What is Freedom?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
So, you want to legalize murder?[/quote]

No, but drugs and prostitution and gambling and prading on main street on saturday without a handkerchief, you puritan you.

Because you do not learn that fire is hot without burning yourself.

Not that I ever burned myself with callgirls, but then we are a very old, catholic and civilized nation.

In other words, we can handle the grown up shit.

You might be able to too.[/quote]

Pfft, I wouldn’t brag. You guys can’t even replace your own population. Might have something to with all that stuff you’re proud of. Who wants to emulate the dinosaur?

Now, let’s go back to the question of murder. If law prevents us from recognizing virtue, then you must to legalize murder so that we are more likely to recognize it as a wrong. Further, the existence of the law makes us a “servile people.”[/quote]

So if you do nogt have a law that tells you that murder is wrong you would not know how to act?

That is your problem right there.

[/quote]

False again. My argument has been that I’ve know not to murder, supporting the law to dissuade and/or punish those who haven’t arrived at the same conclusion. Why do you support the law? You’ve argued that the law retards our ability to recognize right from wrong. You’ve argued that the existence of law makes us a servile people. Yet, you support at least one law.

62

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Pfft, I wouldn’t brag. You guys can’t even replace your own population. Might have something do to with the non-child/family friendly stuff above for which you’re proud of. Who wants to emulate the dinosaur?[/quote]

Oh, my bad. I forgot, self-interest is your sole guiding light. You care not for a sustaining prosperity. A few generations from now, the nearly extinct Austrian wouldn’t even know you ever existed. So what are they–yet to exist–to you, right? Hey, at least you had the option to party hard before going out. Freeeeeeedom!

That just isn’t my bag. I believe in culture, even laws, that order society towards an orderly prosperity, for future generations. People who might not ever learn of my existence in history. I believe in the promotion of the family, of a culture conducive to family and children. You, you have legal prostitution. Fan-dang-tastic!

63

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Freedom is the natural state of mankind - interactions with fellow humans causes the need for laws and boundaries - evil within man causes the need for defenses and htir attendant organizations[/quote]

I agree to a point. I do not see how it follows that because a few handful of men are “evil” we need organizations to defend us. Besides, there are many people that are not evil that cause destruction and injustices unintentionally – by just following herd mentality.

My highest priority is to defend myself from the state that claims to own me. What organization can I turn to to provide me this?[/quote]

You misunderstand me: Man in his natural state is free, he can have his own land, family, property, etc.

Once he has to interact with other humans, laws and boundaries need to be established. Boundaries are identification and must be mutually agreed upon and respected. This is my house, this is my property line, this is my family, these are my dogs - now we have law.

Once the respect for boundaries is lost or weakened, the individual must either act forcefully on his own, or establish social contracts to enforce the boundaries - now we have government.

Once respect for national boundaries is lost, armies must be established to defend the nation.

Every step along this path is driven by the existence of evil men. Men who refused to respect the natural freedom and rights of the individual, then the community, then the state . . .

Evil is why our God-given natural state is untenable, and why most resort to social contract to mutually protect themselves. The individual can try to protect himself, but evil always seems to have the advantage of numbers.

That social contract, though, has to be based on commonly held values. Once the values and morals of a community are no longer agreed upon, the social cohesion begins to break down . . .and look at me, I keep wondering into all sorts of topics.
[/quote]

IrishSteel and Lifticus: since we are born unfree and hoplessly intertwined with other people on this pale blue dot, both your arguments are invalid.
But you get bonus points for dragging “evil” into the discussion.

64

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Freedom means self determination. No person is completely free, and no person has completely free will however.

Physical laws prevent absolute freedom, I can’t go to the sun for example. We are all subject to limits, however, the idea is to live with only the absolute physical limits.[/quote]

That would mean I can bash your head in and take your stuff (Newton says it’s ok) - are you cool with that?

65

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Freedom is the natural state of mankind - interactions with fellow humans causes the need for laws and boundaries - evil within man causes the need for defenses and htir attendant organizations[/quote]

I agree to a point. I do not see how it follows that because a few handful of men are “evil” we need organizations to defend us. Besides, there are many people that are not evil that cause destruction and injustices unintentionally – by just following herd mentality.

My highest priority is to defend myself from the state that claims to own me. What organization can I turn to to provide me this?[/quote]

You misunderstand me: Man in his natural state is free, he can have his own land, family, property, etc.

Once he has to interact with other humans, laws and boundaries need to be established. Boundaries are identification and must be mutually agreed upon and respected. This is my house, this is my property line, this is my family, these are my dogs - now we have law.

Once the respect for boundaries is lost or weakened, the individual must either act forcefully on his own, or establish social contracts to enforce the boundaries - now we have government.

Once respect for national boundaries is lost, armies must be established to defend the nation.

Every step along this path is driven by the existence of evil men. Men who refused to respect the natural freedom and rights of the individual, then the community, then the state . . .

