I had long ago formed the theory that freedom of choice was strictly individual. Two people together had less choice than did one; the masses had virtually no choice at all. A man who had a family had less choice than a bachelor; one who belonged to a party had less choice than his unaffiliated neighbour. This went hand in hand with a theory of mine that human civilisation, and even human culture, strove to give mankind more choice, more free will. I was still a pantheist, not of Spinoza’s school, but partly of the Cabala’s. I identified love with freedom. When a man loved a woman it was an act of freedom. Love of God could not take place by commandment; it could only be an act of free will. The fact that almost all creatures are born of a union between male and female was proof for me that life is an experiment in God’s laboratory of freedom. Freedom could not remain passive, it wanted to create. It wanted countless variations, possibilities, combinations. It wanted love.
My bizarre fantasy concerning freedom of choice was also bound up with a theory of art. Science was, at least provisionally, the teaching of constraint. But art was in a sense the teaching of freedom. It did what it wanted, not what it had to do. The true artist was a free-willed man who did as he pleased. Science was the product of teams of investigators: technology required a collective. But art was created by a single individual.
[Meshugah by Isaac Bashevis Singer p. 225]