I have in my experience found that most people who claim to love freedom actually hate it. To begin with, they do not know what defines actual, proper freedom. Therefore, when they are presented with descriptions of the circumstances and conditions that are typically part and parcel with such freedom, they recoil in anger-laced disgust and horror, ready to eviscerate anyone who dares suggest what is for them obscenity itself.
The question then naturally arises: "why?" Why, when presented with the realities of being properly free in the civilized world, does the vast majority of people react with such unconsidered rejection?
The trivial answer, of course is that we as a species are mostly corrupt. But that doesn't really address the question with any specificity regardless of how true it may otherwise be. Sufficient to the day is the following.
Freedom requires the following of a man, and in no particular order:
- General intellect
- Essential smarts
- Integrity
- Honor
- Courage
- Objectively correct morals
- Generosity
- Self-control/mastery
- Attitude
- Self-mastery
1. Intellect
It should be clear that intelligence is perhaps the paramount fundamental requirement for freedom because it is foundational to all the rest. Without proper intelligence the would-be free man is incapable of grasping the conceptual basis of liberty, especially in the context of a civil society. Groups of hunter/gathers might get away well enough with banging one another over their heads when emotional impulse demanded such satisfaction. They might copulate like dogs in the street in front of their fellows, uncaring as to whether anyone sees them. But in a civil society it appears that people have generally shied away from such base behaviors because life is no longer quite so simple and unstructured, as is the case then with simpler societies living in the wild. Being so, more highly structured elements of interpersonal relations arise, probably very naturally because the nature of practical human relations has changed as the result of civilized coexistence in villages and later, larger towns and cities.
The dullard is incapable of wrapping his head properly around such ideas, however tacitly they may be held by his fellows, and therefore remains more a creature of reflex than a thinking, rational being in possession of the requisite faculties for being a self-governing member of a civil society. Today, such people often end up in prisons, mental hospitals, or on the slab.
2. Smarts
While a necessary element, intellect is not sufficient to the cause of self-governance, which is the very basis of properly civilized human freedom. Nominally normal people possess the raw intellect to be free men. However, left inarticulate, that intellect will serve them not to such ends. Basic intelligence must be molded by training and experience, forming and constituting what we call "smarts". Free men must perforce be smart men, and their smarts must include the types of learning that provide them with the capacity to make proper decisions with respect to how they govern themselves, lest they be governed by others.
It is all well and good to have the smarts of a carpenter or an engineer, but without a correct knowledge of self-governance the same man becomes useless in his potential as a civilly free being.
3. Integrity
The integrity of a man speaks to a certain sort and level of predictability, which translates directly into his trustworthiness. Without trust between them, two people can have no sort of a relationship beyond one of wonder, doubt, and suspicion. Trust is the single most essential element in any relationship between men. If I cannot trust you, I do not want you near me.
4. Honor
A sense of honor more finely tunes the quality of individual integrity. A man may have high integrity, yet no honor, depending on that to which his integrity cleaves. One could have great integrity, which is to say devotion and predictability, for betraying those who have chosen to trust him. That would be a man with integrity, yet no honor. Honor speaks to the brand of a man's integrity. It signals to others that his trustworthiness does not extend to acts which others would regard as foul or otherwise unpalatable. Quite the contrary, it very much indicates that one can be trusted to consistently do the "right" things by others. This is the correct brand of trustworthiness, as opposed to the incorrect that would include the predictability that one would betray others in some consistently stable pattern. This may seem a silly distinction, but I assure you that it is essential to be aware of it and to understand it, no matter how tacitly obvious and/or irrelevant it may seem.
5. Courage
What is courage? It is the quality in a man that leads him to do what he knows is right even when to do so leaves him quaking with fear, dread, and trepidation. Without courage, men would shrink away from what is right for the sake of what feels safe, momentarily expedient, or easy.
6. Correct Morals
An objectively correct moral foundation is an absolute requirement for being properly free. Those of a certain philosophical bent will rail and rage against so much as the suggestion that such an objective standard exists because in their limited minds all things are "relative". In a very pedantic sense, one that is detached from practical reality, they are correct. However, their views on such matters are invalid precisely because they have no relevance to real living on planet earth. What they fail to understand is that once a frame of reference is chosen, which is to say a standard of assessment, objective truth with respect to that standard arises and solidifies instantly, thereby establishing the selfsame objective basis for making all manner of judgments within that frame.
