| Is it even possible to have a "free" society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 4:35:49 PM | Here is my view on what people call freedom. We claim we are freer today then ever before in history. And in many ways we are, I dont disagree on that. But is it possible to have a 100% free society? I would say that realistically, no it isnt.
The only way this could be achieved is if every single person on the planet was completely selfless and ethical. Even if you could put togther a community of people that live ethically, never commit crimes, share everything, and care for eachother that community could exist free of all laws. BUT eventually someone else who doesnt share that mentality is going to come in and just conquer them. And history is written.
Here is another little factoid. The amount of laws required to govern a society is directly proportional to how ethical the people of that society are. If the population is totally immoral and selfish then they need to have strict laws to govern their lives or they would just fall into anarchy and destroy themselves. So an immoral society is the least free. If it is a moral society then they need less laws to govern themselves because things that would otherwise need to be written into law are just common sense to everyone and no law is needed. If no one ever stole then you wouldnt need a law that sais you cant steal.
So your freedom is directly based from how moral and ethical the society is you live in. I had a glimpse a few days ago of what would happen if our structure of law broke down today and people were left to their own devices. See: the dark ages, except this time were all on drugs and have advanced technology to kill eachother with. Theres also about 10 times more people living today and most of the natural food has been wiped out. Good game if and when our advanced society breaks down.
So another question. If we did live in anarchy and there were no laws, and people killed eachother for food and the streets were ruled by gangs and crime lords, there was no police, or government, militaries, and it was basically a free for all, is that freedom? | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 4:44:01 PM | | The goal of justice is to codify what are natural laws into a social code. A free society is based on humanistic principles which are derived from philosophy to represent what is universally in the best interest of human beings. That framework acknowledges the conflict inherent in personal liberties within a community, and seeks to state as clearly and fairly as possible the rationale for social contracts that are intended to balance the well being of every individual against the effects of individual and collective actions. It's possible to have a good life within a just legal framework. From there, you can be as miserable as your wants exceed realistic possibilities. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 5:12:32 PM | Well, the Dark Ages were actually not all that bad depnding on whose perspective you are looking at them from. FRom the Roman historical perspective, well, Rome had broken down, which had been preceded by centuries of social decay ... to the extent that the Empire had sponateously spawned multitudes of urban salvation cults a la Christianity.
The so-called lawless "barbarian" Nordic tribes of NW Europe were enjoying an unprecedented level of in-group solidarity, and tribal confederations were solidfying into modern day nations.
It's kinda humerous that those barbarian tribes were considered "lawless" as the word law is a product of the Germanic languages. But the thing is that Germanic culture had no police forces and law was completely in the hands of the community and the individual for all but capital cases, save where the folk actively sought the judgement of priest, lord, or king.
To the freedom loving Germanic peoples, whose languages also gave us the term freedom, the state of being free was oddly enough a socio-cultural matter. The best why to understand is via Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs", in which the basic necessities of survival such as food, shleter, security and a sense of belonging, must be in order for self-actualization to have a hope of taking place.
This is in line with humanities fundamental nature as a "herd" animal ... a social animal. People need people. No man is an island unto himself.
Not surprisingly, the worst state that the barbarians of old could conceive of was the state of wretchedness ... or existing apart from society and left with only one's own resoruces to stand against all of the nastiness of nature and nations. No state was considered to be less free than this.
And if you think about it, where would any individual be today without others? They wouldn't even have a language, or all of the ideas, the worldview that comes with language. You would be sitting around, naked, spending the majority of the day picking berries. And you probably wouldn't be doing that for very long, cause sooner or later a large predator would come along and kill you ... as opposed ot just one of the herd.
So, I think that far from freedom being a matter of being able to do whatever the hell one wants, whenever one wants, it is more a matter of being content with one's culture, society, and one's place within it, and vice versa.
THAT is freedom.
But as for whehter that is possible anymore or not ... I dunno. Freedom has been redefined as over-individualism. It is however precedented, so it was possible in the past. What we would really need to achieve a state of freedom in (a) modern western society is more common census ... common culture and the commone values, common vision, and consequently common sense that goes along with it. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 6:50:29 PM | Very interesting topic.
To me, a free society is one where everyone feels they have the right to contribute through speech and thought. By that definition, we do not live in a free society. Even the term "social norms" is a violation of that philosophy and creates sets of unwritten rules as well as the written ones.
