“The Modern Definition of Freedom is Wrong”
May 9, 2021
By NZB3
An unexpected outburst attacking Libertarianism just appeared on the BFG under the title ‘The Modern Definition of Freedom Is Wrong’. Davidson thinks that what is keeping him from degeneracy is the mob around him, not his own vales. He projects that onto others, assuming we have the same problem he does.¹
“The first thing we need to understand is that culture is the moulding tool of the individual.”
Rank collectivism. Puts the species/population level above that of the individual.
Man is an end in himself, not some tool to be molded against his (sinful) will to be beaten into a ‘good’ person; A tool or fuel for what the mob needs him to be.
No surprise, then, that it is Libertarian freedom that is under attack by this self-described Right-Wing content creator. Libertarians are singled out as the the enemy of his point of view of life.
The author is not threatened by the mainstream idea of freedom that is choking New Zealand. The rubbish about gender-pay gaps, race-based affirmative action, ‘closing the gaps’, regional development lollyscrambles, ‘living wages’ etc all get off Scot free and unchallenged. It’s the live-and-let-live minority (are there any of us left?) who are your priority target?
“With culture being the determinant factor in our quality of life, one would hope that those who create the culture do it in the interests of the population.”
No mention of who these apparatchiks, these designers of your life, are or should be. Were their lives designed right too, Plato? Who makes the makers and how do we know they’re good? But it doesn’t matter. Your problem isn’t that you oppose collectivism. In fact, you’re on the side of the Left and join them in opposing liberty. It’s just that you quibble with the Left about what collectivist mind control and Platonic Noble Lie ought to be inflicted. ie Who and what should be sacrificed for the ‘good’ of the population.
“Freedom should be defined differently than the liberal conception of it. Rather than ‘do what you want as long as it doesn’t infringe on others rights’, the correct definition of freedom should be seen as ‘the capacity to reach one’s potential’.”
Why does James keep calling the people he is obviously talking about, Libertarians, another name? Liberals? We haven’t been called that for several iterations and there’s no particular sign that we’re going to get our word back. Did James perhaps think he would get under the radar by not mentioning that Libertarians were the ones he was trying to make his enemy?
The capacity to reach one’s potential is not something James or culture can give us. We are not born deficient and in need of the installation of a ‘potential’ that we, as useless husks, need to be provided. Everyone already has the Self-Actualising Tendency. Everyone already has the drive to ambition and to integrate knowledge and the hunger to be better than he was yesterday. All greatness is latent, and emergent property, of being a human at all. If you’re alive, you’ve already won.
It’s confidence tricksters who try to tell us we lack self-esteem and inner resources so that they can more easily rob us of them and sell them back to us for money. By the way he writes it seems to me that James is more victim than perpetrator because he’s not selling anything. However, the one leads to the other.
For an individualist, for a Libertarian, especially an Anarkiwi, culture is something he chooses and builds to serve himself and his community. The man is not a sacrificial being to be disposed of for the tribe. We craft our own character and habits and goals rather than have them inflicted upon us by the State. Why would anyone ever go up against this formulation? The usual reason is that they have been alienated from their self and set against it. Because the truth is that there is no such thing as society, no such thing as a collective will or national spirit. There are just people with agendas who want to control you into being part of theirs as opposed to the ‘live and let live’ of voluntary cooperative society.
Selling people addictive substances is part using them as means not ends. This is what James is doing too but worse because it’s at the fundamental principled level. Any quarrel he has among other collectivists, such as our Government or the Left, is not about controlling people and ‘socialising’ them. It’s only about which software, which propaganda, which lies, which tasks the Muggles at his feet ought to be set to doing.
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1 Or, in particular, the problem he has been conditioned by his parents/teachers/priests to believe he does so that they can control him by ‘saving’ him from it!
ref. The Modern Definition of Freedom is Wrong, BFG (May 2021)
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