Freedom Fallacies

Once defined simply as lack of restraints, 'freedom' has come to have a list of various and contradictory meanings.  Types of freedom now include the likes of freedom from restrictions, freedom from rules, freedom from hardships, from tyranny, from hate,  and so on.  Thus, the freedom we once fought for has become a muddled mass of confusion, each individual clamoring for more of his preferred type of freedom.

Freedom from rules and restrictions (i.e. anarchy), cannot exist for all, as the granting of such freedom would mean the ability of one to infringe on the freedom of another.  Thus such freedom would only be had by the powerful, who would destroy the freedom of others.

Freedom from hardships, from hate or pain could not exist either.  For such a freedom to exist, there could be no freedom to choose, for such things come as a result of individual choice.  The elimination of choice is impossible, as it cannot be possible for any but God, who has condemned such ideology, to possess such monitoring and controlling power (i.e. Big Brother) sufficient to control all though and action.  Indeed, the very attempt at the monitoring and controlling of some population will certainly be in direct violation of various wants and desires of those whom are controlled, thus creating hardships, hate, and pain.

True freedom, maximized freedom for all parties, the freedom we ought to pursue with fierce conviction, is that of a personal level.  Under such freedom, there exists a sphere for each individual which is their own.  Within that sphere, individuals may do as they please, to acquire possessions, to pursue their own ends, to live as they choose.  Nothing within their sphere may infiltrate another's sphere without their consent.  Yet, consenting individuals may enter each other's spheres as they see fit.  Thus the pursuit of happiness, as it is so termed, becomes a true freedom for each individual, to pursue such ends in whichever way they choose.

Except in rare cases of mental incapacity, this freedom must be granted to all, else justifications of restricting freedom could have no bounds.  Even those who, as one might perceive, might do harm and evil to themselves, choose to do so because the perceive it to give themselves the most joy within the context of their own situation.  Who are we to say they are wrong?  For their happiness emerges from their own self-concept, from their own perspective.  Forcing one to do right according to another cannot result in happiness, but only resentment and hate, for any and all involuntary action breeds such. 

Laws must exist to protect the spheres of individual freedom.  When laws are issued to violate such spheres, or alternatively when laws fail to protect those spheres, freedom is lost, and with it the chance of happiness of those who lost it.

Agnosticism

Skepticism is a healthy thing.  It helps to prevent mistakes and wasted time and resources in meaningless causes.  I admit to being quite agnostic with respect to many various societal aspects, particularly when it comes to the doctrines expounded by the supposed guardians of societal truths (i.e. journalists, teachers, media), who do nothing more than regurgitate the imaginations of intellectuals who have no recourse for their misguided theories and ideas.

But agnosticism is dangerous inasmuch as it is taken to extremes.  Hayek, one of my favorite economists and philosophers, became a staunch antagonist of what he called scientism, which refers to a faith in science to the point of rejection of anything unobservable.  In his book, The Fatal Conceit, which I'm currently reading, he classifies this ideology into four correlated philosophic concepts, defined here:

Rationalism: denying the acceptability of beliefs founded on anything but experience and reasoning.
Empiricism: maintaining that all statements claiming to express knowledge are limited to those depending for their justification on experience.
Positivism: the view that all true knowledge is scientific, in the sense of describing the coexistence and succession of observable phenomena.
Utilitarianism: 'takes the pleasure and pain of everyone affected by it to be the criterion of the action's rightness'.

These philosophies are very common in modern society, particularly among the so-called intelligentsia.  It should not be surprising, perhaps, that many of the most intelligent among us tend to overvalue that intelligence to the belief that such intellect can grasp vast complexities of the modern world.  But such faith is misguided, as it is impossible, by nature, for one complex system, such as our brain, to fully comprehend a system more complex than itself.  Instead it must rely on simplifications of various types to estimate, guess, or ignore various details that may or may not be of importance to the actual functionality of the complex system being analyzed, inevitably leading to misunderstandings and errors.

What these increasingly popular philosophies have done, as Hayek puts it, is to create "the impression that only that which is rationally justifiable, only that which is provable by observational experiment, only that which can be experienced, only that which can by surveyed, deserves belief; that only that which is pleasurable should be acted upon, and that all else must be repudiated.  This in turn leads directly to the contention that the leading moral traditions that have that have created and are creating our culture - which certainly cannot be justified in such ways, and which are often disliked - are unworthy of adherence, and that our task must be to construct a new morality on the basis of scientific knowledge - usually the new morality of socialism."

Such conclusions, as were growing in popularity when he wrote this summary in 1988, and are nearly dominatingly popular today, "contain the following presuppositions:
1) The idea that it is unreasonable to follow what one cannot justify scientifically or prove observationally.
2) The idea that it is unreasonable to follow what one does not understand....
3) The related idea that it is unreasonable to follow a particular course unless its purpose is fully specified in advance.
4) The idea, also closely related, that it is unreasonable to do anything unless its effects are not only fully known in advance but also fully observable and seen to be beneficial."

To the faith-minded reader, these presuppositions might seem close-minded, or perhaps even evil.  But such arguments do little to persuade the rationalist, who essentially needs to be shown a sign to believe.  Yet, even such should be able to acknowledge two glaring issues with these presuppositions, as Hayek points out.  "First, not one of them shows any awareness that there might be limits to our knowledge or reason in certain areas, or considers that, in such circumstances, the most important task of science might be to discover what these limits are.... Second, one finds in the approach underlying the requirements not only lack of understanding, not only the failure to consider or deal with such problems, but also a curious lack of curiosity about how our extended order actually came into being, how it is maintained, and what the consequences might be of destroying those traditions that created and maintain it."

In essence, it is supposed by such rationalists that the modern order of society, which has survived through the millenia, and advanced mankind out of the dark ages of stagnation, is inept and must be replaced by a more enlightened constructions of the human mind.  Thus the trial and error of generations which have led us to our modern traditions and morals (whether you believe these morals to be developed by human action, or given by the divine as I do), and proven their superiority by natural selection, are eschewed.  Experiments with other societal values have generally failed or underperformed compared to those of the American family.  Yet hastily, intellectuals desire to cast off such pointless values because they do not fall within their science.

It is not unreasonable to believe that religion and its morals are the best values a society should pursue.  Whether a person is agnostic or religious, the evolution of ideas has proven the value of morality.