Freedom

Freedom is one of the most abused concepts on Earth. It makes no sense metaphysically, it has no place in morality (where people are always obligated to do the right thing), and has never been true politically (when's the last anarchy we lived in?). Despite this, we are told day in and day out that we are 'fighting for our freedom,' that we are 'the land of the free,' that 'democracy gives us freedom,' that we can't trade 'freedom for security,' that helping others via government programs would 'impinge on our freedom' or 'the free market.'

From the conservative/libertarian wing of US politics, freedom is the summa bonum. There is nothing better than freedom. If anything conflicts with freedom, it must give way. The only time freedom can be curtailed is if, by doing so, we create a world with even more freedom. For instance, we can prevent crime or field an army, so that criminals and foreign invaders can't steal our freedoms -- but after that good luck.

Isaiah Berlin is a good philosopher. His main point in life was that humans want contrasting things. That it was impossible to give everyone in a country everything they wanted -- that no system could support people's conflicting desires. His solution to this dilemma was to deny any philosophy the right to absolutism. That is, people's desire to be free can be considered as part of a large bag of human desires, but it cannot become the one and only human desire, the touchstone and judge of all others. The same for any other good thing, like equality, security, piety, etc. Any ideal people have must be made to fit into a compromise, a box that can accommodate the interests of those around you. Anyone who insists on freedom whenever some policy is put forward to address some other interest (equality, security, piety, etc) is saying one of two things: 1) I can't get along with others. 2) I don't really want freedom, I just want a continuation of the status quo and oppose change of any sort.

Setting this aside, I want to discuss the term freedom in a little more detail. What is freedom? What can freedom possibly mean in human society?

We can't possibly be free, after all. We are all bound by the laws of physics. Every second of our lives, we are only allowed to obey the laws that weren't made by us, but have eternal and absolute sovereignty over us. We can't shoot fireballs, fly, or turn inside out, even if we wanted to. How, then, are we free? We are in chains so tight that no one has ever budged a single inch from them in all time.

If this weren't enough, we are all bound by a second set of chains, our genes. Instead of consciously choosing what we want to be, we are born with a wyrd, a fate, that was set in motion at conception. We will look a certain way, be a certain height, have a certain color skin, have a certain brain size, be a certain level of intelligence, be humans instead of say, birds or scorpions, be a man or a woman, be straight or gay, be sane or insane, be nice or mean, be extroverted or introverted, artistic or logical, competitive or cooperative, and none of it is our choice. None of it. Our very desires are inborn, we are forced to want things we never chose to want, and dislike/fear things we never chose to dislike or fear. We are born identifying some smells as 'good' and some as 'bad,' some sounds as 'good' and some as 'bad,' some sights as 'good' and some as 'bad.' Everything is set in stone. We don't even get a choice to be alive, it is chosen for us -- and with life comes a whole set of survival instincts that makes it nearly impossible to choose to die again.

If this weren't enough to make the very discussion of 'freedom' ridiculous, there are even more layers of chains. We are not free to choose our own upbringing either. Born as helpless kids, it is up to our parents, and the society around us, to mold us into any putty they choose. We are not given a choice in what language we learn, what music we listen to, what religion we are taught is true, what books and movies are made available to us, what we are taught in school, nothing. It is all decided for us, at a time we are so intellectually and emotionally and physically dependent on others that it is hopeless to try and 'nurture ourselves' into some sort of free thinker. It is not a coincidence that the children of Muslims are more likely to be Muslims, the children of Hindus are more likely to be Hindus, the children of Christians are more likely to be Christian, and so on. It is definitely not a coincidence that the children of French speak French, and not Esperanto. But hidden inside people's language is ALREADY a culture which shapes our very thoughts and way of viewing the world. A language is itself an entire philosophy, which encodes our brain into words and phrases that are our only way of interpreting the world.

Any attempt to adopt some other culture or language later is largely futile, because even the choice to adopt the new culture or language must have first been instilled into us as a good idea via the teachings of our first culture/religion/language/education. Since later choices are determined by earlier choices, and all the earliest choices about your mentality were made by others, there is no possible way to 'free' yourself from your own upbringing. You are what people have made you, for better or for worse. As philosophers noted during the Enlightenment, there was a stark difference between a 'protestant atheist' and a 'catholic atheist.' What they meant was people raised protestant, who later became atheists, had an entirely different world view than people raised catholic, who later became atheists. Even though they should have shared the same views, the fact was neither group could escape their upbringing. And if this is true of Voltaire and Hume, it's certainly true of the more common masses.

Nor are we free to live under laws of our choosing. The right to be 1/308,000,000th of a legislative body does not mean you actually have some power over your political fate. Democracy is a farce. Your vote is worth about as much as spit to what eventually happens in the corridors of power. Unless you are absolute dictator of your own country, or just happen to agree with every law ever passed by your country, you are not politically free. You are bound to obey laws you would never have consented to, except for fear of being shot. Many people complain they don't want to pay their taxes -- are they free? Others think drugs should be legal -- are they free? Nor is it possible to give everyone freedom by creating a libertarian state, because most people would find it just as oppressive to live under a state without the laws they love most -- laws that favor virtue, equality, security, sustainability, or some other coveted good. The truth is 99% of people would not think a libertarian state gives them freedom, because 99% of people voted against the libertarian party last election, and thus to put them under the libertarian set of laws to them would just be a tyranny of the minority.

