Thanks. I will need to plough through the Libertarian Post you attached. Looks like this could be an example of a people who actually desired liberty. I will need to study this more to be convinced.
Generally societies do not choose government, it is instead duped upon societies by and for the benefit of the few. The postmodern governments of today have become masters of perpetuating themselves by pitting the people against each other in the belief that it will improve their well being.
Education will be the key to the paradigm shift away from governments. While the speed and scope of communication has been has been slow the past several millenniums, it is rapidly increasing which brings hope for liberty and despair for governments.
Because the general public possesses the intellectual and behavioural capacity of an infant. They’re not interested in producing ideas that match objective facts, but to consume ideas that gives them an easy answer. The aftermath of the failed bomb incident is just one of the "I have lost my respect for in humanity " moments, which has exemplified my opinion.
I believe this is very true. People’s definitions of what freedom and liberty are vary, and our meaning of what liberty is and how we interpret it is different than that of a socialist. From different socialist writings I’ve read and that of whom I talked to they seem to confuse freedom with other things, and sometimes (or all the time) place egalitarian goals and “equality” or what they think is right before actual liberty. There’s been times where I was completely stunned and confused from different socialist writings. I’ve read some where they contradict themselves in the same sentence, and a lot of young people get attached to those ideas and think that’s freedom because it’s different than our current situation, and what they think is capitalism isn’t, and what they believe isn’t what they know, or should know. People are not educated to understand how things work, and they accept what they hear and they read misinformation. One problem being the public schools (it may sound mediocre), but it’s very true. I took honors and AP classes in high school, and I thought I learned a lot, but once I started reading the correct books I realized everything I was taught was a bunch of nonsense. Hell, I’ve come across people who literally believed that anarchism and socialism were synonymous, and the same people will go on how capitalism exploits workers and that all workers should have a share in the company, and don’t explain anything to back their case. (One person I came across believed the bosses, owners, and management of a company didn’t do real work and only exploited the workers to make money.)
One of my favorite Mises quotes:
“However, people do not ask for socialism because they know that socialism will improve their conditions, and they do not reject capitalism because they know that it is a system prejudicial to their interests. They are socialists because they believe that socialism will improve their conditions, and they hate capitalism because they believe that it harms them. They are socialists because they are blinded by envy and ignorance. They stubbornly refuse to study economics and spurn the economists’ devastating critique of the socialist plans because, in their eyes, economics, being an abstract theory, is simply nonsense. They pretend to trust only in experience. But they no less stubbornly refuse to take cognizance of the undeniable facts of experience, viz., that the common man’s standard of living is incomparably higher in capitalistic America than in the socialist paradise of the Soviets.”
I think people always choose freedom, but they have a poor understanding of what freedom is. A Socialist will tell you he wants Socialism because he believes only then will he be truly free. Take someone like Che Guevara, he was a monster but he honestly belived he was working towards more freedom. (And in the sense that he was working against the influence of the US on Latin America he actually was working towards more freedom.)
The conflict is not between those who want to be free and those who do not want to be free. Everyone wants to be free. The conflict is between those who want their neighbors to be free, and those who want their neighbors to be controlled.
excellent insight
Seconded. I think this is also a big part of it.
Because liberty is a form in Plato’s heaven which only occasionally graces us with its presence.
Favorited
Humans do desire liberty; But they desire other things as well, and, strange and destructive as this seems, sometimes these desires will even “override” the desire for liberty. But why?
In order to answer this and fully appreciate what we are dealing with, I believe one needs to look at this with a more full-orbed perspective.
As a born-again Christian who holds a biblical worldview, I believe that many people err from the outset by assuming non-theistic origins to the universe, and thus, the root of the observed dilemma. Further still, I believe many of these errors can be traced back to an undeveloped or under-developed concept of the nature and extent of sin. At this point some (many?) of you may be ready to dismiss this argument out-of-hand but, bear with me and think about what I am saying.
We observe the law of cause and effect around us everyday, do we not? In light of the aforementioned is it so unreasonable to believe that our sinful nature has so “darkened” our minds and spirits that even if freely given a choice between say, merely better or the best, we sometimes settle for merely better? I think not. I also believe that this idea offers a broader scope of explanatory power than rival ones and therefore helps provide, at minimum, a glimpse of how to “hone” our understanding of the dilemma of why we do not see the cause of and desire for liberty prevail like we would think we would.
One last thing that may help drive this point home: Since the dawn of civilization there have been, and can only be, two “powerhouses” of meaning in any culture; Religion and the State. In our post-modern culture the State obviously holds the “upper-hand”, so to speak, as the dominant voice within the culture, and has for quite some time. Thus, the State (and statism) is the only frame of reference many people have. Again, in light of this we should not be surprised at the dilemma presented in the original question. Religion, has been “locked out” of the public square and the marketplace of ideas, thus people will “grope in the dark” and all they find that they have, unfortunately, (and unnecessarily), for an intellectual foundation are statist notions.