Laws are developed due to society norms. The thing about society is its always changing so its probably a really bad thing to base laws on. Creating laws based on current society norms can actually prevent the evolution of society by restricting it.
Do I think its possible for us to live in a free society? Yes, I do. It's not going to happen tomorrow, next week, or even in the next few years though. We have a very long way to go and there will be setbacks along the way but I do see movement towards it.
Why do I think this? One word...
"Diversity"
You are hearing this word more and more now...a seed was planted and is growing. It is a very very important word and critical to a free society.
One of the things about "diversity" is it recognizes differing social norms within the same structure so you can't base laws/rules on social norms because you are not being representative of the make-up of that structure. When you do not represent that structure, you undermine it. This is a very foreign concept to date because until now, we've had borders, geographic barriers etc. etc. so haven't really seen what goes on in an environment that is respectful of diversity...because we weren't all that diverse.
My generation is the first generation to be educated about diversity since we were children. Not all, but many of us recognize just how important it is to everything people are striving for. I've worked on and off for many years with designated groups because of how important this is. There are laws to protect designated groups from harm. The laws are there because they are recognized as statistically having more barriers and being more picked on due to being more vulnerable. These laws would not be there if they could not prove that this was very damaging to them.
The thing is, these things that go on to designated groups don't harm them because they are designated groups but harm because they are human beings. When you start looking into diversity issues you are start seeing the diversity within diversity going on. You start to recognize the diversity of non-designated groups as well and how many of these same things are going on to them too it's just they have no laws to protect them.
I don't think people are so much against accommodating the diversity of others as they are resentful no one is accommodating their diversity. It just gets translated badly into they don't feel designated groups should get "special treatment" when the issue isn't that we need to deny these groups this treatment but need to widen the umbrella so its all inclusive and then widen that a lot more because diversity within the human race is not being respected and it is the key to our survival.
There is a huge business case for diversity because we have introduced it into enough business environments that you can see the positive impacts accommodating employee differences can have on productivity, efficiency, and morale.
Give people more freedom and individual power and systems start to improve. The people themselves are doing it whereas in environments that work under a hierarchy of sameness, more people rely on others to improve systems and are not invested in them. Morale is bad. I don't know if there have been studies on it but I bet you employee theft and other misbehaving is up as well so they have to put in strict rules.
These same philosophies apply to society.
You need more rules to control people when you are asking them to conform to unnatural and unfair standards. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 7:32:45 PM | There have been studies about workplace efficiency and management. They found that when they gave workers at the bottom more authority and allowed them to make decisions themselves instead of having managers to control them, their productivity increased drastically. it also cut out a huge management structure that was no longer needed. But most corporations are going the exact opposite way, making their companies structured and managed to the extreme. It will be the downfall of many corporations.
I see it at the place im working at right now. They have owners, then head supervisors, site supervisors, then foremen, then laborers. If your a laborer its like your not part of the company. They dont even buy the laborers coffee, just the "white hats" get a coffee in the morning. and the white hats go for drinks and dinner after a job is done while the laborers go home dirty and thirsty. Now us laborers have to drive our own cars to site while the supers get a company vehicle, plus drive time. Hell its so bad now we have to bring our own tools because the tools they give us are crap.
Whats the result? No one cares about the company. People consiously do jobs wrong knowing they will be back in fixing it all. I guess it makes sure they have a job. Oops, did we just accidently break the roots on a $1000 tree? Oh well stick it in the ground anyway we know its going to die and we will be back next year replacing it but meh....not our problem. I spent 2 days this week watering dead grass. Maybe if we watered it oh I dont know....last week it would be alive? But my foreman tells me well....your getting paid to water it so water that brown grass....
Oh heres a good one. Company regulation sais you cant repair broken equiptment on site. The pull cord on a water pump broke so the foreman calls to get it fixed. We sit around for 3 hours waiting for the mechanic to come. He gets there and sais yep....its broken. Thanks man we know that. All he needs is a new pull cord and theres a canadian tire across the street. But whos going to coin up $6 for a new one? No ones going to get reimbursed if they buy it so it so he just takes the case off and goes back to the shop. 2 days later it isnt fixed. We spent 2 days watering a brand newly sodded resivoir compund with garden hoses getting like 1/100th the volume the pump can put out. Oh and about $5000 worth of sod dies. $6 problem turned into that because of a "law" and no one caring. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/17/2009 8:01:50 PM | ^^
I have watched while the world crumbles.
