The invisible cage you built yourself

From me

Most people follow the rules of their social environment, assuming that's just how the world works. Few ever pause to go one layer deeper.

Who created the rules? Why these rules and not others? What assumptions produced them? Who benefits from them? What possibilities do they exclude?

And because of this, those rules become their reality.

Nobody has to stand over you and say no. You're simply self-enforcing those rules, building your own invisible cage.

You don't ask why the rules exist. You only ask how to succeed within them. And in that way, we limit ourselves without even realising it, spending our finite life resources optimising within a game we thought was our only choice.

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From others

Philosopher John Stuart Mill on the weight of inherited custom:

"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement."

Source: On Liberty (1859)

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer on the price of conformity:

"We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."

Source: Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

For you

What invisible cage are you still living in?

P.S. Your life resources are finite which means there is always opportunity cost.