Liberty: One over One Million
Libertarianism and Its Heart
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Human beings are at their core story living creatures. We are searching for a cause, a purpose, a devotion, and only in service to a story do we feel fulfilled. Human beings at first glance may seem to search for pleasure, a view argued by many materialists from Democritus and Epicurus to Jeremy Bentham and B. F. Skinner, that a person merely follows mechanical impulses in the brain built to avoid pain, do what brings pleasure, and to maximize the probability of its own survival. Whether or not this is the case is a matter of faith in religious or scientific dogma, and that discussion is more than what we can handle in an article such as this. Regardless of the position you take, be it dualism or physicalism, there is substantial evidence to support the belief that pleasure is not the ultimate concern of our desires. Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine presented this thought experiment: suppose there was a machine where if plugged in, you would leave this reality and your experience is rerouted into a simulation where you would “live” a life free from worries and cares, or at least have a maximized ration of pleasure versus pain. You would feel as if you made deep connections with people, became popular and successful, and it would be indistinguishable from the world you came from. It would be so convincing that you would come to believe it was the life and world you always inhabited. At the end of the simulation, you would die, having lived a life free from distress. Would you choose this? The experiment showed that human beings, when presented with a choice of guaranteed survival and maximum possible pleasure stimulus, would choose something else instead. People choose reality, but why?
To answer this question, in part, we must ask another question, the central inquiry of all inquiries ever put forth by the human mind: what is truth? Truth, or the thought of truth, has had its admirers since thought itself began. We all court this question, and our lives are a product of the dance we co-create.
One may choose the route of Descartes’ Method of Doubt, to reason away the physical world as an illusion, and that reality may never be able to be discovered beyond the idea that you exist, and that I, the writer, am an illusion conjured up by some unknown force. Perhaps this is the case. But even so, if this world is an illusion, then my question could be “what thing is there that appears to be the most real, what can cut through my curtain of the will-to-disbelieve?” The answer to this is that even if my life is an illusion, then my response to the illusion is what is most real; I may be able to hide from the outside world, but I cannot hide from myself, my reactions reveal that “thinking thing” that I am. This ability to choose is at the core of reality, it is at the core of what it means to be human, and these two reasons are why we are so offended when our right to choose is taken away. Without our right to act for ourselves we lose our dignity, an outside force has taken from us our right to participate in the creation of our sense of reality itself.
To be a libertarian is to make the claim that the dignity of a single individual is worth more than the desires of a million. To violate the dignity of another individual, we must first forget our own, we must remember that in the act of lying to someone else that the first lie we tell is always to ourselves.
Some might then reason that since the individual is so valuable that their success ought to be guaranteed. However, the heart of libertarianism would reject this, because at the center of the right to choose also lies a deeper value: the right to fail. If an action has no way to fail, what makes it a success? To guarantee victory would be to contradict the notion of victory itself, and to take away the sting of life would be to deprive us of life’s wonder. It would be as if we are to attend a feast without our faculty of taste, so much food, but would the food be enjoyable? How could it be if we have never had a lackluster meal? There must be opposites in all things if that thing is to be experienced at all. Those who cherish their right to choose the most are those that have experienced it taken from them. One goes to a feast for the joy of feasting. The talk about economics, as important as it is, is not enough to stir the passions of the human heart, only an inquiry into the source of joy can do that. Capitalism is a means to an end. The founders of the United States did not sign their death warrants for a devotion to economics, but in service to the ideals of human dignity and the right of the individual to have a say in the co-creation of political endeavors — being neither above nor below their fellow citizens, each with an individual worth.
There is no such thing as group dignity, nor group worth — that is the real illusion. The group takes on the appearance of having a soul, but it does not possess one. Though a group does not exist, we knot facts about them, such as herd mentality and group competition. A triangle does not exist. It is a two-dimensional object we created through the use of logic, but no two-dimensional triangles exist in nature since nature is not two dimensional. But we know lots of things about triangles, like all interior angles add to a sum of 180 degrees and that it is the strongest shape. A “group” does not act. A web of individuals use their agency in unison, creating the phenomenon of a group. Out of many, one, E Pluribus Unum. Does it take a village to raise a child? What do we mean by a village? It is individuals who act in relation to individuals in contracts of first attention and then action. It is by the grace of those around us that we survived beyond infancy, and it is by our grace too that others who will come after us can live beyond theirs.
