January 23, 2023 (Updated January 13, 2025)
There is a prison in everyone’s mind. It’s an invisible jail. You can’t see it in brain scan image, but you can think, that it’s there.
If you do bad things to other people knowing, that they will be hurt, you will put yourself in that prison. You are imprisoning yourself inside your mind’s jail. If you continue doing bad things to other people, you just push yourself deeper inside that prison.
Living in your own prison is miserable life. It’s not happy life at all. You have no freedom.
On the contrary, if you do good things to other people, you’ll become free. The more you do good for other people, the more freedom you can feel.
Doing good things to others sets you free. You are not isolated from other people inside your mind’s prison. You are not locked inside your mind’s jail.
Your inner self doesn’t want to be in jail. Your inner self needs light and fresh air. It needs a view to the landscape. A beautiful view. You want to see clearly ahead on your way. The inner self of other people needs to be free too. The communication fails, if people’s souls are locked inside a mind’s jail.
Should you decide your moral actions intuitively or rationally? If you think, that there is a prison in everyone’s mind, you can rationally evaluate your actions before you do anything. In that way the idea of a mind’s jail generates rational thinking, that leads to morally conscious and trustworthy actions.
However, your rational mind can be distorted by a role that you have in a given situation and circumstances. A role can also be a mind’s jail, in which you can’t make morally durable decisions. That’s why rationally made decisions can in some situations be morally damaging for other people and for yourself. Even if you know, what is right, a role can prevent you from doing right. You can even have a punishment for doing right, because doing right may break your role. For some people breaking a role can be a more terrible thing than acting morally right. A role can be so restrictive, that it actually prevents you from acting in morally reliable way.
If a role is your jail, you can free yourself to make moral decisions by trusting your intuition, because intuitively made decisions are less distorted by a role and its potentially bad requirements for acting. Intuition can liberate you from acting badly before you do anything bad. You must be able to detach yourself from a role, if sticking to that role would lead to morally harmful actions.
As we can see, the question of rationality and intuition is related to your personality and your society. It depends on a role, that you might have. Some people need awakening of their imagination, thinking and consciousness. Some other people need awakening of their intuition. Some people need courage to break their roles. However, the purpose of the idea of a mind’s jail is to let your moral mind and not to be restricted to repeat patterns, that are morally damaging to anyone. Morality should not be locked in a prison of corrupted moral conventions and behavior.
We should be free to act in morally truthful and responsible way. If we act in morally truthful and responsible way, we will be free.
Freedom and ethics are connected to each other. They depend on each other. We can keep ouselves free by doing good. We can help people around us to feel free and alive.
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Franz Kafka:
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
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