What do you think?
This may be close to answering my question, “why don’t human beings choose liberty, and why haven’t they done so by now?”
I suggested it was because we do not have an innate desire for liberty. However, communication is an innate human characteristic. Every person is equipped to communicate (unless there is a physical disorder of course). Could it be that communication is the key to unlocking mankind’s innate desire for liberty? And, that this communication was only recently developed (the internet)? Could it be that Liberty and communication are linked? From the ancient empires through the 20th century, communication (not merely technological, but human communication) was inadequate. Today, anyone in the world can read this reply, but a few years ago this would have been impossible.
The internet is the most powerful tool yet conceived for mankind to communicate. Liberty seems to be growing in the early internet era. The fact that governments censor the internet, desire to squelch it, is more proof that communication is the key to liberty. The connection between communication and liberty seemed superficial to me at first. It seemed as though liberty should have risen in any age during the past if people really desired it enough. But now I realize that communication had to develop first, and the internet is the first time in history that humans are communicating in an adequate manner to release our desire for liberty.
The law of cause and effect does not allow one to reason backwards in this manner. We cannot take an observation, which we believe to be an effect of something, then point out that, were a certain cause present, it would indeed cause the observed effect - and conclude that the cause is therefore true. There has been a Twilight movie each year for two years. If there were a Twilight monster in the sky dropping these movies into Hollywood studios each year, this would happen. It does not follow that there is such a Twilight monster.
This is not true, there has never been two separate powerhouses, except maybe in our time. Most of the time, though, there has been one powerhouse, the state/religion/corporate complex. Consider the case in England - the monarchy built itself a church, and whenever they needed to choose a new king, the lords basically went to war with each other - confident that if they could hold out for a little while, they’d be chosen by the archbishop as king - and the people would be told that they had to obey or go to hell..
The answer is simple: genetics and evolution.
Liberty gives a lot but also demands a lot from a human agent: responsibility, strength, intellect, ability to process and analyze his environment by himself and make decisions that would maximize his self-interest, individualism (ability to think for himself and often in opposition to the herd), etc. Neither item from this list characterizes the (average) human agent pushed by evolution through history’s grinder. The “winners” in the evolutionary game have been the human agents that are easily subsumed under banners, into herds and armies of all sorts. This strength from coherence in thought and action has consistently run over and pillaged the individualistic parts of the human genome that are so necessary for liberty to prevail. Hence, we have a world today with only traces of the individualistic genes required for liberty’s sustainability over significant enough swaths of humanity. This is just a depressing prediction but it would take a lot of generations and a lot of luck for such a powerful evolutionary trend to be reversed on this planet.
Z.
I think your response shifts the topic to an entirely different subject matter. This was not an inquiry into the spiritual implicatons of the fall of man, a worthy topic, but not what I asked.
I suggest reading Etienne de la Boétie. [;)]
Just a continuation of my thoughts from above…
Perhaps it all comes down to a battle between the “herding” (H) and “individualistic” (I) parts of the human genome. The (H) part has had obvious evolutionary advantages pushing the genome through most of the mammalian phase. Only over the last 50k years and with the development of human consciousness and intellect have some (I) parts emerged and started to compete with the (H). But the (H) parts have adapted and prevailed over that period, as well, manifesting themselves through BELONGING (herding) impulses to purely human constructs such as: religion, nation, race, ethnicity, political party, ideologies, sports fans, music fans, fashion, labels (“-isms”), and, many other avenues for herding to a warm and fuzzy “us” as opposed to “them”.
Even within a likely individualistic group of agents, such as these forums, it is very hard to escape our genetic pull toward belonging, sharing of beliefs, coherence of ideas, confirmation of one’s thinking and logic by the herd. Even for AnCaps and “liberty lovers” of all sorts, this is the source of the need for something universally and OBJECTIVELY “human”, “noble”, and “right”, something that binds “us” all in some way. Even individualistic ideologies have leaders and herds, feeding off each other and reinforcing the (H) in both. And we, as humans, end up right where we started.
Even as I write this critique of (H) and in favor if (I), I cannot avoid self-reflecting and admitting my preference that my ideas are accepted and acknowledged by at least someone else, and preferably a human herd of some sort. Our genes keep screaming at us from within: “Implementing and living the (I) could be extremely rewarding but is also very difficult and lonely. Stick with (H).” So most people surrender to the pull of (H) and never give (I) a chance. And without (I) there’s no liberty.
Z.
We are not going to get anywhere until security and liberty come to mean the same thing.
They are not the same thing, though.
I would argue that they are.