How much individual freedom is possible?
Posted by coaldigger 7 years, 4 months ago to Ask the Gulch
When you consider the whole earth, are we as free as we have ever been and considering everyone, as free as possible at this point in time. In every country, there are many people that are unprepared to be free, some that can never be free enough and everything in between. What will it take to achieve complete individual freedom and how many generations?
I was consistent, despite your word manipulation (as usual). The choice of using the colloquialism of not "going away any time soon" was properly used. Such premises won't go away in our lifetimes; beyond that, it doesn't matter.
Just look at all the things you need permission to do before you can do them, or those things you pay a fee or tax to do and you'll clearly see the chains.
1) Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology
2) Atlas Shrugged
3) Declaration of Independence
4) Bill of Rights
in all necessary languages and distribute..
In certain aspects this is true, but in some ways things are a way better. You might be a slave, someone else's property, based just on how you look. You might be not allowed to travel, get a job, or keep what you earn. You might be conscripted into war. Your risk of being the victim of violent crime was higher. Your chance of being in a lawsuit was higher. Even educated people resolving their disputes through dueling was seen as acceptable. Physically beating children and even adult spouses was acceptable. Sexual assault was illegal, but acceptable theme for jokes and seen as possibly the victim's fault.
Even if you consider a narrow case and talked to the average person in the 18th century about light-skinned men of English origin and asked them about the concept of their right to control their life and what they make and freedom from obligations to "society", "God", the good of their extended family, I bet the average 21st Century American could better explain why her life is her own.
If I were in the 18th century world, even if it had all the modern conveniences like toilets and computers, and lived the life of a slave, I would risk the life of everyone in my family to get to the modern world where we're forced to pay a third of what I earn.
51 titles US code not counting "case law and regulatory provisions, and finally 74608 pages in the tax code as of 2014
20,000 statutes passed since 1789
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
"As for the United States Code, the Government Printing Office explains that “the United States Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is divided by broad subjects into 51 titles and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives.” It is clear that the United States Code is a compilation of laws arranged by subject. However, similar to the Statutes at Large, it does not include case law or regulatory provisions."
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/freq...
Number of pages in the federal tax code 74,608 as of 2014
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/loo...
We are ruled by the regulators. The real dark state.
It wasn't a threat but it was already-existing lack of liberty, free markets, and property rights. For most of human history people were ruled by tribes and after agriculture by divine right of kings. I don't expect them to have nailed it in the first century they tried to build a real democratic republic based on theory. I'm similarly not surprised we haven't nailed it today.
I do not at all understand the idea of slavery not being a threat to liberty. Slavery is the opposite of liberty.
Things contradicting the principles of the civilization and their being overthrown do not seem related to me.
BTW, I see no reason this post should have been downvoted...voting back up.
(There was no reason why my post was 'downvoted'; it was done out of personal hostility by an emotionally out of control militant trolling my posts.)
What does an individual want? One can not adopt a policy or philosophy which one does not have familiarity with. Therefore there must be someone who has familiarity with the desired philosophy who is desirous of camaraderie in said philosophy. An examination of the motivations for promulgation of of the philosophy is certainly a worthy study but may be better reserved for its own thread. Regardless, one who is familiar with the philosophy must then teach (or sell) it to others.
Those to whom the philosophy is peddled must come to an estimation of the effects of that philosophy upon their lives. They have to guess or take on faith that adoption of that philosophy will indeed better their circumstances during its implementation phase. They may not see the payoffs immediately, so having someone there to guide them through the adoption phase may indeed be critical to the expansion of the philosophy.
Last comes defense. Once a philosophy is adopted, one must not only live the philosophy, but defend it against attack or encroachment. That may mean merely an intellectual defense, but could certainly extend to a physical defense against aggressors of competing philosophies. This means not only that the defender must have the means of defense - both intellectual and physical - but the conviction of soul that the defense is worthy and/or moral.
A note about those who choose not to adopt the philosophy: they will have made a choice. If one values the principle of individual freedom, one must respect the choice to remain in slavery even though we may disagree with the choice. But we must also allow for the decision to change one's mind later down the road, and such as who do should find an extended arm.