The only way for political freedom to exist is not to create a law code of maximum lawlessness, the libertarian way or the highway, it's to respond to the wishes of the people and give them what they actually want. There is only one political freedom, the freedom of association. If you can associate with people like yourself, who hold the same values and desire the same laws, you are free, because you can finally get your way, and live the way you choose, among the people you choose, under the laws you choose. If you, and everyone else around you, wants 99% taxation and to ban all speech, then the only time you are free is when you finally get to live under that code. You are being oppressed and tyrannized until the day of your deliverance, and the new 99% tax code comes into effect.

Across history, we have seen again and again how few people it requires to run a polity. Ten thousand is perfectly sufficient for a unique government and culture to develop and sustain itself. The fact that millions of people, 20% of the United States, wishes to secede and try their own luck under a new code of law, but is prevented from doing so by the armed forces of the United States, is the ultimate assault on freedom. Freedom of association is the only freedom of worth, is it the only freedom that makes you, in essence, absolute dictator, because it is the only freedom that allows you to choose the laws you will live under. All other freedoms cannot possibly promise such a wonderful prize as this, what is one freedom or another compared to living in utopia? -- but if you can agree with just 10,000 other people on Earth, around Some sort of law code, freedom of association would create just that.

If people want political freedom, they should be arguing for freedom of association. Not the freedom to impose freedom as the absolute value that trumps all others, against the will of 99% of their countrymen. Not the freedom to do or be things that offends everyone around them. Not the freedom to have or acquire things everyone else wanted to share. If libertarians wanted to get together and lobby for freedom of association, so that they and they alone would live in a libertarian state, composed solely of libertarians, I would fully support them. I want everyone to have the right to live under the laws of their choosing, including myself. It is the only freedom that matters. But I don't wish to live under a libertarian state, like 99% of other people, freedom is not my summum bonum, and a law code dedicated solely to freedom would interfere with my ability to create my summum bonum -- or enjoy it: Love, Beauty, Truth, and Life that makes it all possible.

Political freedom can occur in only one way -- "Let a thousand flowers bloom." At some point we must discard the giant empires composed of millions and billions of people cobbled together at the point of a gun, and take up the notion of a 'mirror republic,' a republic whose outward system reflects perfectly, like a mirror, the unanimous consent and approbation of its people. Arguing for any other freedom, under the aegis of an unfree state that does not allow for secession or freedom of association, is hypocrisy.

Of course, our freedom is even more limited than this. There are other curbs to our freedom, such as luck, such as other people's wishes, such as historical momentum, such as peer pressure, such as poverty. It is impossible to be a master of your own life if a drunk driver takes off your legs, the Earth is hit by a meteor, you are drafted into some war for a country you had never even heard of before, you would lose all your friends, family, and job prospects for saying a forbidden term, or are in debt and living hand to mouth, just lucky to have a full belly and a place to sleep at the end of the day. Some sort of idealized freedom, wherein it is 'legal' to do this and that, be this and that, but completely impractical because you lack the funds, friends, lover, or fellow-thinkers to do it, is just as hopelessly limiting as an ironclad ban. One person can only do so much, at the limit of that person's actions, is the moment when he must rely on others to achieve the rest of his will -- if others do not wish to be relied upon, he is helpless -- and then where has his freedom gone? It's entirely reliant on the whims of others, which leaves him a slave to circumstance. If your goal is to reach the fridge, perhaps you are 'free,' because you can achieve it all on your own, whenever you want, however you want. When your goal is to reach the moon, the equation shifts dramatically.

So when I say, "We should mandate marriage, as it is the only solution to people's current unhappiness, the only solution to extinction level fertility rates, the only solution to a crumbling social fabric." And I am rejoindered with "But that crimps my style!" Or "But that limits my freedom!" I have to ask them where they have been all this time. In what way are they free? What has freedom ever given them? How have they benefited from their freedom, such as it is, and why wouldn't they trade it for something much more wonderful, like a happy home, a minimum standard of living, or a glorious cause? What's the use of being free, and isolated, on a desert island? Wouldn't it be better to be bound, and surrounded, by a loving family, on a spaceship heading for the stars? Do they have no concept of offsetting costs and benefits? No concept of compromise? No sense of proportion? How far can freedom really get anyone? Is it enough to be free? Isn't there anything else to life? Don't you love anyone or anything more than yourself? And what is so bad about sacrificing your freedoms for his/her/its welfare?

If you don't want to 'sacrifice your freedom,' fine. I'm not talking to you. All I want is the freedom of association, such that when enough people DO wish to live under my proposed laws, we can secede in peace and make our own way. There are millions of us, and your freedoms are our prisons, and we want out already.