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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 17 The Road to Compassion and Freedom Thoughts on a Classical Liberalism for the 21st Century by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR May
7, 2007 Freedom
has been fading in This
increasing lack of freedom in By
now, we can no longer avoid the truth: this pro-freedom movement has
failed. History
makes the danger of this situation very clear. -
2 - Why
has the freedom movement failed so miserably? Put another way, why has the
market rejected our offering? Perhaps
the product is not as desirable as we think it is, or perhaps we are doing
a poor job of marketing. There
is a third possibility, however: perhaps we have not understood our product accurately or completely, and thus
have been promoting a damaged or incomplete version. If
that is true, then it is no wonder we have failed in the marketplace. We should
fail in the marketplace,
until we bring the product up to spec and learn to promote it properly. -
3 - Expanding
our market share, as it were, is more important than with most products;
history shows that lack of freedom is incredibly dangerous. Even aside
from the increasing dangers, we need very wide public support if we are to
oppose tyranny effectively. Indeed,
any plan without a realistic approach for dramatically
increasing public support will fail, and that failure will likely have
catastrophic consequences. I question whether there is still time to
create the necessary support, but without success at that task we are
certain to fail at our primary goal. We
are trying to get the system to allow us our freedom – yet the purpose of the system is to prevent freedom. Clearly, we will need help from a great many
people to succeed – to get the “authorities” to allow even a small
subgroup of people their freedom within the greater sea of tyranny. Best
of all would be to bring so many people to our side that tyranny itself
cannot stand. Even for a lesser victory, we must reverse the current
situation, where the great majority of people do not know about us, or do
not understand us, and either way do
not support us. Without
an understanding of what people want and need, and of what freedom
actually means, we risk not only failing but actually being
counterproductive. We risk making things worse instead of better – as,
indeed, we seem to have been doing these past several decades.
-
4 - Those
assumptions may be wrong. Indeed, I believe they ARE wrong, and the poor
results of our efforts support that opinion. I
have already suggested that our understanding of “freedom” may be
inadequate. Since we have apparently been marketing something most people
are not interested in, it behooves us to at least understand what people
ARE interested in. It behooves us to consider what people actually want. To
encourage thought on those issues, I have three questions for you: First:
what kind of world do you want? In
particular, I am encouraging you to see and especially to feel the “better world” you hold in your heart. Be daring. Go
deep. What kind of world do you
want? What kind of world
do you envision as an Earthly We
will never succeed at interesting others in our vision of a better world
until we have both a solid intellectual
understanding of that world and
a deeper, more profound emotional
sense of that world. Seeing this world with emotional depth gives rise to
a sense of loss, and a sense of longing for a
world that should be. You
have that world within you. Find it. Get familiar with it. Spend time with
it. A passionate and emotional understanding of the world we are made for
– which requires freedom – is one of the keys to advancing the freedom
movement from obscurity, to interesting curiosity, to upcoming minority,
and eventually to success. Without
the passion, nothing happens. Without something to BE passionate about, we
have less than nothing. And “freedom” as
we have defined it, is NOT something that most people are passionate
about – for good reason, perhaps. “What
kind of world do you want?” is a question that people can and will be
passionate about, if you can get
them to take it seriously. And for that, you’d better have something
real to offer. I will discuss that "something real" later in the
talk. Second:
as a way of expanding your answer to my first question, consider also the
world you want your children and grandchildren to grow up in. What sort of
world would give them the best chance for the best possible lives? Third:
what else, beyond the non-initiation of coercion, is necessary
for such a world? -
5 - The
Nature of Freedom Freedom
involves more than being left alone, or we’d all go off into the forest
as hermits and be done with it. Living
as hermits would be quick, simple, and do-able yet, clearly this is NOT
what most of us want. Here
is what I want, personally: a healthy
society. Naturally,
any healthy society must be free.
Use of initiated coercion would never be conceived, much less condoned, in a truly healthy society. A
healthy society (or world) would include the necessary elements to
encourage, protect, and sustain the division of labor and honest
free-market activity. In such a world, people would feel a connection with
each other, for one thing. A healthy society would include the compassion
necessary to encourage even the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the
disadvantaged to support the social order. A healthy society would be just
and humane as well as free. That does not mean everyone would be equal in
wealth, any more than they would be equal in height or beauty or athletic
ability. It does mean that concern for one’s fellow man would be deeper
and more widespread than one sees today. A healthy society would include
widespread emotional health as
well as freedom from coercion. More
on this later, after we talk about paradigms. -
6 - Paradigms The
contest between freedom and tyranny is an epic, world-changing struggle,
and will be fundamentally a contest between paradigms. As I have already
suggested, the freedom movement has failed so dismally because the
paradigm it uses is broken and incomplete. If we want success, we need a
new paradigm. First, some thoughts about paradigms in general: *
The term “paradigm” is vague and often misused, and has therefore
developed a negative connotation. You’ll need to look past that to see
the power and usefulness – indeed, the necessity – of paradigms to our
task. *
Paradigms are tools of perception, not coercion. *
A paradigm is a framework for
understanding, constructed from widely-shared assumptions, theories,
examples, and beliefs. Paradigms give meaning to diverse sets of data,
guiding action in useful ways – or in less-useful ways, depending on the
accuracy of the paradigm. *
Paradigms are decentralized, potentially very long-lived, and extremely
powerful; they are the perfect tools for changing a vast, emergent system
like human society. Some paradigms – certain religions, for instance –
