I think Nietzsche's Master/Slave mentality are pretty interesting topics and similar in vein to how Ananda is trying to frame their take
The idea that being counter cultural actually is as far as being free as you can be because you're necessarily defined by the culture wasn't something I thought of before I heard of that idea
But people do like to feel inclined to think that an act of rebellion is tantamount to an expression of freedom
A pet theory of mine is that free will can be thought of as a spectrum. For example, poor and uneducated people have a lower degree of free will than rich or world aware people. This is the case if you frame free will as the range of choice you can choose direction for your life. Someone with more resources and possibilities to consider necessarily has more free will. So I suppose the range of behaviors that someone is capable of can also be considered as the degree of free will with this framework. If all someone can do is habitually goad others with inane belligerence, and all the receiver can do is give in to their emotional reaction, then I think they equally "bend" to their own will, which is their lack of will. They bend to their natural inclinations so to speak.
