How free can we actually be, as individuals, even when we are outwardly, politically free? Whose opinions are they really that we call our own? When can we say I and really mean I, and not the father, the mother, the teachers, the friends, whose convictions are reproduced in us? How much I is there really, beyond my upbringing? (Because even if I reject my upbringing, surely that can be seen as another consequence of my upbringing.) You probably know the famous Schopenhauer quote, it goes something like this: A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.

Can we exchange our own history for another? Discard it? Retract it? Can we take the convictions and beliefs that we have developed over the course of years, and replace them with a blank slate? Can we unlearn what we have learned, unfeel what we have felt?