It is false that "one must respect the choice to remain in slavery", whether or not it includes imposition of controls on all of us.
It didn't take with my six siblings, one whom thought that Atlas Shrugged was a story about a bunch (the heroes) of people who thought they were better than the rest and thus should exploit them.
Some individuals around Ayn Rand sometimes behaved rudely; they were not a "cult". Spreading better ideas is not proselytizing for a religion.
Ayn Rand did not "cancel subscriptions" for asking "improper questions". Belligerent, rude and snide attackers were rejected for what they were and ignored. We still see some of these personal antagonists against Ayn Rand as a handful of malcontents lingering around a half century later. It isn't what this forum is for.
You once referred to Barbara Branden's biography of Rand as a hit peace. If you would read Jeff Walker's "The Ayn Rand Cult" and other books outlawed by ARI, you will find that most of the early Objectivists did not disavow Rand's work but only the eight of the nine practices of a destructive cult as listed by cult expert Eric Merrill Budd. I consider Objectivism, if taken as an open system, to be very good but not something from god to not be questioned.
Tell me, could you feel ok if you just had that copy of Rand's work in your head without all your support groupies?
I doubt whether Blarman is anti-Objectivist, but rather against the True Believers, some of whom can be found on this forum.
Sorry that I might have upset you. I will tone it down some for you.
OK moderator, am I done because ewv does not want to consider any of the views of those who had actually gone through the early Rand collective inner circle purges?
You sure seem to pretend to know a lot about me with your personal attacks with all that "ugly feelings", etc., that I must hold. Nowhere did I mention Soviet style purges. You also know nothing about any groups that I may or may not have tried to join 50 years ago. In fact I do no join groups and never had. I have been a loner all my life and do not need such a crutch as belonging.
As for closed belief systems, one would have to consider them to be completely true. Objectivism is a philosophy and to be practiced would have to be considered true without anything wrong in it. If it is not questionable by the practitioner, it is a religion. That is why many Objectivists consider that it is open to questioning and need to be made objective in all areas. There is no such thing as an objective ideal man. The "man qua man" concept seems to mean that the concept "man" is of the concept "man" as some kind of floating abstraction for an ideal rational man, which resides only as an idea in a mind and is not objectively perceived in objective reality. It is something which has to be mentally created by a human mind by discovery of what is necessary for a man's existence.
His pronouncements on "closed belief systems" are irrelevant and meaningless. Whatever it is he thinks he believes himself it is not Ayn Rand's philosophy, which he reveals that he still does not understand, shown directly by the rambling about metaphysical idealism and subjectivism that has nothing to do with it.
Anyone can believe anything he wants to, in his own name, but Ayn Rand's philosophy is what she described and explained it to be; it is not "open" to whatever else someone else wants it to be either in his desired replacements or his misrepresentations while attacking it. This is simple small-o objectivity and honesty, not "religion".
This forum is not for cranks, still obsessed after half a century with personal hatred and hostility towards Ayn Rand and her supporters, as they look to leech off an audience of people attracted to her ideas. Their bitter, resentful infesting of Ayn Rand forums to carry on their obsessive personal smearing and feuding are of no value and contrary to the guidelines for posting here.
"sneering, venomous, ignorant, irrelevant, meaningless, rambling, small-o objectivity and honesty, cranks, obsessed, leech, bitter, resentful, infesting, obsessive personal smearing, feuding...
Not at all the hallmarks of a man of reason. Good thing the Inquisitions (the Spanish ones) ended in the early 1800's
To say quoting religious texts has no place here is ridiculous. It's part and parcel with our culture, with our language, a good third of our communication relies on shared, common, knowledge. If I were to say "he has an Oedipus complex," you would certainly understand the reference, and that reference would give you insight into what I was saying. You may be able to divorce from your pantheon of cultural reference all such references that deal with faith, but I cannot, and will not.Yet you feel justified, perhaps even vindicated in belittling, and demeaning not only me, but some others here as well. Simply because they hold views not in keeping with your own. That is not free and open debate. That's what's happening at College campuses across this nation. There's no free thought there, and perhaps there's none here either. Which is why I will not go away. After all, one thing that's really great about the internet is if, in your irrational hostility to people who think differently that you, you can't very well pick up a club and bludgeon them. THAT makes this forum, and thousands of others, true bastions of free and open debate. IF and only if, the person using the forum isn't driven off by others who feel their opinions are the only ones which matter.