I can't walk down the street with an open beer can, or sit on my veranda sipping a mint julep (legally)
Freedom doesn't exist unless you break the law and don't get caught. You don't have to be a bad person to break the law. You just half to value freedom more than law.
As a laborer, you don't get paid to think. You get paid to laugh when the supervisors screw up, and get paid overtime when they screw up bad. Then you lose the job and get to laugh at someone else after they destroy the company. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/18/2009 5:57:32 AM | You can walk down the street with an open beer can illegally. Or you can move to Texas and do it legally, but if you do anything they don't like, they'll execute you. You're free to break the law whether you get caught or not, and you're always free to move somewhere where the laws suck more. The more freedom people have, the more they tend to complain about freedoms they don't have, so they really only succeed in complaining if they don't exercise their freedoms without taking them for granted.
Also, conformity and repression are necessary to freedom because if they didn't exist, but freedom did (or if freedom existed for only one person), it wouldn't be freedom, it'd just be existence. If someone's free in one way and they aren't repressed in any other way, they don't have the potential for freedom. Any other explanation besides coexistence of freedom and repression would be a flawed binary explanation of a dynamic idea. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/18/2009 11:29:51 AM | Injecting hope into the notion of journalistic ethics, in 2005, the public editor of Canada's largest daily newspaper wisely suggested, "It's time to talk about freedom." (Sharon Burnside) Smothered under centuries of political rhetoric, the idea is too hazy and incomplete. Some would allow that we must address the priority attributed to a particular kind of freedom, for at present freedom of enterprise reigns supreme over a class of what ought to be far nobler intentions.
"It was the liberals of that era {20th Century} who clamoured for unfettered personal and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such untrammelled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the weak. It is a notion of freedom that is inherently violent, because it is enjoyed at the expense of others." (Paul Biglioni 2005) | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/18/2009 12:27:10 PM | Is you your foaming rabidly from the gob valid from some form of present day benchmark OP...that my sim,simpleton mind cannot grasp.
Totters of to get inversely proportional to many helping off muffins.
That aside, a zealot is a zealot irrespective of their illogical rationale and how did they get on in the days of olde during times a stable - which bear no relation to present day scenarios
anyhoos wicked point are, IMO, we would abolish religion and flog most historian and religious figures as heretics as they seek to beguile the ignorant...never the
IP you made that up haha wpot | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/18/2009 12:28:40 PM | Just in response to the first post
Noam Chompsky writes that anarchy does not necessarily entail riots and chaos. People maintain a soxial inertia. If it weren't against the law to run a red light, most people would still stop at a red because it is in their best interest to do so. If, however, the intersection were clear, they could proceed at their leisure.
Machievelli, perhaps one of the first sociologists (though his focus was on politics), wrote a lot about human nature and supported this notion of a social inertia. If there were no laws barring murder, I still wouldn't kill people because I have been socialized in such a way that I believe cold blooded murder is worng.
Moreover, Locke's State of Nature is quite anarchistic and not "nasty, brutish and short" as Hobbes would have one believe. It is just that it is more convenient to have a clear cannon of laws which one can turn to in order to solve disputes. It is not that laws are necessary in order to avoid chaos. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/19/2009 1:43:08 AM | Anarchy does not equate with chaos. In fact anarchy literally means "self-government." Freedom is an illusion. We're all slaves to our genetic predispostion. And as a much wiser man than myself once said, "Sometimes, I must say no to my desires in order to feel I am truly free.".
Just look at the lawless west in America's history. That's one of the best and most recent examples of living "free". Even with the "freedom" available, the natural inclination and need was to provide laws and codes of conduct by whcih the majority can thrive. In any culture/society we have a herding instinct. This is a by-product of evoltuion. It's not 'survival of the fittest', it's "survival of which fits". This it to say that the species that can best work together to ensure its survival is most likely to procreate and survive.