have been at work for thousands of years. *
Progress is made in part by refining existing paradigms and by
occasionally replacing current paradigms with newer and more
usefully-accurate paradigms. These are potentially seismic events;
superstition vs. science, for example. The framework of science is more
closely aligned with reality and has allowed huge progress for that
reason. *
Paradigms work by harnessing the natural creativity, intelligence, and
energy of millions of people. By not forcibly imposing a single plan, many
plans and approaches may be taken. By not creating a centralized
bureaucracy, a paradigm fosters the sincere, diverse efforts of many
people. *
A new and more accurate paradigm makes things visible
that were previously not, even if they were in plain sight. A good
paradigm adjusts one’s vision so that “things make sense” in a way
that is both satisfying and useful. *
Details may obfuscate rather than
clarify until a paradigm makes proper sense of them. *
Until others adopt our paradigm, THEY WILL MISPERCEIVE US in ways that
will often seem bizarre. It is not possible to correct this with detail
alone; only by helping others to see the broad sweep of the paradigm
itself will we make real progress. *
This leads so something I call "blinding
by paradigm." Some relevant examples and details:
*
Unless we ourselves are using an accurate paradigm and understand it well,
we will waste time and effort working towards the wrong goal. *
On the other hand, perfection is
not necessary – in paradigms, or in most other areas of life (sports,
science, etc). What is needed is a dramatically improved level of useful
accuracy, not an unattainable perfection. *
Adopting a new paradigm generally requires repeated exposure to it; the
resistance to such global change in thinking is very strong, especially
(as in our case) when powerful feelings and
much wealth and privilege are bound up in the old, inaccurate paradigm. *
Here’s an interesting and amazing fact: A single paradigm can solve many
seemingly unrelated problems. Example: the paradigm which grew up
around the germ theory of disease (neither perfect nor complete, please
note) gave scientists, doctors, nurses, medical innovators, parents, and
eventually EVERYONE a way to begin solving the problem of hundreds of
different diseases that had previously been seen as hundreds of different
problems. The single tool of an accurate paradigm did what centuries of
work based on faulty paradigms could not. Result: a doubling of average
lifespan since 1850, based largely on reduction in death from infectious
disease. Infectious disease has not been ended, but billions
of people have had longer and better lives because a new way of seeing the
problem was developed and successfully promoted. If you want a tool that
can actually change the world, look at paradigms. *
The paradigm currently used by the freedom movement appears to others as
cold, heartless, and skewed in favor of oil companies, the rich,
Halliburton and other large corporations and special interests, in part
– but only in part – because people do not understand that government
power enables and encourages bad corporate behavior. There are other
reasons this paradigm is unattractive to the public, and the most
important is this: The
freedom movement itself has failed to promote or even to understand the integrated
nature of love and freedom. -
7 - Love
and Freedom All
men are brothers and each man is free. —
The
Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority, 1943 Love
and freedom may be seen as two sides of a human duality,
much like yin and yang. Emphasizing one over the other causes problems
because an imbalance means that at least one side is below the healthy,
optimal level. High levels of both love and freedom are necessary for a
healthy society. We
require love because we are all one. We are all connected. We are all
brothers and sisters, and love is what we were born for. Yet we also
require freedom because each of us is a separate and unique individual. We
have our own thoughts and talents, our own preferences and desires. This
natural diversity among individuals makes life interesting, makes the
division of labor and even life itself POSSIBLE, and brings surprising
strength to the group. Early
First,
slavery was allowed in some of the states. Second, American Indians were
sometimes mass-murdered, their land was stolen, and the survivors were
forced onto reservations. In
both cases, the target groups were not being treated with love or
compassion. It
is equally clear that in both cases, the target groups were being denied
freedom. Love
requires freedom.
One cannot enslave or murder someone while treating them with compassion.
Loving someone requires and includes allowing them the rights of life,
liberty, and property. Likewise
. . . Freedom
in human affairs requires love.
Because people often see “freedom” as merely a lack of coercive
interference, it is easy to miss the human element here. But we are human
beings, not inanimate objects, and humans have needs beyond lack of
coercion. In addition to personal needs for love and connection with
others, the market, the division of labor, and society itself require
widespread emotional health (the foundation of love) to function well and
to prevent a drift towards fraud and coercion. Love is the lubricant and anti-corrosive for a free society. A
widespread and severe lack of emotional health ensures a nightmare, no
matter what the original political situation. Nazi
Germany is perhaps the best-known and most-studied recent example of
emotional damage leading to epic tyranny, in this case including genocide
and a world war. How could a civilized, well-educated, industrialized
nation rapidly become a horror almost beyond imagining? One key reason (of
several): widespread
and severe mistreatment of children, as documented by Dr. Alice Miller
and others. A nation of repressed, angry adults treated with coldness and
cruelty throughout childhood and trained to obey without question will
never remain free or civil for long, no matter what political or social
structures are originally in place. Compassionate
treatment of pregnant mothers, newborns, infants, and children is an
absolutely key element in improving the world. Neurosis is a form of
un-freedom more powerful than any political dictatorship, and adults
shackled by high levels of emotional damage, and who were not respected in
their own childhood, are not only unlikely to respect others – they will
often be angry enough to enjoy hurting others. If we want a sustainably
free society, we need to see to it that emotional health becomes more the
norm, and neurosis – finally! – fades away from the world. The
freedom movement is an advocate of
and a tool for creating
a new and healthier world –
or it is nothing at all. [End
of excerpt] Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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