To say that faith has no seat at any table with Reason, when life without faith is empty, is irrational, since it leaves all who sit at that table hungry for an indefinable something that Reason cannot assuage. There are too many people who, on their death-beds, regretted the shape their lives had taken (this is seen by their final words), who wished they had lived differently. Can regret be quantified by Reason? Can it be measured? or weighed? No. Regret is personal and varying, reaching to the depths of one's, indeed infusing one's very soul. The soul can't be quantified by Reason either. We say a man "has no soul," but that's an irrational statement... of course he does, it's simply stained by __ (take your pick of euphemisms).
A society without faith, is a godless society. And without a god, there would be no need for a moral code - Stealing, then, becomes permissible, because there's no god to answer to - Man would simply make laws as he went, arbitrarily, as needed, with no discernible cohesive theme. The proof of this is all around you. Without a moral code no man could be free - free to produce and live as they wished. And what of government? Will there be a ruling, or governing body is this Brave New World to judge disputes? No? We may as well, then, trade value for agates etched with a personal sigil... or maybe that's what you want... everyone to have their own coins stamped with their own likeness. Everyone with their own moral code. .. Chaos! That would be chaos indeed, "and every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Chaos! Which is irrational, in that rationalism can't quantify Chaos because it's the opposite of Law... of Reason. But then you can't really have creativity without Chaos, can you? In the same way, you can't have Reason without Faith, because Faith without reason is no faith at all... I repeat... Faith without Reason is no faith at all. The Bible puts it another way... "Faith without Works is Dead"
With reason as the bedrock.
Bravo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ++++++++++++++++++++'s
Everyone becomes a full functioning Conscious Human being (Conscience introspection of self) with a shared moral compass based upon time tested truths, ( that level would have to be beyond the present 6 theoretical models-Spiral Dynamics) AND the Most profound respect for private property, (the basic unit of which starts with the individual) not to mention guided by something like the "Prime Law".
[you can yahoo Mark Hamilton's or The twelve visions party to view the Prime Law]
We may NEVER achieve it although we are certainly capable of doing so.
First...we'd have to fix "Stupid" or what I call...antilectuals and parasitical humanoids.
Oh...caveman was probably the most free...maybe even the nomadic people prior to cities and large civilizations.
My guess is that they shall enjoy an utopia of individual freedom for about 150 years before they begin to screw it up. In about 150 years more it will be like the USA is today.
Looters and moochers shall abound with libtard mental disorders.
If that civilization is a colony tied to some Federation or so-called interstellar republic who wants to start from scratch with a USA of a forefathers, dream on.
Or rebel by writing a Declaration Of Independence in the futuristic historical year of 17767.
The red star ships are coming!
The red star ships are coming!
A month ago me age 70 dino had Netflix send me Starship Troopers 3: Marauder for a second time since first seeing it about five years ago. That movie is a hoot!
Found out via Netflix that Starship 2: Hero of the Federation is a big time STINKER.
I have the DVD of the first Starship Troopers mostly due to getting a big kick out of all the humorous fascist propaganda (as in #3).
In number #3 I really loved how distant descending rescuing trooper vehicles formed a halo around a fervently praying Christian's head.
My simple response to this discussion was, he CAN'T. Freedom to pursue ones own designs, ones own fortune, ones own ends, owing no man anything means nothing to the Kim Jong-Un's of the world, who will ever seek to make you pay for their purposes. Man cannot live peacefully with his neighbors, for very long.
Even America in its infancy was a far cry from what Rand saw as ideal (reiterating: I, too, view it as ideal!). Freer than we are today, but the original question was "...What will it take to achieve complete individual freedom and how many generations?" And the answer I gave offended you - as it plainly did. It was not my intention to do this. But what has reason achieved us in the realm of personal freedoms other than the freedom found in death? Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, to say nothing of Islam today? War, and rumors of war persist to this day, and reason has fallen short to change the world. How many generations to achieve individual freedom? No honest answer is going to satisfy this discussion.