On the earth and in the human world, the one in which we must daily navigate as we move through time and space, life itself becomes the standard by which objective decisions are made. It is important to note that the application of that standard must perforce be consistent and devoid of any hypocrisy, which speaks to one's integrity, honor, smarts, and basic intellect.
So for example, as a living breathing human being there are things toward which I move, and those away from which I flee. I wish good health for myself; food and drink; freedom to pursue my interests. I wish not to be dismembered; to lose what is mine; to be burned with fire or beaten or raped or murdered. In my perhaps longish litany of desires do I find my standard of comportment, my aversion to hypocrisy being critical to my ability to render assessments and judgments of myself, as well as others.
If I do not with to be dismembered, then I must refrain from dismembering. If I wish good health for myself, I should also wish the same for others, or at the very least refrain from wishing ill upon them.
If I wish to have my rightful prerogatives respected by others, then I must perforce show them the same courtesy.
And do on and so forth down the list of common human desires, which serve as the very basis of our objectively correct morality. Hypocrisy is the most insidious of all human evils, for it hides in places many cannot find it, cloaking itself in manifold justifications for why Johnny is free, but Jimmy is not. Were there only one evil I would be permitted to eradicate from the world, it would be hypocrisy. Such eradication would in my rough estimation instantly eliminate 99% of all readily avoidable human troubles.
On the earth and in the human world, the one in which we must daily navigate as we move through time and space, life itself becomes the standard by which objective decisions are made. It is important to note that the application of that standard must perforce be consistent and devoid of any hypocrisy, which speaks to one's integrity, honor, smarts, and basic intellect.
So for example, as a living breathing human being there are things toward which I move, and those away from which I flee. I wish good health for myself; food and drink; freedom to pursue my interests. I wish not to be dismembered; to lose what is mine; to be burned with fire or beaten or raped or murdered. In my perhaps longish litany of desires do I find my standard of comportment, my aversion to hypocrisy being critical to my ability to render assessments and judgments of myself, as well as others.
If I do not with to be dismembered, then I must refrain from dismembering. If I wish good health for myself, I should also wish the same for others, or at the very least refrain from wishing ill upon them.
If I wish to have my rightful prerogatives respected by others, then I must perforce show them the same courtesy.
And do on and so forth down the list of common human desires, which serve as the very basis of our objectively correct morality. Hypocrisy is the most insidious of all human evils, for it hides in places many cannot find it, cloaking itself in manifold justifications for why Johnny is free, but Jimmy is not. Were there only one evil I would be permitted to eradicate from the world, it would be hypocrisy. Such eradication would in my rough estimation instantly eliminate 99% of all readily avoidable human troubles.
7. Generosity
In the relevant sense, generosity does not mean the opening of one's wallet to shower silver upon the less-fortunate, but rather the generosity of spirit that, in consonance with one's honorable nature, knowledge of what is right between men, proper morals, courage and integrity, leaves others to live their lives as they wish, just as you wish your rightful prerogatives to be respected by others. You may not like their choices in all instances, but you are large enough, generous enough to allow them to make them in any event, so long as those choices do not trespass against the equal rights of others.
8. Self-control
The free man is mastered by no man other than himself. He owns himself and is therefore responsible and fully accountable for his actions. Therefore, self-control becomes yet another central characteristic of the man. He uses the faculties he has developed in such ways as to best satisfy his goals without resorting to the violation of the equal rights of his fellow human beings. If for example he has entered into an agreement with another, sees an opportunity to get away with an act that would profit him at the expense of the other without his knowing, yet knowing that it constitutes a breach of trust between them, he employs his self control to squelch his impulse to act in that way such that he preserves his honor, integrity, faith to his morals, and his agreed-upon obligation to the man with whom he has his agreement.
Self-control sees him remaining a gentleman when he encounters the most beautiful woman he has ever beheld; one upon whom his impulse is to fall upon and drag away to his cave to satisfy his base desires. He is no rapist and no woman, regardless of her raw, sultry allure will lead him to turn his back on everything he holds dear as a human being in himself. It means he remains sober when the desire to join in the libations is strong, but he must for whatever reason desist. It means knowing when to walk away from a gambling table even when he's certain that the next hand, toss of the dice, or fall of the little ball is sure to be the one that will yield the big payoff.