What is the main antagonist of Liberty? What fights it at every turn and corner? I can think of no greater candidate than the sentiment of resentment. It is a virus that erodes the mind like none other, and its desires are unsatisfiable. It was resentment that caused the Allies to punish Germany so severely that Hitler’s resentment had a fertile ground for planting. Its ingredients of self-pity and cynicism poison the individual and, by extension, society. But resentment does not begin in a vacuum, it is a product of one’s desires.
There are three questions that every action can be categorized into:.
What do we consider our treasure? Is it people or things?
Do we use power to reinforce our own status or to serve others?
In our sense of personal justice, do we choose gratitude or give in to entitlement?
The way we answer these three questions determines if we create an environment of trust or distrust within ourselves, and then amongst others. If our highest goal is the pursuit of things, we see people as tools we can use to obtain things, and thus people too become objects in our sense of reality. If they get in the way of our things, we resent them, and we must remove them as if they were merely a thing themselves.
If our status is most important to us, and if someone rises to a point where we see them as a threat to our status, we spread rumors to damage their reputation and sabotage their progress. We stab them in the back.
And if we choose entitlement over gratitude, we wrap ourselves in a cloak of self-pity as a shield from taking responsibility for our actions and an excuse for not standing bravely in the face of reality. Because we do not want to face the possibility that we are wrong, we cut out all voices we do not agree with, a metaphorical murder and always preamble to the actual kind. When words of debate and self-examination are no longer options, and the lines of civil communication are severed, violence always follows. Resentment views the freedom of speech as not a right, but a threat. It is said that the eyes are windows to the soul. Well then, the state of politics is a mirror of the hearts of the people. Why do nations fail? Because those who see people as objects, who value only their own status, and who believe they are exempt from the consequences of their own actions and are entitled to other people’s good grace cannot create stable relationships with other individuals around them, and a culture of distrust is formed. Ruled by their fear, they attempt to guarantee their power, failing to realize they lay the foundation for their own potential subjugation. They are trapped minds in a feedback loop of self-destruction and cognitive distortions because those that are angry believe themselves to be right. Societies fall when those that build are overpowered by those that take, when those that pride themselves on their ability to deconstruct gain leverage over those who create, and when those who destroy trust break the bonds of relationships faster than those who can build trust repair them. The martial law enforced on a society is but a projection of the martial law of the mind, the abandonment of cerebral logic and a regression back into the sympathetic nervous system’s survival and conquer programming, our hand-me-down subconscious computer inherited from our prehistoric reptilian ancestors. To this part of the brain, everything is a threat. Trust no one. This is a state of uncontrollable chaos, it throws the mind into a state of amygdalar hyper-reactivity and effectively disables the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex’s ability to counter natural perceptions with critical reasoning. It saps the body’s resources, influences the senses to interpret benign stimuli as potential threats, and locks itself in this feedback loop of self-sabotage. Money is not the cause of economic collapse, because what is money but the checks to cash out at the bank of human trust and human agency? Money goes where trust flows, it is not the root of all evil, it is the paper trail of the things people place their faith in. Faith is what keeps the monetary system alive, it is just paper. Take the monetary system away and what are you left with? Relationships of mutual agreement and trust (trust as a value neutral term, you can put the trust of your desire in anything). Money is but one tool we can use to measure the exercise of trust and the exchange of human agency. Steven Covey said it best in the opening page of his book The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything: “There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.”
I have not made any ethical claims yet. All these things I have pointed out are descriptive facts as they are, not a normative claim as things as they ought to be. However, like our more liberal and conservative siblings, libertarianism too places its bets in the gamble for objective ethical standards. We say that there is a line that people should not cross, even if many of us disagree amongst ourselves as to where that line must be drawn. Nevertheless, we believe that line exists, because even though there is an infinite number of possibilities of how to live an acceptable life, if not to say a good one, there is an even more infinite number of ways to live life incorrectly, even by libertarian standards. That line that divides the two infinities is the truth to answer the libertarian quest to maximize the capabilities for us to retain the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while preventing as much as possible the external forces of others on the individual. How do we reach the knowledge of that line? I do not know if anyone can reach it. There is an infinity that exists between .1 and 0, and in that infinity lies an infinite potential for new discoveries. Just how a ray slanted on a graph will never reach zero, forever approaching the horizontal axis, we will forever dwell in that never-ending space that exists between (0,0.1) and (0,0). Perhaps progress is best thought of as a horizon than a destination. You can forever walk towards it, guided by the tree line, but you will never reach it. But we do know this, that people’s personalities are influenced to a large degree by biological factors, genes, neurophysiology, and childhood trauma, and their reason is affected by that personality as well as their current mood and even scents they smell, which leads them to select information (this is called bias) which they then use to form a coherent worldview (to them), which will differ radically from others’ perceptions. We know that they then try to order their environment, their workplace, their local institutions and government to cater to the preferences of their own personality and then they use reason to justify it to others (called “Confabulation”). This is the source of disagreement. And so the heart of libertarianism is this: how can we, given that we all disagree with each other on how to order things, create one common game to play so we all don’t kill each other?