If you are still capable of rational understanding after whatever it was that happened to you, and want to understand whatever it is that attracted you to Atlas Shrugged, then go back and look at the philosophy that made it possible and what is required for human life and civilization.
The only thing needed for human life and civilization are a willing couple and, without going into detail, all the particulars that lead to a live birth. That's it. Civilization? A whole lot of willing couples doing the same. How about a code of conduct so they can all live peaceably? How about the Hammurabi Code? Too harsh? Okay, then, how about seven of the Ten Commandments (leaving out the "religious" ones)? Sounds like a good foundation for a civil civilization, right? We'll all just get along fine, right?
You say Reason and Faith are incompatible? I disagree. The very mention that I disagree, you want my opinion shut down... or at the very least, you want me to go away... this is not the right place for that kind of "reasoning". You seem to balk at faith because, seemingly to your mind, faith is not a matter of reason, and vice versa; they're competing dogmas as opposed to two sides of the same coin. But where do we get our ideas of right and wrong, if not from [gasp!] God, or a god? Why is it wrong to take something from someone else? Because our parents said so? Society said so? or because there is this niggling little voice on the inside which say, "You know that's not yours, don't take it!" And who began the whole "stealing is Wrong" meme? Moses? Hammurabi? Because it didn't just pop out of thin air. Morality is whatever a society says it is? So why does our western culture (and a good 99.999% of the world's population) say it's wrong to steal? Reason, can't answer that question for you, because doesn't possess innate morality... Reason is neither moral nor immoral. Man has a built in propensity for evil. He can give himself over to it, or deny it for a time, but he can't escape it, and Reason can't answer WHY stealing is wrong; only a moral code can do that. Without a moral code Rand's Atlantis, Galt's Gulch, is a futile experiment doomed to failure. Rand's "Anthem" clearly shows what happens to a society without a moral code.
Every child knows stealing is wrong - before they even know the difference between the two. You don't have to teach children how to be selfish. They come by it naturally. You say you want to live in a world ruled by Reason, devoid of Faith, yet you shut your mind to simple truths.... Reason says, post a sign saying, "wet paint, do not touch," and what happens? The wall gets touched... repeatedly. If a sign wasn't posted at all, few if any people would even touch the wall. That's the whole premise of Sin. Yet you can't have Religiosity and Reason sitting next to each other at the dinner party.
Reason tells us all that stealing is wrong, many actually call it Sin. Yet, because "Sin" is not in YOUR lexicon of Reason, because it smacks of religiosity, you insist such words (because they're religious in nature) have no place in a rational discussion?
That, sir, is irrational.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weathe...
My gf and I aren't using our share, dammit. We use about 1500 gal/mo and most of that is her 2 1/2 baths a day. We even have a veg and herb garden. Guess I need to take really lo-o-o-o-ong showers.
I think we had far more freedom prior to the 1900 and maybe up to the 1940's. To believe we have as much freedom as that time is wishful thinking. Consider all that was done, how little we were taxed, and the massive amount of achievements that happened in America during that time and I think you'll reconsider.
I would certainly never say everything is better now. We send a third of our income (nearly half for some people) to the gov't. Today's surveillance and restriction on guns and drugs would have been unthinkable 100 years ago.
OTOH, the same person who is free to follow her dreams and go work on autonomous drones or whatever it is might not have been allowed to follow her dream in 1900, just on account of her physical appearance. That's huge. If she can't get into the meetings because of her skin color, and most people agree because of her sex she should be a teacher until she finds a husband, she'd probably do anything to get to a place where work on transatlantic voice telegraph but half to give up a third of what she makes.
We don't have to choose between the two time periods, and I suppose since there's no time machine choosing isn't even an option. I want that hypothetical person 100 years from now to be working on her ultra-light strong-but-not-brittle material in Tycho Crater where the whole nano-fiber ecosystem is springing up thanks to the low-G environment and non-intrusive Lunar gov't. That sounds insane, but today's world would sound insane to the 1900s would-be-engineer housewife living in a country with the same GDP as Argentina, where trains and telegraph are high tech, and where it goes without saying she's a second-class citizen.
