We don't normally question our choices simply because we don't believe that we are making them and that is correct for mostly our political views, our ideas about how to be, what is grooming, what clothes to wear and how to wear are mostly decided for us by the actions of the others and all we simply have to do is fit ourself into the predefined role and shape.
Leo Tolstoy's famous character sketch of Prince Stepan Oblonsky in his, my most favourite, novel Anna Karenina got me thinking on this point, for all of Oblonsky's views like the choice of his hat and the liberal newspaper that he reads,and his views on marriage are borrowed and what are the mostly held opinions of the herd. Is then Tolstoy introducing him as a foil to his sister Anna who has very strong and thought out opinions of her own? They may be wrong in the moral sense, they may be condemned by the society at large, she may do wrong by her husband and her son but are we to pass judgement on her? Do we not fail morally within the soul of our souls? don't we get tempted to do what is generally thought of as wrong and what we dearly believe as wrong? The question then is to ask can we or do we have the moral courage to do that wrong and live by it? Anna certainly fails, but not because of lack of courage on her part but on account of the betrayal of Voronsky - and that is the tragedy of Anna Karenina - the failure of her own character to see and understand other people as and what they are and not what they say they are.
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