I hate freedom

This isn't a cynical 'enemy of my enemy' anti-Bush polemic, although it could be read that way - it's just that I've come to prefer authority over anarchy. Perhaps I've become a Platonist at long last.
Rules, and reasons. Which only serve as ideals, not standards; things that are rarely achieved, though continually striven for. What has become known as a platonic friendship only works, in my estimation, if its rules are known, understood, accepted and acted upon by both parties. Unlikely to last very long in any depth, but worthwhile all the same: for the duration that it does.
These are sweet ideals in the relating of one to self. I'll digress.
Marshall McLuhan (google him, I couldn't be bothered doing the linking for you) describes communication technology as extensions of the physical senses. Or something like that.
Now, with this internet thing, everything is linked. The potential is immense; the competence is lacking. Every human intrigue can be satisfied at the click of mouse. Porn, porn, porn, viagra, novelty, novelty, novelty: shite. Would Buddha have achieved enlightenment by the age of thirty-five if he had had digital television? I doubt it.
There's too much fluff around, too little substance. It's no wonder marriages break down, nor fellows loose persistance - we have too many ideas, too many empty heads to be filled with unreal achievements. Too many options.
Such is modern living, technologically replete, virtually bankrupt of virtue.
But it's not so bad, it's just the same old process of attempting to know oneself, that's been tried for years, now in an age of narcissism.
It'd help to remember Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who, on inheriting his father's estate in his thirties, retired to study the great works and become a man of learning. He went off the deep end, as his Essays, though a new genre, reveal a continual struggle for stability. But he managed, by writing and re-writing, to reach a certain kind of peace. In his last essay, on experience, he finally came around to the notion that he would never be completely enlightened, like the exemplars of Socrates and the like that he clung to: "My selfe, who professe nothing else, finde therein so bottomlesse a depth and infinite variety, that my apprentisage hath no other fruit than to make me perceive how much more there remaineth for me to learne." (from John Florio's 1603 translation). It took him a long time to come to that, a long life of writing.

For me, there is enough freedom on a blank sheet of paper. I'd be happy with that. But, in this day and age, it's not enough. I've been infected with the information, and it's affecting my satisfaction.

And you - you are hungry, aren't you? looking for something from a computer screen? But it's not there, not in the search, not in the scan, nor the results that will make you happy. I really don't think so.
Could it be in the authority, or even in the publicity, that the 21st century will find fulfilment?

Perhaps then, I should just publish this post, gratify my self, and liberate you from my words - go and create your own identity ...