retaining power always feels like the way forward.

I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create.

positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.