Evil is why our God-given natural state is untenable, and why most resort to social contract to mutually protect themselves. The individual can try to protect himself, but evil always seems to have the advantage of numbers.

That social contract, though, has to be based on commonly held values. Once the values and morals of a community are no longer agreed upon, the social cohesion begins to break down . . .and look at me, I keep wondering into all sorts of topics.
[/quote]

IrishSteel and Lifticus: since we are born unfree and hoplessly intertwined with other people on this pale blue dot, both your arguments are invalid.
But you get bonus points for dragging “evil” into the discussion.
[/quote]

obviously, you missed my point . . .

66

…freedom to me is first and foremost a state of mind; something that can’t be taken away from you nor owned by someone else. A close second is to live your life as you see fit without causing harm to anyone. I don’t think that humankind can live without a societal structure. Such a structure ultimately leads to law and regulation, but this in- and of itself does not lead to an absolute restriction of freedom when those 2 precepts are honored…

67

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
The truth is:

Living under a government one can never be free.[/quote]

Sir, as long as you’re riding the dead property horse, you shall create a strong man with a stick.

They go hand in hand and thus you do create your own cage.

68

[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Let me dissent. As I have said before and I will say again & again, freedom, equality and justice are human concepts to regulate human behavior. They have no analogs in the natural world, where aggression rules.
[/quote]
very good!

[quote]jj-dude wrote:
The issue I have with your statement Irish (oh and I really do enjoy your writings, but I think this hits a larger issue) is that by taking an artificial state and declaring it ‘natural’, Rousseau – the father of this line of thought – introduced probably the worst single bit of philosophy into Western thinking and for my money, the root cause of many, many other ills.

By reducing freedom to some undefinable natural state, virtually any property can be ascribed to it. Moreover, no discussion of it can occur (“Freedom defined is Freedom denied!” as the campus anarchists like to spray paint on anything that doesn’t move). It makes it too easy to turn all serious discourse into sloganeering about victimization and oppression. After all, no laws or understanding is needed to breath, since that is natural, as is walking, right? If freedom is as natural as all that, any laws about it are, indeed, just comically authoritarian. On the other hand, if freedom results in the context of human interactions, then we should be able to not merely understand it and its social function, we should be able to allow it.
[/quote]

the crux is this: while freedom and nature have little overlapping, there is no concept of “property” in nature. The one thing I call Proto Property, however does exist. We can observe it within primitive cultures and it includes very, very little, to the dismay of hardcore capitalists.
So the naturalists didn’t miss entirely here.

69

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
obviously, you missed my point . . .[/quote]

How?
Also, your religion starts on the premise that the natural order is not(!) freedom, but enslavement to work, pain, rules etc.

Humans don’t appear out of thin air.
A child is incapable of doing the simplest of things.
So we are indebted to other people right from the start, they feed, protect and school us. That’s not an option.

70

Freedom = the ability to turn my potential into my actual, without hinderance from my fellow-man.

Altruism seeks to use this desire for each of to become ourselves as ‘hostage-taking’. “Share your wealth because we’ve got guns!!” Obama the Criminal is the worst.

Your desire to live is held hostage by spiritual/material vampires. That’s what Socialism is.

71

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
The truth is:

Living under a government one can never be free.[/quote]

Sir, as long as you’re riding the dead property horse, you shall create a strong man with a stick.

They go hand in hand and thus you do create your own cage.[/quote]

I am trying to understand what this means without all the prosy language…?

Are you implying that property rights require government to protect them?

Interesting because all I see are governments which violate property rights as a matter of course. None question it.

72

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Dabba wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:
No you cannot.

All you can “recognize” that you treat people like chattle which will forever prevent them from developing their moral muscles on their own.

And then, people, just like you, will proclaim that force is necessary because people will not do on their own what is right.

First you rob free people of the competence to deal with this shit on their own and then you proclaim that they need your help to deal with it and sooner or later they really do.

You are a closet liberal.

[/quote]

Exactly. Sloth keeps saying that libertarianism and classical liberalism is what leads to a huge state. Meanwhile in the most traditionally “conservative” nation in history…[/quote]

Well, I just looked at the out-of-wedlock birth and divorce rates…Conservative? No, that’s liberalism. I’ve looked at the debt-ridden materialistic culture around me. Conservatism? Nope. And nowhere have I said that Conservatism is impervious. It’s just that libertarianism/liberalism is the surer route to a powerful central authority.[/quote]

Come on man, I said traditionally. Perhaps there is a causal relation that you are unaware of here? Perhaps it is hyper-conservatism that leads to a big state and not hyper-individualism (which has never been present as a majority mindset in the United States, perhaps except for the founding time period). Ya’ know, the whole hippie counter-revolution as a revolt against the super-conservative mode of thought in the US? Just throwing the idea out there… I think you’re making a bit of a leap when you say confidently that libertarianism leads to a more powerful central authority then conservatism, but your argument has some validity of course, that cannot be denied. Also, for clarification purposes are you referring to modern liberalism or classical liberalism?

