesis

Yes, the corruption could / should be much, much more evident than it is.

Žižek's critique helps here: it's not so much that folk no longer what to be free, but that they have no idea what they want. They are told that being free is about being able to buy a bigger television screen or an SUV, and are confused to find that achieving these goals does not bring any satisfaction.

One need not use Google or Facebook, whereas we see what happens if you do not comply with police or government. So I cannot see how these entities can be a source of any denials of freedom — NOS4A2

True enough, one does not need to use Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al. It's also the case that the operation of these extremely large corporations is only visible on the front end -- our computer screens. The algorithms, scraping and sale of data, massive profiling (for various and sundry purposes), and so on is not at all visible, let alone not obvious. Check out SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM by S. Zuboff - it's on YouTube -- another giant social media operator, but Zuboff is quite enlightening.

The police are the hard fist; most of the tracking, profiling, data scraping -- all that back-office monitoring -- is the soft fish.

FOR EXAMPLE: What do back office companies do with the data they scrape off of the zillions of pictures posted on facebook (and identified by FB users)? Likely, that information goes into the construction of facial recognition systems--something that has definitely hard, as well as soft, fist uses.

Target Corporation figured out how to tell which women were in early pregnancies by studying changes in purchase patterns. The women's changes were not dramatic -- they started buying more items like hand cleaners and unscented soap. Later on, they started buying baby products. Ah ha -- more unscented soap in June, baby products in December! An opportunity to become the mother's and baby's primary supplier.

That in itself may not be tyrannical (it IS manipulative) but suppose there are changes in run-of- the-mill purchases that predict a right- or left- shift in political views? Maybe crypto-nazis buy more canned peas and plastic containers 9 months before they start posting on a Proud Boys site. Maybe crypto socialists start buying fresh organic vegetables and white socks 5 months before they subscribe to The Militant and start spouting theory from Leon Trotsky.

Over the past years it has become apparent (to me) that man needs a higher, everlasting moral authority because depending on intellectualism to achieve the same results in what every other foray into intellectualism portends, birth, life, and death.

Freedom is no longer discussed by the sake of freedom, but for the sake of power. — Gus Lamarch

Yeah.

Could the schools get any worse?
— synthesis

Yes. There ARE good schools with good students getting a good education. These schools produce the next generation of cadre that the ruling class needs to keep society functioning in the desired manner. Maybe 20% of American students attend these (usually suburban) schools.

Yes, there are some fairly good schools left, and a lot of schools that have won the race to the bottom. That's OK because the students attending the crappy schools were never going to be very useful, anyway, except as consumers -- which they'll do well as. — Bitter Crank

I would maintain that those going to the "good" school and are running the place are absolute idiots. I don't care if they aced every test since kindergarten, they are almost all fools.

Does anybody in public life ever tell the truth anymore?
— synthesis

Yes, Somebody, somewhere, is telling the truth in public. Why do you expect people in power to speak the truths that would probably result in their not being in power any more? — Bitter Crank

I just figured that somebody might want to sleep well at night.

Could political polarity be any worse?
— synthesis

Oh yes, much worse. Think Germany in the 1920s-1930s. Bloody street fighting between Communists and Nazis was a regular and frequent occurrence. Go Reds, Smash State! The Communists as well as the less radical, centrist parties were brutally suppressed as soon as the Nazis took power in early 1933. The recent storming of the US capital building was very widely condemned by both sides of the shallow groove that marks the shallow political divide.

The US doesn't really have much polarity -- we are a unipolar political system, the two poles are both capitalist.

We could, we should have more polarity -- workers of the United States, Unite -- then revolt. We have a small amount to lose, and a lot more to gain. — Bitter Crank

BC, what's with all this anti-capitalist bullshit? Do you believe that all of this just started at the dawn of capitalism? Life before capitalism was MUCH worse for the average dude. It was brutal. And I know, they didn't do communism/socialism right everywhere it has been a complete disaster (which is everywhere its been tried).

Could the fact that the health care system is corrupt beyond your wildest dreams be any more evident?
— synthesis

Yes, the corruption could / should be much, much more evident than it is. — Bitter Crank

How is that possible?

Freedom is just a fancy word for nothing left to lose.

I would maintain that those going to the "good" school and are running the place are absolute idiots. I don't care if they aced every test since kindergarten, they are almost all fools. — synthesis

There is, of course, no shortage of liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels. Plenty of absolute idiots, and fools, too. You are focussing on the right side of the distribution of goodness and intelligence--out in the territory of Trump, Putin and Balsinaro; the robber barons; Mark Z. and Jeff B. The Normal Distribution will not be mocked. Most people are in the middle--neither rotten nor perfect. Then there are the people on the left side of the distribution who are unusually competent, kind and decent people. The distribution is skewed to the left -- there are more very decent people then rotten mafiosi.

