Writing · 2025/07/28
Freedom and Culture
On possession, exercise, time, and what becomes sharper at the edge.
Freedom is more valuable in possession than in exercise. Culture is the opposite: you grow richer culturally by sharing it. There are two reasons for this difference.
One is that they have opposite relationships with time. Individual culture can only grow with time; freedom changes value with time until it expires.
The other difference is concentration. Freedom generally appreciates linearly with its purity, until it reaches 100% and becomes meaningless. It seems to me that a lot of people are going after this—sort of freedom optimization. Culture, however, is sharpest when it is on the edge, when it is in conflict, and when it is threatened. It becomes bland with a larger majority.