Freedom Is Not License

"Freedom is not license but as with love, is a commitment of willing bondage." S. Janssen
Freedom is often acclaimed as one of the highest aspirations and most valued conditions of man. Ideals of freedom are woven into every culture and civilization, every country, state, society and individual. It is an essential ingredient of our human requirement and is a most powerful motivator of the personality.
We may freely use the word " freedom" but what does it really mean?
Aside from the well accepted association of a state of being unrestricted, unrestrained, or unbound, there are two considerations involved - the one being freedom from something we wish to escape and the other, freedom to enter a condition we desire. Each is associated with self responsibility and self determination.
It is easy to consider freedom from unpleasant situations and conditions of fear and stress. Everyone shares the wish to be free of oppression, tyranny and enslavement just as we all wish to be free of disease, pain, hunger or impoverishment. But freedom from the negatives is only one aspect of freedom.
Other aspects are often neglected in our thinking and our ways of government.
We each desire freedom to be creative and constructive in our individual way within the bounds of society's cultural codes; free to live out our lives in a worthwhile manner; free to contribute our talents in a positive constructive manner and to have our unique contribution appreciated by others.
We wish to be free to benefit by our cultural achievements which have been so hard-won over so many centuries of human endeavour just as we wish to be free of the horrors of society's past. We wish for the positive aspect of freedom to be manifest in society as freedom of thought which inspires greatness and excellence in all things - creative, cultural, architectural, literary, scientific, philosophical and practical. We seek to benefit from and build upon our classic culture and be free to contribute to it. We wish for a social and political pattern which encourages individuals to positively contribute to the welfare of the nation and so leave our personal mark in the community.
The abstract principle of freedom must be consolidated in its practical expression through our culture and our personal willingness to earn our right to it.
It is by reduction of our social sense of responsibility towards others that we are failing to live by the spirit of freedom. We fail to appreciate and live by our laws that allow us to indulge in our good fortune and only require that we do not intrude or hurt or harm others in seeking our own personal ideal of freedom.
We permit those who do not live by this rule to inflict offensive habits and speech, intrusive noise, violence, even physical torture and all manner of illegal offences of criminal behaviour and wrong doing. Our system of law and punishment proves powerless to curb criminality and establish law and order in a system that has become so weak that following trial, many offenders, even extreme rapists and murderers are injected back into the community having served a pittance of their sentences
In doing so, by giving license to criminals we betray the right of decent people to enjoy peace and life in a civilized community that protects individual freedom and honours the principles within the ideal of freedom in a free society.

Societal Alienation In Nations Based On Individualism

'There is no such thing as society' is a pronouncement ascribed to Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain. On the contrary, society is that highly organised and integrated collective of individuals, organisations and institutions which, in any civilisation, has specified roles, functions, and responsibilities to enable arms of that civilisation to operate as efficiently as possible, while offering security, social stability, good governance, and practices for the furtherance of its youth into useful future roles, within an evolving environment which is necessarily potentially destabilising.
Without such a structured entity, humanity would probably operate in a chaotic manner. Unlike the physical and chemical world, where there can be found coherent patterns of stability within the observed chaos, there is no basis for assuming that similar stability would underpin any chaos of humanity. Indeed human chaos is underpinned by social instability through unfettered selfishness. The events of recent history throughout the world support such a conclusion.
Francis Fukuyama, an American scholar of renown, wrote in depth of the deterioration of society in the USA, a civilised nation. It is also a leading member of those nations created in relatively recent centuries over the seas by immigrants from Europe. These nations are thereby ruled by the ethos of individualism, instead of the communalism of the more established nations of Asia and Europe. Individual rights seem to be proliferating in these nations (which can therefore be termed the Ultra-West) except in those areas of interest to the Vatican - a strange contrast.
Without extended family support in these new territories, self-sufficiency and individualism necessarily prevailed. This is in contrast with the time-tested communitarian values of Asian societies. These values have been defined by some Asian leaders as reflecting 'Asian values.' Yet, immigrants from the Mediterranean in Australia celebrate the same values: individuals and nuclear families being supported by their extended families, respect for one's elders and authorised leaders, and a sense of belonging to a tribe with defensible boundaries, especially when integrated into a conglomeration of multi-ethnic peoples.
This spirit of individualism seems to have engendered claims for more and more personal rights. Taken to extremes, traditional respect for others may be diminished, if not ignored. Conflicts over relative individual rights can occur. In Australia today, surnames and addresses indicating respect for age, position, or relationship have given way to the universal use of first names.
Rights breed rights - even in the open! The proliferation of claimed rights, aided by those using the courts to acquire yet more rights (even for unlawful asylum seekers) can be juxtaposed with the reality that rights are not set out in the Constitution, or a Bill of Rights, or official policy statements in Australia. This results in all manner of societal difficulties, primarily because of a lack of corresponding or counter-balancing personal responsibilities towards the collective.
Some consequential effects of enhanced access to claimed personal rights are the suffering caused to children through the impermanence of marriage and cohabitation, a fear of empty streets (casually brutal attacks by louts or a threat to children), the serious abuse of generous welfare and free medical services, a denial of personal responsibility (eg. acquiring skills to enable employment or to re-locate to centres offering employment), and escalating demands by the well-off for 'middle class welfare.'
In the light of the above, the unavoidable conclusion is that, at least in the USA and Australia, modern society does not generally offer the cohesion and mutual kin and community support of traditional societies.

