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| Pictures from Justin Bieber's April 27 carousel post on Instagram.(Instagram) |
Freedom isn’t having money.
If that sentence feels backwards to you, you're still trapped.
Look at the wealthy. Look at the famous. These are the people the world trains you to envy — yet they’re some of the most miserable individuals alive. Depressed behind mansions. Medicated inside supercars. Smiling through contracts. Their life is a curated performance. A role they can’t step out of without consequences.
Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation — the phenomenon where happiness returns to a baseline no matter how much wealth or success someone acquires (Brickman & Campbell, 1971). More money. Same emptiness.
You think money equals freedom? Then explain why the richest people in the world can’t even say what they think. One wrong sentence — one unfiltered opinion — and their entire life collapses. Roles vanish. Deals dissolve. Status evaporates. They're not free. They're leased.
Dave Chappelle once walked away from $50 million because he saw the trap: fame comes with expectations, and those expectations often conflict with reality. Kanye West, J.K. Rowling, and countless others have said something real — and paid the price for it.
Fame is even worse. It’s unnatural.
Humans weren’t built to be known by millions. According to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the average person can only maintain stable relationships with about 150 people — the so-called Dunbar's number. For 99.99% of human history, that was enough.
Then came technology — the amplifier. Television, the internet, and now social media — each wave created visibility on a scale the brain wasn’t designed to handle. The result? Chronic stress, identity distortion, and the collapse of privacy (Turkle, 2011; Marwick & boyd, 2011).
Now we manufacture "personal brands" and sell them like products. Privacy became a luxury. Authenticity became a liability.
So what do they do?
They censor themselves. Smile for the camera. Avoid the real. Stick to scripts.
Because when you're rich or famous, honesty costs money. And nobody gives that up easily.
This is what society won’t tell you:
They are prisoners.
Their faces are public property.
Their time belongs to the calendar.
Their thoughts are pre-approved.
And yet — we’re told to chase what they have.
Funny.
You don’t need money to be free.
You need detachment. Silence. Room to move.
You need the ability to say “no” and mean it — without it costing you your identity, your peace, or your survival.
Most people aren’t chasing freedom.
They’re chasing decorated cages.
And the lock? It’s inside their head.
References (for backend citation, not necessarily visible in the post body):
- Brickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society.
- Dunbar, R. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution.
- Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.
- Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2011). To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter. Convergence.
- Interviews and public cases: Dave Chappelle (2005), Kanye West (various interviews), J.K. Rowling (2020 onwards).