You could go West back then. I long for a West. When I am flying over a remote region like Greenland or the Rockies, it stands out how the vast majority of the Earth is undeveloped. But it's all under the control of nation states. Even with how small the world as become, it looks vast, and I wonder how many people are living in tiny communities or nomadic tribes off the grid.
You're spoiling my 40,000 feet American fantasy with reality.
I think society has gotten fairer, but I'm actually talking about freedom: the right to make money in a mutual exchange, keep that money for your use, use the money to travel where you want to. I'm saying in many ways society is much freer, even in the areas of keeping your money and traveling without harassment by the authorities. We obviously have a long way to go yet though.
The return of Jesus Christ. Man cannot live peacefully and productively with his neighbor... impossible! Nothing wrong with HOPING, though.
Many of you will, naturally, object to my invocation of Religion here, but honestly, I don't see any reason the two can't co-exist... His return, and 'peace on earth' (that is what we're talking about), are not mutually exclusive. "If a man won't work, neither should he eat"... that's biblical! And man, as his heart now stands, will never except such rule... forget the rule of Jesus Christ (man would have no choice with God as ruler), Man cannot and will not accept the "Good of the Many," when he won't even accept the Good of the One.
Peace
But you don't have to eradicate (meaning intellectually, not by force) Christianity, just remove it from dominant influence of its false premises. Not everyone in a society has to be Objectivist to establish and maintain a dominantly free political system. The Enlightenment emphasized reason and individualism, largely rejecting the mystic mentality of religion, but did not eradicate it. Nor did it provide a rational ethics of egoism even though that was implicit in the principle of a right to one's own life, liberty, property and pursuit of one's own happiness. It lead to a political philosophy of freedom and limited government power, but couldn't hold it against the onslaught of explicit altruism and collectivist ethics. More is required than the Enlightenment provided, but it doesn't have to be everyone Objectivist.
There are, or at least used to be, many American secularized Christians with mixed ideas who would not fight limited government, but they cannot institute one as long as they take the premises of mysticism and altruism seriously, and could not defend it based on the essential supernaturalism, mysticism and sacrifice at the root of Christianity and pushed throughout the Dark and Middle Ages. And reversion to Bible-thumping is a bad sign.
I accept both the philosophy of Rand, and Jesus
The question was "What will it take to achieve complete individual freedom ..." If history has shown us anything it's that man cannot get along with each other. Stephen King, wrote in his book "The Stand," commenting on social structures, that (paraphrasing) 'a society of two can be peaceful, if unfulfilling; add a third and they'll invent hierarchies; four, and they'll invent prejudice; five, and they'll invent war." In order for the premise of this discussion to ever come to pass, man would have to deny his nature, which he can't. The very fact that I introduced Jesus Christ into the discussion is proof enough of that.
My point being, and I mean no disrespect, is that Man cannot live is peace on this earth, or any earth. And you need peace for all the glorious things we, as free individuals and thinkers, can achieve, individually and corporately. Casting an opinion aside because it smacks of religious tropes and slogans, is exactly the kind of "free thinking" that has given us the world we live in. I'm not trying to proselytize anyone here.,, just pointing out the obvious, quoting historical figures, consulting an ancient text, and wondering why my point isn't seen as 'obvious.'
Look at the poor... Jesus said, "the poor will always be with you..." Ayn Rand has been absolutely correct about a lot of things actually, but most especially Man's need to control others, and on the flip-side of that, to take from others: not you, not me, but those people do exist. They exist to take what is yours, what you built, what you thought, what you have harnessed, and give either to themselves (if they're honest about it) or to others.... the poor; those who either can't (and few there are of this sort), or won't work in their own best interest, and those of their families..
Even religious slogans can bear truth. And because a few 'slogans' get bandied about doesn't negate their truths...
I could give you my whole speech about Cultural Literacy and the importance of being very well versed in this regard adds to our communication and understanding, but I won't. It's relevant to my argument, but I won't belabor the discussion further.
Thanx!
Religion is the essence of irrationality and the direct opposite of Objectivism.
Reason... true reason... doesn't ask you to divest yourself of anything, in that everything is useful, in it proper place. You espouse a world free of religion... "especially Christianity" as one commenter put it. This is irrational.