We are far too unintelligent, undeveloped, and ativistic to ever thrive in a completly "free" environment. Nature abhors freedom. Nature likes rules and regulations however contrary that may sound. It's the only way it works. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/19/2009 2:47:31 PM | | people are only as good as the laws allow them to be, we need some sort of order to keep them in check. It is kind of like a child , if you allow them to do whatever they want they will you have to set boundaries. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/19/2009 3:00:22 PM | | Morality or ethics are meant to be internalized upon maturity so that adults regulate their own behavior. External authority is justified by the fact so many people fail to mature properly in terms of responsibility, and so they must be dealt with, their actions being harmful to others. The ideal of a free society includes this expectation that adults could and would act ethically and responsibly. As far as people do, they can be free of external regulation. Some laws are more concerned with organization than with criminality. Having a structure of rules allows people to make arrangements into the future, giving them reliable expectations upon which to base decisions, make plans, etc. There is more to a constraint than what it prevents; constraints also make things possible. Traffic lights will stop you from going through an intersection whenever you want, but they also make it possible to walk across the street without getting run over. No one person can possibly know all of the effects of their actions and of other people's, so when you think about an ultimate kind of individual freedom it is not realistic unless that person lives alone or in a very small group. In practical terms, freedom is automatically curtailed just by being among many other people. Laws are an attempt to approach that fact with some shred of wisdom. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/19/2009 3:36:04 PM |
Just look at the lawless west in America's history. That's one of the best and most recent examples of living "free". Even with the "freedom" available, the natural inclination and need was to provide laws and codes of conduct by whcih the majority can thrive. In any culture/society we have a herding instinct. This is a by-product of evoltuion. It's not 'survival of the fittest', it's "survival of which fits". This it to say that the species that can best work together to ensure its survival is most likely to procreate and survive.
I think this is bad example to say what happens when people get freedom. We do see these same dynamics going on with designated groups and due to the data available it allows us to study them in a way we can't study the majority in society. They are people and they have their own societies. Their environment is dictating what goes on with them as a society. The wild west was comprised by a lot of previously oppressed people. The morality of that was their guide.
Crime happens when there is lack of opportunity not due to freedom. Freedom encourages opportunity and actually reduces crime.
People think having freedom creates the need for rules but its more the case that we've become so reliant on rules that people lack the skill to function without them. So to put them in an environment with no rules, they will push boundaries and go a little wild.
Humans make mistakes, its how we learn. When you try to prevent people from making mistakes, you don't allow them to learn how to solve their own problems and they won't even try. They become reliant on you. Those they are reliant on have themselves convinced that they have to be that way because those people would be lost without them. It's just not true. The only reason they'd be lost is because they were never taught the skills to function without the rules.
It also takes a huge amount resources and manpower to police and administer to these rules and only a micro fraction of that to educate instead...plus there are other positive spin off impacts by doing so. But right now, vast amounts of our resources are going towards unnecessary rule administration. In the business world, we even know its going on and there is a recognition that things have now gotten too complicated due to the over abundance of rules. It is acknowledged that this is a serious issue and that the rules need to be reassessed and thinned out due to the cost, time involved, and how they are hampering productivity.
Why don't we do anything about it? Because we have so many rules that even if our rules are unnecessary, changing them may violate someone else's rules so first, you have to get those rules changed and we usually have a whole bunch of other rules to follow in order to make that happen. It's going to take a lot of time and man power. So instead, you try to build systems to make at least administering to the unncessary rules a little easier and create sets of rules to use that system. Eventually, people don't always recall why the rules was put there and are scared to change it because of unknown impacts.
This way of thinking has slowed down the productivity of our society. The natural progress of this way of thinking is collapse of productivity. Eventually, we will have so many rules (we create new ones all the time without getting rid of old ones) that people won't know what to do in any new situation because they will know there are rules but won't know what they are. The rules are there for the same reasons as in their own environment but the rules themselves may be different creating a situation where they don't know how to act. If they inadvertently violate a rule, they are a "rule breaker" and have to face consequences.
This is isolating and can even get in the way of procreation so I don't find anything evolutionary about it.
Working together as a society in large cities is not something we are naturally good at. What we are good at is inventing things and we invented agriculture which spawned these cities. Our creating a system of rules was a way to cope with a situation we weren't adept at solving. I think the natural evolution of this is we will realize eventually we made a mistake, it just took us a really really really long time to see it. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/19/2009 9:32:14 PM | | I think a "free society," using the definition of "free" that the OPer suggests, is an oxymoron. Society includes some level of structure/organization. Anarchy disolves society. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/20/2009 4:41:44 AM |
...or they would just fall into anarchy and destroy themselves.
