"The
great citizens of a country are not those who bend
the knee before authority but rather those who,
against authority if need be, are adamant as to the
honor and freedom of that country."
Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
Instead of
respect for reason, open dialogue, freedom of speech and
individual and property rights, political systems across
the world are becoming increasingly authoritarian.
Deceptions
and lies, manipulation and propaganda, fear-mongering
and psychological operations are all being used to
justify political actions and policies that destroy
life.
How do
politicians continue to convince the public to do away
with their freedoms in favour of heavy-handed government
control?
Why are so
few people defending liberty when a world absent of it
is a world of mass suffering?
In this video
we are going to examine these questions.
"... if
freedom is regressing today throughout such a large
part of the world, his is probably because the
devices for enslavement have never been so cynically
chosen or so effective, but also because her real
defenders, through fatigue, through despair, or
through a false idea of strategy and efficiency,
have turned away from her."
Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
It is often
said that one cannot solve a problem if one is not even
cognizant of it, and herein lies one of the reasons
freedom is retreating so rapidly from our world.
Many people
still believe themselves to be free and as Goethe wrote:
"None are
more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely
believe they are free."
Those who
believe themselves to be free disregard the fact that to
be governed in the modern world is to be,
"...
watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled,
indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked,
estimated, valued, censured [and] commanded, by
beings who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor
the virtue to do so."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Accepting our
lack of freedom is a necessary step to counteract this
undesirable condition.
For so long
as we remain in denial of the chains of servitude that
are upon us, we will do nothing to cast them aside.
But when we
acknowledge our chains we can begin to push back against
them and in the process contribute to the creation of a
better world, or as Camus noted:
"The task
of men... is not to desert historical struggles nor
to serve the cruel and inhuman elements in those
struggles.
It is
rather to remain what they are, to help man against
what is oppressing him, to favor freedom against the
fatalities that close in upon it....
Man's
greatness... lies in his decision to be
greater than his condition. And if his condition is
unjust, he has only one way of overcoming it, which
is to be just himself."
Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
But
widespread ignorance as to the lack of freedom is not
the only reason why freedom is retreating from the
world.
Rather, there
is also an idea that has infected many minds and this
idea, if not defeated, could prove to be the kiss of
death for freedom in our generation.
This idea is
promoted by most politicians, indoctrinated into the
youth at school and via popular culture, and championed
by the vast majority of talking heads in the mainstream
media.
This idea is
collectivism.
To understand
what collectivism is we must consider the question:
"Does the
individual exist for the sake of society? Or does
society exist for the sake of individuals?"
Those who
adhere to collectivism believe that the individual
exists for the sake of society and therefore that:
... the
individual has to subordinate himself to, and
conduct himself for, the benefit of society and to
sacrifice his selfish private interests to the
common good."
Ludwig von Mises, Epistemological Problems of
Economics
This
collectivist mindset is foundational to communism,
fascism and socialism:
"The
common good before the individual good" proclaimed
one collectivism's most infamous adherents.
Adolf Hitler
The doctrine
of collectivism has been put into practice by many
dictators such as Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot and
Mao.
Death,
destruction and suffering on a mass scale was the
end-result in each case.
How does placing the good of society above the good of
the individual tend toward such unfortunate outcomes? Is
it not a display of compassion to sacrifice our personal
interests for the greater good of our society?
At first
glance collectivism may seem to be a virtuous position
to take, but on closer investigation a philosophical
error called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness
corrupts the practical application of this ideology.
The fallacy
of misplaced concreteness occurs when one treats what is
merely an abstraction as an entity that exists in the
real world.
Collectivism,
in claiming the individual must sacrifice his or her
private interests for the sake of society, takes what is
merely a concept - "society" - and treats such a concept
as if it had a concrete existence, but as Jung points
out:
"Society
is nothing more than a term, a concept for the
symbiosis of a group of human beings.
A concept
is not a carrier of life."
Carl Jung, Volume 15 Practice of Psychotherapy
In contrast
to the individual that has a real existence in the
world, society is an abstraction used to represent an
ever-changing collection of individuals living and
interacting in proximity.
As far and as
wide as one looks, one will never find a concrete entity
called society that we can point to and identify in the
manner analogous to how we can identify an individual.
"Society
does not exist apart from the thoughts and actions
of people. It does not have "interests" and does not
aim at anything. The same is valid for all other
collectives."
Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of
Economic Science
Or as Jung
put it:
...the
"nation" (like the "State") is a personified
concept... The nation has no life of its own apart
from the individual, and is therefore not an end in
itself... All life is individual life, in which
alone the ultimate meaning is to be found.
Carl Jung, The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum
As a society
is a concept it cannot think, act, speak or choose, and
therefore, an individual, or group of individuals, must
be granted the ability to define the so-called societal
greater good and then granted the power to force
individuals to act in service of this good.
Since the
dawn of civilization, it has been ruling classes who
anoint themselves the arbiters of the greater good, and
so not surprisingly the greater good, more often than
not, merely amounts to the good of those in power, or as
the 20th century psychologist Nathaniel
Branden wrote:
"With
such [collectivist] systems, the individual has
always been a victim, twisted against
him-or-her-self and commanded to be "unselfish" in
sacrificial service to some allegedly higher value
called God or pharaoh or emperor or king or
society or the state or the race or the proletariat
- or the cosmos.
It is a
strange paradox of our history that this doctrine -
which tells us that we are to regard ourselves, in
effect, as sacrificial animals - has been generally
accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and
love for humankind.
From the
first individual... who was sacrificed on an altar
for the good of the tribe, to the heretics and
dissenters burned at the stake for the good of the
populace or the glory of God, to the millions
exterminated in... slave-labor camps for the good of
the race or of the proletariat, it is this
[collectivist] morality that has served as
justification for every dictatorship and every
atrocity, past or present."
Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Romantic Love
The
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a
staunch collectivist who exerted a profound influence on
the ideas of Karl Marx, promoted collectivisms' negation
of the individual with the following words:
"A single
person, I need hardly say, is something subordinate,
and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical
whole.
Hence, if
the state claims life, the individual must surrender
it...
All the
worth which the human being possesses... he
possesses only through the State."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the
Philosophy of Right
Contrary to
the philosophical trickery promoted by collectivism,
neither the "greater good" of society nor the state nor
any other concept used to describe a symbiosis of human
beings is superior to flesh-and-blood individuals, whose
spontaneous actions are the real creative and generative
force in the world.
As the 19th
century British philosopher Auberon Herbert
wrote,
"The
individual is king, and all other things exist for
the service of the king."
Auberon Herbert, Lost in the Region of Phrases
Or as he
further explained:
"[The
individual] is included in many wholes - his school,
his college, his club, his profession, his town or
county, his church, his political party, his
nation... but he is always greater than them all...
All these
various wholes, without any exception... .exist for
the sake of the individual.
They
exist to do his service; they exist for his profit
and use."
Auberon Herbert, Lost in the Region of Phrases
The
conviction that "the individual is king" informed the
ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th
and 18th centuries and led to a rapid
awakening to the vital connection between freedom and
the individual rights of life, liberty, and property.
Generally
speaking, individual rights specify that:
"The only
freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing
our own good in our own way, so long as we do not
attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their
efforts to obtain it.
Each is
the proper guardian of his own health, whether
bodily or mental and spiritual."
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Those who
support individual rights are not motivated by an
insensitivity to the plight and suffering of others, but
rather by the recognition that in granting each of us
the freedom to pursue our own good, social cooperation,
the division of labour and a prosperous society emerge
in a bottom-up manner and thus the ability to help
others also improves.
For without
the wealth generating mechanism of freedom all the good
intentions in the world will not clothe, house and feed
the poor.
Collectivists
claim the opposite.
An emphasis
on the rights of the individual, they suggest, rather
than on the greater good, tends to inhibit social
cooperation and promote an atomized population in which
every man and woman is an island left to fend for
themselves.
But here
collectivists have it backwards.
We are
naturally social animals and so the atomization of
individuals only results when a government, under the
guise of the "greater good", is granted the power to
enforce social isolation or else to sow the seeds of
fear and suspicion amongst friends and neighbors.
In his
classic study of 20th century collectivist
political systems, the medical doctor Joost Meerloo
noted that,
"...
behind the iron curtain the most prominent complaint
in the totalitarian system was the feeling of mental
isolation.
The
individual feels alone and continually on the alert.
There is only mutual suspicion."
Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
Carl Jung,
who lived through the totalitarianism which swept across
mid-20th century Europe, likewise observed:
"The mass
State has no intention of promoting mutual
understanding and the relationship of man to man; it
strives... for atomization, for the psychic
isolation of the individual."
Carl Jung
The best way
to promote social cooperation and a prosperous society
is not through top-down centralized control, but to
remove the clamps of control and to let individuals make
their own choices with respect to their own lives.
And this is
what a society structured on individual rights
accomplishes. Live and let live, as the age-old adage
puts it.
Or as
David Kelley explains:
"[Individual rights] leave individuals responsible
for living their own lives and meeting their own
needs, and they provide the freedom to carry out
those responsibilities.
Individuals are free to act on the basis of their
own judgment, to pursue their own ends, and to use
and dispose of the material resources they have
acquired by their efforts.
Those
rights reflect the assumption that individuals are
ends in themselves, who may not be used against
their will for social purposes."
David Kelley, A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights
and the Welfare State
As individual
rights leave us free to pursue our own good in our own
way so long as we do not aggress upon the person or
property of others, it follows that each of us has the
right to freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom
of association and assembly, the right to property and
bodily autonomy, and the right to work and retain the
fruits of our labor.
"Man is
absolute lord of his own person and possessions,
equal to the greatest, and subject to nobody."
(Locke)
John Locke, Second Treatise
Individual
rights are universal in that they apply to all human
beings everywhere:
"...
rights exist regardless of whether they are
implemented in the legal constitution of a given
country."
David Kelley, A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights
and the Welfare State
And they are
inalienable in that they cannot be given or taken away
by any man, government, or institution.
"A man's
natural rights are his own, against the whole world;
and any infringement of them is equally a crime...
whether committed by one man, calling himself a
robber... or by millions, calling themselves a
government."
Lysander Spooner, No Treason The Constitution of No
Authority
When a
society and the judicial system are predicated on a deep
respect for and commitment to individual rights, the
individual is king and therefore the individual is free.
But when
individual rights are transgressed under the pretext of
public safety or the "greater good", the individual
turns into mere political property which any mob or
government or institution in power can oppress, detain,
or eliminate if deemed necessary.
As
Lysander Spooner explained:
"...
there is no difference... between political and
chattel slavery.
The
former, no less than the latter, denies a man's
ownership of himself and the products of his labor;
and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose
of him and his property, for their uses, and at
their pleasure."
Lysander Spooner, No Treason The Constitution of No
Authority
In the modern
world we are moving ever closer to a widespread
acceptance of collectivism and thus the condition of
political slavery to which Spooner alludes.
At times such
as these it is useful to recognize that while the
majority are complicit in their servitude, in standing
on the side of freedom, we unite ourselves in spirit
with all other guardians of freedom across the globe.
"I rebel
- therefore we exist."
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Or as Camus
Further wrote:
"Every
insubordinate person, when he rises up against
oppression, reaffirms thereby the solidarity of all
men." (Camus)
Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