This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, not a place for a contradictory mish-mash from mystics.
I have been learning about this for a long time. I used to think reason had to be founded on unprovable faith-based axioms.
My crude understanding of Objectivism is that the axioms, the starting-points of reason, can be derived without faith. This means that faith and reason are incompatible.
I consider someone having faith that "the universe is a good". That's a value judgment, outside the domain of science. I do not understand what Objectivism has to say about this, so it's good you bring it up.
Faith is the opposite of reason. It is acceptance based on feeling -- mysticism in the context of religion -- a hopeless shortcut attempting to gain knowledge without regard to or in spite of the evidence of the senses and logic, i.e., fantasy. That is why it is incompatible with and the opposite of reason -- as are claims that faith is just as good as reason or that one can validly mix them and do both simultaneously. Any form of the arbitrary mixed with reason leads to hopeless contradictions and fantasies. That is the mess that those who deny that "Faith and Reason cannot occupy the same space" in their minds get -- they can physically do it but suffer the consequent destruction.
Faith has no cognitive validity whatsoever in any realm and anyone employing it is to be dismissed out of hand as arbitrary and cognitively irrelevant, as if he had said nothing, whether it is subjective personal feeling like revelation, appeals to sacred text, or any other intellectual authoritarianism attempting to override and bypass reason. This includes the infamous attempts throughout religious history to make reason the handmaiden rationalizing faith. You can't even argue with faith because it rejects all logical standards. See Ayn Rand's "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World" in her anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It.
The invalid notion of basing reason on faith is an incoherent contradiction in terms, evading the source of the concept reason in the facts giving rise to it.
The axioms identified by Ayn Rand, which I'm assuming you have some familiarity with, are neither arbitrary premises nor "derived" as in a deductive syllogism; they are concepts identifying and referring to facts that are implicit in and at the base of all knowledge. They are axiomatic concepts ('existence', 'consciousness' and 'identity'), not axiomatic assertions of particular facts like those in Euclid.
The meaning of an axiomatic concept is perceived and experienced directly but understood conceptually, i.e., abstractly. The axioms are stated in the familiar repetitive propositional form ("Existence exists", "Consciousness is conscious", and "A is A") as a reminder and a means to affirm and emphasize the concepts (not as "tautologies"), and because they cannot be further analyzed into constituent concepts.
But they can be explained and their role discussed as Ayn Rand did in Galt's speech and more technically in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, chapter 6. Also see Leonard Peikoff's exposition in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (chapter 1) where he discusses Ayn Rand's axioms in a broader philosophical context, further showing their significance in relation to other principles.
In particular, the recognition of the law of identity "A is A" is the metaphysical basis of and the reason for the principle of non-contradiction in logic.
Ashley did not bring this up and brought up nothing good; his posts are malevolent religious mysticism.
The rational idea of the "universe is good" simply expresses the objective value of the universe to man -- it's where we live -- not a value judgment outside science and not faith.
When someone mystically asserts an intrinsic value of the universe apart from value to whom for what purpose -- like viros do putting 'nature' worship above man, or religious mystics do in their supernaturalism -- that is outside science and all reason.
Ayn Rand's principle of the 'benevolent universe premise' is related to this. It means that we are capable of dealing with reality to live by using our rational faculty to adapt the world to our needs and thrive in it, with happiness the normal condition of man. It's a principle of a sense of life, not metaphysics. It doesn't mean there is intrinsic (mystic) value to the universe apart from man or that the universe cares about and is good to us, or was created for us as the best possible (Leibniz's mysticism). The universe doesn't 'care' about anything; it simply is what it is and it is up to us to use our capacities to live in it and achieve happiness as our normal state, which we can and which some do, even though success is not guaranteed. This principle is in Galt's speech. The basic principles of how to do it are the purpose of epistemology (about how we use reason to know), ethics, and the consequent political philosophy, including the principle of the rights of the individual.
The opposite of Ayn Rand's 'benevolent universe premise' is what she called the 'malevolent universe premise', which is a sense of life that sees man as inherently and routinely doomed to failure and misery by his nature, with success an exception. (Ayn Rand's concept of this doesn't mean the universe is out to get us.)