You're making the error of equating anarchy with chaos when the truth is, the two concepts couldn't be further apart. Anarchy is by definition, the most highly organized, fairest and freest socio-political system (which is why it is reviled and quickly stamped out by Governments and other forms of over-privileged, centralized power wherever and whenever it appears).
I recommend you read 'Anarchosyndicalism' by Rudolph Rocker or better yet, 'Chomsky on Anarchism' by AK Press. For a full treatment including historic examples, have a look at Daniel Guerin's 'No Gods, No Masters' | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/20/2009 9:57:41 PM |
Society includes some level of structure/organization. Anarchy disolves society.
Structure and organization can support freedom. The difference is between control and support. One way of thinking supports society while the other way seeks to control it.
When you seek to control you seek power over something else. You can only seek power over yourself and any other power is temporary or illusionary. Your power can only be supported if others believe in you.
Systems that seek to control are very hard to change because they are assuming you need to be controlled so are not qualified to fix the systems when they are dysfunctional. Systems that seek to support allow for your input and change because they realize your growth is more important than the system. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/20/2009 11:16:06 PM |
Anarchy disolves society
So a society of cooperative anarchists is not possible?
I beg to differ. I would contend that a society of free, self-governing people would be the Utopia that has been sought since time began. All it would take to create it is agreement among all members to abide by the negative form of the Golden Rule and the agreed upon consequences for breaking it. That is the only law that would really be needed for the society to work. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/21/2009 2:45:48 AM | There must always be a compromise between freedom and equality.
In order to have perfect freedom then equality must be sacrificed. In order to have perfect equality then freedom must be sacrificed. This is the obstacle which always trips up the Utopian ideals.
People want to be free, but they also want to be equal. So, every society must compromise between the two.
If we got rid of all laws and let people do whatever they wanted with everybody taking care of themselves, then very shortly the biggest bullies would take over every patch of ground. The whole country would be divided up into separate little monarchies.
Naturally, a group of weaker people would band together and defeat the bullies and you've got representative government and laws all over again. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/21/2009 4:07:04 AM |
Naturally, a group of weaker people would band together and defeat the bullies and you've got representative government and laws all over again.
What if the group of "weaker" people was nearly the entire population and the bullies were the "representational" governments that ruled them? | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/21/2009 6:24:46 AM |
Structure and organization can support freedom. I agree. I just don't think it applies to the notion of freedom that was described by the OPer. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/21/2009 9:42:49 AM |
What if the group of "weaker" people was nearly the entire population and the bullies were the "representational" governments that ruled them?
This is an important point and one which our founding fathers didn't overlook.
Representatives become bullies when the people are lazy and weak minded.
One of the advantages a democracy has over a monarchy is it's flexibility. A democracy can change it's leaders at will and adapt to a changing environment.
However, there is one key factor which must exist for a healthy democracy and a free society to survive.
EDUCATION.
Ignorant people can be easily fooled. The people must be educated and well informed.
Who is it who resists supporting education ?
Who is it who dominates the media and access to information ?
The Nazis knew very well how important a good propaganda machine was for their continued survival as a political force. Every tyrant puts all his efforts into restricting the information people have access to.
A free society can survive without a lot of things but it cannot survive without free speech or a free press. | |
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| Is it even possible to have a free society?
Posted: 6/21/2009 10:09:59 AM |
A free society can survive without a lot of things but it cannot survive without free speech or a free press.
Bingo!! The founding fathers of the US (the one's who weren't secretly working for the Crown) tried to install enough checks & balances to prevent the subversion of their system. It was a valiant effort, but as even Jefferson would come to admit, the "loopholes" were sufficient to allow tyrants to take control if the people let them.
The loopholes were exploited and tyranny again reigned, but this time there was enough control of the press to fool the people. Over time (with some control of the educational system) the people were "dumbed down" enough to cover the tracks of the power elite (the true rulers of the countries) with ignorance.
Nowadays, (and for the first time in nearly 200 years) it is only the internet (which they are desperately trying to censor) that gives us any semblance of true information (and education), hidden in a morass of lies & disinformation (deliberately injected in lieu of true censorship).
This unexpected development of technology has given rise to a new brand of revolutionaries (the bloggers), whose weapon is truth and whose strength is ethics, compassion and a desire for justice. Their number grows by the day. Soon, we can expect to see another revolution, but not simply an American one; it will be global; it will be the people against their tyrants all over the world. This revolution has already started in Venezuela, but it won't end there; that was only the beginning. | |
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