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Before moving on to the remedy for such an impasse — the impasse that has characterized human history — we must not overlook another important aspect and implication of freedom: consequence or fate.
To choose means also to choose the consequences of what has been chosen, whether or not we have perceived those consequences to be a part of our choice. Our perception of what reality is never has the last word. It is what reality is that does have the final say. If we were insightful enough so that our perception agreed with reality, so much the better. But no matter, it is the reality of how things move and can become when we made our choice that governs the consequences of our so choosing.
One may try to evade this annoyance by imaging a universe without any predictable consequences and asserting that it would be totally free. On the contrary, such a totally capricious universe would not be free at all. All choices depend for their freedom on some elements in the situation being stable enough to predict. We cannot plan without some reliably predictable "fates" or stabilities. Actually, no universe without some system of orderly consequence could exist: it would be so unstable as to self-destruct almost if not immediately.
One has only to imagine a world in which the ground beneath one's feet would unpredictably disappear, or the oxygen whimsically disappear from the air for ten minute intervals, to see how impossible such a world would be. Consequence is a necessity for freedom to exist The exercise of freedom inevitably involves responsibility.
