Transcending the Intellectual Obstacles to Freedom: The Rest of the Mind Traps (5)
Welcome to the fifth and final blog in my series on “mind traps” that keep us from achieving coherence, morality and true freedom. When you have reviewed them all, let me know if you see any more that are critical to add.
Sacrifice / Compromise
Mind-trap #20
No one gets their way all of the time, so isn’t it good to be willing to compromise, even when it comes to freedom?
Of course we don’t always get what we want, but we don’t need to compromise on morality. In fact, it is allowing immorality and even institutionalizing it that has us all in a civilization-threatening predicament. The fundamental compromise of morality represented by all forms of mandatory governance is the root of inevitable tyranny. We don’t need rulers, but we do need rules — the protective kind — that elucidate the Non-Aggression Principle (“Live and let live”) and form the basis for genuine conflict resolutions when someone is violated. You may or may not be able to justly acquire the goods, services or success that you seek, but imagine the unleashed creativity and resources you would have at your disposal without state intervention!
Mind-trap #21
If you don’t like it here, why don’t you just “love it or leave it?”
Who gives you the right to declare that I have to surrender my property and leave my home if I don’t go along with your authoritarian notion? I never signed that agreement, so this attitude would be trying to impose your will on me unjustly. The whole idea of patriotism, of the nation-state itself, though assumed by almost everyone, is a fiction — an idea used to justify the tyranny of some over others — in this case, you over me.
And by the way, even the notion of “America” was covertly turned into a corporation in 1871 and sold off to the European central bankers. You and I and our children’s children’s lives have been mortgaged off for generations to come as collateral for unpaid debts owed by the fiction of “America.” Such is the horrible destructive force of the myth of “aggregated power.” How does that feel to that “patriotic” part of yourself. Are we now supposed to beg our rulers for some crumbs of hope and change? Or is it time to get a taste of true sovereignty for every being — before it’s too late?
Private property, starting with our own thoughts and body and the fruits of our labor…is real. Perhaps it’s the “myth of authority” and its notion of the nation state, rather than the actual human beings who live here, that should leave.
Mind-trap #22
Isn’t being against “government” not only unpatriotic, but also illegal and even treasonous?
The first thing every government always does, of course, is to make challenging its immoral power illegal. We each need to ask ourselves, “To what is my core allegiance?” Is it to my so-called “country?” Is it to “the laws” — even if they are arbitrary and unjust? Is it to a religion, even if its dogma has elements which seem unbelievable, unfair or just doesn’t make sense? Or is it to truth and morality? Unless it is to the latter, our critical thinking will always be limited and we will be easy for nefarious forces to dupe and control for their own destructive ends.
Mind-trap #23
Isn’t going for this notion of freedom equivalent to “imposing one belief on everyone?” Aren’t you just replacing one authority with another?
Quite the contrary…as breathtakingly challenging as it is for most of us to imagine life without being under “state” rule…it will come to be seen as just as obvious as that the Earth is round instead of flat, and that slavery is unjust instead of assumed and justified as necessary. The “right” to not be violated can be enjoyed by everyone without imposing on anyone. The right to rule others, to govern without unanimous voluntary consent, is by definition a violation. We should each intrinsically have the right to protect life. That is fundamental to our very existence. However, that anyone should have the right to steal, to dictate, to initiate force on others, just because they have a uniform, or a suit and a lapel pin, or a flag, a badge, a gun, or a majority vote, makes no logical sense. It lacks the universality of any valid moral principle. If it applies to one, it must apply to all. We should each have authority only over ourselves. That is what true sovereignty is, and in this realization, challenging as it is, rests the fate of humanity and life on our dear planet Earth.
Mind Trap #24
Wouldn’t private armies just leave the poor unprotected and lead to mercenary civil wars and domination by the rich who could afford the biggest armies?
Private security companies that violated anyone, other than in genuine protection of individual rights, would be prosecuted, penalized and need to make amends as well as lose their insurance, reputation, and be unable to compete with companies that adhered to the Non-Aggression Principle.
Mind Trap #25
Wouldn’t private insurance companies with no government supervision be even worse than the AIG and health insurance fiascoes we have already witnessed?
Supervision would be by insurance companies and independent conflict resolution organizations, enforced by independent security. Private insurance companies in a true free market society would themselves need to be insured and therefore need to stay honest in their practices. They could not count on government contracts, subsidies or bailouts to survive. Fraud would be prosecuted at the individual and organizational level. Convicted companies would need to make the victim whole, plus damages.
Mind Trap #26
Wouldn’t it be better to have a small government than no government at all?
No state in history has ever been contained. When a few have rights that others do not, we do not have a universal morality. That underlying inequality is the cancer in the “body politic.” It has been shown to always metastasize into greater tyranny. We need to organize around a central universal morality, rather than a centralized ring of power over others.
The state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence. States grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance.
It’s took just a little more than a century for the U.S. — founded on the idea of limited government — to institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion.
— Stefan Molyneux
A “protectorate” is a suitable goal for stage two in the transition to a stateless society outlined in THRIVE — shrinking government to protect individual rights and some of the commons — but will it be sustainable? Most likely not, if it can take even some of my money against my will and if I am forced to accept its services on its own terms if I want to keep my property. These two seemingly innocuous powers are all any government needs to grow from the smallest “protectorate” seed to the most totalitarian “empire.”
Mind Trap #27
Realistically, don’t advocates of liberty stand no chance at all of getting their dreams realized?
It took about 100 years to get rid of slavery. Liberty has been around as a political movement about 40 years and as a philosophy since the 1920s and some going back to the founding fathers.
The truth and common sense of the NAP as a universal morality is surfacing and along with it… private security, independent conflict resolution, alternative learning, holistic health, independent truth media, honest decentralized currency and many more examples in every sector of human endeavor.
Learning to dispel and transcend the “mind traps” that we have explored in this series, we can… and we will… be “free to thrive!”
I welcome your comments below, and invite you to add any more critical conversation stoppers to this set.