So on the one hand in school you're teachers are constantly telling you that you can be whatever it is you want to be as long as you put your mind and heart to it, and yet at the same time I was also getting the clear message of, well, what can you do really?

It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing.

What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.

We're born with the desire, but we don't really know how to choose. We don't know what our taste is, and we don't know what we are seeing.

What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold.

Well certainly not having any choice - having your entire life dictated by others.

Knowledge should be a public good, and I want my ideas to have as much exposure as possible.