BC, what's with all this anti-capitalist bullshit? — synthesis

I've been anti-capitalist since October 28th, 1982. Prior to that I was merely unenthusiastic.

How well is capitalism working out for you? Don't like the state? Marx didn't either, He called the state 'a committee to organize the affairs of rich people'. You are free in America insofar as you obey.

Here's a communist joke:

Comrade A: "After the revolution, there will be enough strawberries for all!"
Comrade B: "But comrade, I don't like strawberries."
Comrade A: "After the revolution, you WILL like strawberries."

Large organizations, be they states or corporations, on down to small non-profits, are controlling and repressive by their nature. People don't like to be controlled. I don't either. I want neither the state nor the corporation telling me what to do. I too want to be free.

But wake up: There can be no great individual freedom in the kinds of states and workplaces we exist in.

Yes, the corruption could / should be much, much more evident than it is.
— Bitter Crank

How is that possible? — synthesis

Ah well, publish the contracts between insurers and providers (hospitals, clinics, pharmacies Medicare/Medicaid, etc.). Here's a prime example: Big Pharma corrupted enough congress people (men and women both) to get a law passed forbidding Medicare/Medicaid from negotiating drug prices. Unconscionable.

↪Nikolas Over the past years it has become apparent (to me) that man needs a higher, everlasting moral authority because depending on intellectualism to achieve the same results in what every other foray into intellectualism portends, birth, life, and death. — synthesis

Quite true. Sustaining liberty in society requires the voluntary adoption of its citizens of essential obligations. If they don't, then it is up to the government. Is it a good idea?

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Unfortunately it does seem that America is destined to learn the hard way.

As we devolve into a totalitarianism characterized by intolerance, divisiveness, and massive propaganda/ignorance, you just have to wonder whether the desire to be free has been selected out of Western people. — synthesis

I think people's nature is to pursue what they lack. Like the lawn is always greener on the other side, and that applies to freedom as well. Perhaps people in the West have lived too freely, too long without knowing the dangers authoritarian control. So they idealize it with rose-colored glasses. I see similar things happen when people picture nature, or living "simply in the olden days" to name a few, when these were much more brutal in many respects in magnitudes that are hard to imagine for us in the west.

Freedom is just a fancy word for nothing left to lose. — god must be atheist

I love it! I can't tell if it's bait or true. I suppose to some, gaining freedom is the same as losing security. The security of not having to take responsibility for one's actions.

America is a very commercial society, and one becoming ever so much so as time goes on. What, after all, are “jobs and the economy” about, or “it’s the economy, stupid”?

Some ppl only learned who Picasso was when they read a news article that told of one of his paintings selling for a record umpteen-million dollars. Culture becomes important when it generates money. I doubt they ever learned who Diogenes was.

That’s why Trump was elected in the first place: independent voters decided he would be better at providing them the comforts and securities they wanted...just because of his wealthy persona.

What does this have to do with the OP? Everything. What a ppl values is what guides it. When money guides it, it does so at the expense (no pun intended) of everything else. That includes morality. If the porn industry generates enough money it is viewed as heroic (Larry Flynt), or respectable (Hugh Hefner). And the music industry gets a free ride too for the same reason.

When we become a ppl that values money above all else, we sacrifice everything else for it...including our freedom...not to mention our morals. Then we are at the mercy of those few who have the money and use it to control the government. We are not a democracy. We are an oligarchy.

Over the past years it has become apparent (to me) that man needs a higher, everlasting moral authority... — synthesis

Do you have an example in mind?

Some ppl only learned who Picasso was when they read a news article that told of one of his paintings selling for a record umpteen-million dollars. Culture becomes important when it generates money. I doubt they ever learned who Diogenes was. — Todd Martin

It generates money and then marketing. Picasso is more famous than Diogenes because there are a lot of commercial interests of rich people flowing around.
This exactly happens when we are speaking about other marketing culture stuff: Mona Lisa. We all know is a Da Vinci paint but it is not his best work... But somehow it provides a lot of marketing and money. It is easy to see around internet the image and "memes" about it.
I also bet, as you said, those don't even know who is Francisco de Goya and the "black paintings" which are one of the most important works in art history.

So yes... Sadly in nowadays an art work depends of how the dictatorship of social media give them the accurate reflection or marketing.

I love it! I can't tell if it's bait or true. — FlaccidDoor

It's the great post-modern theorist Kris Kristofferson.