"I could ____."

In class on Wednesday during our discussion of freedom, Dr. Johnson gave the example of vertigo. She explained that Sartre would say that we are not feeling those symptoms because we are afraid to fall but rather that we are afraid of jumping. In a moment like standing on top of a tall building or near the edge of a large drop we experience the weight of our own freedom. We recognize that we have the option to exercise our absolute freedom by negating any other choice, and for some reason we are drawn to do so.

This sounded very familiar to a concept I remembered seeing mentioned in a video, but during class I couldn't remember the name. After class was over I looked up the video and went to Dr. Johnson's office to show her. The concept turned out to be "L'appel du vide". It is French term that translates to "the call of the void", which sounds pretty creepy if you ask me.

It can be applied to more that just the urge to jump off of a high place. You can watch the humorous explanation in the video I have been referring to HERE (the relevant part is from 2:00-3:51).

What is disturbing to us when we have a thought like "I could drive my car off the road" is that, well, we easily could. The fact that we "could" do anything but we choose not to is very powerful when thinking in terms of our freedom. We should apply this to positive things any time we want to say "I can't" do something we know we have to do.