Philosophy Spotlight: Sierra, Queen of Antarctica
“Society imposes its customs and values on each of us, telling us who we are and how we should live. It is all irrelevant noise. I need no one’s permission to choose my own path.”
Inspiration: Constructivism, Christine Korsgaard
Sierra’s philosophy demonstrates the self-assurance needed to exercise your own free will. A free will chooses its own values, in addition to its actions, creating a personal ethics rather than accepting one from others.
While this freedom is accepted on an applied level - we each naturally choose our own career paths, hobbies, personal priorities, and relationships - it is more controversial on a meta level. If we can freely choose our own values, what stops us from choosing malice, sadism, or indifference? If society demands self-sacrifice for the sake of others, is it ultimately up to each of us to determine what is right or is the selfish option impermissible? When push comes to shove, most people believe that there is at least some minimal value we must place in each other before we have the freedom to choose our own values.
The most poignant depiction of the audacity of free will comes from Nietzsche’s Metamorphosis. After growing resilient from a life of hard work, the individual is confronted by the Dragon of Thou Shalt, the imposing metaphorical embodiment of society’s values and culture, created from the sum of history, that we are expected to adopt. The Dragon declares that the question of value has been answered, and there is no room left for the individual to create their own. To reject the Dragon, denying the values that society compels us to absorb, the will must have the strength of a lion and boldly declare its own authority.