Self-control sees him remaining a gentleman when he encounters the most beautiful woman he has ever beheld; one upon whom his impulse is to fall upon and drag away to his cave to satisfy his base desires. He is no rapist and no woman, regardless of her raw, sultry allure will lead him to turn his back on everything he holds dear as a human being in himself. It means he remains sober when the desire to join in the libations is strong, but he must for whatever reason desist. It means knowing when to walk away from a gambling table even when he's certain that the next hand, toss of the dice, or fall of the little ball is sure to be the one that will yield the big payoff.
9. Attitude
Self-control is driven by one's attitude. The right attitude is foundational to right decision making. Without it, correct decisions come only by dumb luck and almost never through deliberate intention. Charles Swindol said, "life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." In other words, more than anything else, your attitude determines at the deepest levels the quality of your life. The right attitude produces right results, the wrong attitude, disaster petty or grand.
If you don't care, which is to say that you carry an attitude of not caring or not caring properly or enough, you will most likely not exercise the self-control required to regulate your behavior in a properly self-governing manner. You will not care about your honor, integrity, or morals, and as such you will be incapable of being a free man, but rather only an ill-disciplined brute, plodding his way through the minutes and moments of his days, caring no whit for how his choices affect others. And for him the day may come when the consequences come, whether they be finding oneself with no friends or family, or perhaps in a prison cell, or even no longer among the living.
And perhaps equally importantly, all this counts most when nobody is watching, running contrary to what so many believe. "Meh... nobody will know." YOU will know, and you will never be able to escape the knowledge of what you did, or failed to do, as well as the fact that once committed, the bell can never be unrung.
Self-mastery
This, the tenth quality of the list, is the result of the other list elements taken together. Self-mastery is the overarching requisite for self-governance. Without it, self-governance becomes a hit-or-miss affair, rather than something upon which others may depend upon in you. The qualities of one's intellect knitted together with the smarts needed for proper self-governance, as well as the honor, integrity, courage, moral foundation, generosity, self-control, and attitude culminate in self-mastery. Self-mastery is the ultimate achievement any many can attain in a lifetime. Self-mastery tells the world that you are the sole proprietor of your life; that you are free of masters other than yourself. It does not mean that you make no errors or mistakes. It does, however, tell the world that you own those errors, stand accountable for them, and do what you are able for the sake of amends, the avoidance of encores, and your self-respect.
Taken as a gestalt...
In other words, proper freedom and attendant self-governance requires everything of a man, whereas authoritarianism requires nothing other than mere obedience. Do as you're told, the tacit assumption there being that the "authority" knows what they are doing and has your best interests in mind, rather than someone else's.
This is what I call "pretty slavery". It is the free lunch that can never exist, but for which people lie to themselves contrariwise for the sake of not having to do the heavy lifting required of the free man on a daily, moment-by-moment basis. Such people want all the benefits of freedom without having to bear any of the costs of obtaining it and, more significantly, the burdens of keeping it. Such people are what I call "Weakmen". They are weak almost never due to an absence of capacity, though there are by all means such cases. Their corruption of strength roots directly in their attitudes of refusal to do what must be done in any given moment in order to fulfill the requirements of being a self-governing free man. It's just not sufficiently appealing to them, and because they are free to reject those requirements, they choose to in the overwhelming majority of cases. The Weakmen think they have gotten over with attaining something for nothing. Au contraire. Such corruption comes with the precipitously steep price of one's autonomy of self-ownership and their self-respect. Self-ownership is supplanted by that if a third party authorized to steer one's choices willy-nilly as it's designs and possible (likely) caprice may dictate. Such men think that they remain the sole proprietors of their own lives, but they are either blind to the presence of the tyrant's hand, or they simply do not care that it is there to interfere with them, so long as the cage they occupy is large enough and sufficiently provisioned with the accoutrements desired. Bread and circuses. And of course, the self-respect of the Weakman such as it may ever have been, flushes right down the toilet, further degrading the image he holds of himself.