73

[quote]Dabba wrote:
Also, for clarification purposes are you referring to modern liberalism or classical liberalism?
[/quote]

What if I was to say that progressive liberalism is classical liberalism with a dose of reality?

74

There is no such thing as freedom. It is an illusion. We do not choose what we think or do because such things are decided by our environment and genetics which we cannot control. We don’t choose where we are born, who we are born to, to be born, how our brains are inherently wired, our basic appearance, our basic physical aptitudes and so on. We are like computers. We do not choose the data inputted into us or how we use it. There is no such thing as free will. We do what we are programmed to do. We make choices based on the options available to us and we do not choose what those options are. The “choices” we make are based on an initial set of factors we cannot control. If those factors were different our choices would be different.

75

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Dabba wrote:
Also, for clarification purposes are you referring to modern liberalism or classical liberalism?
[/quote]

What if I was to say that progressive liberalism is classical liberalism with a dose of reality? [/quote]

Well it would affirm the fact that you are indeed a statist. But seriously, it would only show that you are not in favor of (even relatively) free markets. The other aspect is that classical liberalism doesn’t necessarily have a liberal social policy or foreign policy. As I said on other threads, you are an economic progressive. The negative view that you take on markets lends itself to more and more regulation and taxes. If you want to know why we are at where we are, it is because the only true free market advocates with any sort of power in this country decided to ease up and let ‘X’ program through, then ‘Y’, then ‘Z’ and now we find ourselves with leviathan today. Most of the things you say about a strong society with conservative values is true, yet you miss the point because the real problem is that conservatives aren’t really conservative.

Also, I would appreciate if you could at least try to respond to the rest of my former post, as you seem to have ignored it.

76

The casting aside of traditional views of marriage, divorce, and family, (social constraints) to pursue individualistic self-interest? Individualism or collectivism?

77

[quote]nothingclever wrote:
There is no such thing as freedom. It is an illusion. We do not choose what we think or do because such things are decided by our environment and genetics which we cannot control. We don’t choose where we are born, who we are born to, to be born, how our brains are inherently wired, our basic appearance, our basic physical aptitudes and so on. We are like computers. We do not choose the data inputted into us or how we use it. There is no such thing as free will. We do what we are programmed to do. We make choices based on the options available to us and we do not choose what those options are. The “choices” we make are based on an initial set of factors we cannot control. If those factors were different our choices would be different.[/quote]

So what you are saying is that there is no free will. That everything, including the post you made, and my response was foreordained. That you are not responsible for your actions.

Wow, this makes a great excuse for everything.

You didn’t choose where you were born, but you choose to stay there, or leave, or how to live there. No you don’t choose your genetics, but genetics doesn’t decide your life. It doesn’t matter if you have great genetics for weightlifting if you never lift a weight.

Your choices are not dependent on your life, your life is dependent on your choices. If you cannot understand this, you are not a slave to your circumstances, you are a slave to your own ignorance.

Also until you can disprove quantum mechanics, your argument is not scientifically valid.

78

[quote]nothingclever wrote:
There is no such thing as freedom. It is an illusion. We do not choose what we think or do because such things are decided by our environment and genetics which we cannot control. We don’t choose where we are born, who we are born to, to be born, how our brains are inherently wired, our basic appearance, our basic physical aptitudes and so on. We are like computers. We do not choose the data inputted into us or how we use it. There is no such thing as free will. We do what we are programmed to do. We make choices based on the options available to us and we do not choose what those options are. The “choices” we make are based on an initial set of factors we cannot control. If those factors were different our choices would be different.[/quote]

This is simply a desire to escape from a responsible consciousness.

Everything you do is a philosophic act of choice: “I should take this meth - right or wrong? I should break my wedding vows and fuck this slut - right or wrong? I will be a noble and moral being - right or wrong?”

Your life belongs to you and your choice is how you live it. Moral and noble being, or mindless drug/alcohol/sex beast…those are your choices. There are no other and your time is running out.

79

[quote]Sloth wrote:
The casting aside of traditional views of marriage, divorce, and family, (social constraints) to pursue individualistic self-interest? Individualism or collectivism?[/quote]

Your definition of self-interest is the irrational one, the selfishness of beasts. Selfishness for a rational being is quite different. Ayn Rand could explain this to you, if you but read.

80

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Freedom means self determination. No person is completely free, and no person has completely free will however.

Physical laws prevent absolute freedom, I can’t go to the sun for example. We are all subject to limits, however, the idea is to live with only the absolute physical limits.[/quote]

That would mean I can bash your head in and take your stuff (Newton says it’s ok) - are you cool with that?[/quote]

And I could defend myself, and my neighbors could defend me too.

Can you defend yourself when government agents come to take your things when they claim ownership of your earnings?