Objectivity is never possible, the best we can do is develop a well-informed subjectivity, aware of our own bias and prejudice, and with a recognition of human dignity and by extension gratitude for our ability to choose, we then seek to use our agency to the best of our capacity. Those who live a life of gratitude are eager to learn, eager to change, and eager to forgive. An environment of forgiveness allows people to feel safer to make mistakes, and then to admit them. “Mistakes are a natural part of learning, but students cannot develop into critical thinkers if they regularly freeze out of the fear of making a mistake.” Eager to forgive we must be if we wish to avoid the spiral of silence and encourage others to say what they honestly believe, and honesty is a virtue we cannot afford to lose. Through the spirit of pluralistic cooperation, argumentation, the dynamic web of intellectual checks and balances, as our individual biases are exposed to our collective intellect, the totality of human desires can inch closer to the throne of truth – or things as they really are. The light of our vision then shines on our personal hell, the metaphorical space in our mind where we have not looked before, either out of ignorance or out of fear of seeing ourselves as too small to face it. As we encroach on the horizon of truth, our perception gradually gives way to perspective, and in revealing to our mind the light of knowledge, hopefully we gain the courage to face it. Then, in seeing the standard by which we can be judged, the full potential of our species is revealed. I have spoken to many about this vision of libertarianism, and then have witnessed them tell others in conversations that they are liberal-libertarians, or conservative-libertarians. Their minds were opened because first their hearts were, and this is because before I cared about changing their political beliefs, I treated them with the dignity I believe they possessed. My attitude towards them is not dependent on their reaction towards me, because in my response, I create my own reality. Because I maintained this mindset, they felt that the space was safe to question their own paradigms, and that they were no less a person for doing so. No one wants to be a failure, no one likes to be wrong, and logical take-downs do very little to expand the web of trust. It takes more than the brute force of logic to form a bond, though reasoning is required too; we cannot expect someone to release their hand from a hold on the face of a cliff before showing them why another hold is better, but it is the faculty of emotion that ultimately leads us to move.
To answer the question of why I am a libertarian? I am libertarian because I want you to pursue your quest for a life you deem worthy of your agency, as free as possible from the interference of a power that wishes to subjugate you. I want for you what you want for yourself, the preservation of your dignity and the freedom of your heart and mind. If our minds are infected by the virus of distrust, captured by the desire for things, for power and status, by entitlement, unable to self-reflect or to create bonds that can stand the test of stress, our perceptions are warped and our creations are embedded with defense mechanisms that serve to protect our own ego. If our outer creations reflect our inner state, perhaps we should elect those that are best suited for creating laws that keep society free, those whose hearts are free themselves. I envision a future not where human reason and human faith seek to subjugate the other, but where the faculty of human reason is raised to the fullness of its stature, and the force of human faith is set free, both united as the two cords of the same rope of human progress, existing as both a guide to those on their journey towards the horizon of truth, and a testament to where the mind of the human race has explored. I am a libertarian because I believe in the freedom of the mind to discover truth, and the courage of the heart to face it. If the central virtue of the liberal is compassion, and the virtue of conservatism is patriotism, what is the highest value of libertarianism? Well, if the enemy of liberty is authoritarianism, and the author of subjugation is resentment, then the advocate of liberty and thus the highest and first virtue of libertarianism must be forgiveness. The virtue that animates trust and creates the environment where the freedom to express one’s views and argue for one’s propositions can be best exercised. It is the genesis of social freedom, and the end of personal captivity. The safest space that exists is in the mind that forgives, the triumph of exploratory free-will over the nature of protective insulation. Says the founder of Logotherapy Victor Frankl in speaking of the Holocaust prisoners who maintained their compassion and humanity in the midst of physical imprisonment, their minds remaining free, “They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” They who embody this mindset know peace is a creation, not a right. At the genesis of this peace was always the presence of the personal power to forgive, to conquer one’s own mind and focus on what is in their control. Says Epictesus: “It's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things.” The story we all wish to live is that of personal freedom. Let our call to others be to take what good you have, and add it to the mosaic tapestry of human wisdom, the aim of which is not just change, and not just stability, but progress — the change that lasts.
Notes:
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