This is what I call "pretty slavery". It is the free lunch that can never exist, but for which people lie to themselves contrariwise for the sake of not having to do the heavy lifting required of the free man on a daily, moment-by-moment basis. Such people want all the benefits of freedom without having to bear any of the costs of obtaining it and, more significantly, the burdens of keeping it. Such people are what I call "Weakmen". They are weak almost never due to an absence of capacity, though there are by all means such cases. Their corruption of strength roots directly in their attitudes of refusal to do what must be done in any given moment in order to fulfill the requirements of being a self-governing free man. It's just not sufficiently appealing to them, and because they are free to reject those requirements, they choose to in the overwhelming majority of cases. The Weakmen think they have gotten over with attaining something for nothing. Au contraire. Such corruption comes with the precipitously steep price of one's autonomy of self-ownership and their self-respect. Self-ownership is supplanted by that if a third party authorized to steer one's choices willy-nilly as it's designs and possible (likely) caprice may dictate. Such men think that they remain the sole proprietors of their own lives, but they are either blind to the presence of the tyrant's hand, or they simply do not care that it is there to interfere with them, so long as the cage they occupy is large enough and sufficiently provisioned with the accoutrements desired. Bread and circuses. And of course, the self-respect of the Weakman such as it may ever have been, flushes right down the toilet, further degrading the image he holds of himself.
For the Weakman, the responsibilities of being free are simply too much work, most especially the self-mastery part, all feigned protests to the contrary by Johnny Average notwithstanding, for he lies. So much so is it the case that Johnny holds naught but dread for the requirements of the Freeman, he will come to the defense of his evil masters up to and including the point of murdering his betters for the sake of protecting the tyrannies to which he has been so deftly trained by those who have not his better interests in mind. I will add that his hatred of freedom is bolstered by an even greater hatred of those who embrace it, for not only do they stand as threats to Johnny's status quo - that which is familiar and therefore comfortable to him - but they shame him for his inferiority, of which they remind him by their very existence. Though Johnny may appear something of the dullard, he is not so much so, save for functionally as the result of his willful choice, rather than any organic incapacity. He was given a perfectly serviceable intellect, and because of this he is able to dope out for himself, however tacitly and devoid of sufficient self awareness, that he is in fact inferior to those whom he hates with venomous, bitter rage; those who embrace liberty.
Underneath all the noises of his wrenching and wracking consciousness there lies the dim awareness that he could choose differently. But Johnny is a coward, and a bitter one at that. He has not the drive and courage to walk away from the squalor of his dominant thoughts, yet he sees it in those who do. He possesses the sense, however deeply buried, to be shamed by this, and typically is. But being so corrupt, it is beyond his desire to improve himself; to choose the better path, for not only does he lack the courage to do so, the deeper truth is that he has not the confidence in himself to believe he can do it. Therefore, he retreats into the darkness of his shuttered soul and, incapable of escaping the shame his higher self knows he should be feeling, rages against those who in his twisted mind make so public a mockery of him as they reveal to the world just how diminished and degraded a wretch he is.
This is seen every day as those on the so-called "left" defend decay and criminality of all sorts. They do it because it is all they have; it is all they know. They refuse to see the errors of their way because to do so would demand change in themselves, and that would demand work. Actual, blood, sweat, and likely tears work. Oh, the horror! Being ultimate narcissists, they simply refuse to admit any fault of their own; everything wrong with the world is borne by the Other. They cannot bear their shame, so they bury it under mountains of self-hatred that they redirect outward toward those whom they know in the seat of their souls to have made the better choice. They seem to prefer squalor and decay over what for them seems a self-shattering admission of error.
One can but feel pity for such collapsed souls so lost, so hopeless that likely nothing beyond a reset event holds any chance for their recovery. And even in the case of such an event, it seems likely that a vast plurality of those people would prefer to meet their doom than ever admit that maybe they had taken a wrong turn somewhere in their lives. So say the outward indicators.
As for solutions, I have few offerings. The so-called "reset event" - an occurrence so disruptive of daily life that it becomes immediately clear that carrying on as one has is now come to an immediate end. Such an event is, I suspect, most likely physical such as a meteor strike upon the earth, aliens landing on the South Lawn, or Jesus popping out from behind a cloud, and in what might be described as a less than jovial mood. I can see little or no chance for lost people as they currently seem to exist. Their psychoses are so deeply seated as to leave normal means of aid and salvation beyond the reach of their fellows. They are not even in the same world as self-governance and likely never shall be, all else equal. It is terribly sad because we are talking about several billions of souls, worldwide; a definite and likely overwhelming plurality of extant humanity. I wish I had the answers. Some say it is Jesus, and I may not disagree - but how do you bring people to the Sacred when they outright refuse it no matter how it is presented to them; when they are so habituated to the profane; when the manifold evils of the world are the things they have intransigently chosen for their devotion and worship?
I wish I were smarter.
Please forgive the seemingly sour note on which I now conclude this work, but as usual and until next time, please accept my best wishes.