Is It Possible Today to Build Up a Small Nation and Make It a World Class Superpower State?

Last year, I was discussing with an overseas acquaintance from South East Asia who is in Europe studying in college, a student of history, economics, and geo-politics. Specifically we began a lengthy dialogue on a blue print to build a world class superpower state from scratch, that is to say, with a non-educated population base and the basics of an independent nation with some resources already available, reserves yet untapped. Okay so let's consider this proposition for a moment shall we?
First, he notes, what if the country has "very little knowledge and limited experience" in the affairs of running a civilization? Where on Earth do you start to build something from nothing, to eventually become a super state? Can we draw upon former civilizations or near super powers of today to create a solid strategy to make this happen? Okay so, yes, well having no previous experience here, this is of course only a temporary challenge. First, in order to do this, you would have to do is build a team, individuals with 2-more areas of expertise in the key categories;
Security
Education
Transportation
Energy
Banking and Economics
Education
Distribution
Health
Water
Agriculture
Information Technologies
Media
Also, you'd need a mission statement, perhaps something similar in Collins' book "Built to Last" and then get the citizens on the same page, with "buy in" into the plan. As citizens saw the progress they'd give it their 100% efforts moving forward to see it to fruition. To do this you could use a sense of nationalism, almost like a religion, or join nationalism and religion together to keep the masses on the same page.
If this is starting to sound too much like Machiavelli please forgive me, as there are some solid doctrines and lessons there worthy to nation building and leading, just as I mention religion here, or a strong sense of nationalism, please understand the context or reality of leadership.
One should perhaps borrow what works in leading human societies, similarly to how religious indoctrination and authoritarian education training has served past leaders, only in any future "built from scratch" nation building, I'd recommend using the new methods, as its more diplomatic; the art of letting the people get your way - even believing it was their "choice" to serve your goals to unite in the common cause of nationalism to build something great - you are basically setting the stage for a visionary mission with destiny for the people and the "new" nation. See that point?
Now then, I hope you will lean back close your eyes, and consider the realities and hardships of nation building on a philosophical level. Please think on this.

Surfer Kid Asks Neighbor for a One-Spot or Dollar, Neighbor Goes Ballistic

Not long ago, I was told a story about two neighbors in a middle class neighborhood. One was a couple mid-50'ish, the other was a dad with 3 teenage sons, their mother was not around. The men of the two different households had mild conversations at times mostly over cars and automobile topics as the Dad of the 3-teenagers was rebuilding a pick-up truck. He was tall longer hair, big Norwegian type, Viking size, but trim for his height. His kids were starting to show muscularity and played various sports.
The other man was a management guy or did some similar type work, and they often chatted about cars and philosophical issues. One day, the man with the sons, had his youngest, who enjoyed riding skateboards and was somewhat skinny, but taller than usual for his age ask him for money, as teenagers often do; "Dad can I have a one-sport (dollar)? The Dad, said "No" and the son asked; "why not?" The dad told the son to go over to the neighbor's house and ask him for money "because you are not getting any from me!"
So, the son figured he had nothing to lose and needed a dollar, for what reason, who knows? Anyway, when he asked the neighbor for a "one-sport" in a sheepish somewhat embarrassed tone, the neighbor started to give him a harsh lecture. "You want me to give you money? Why don't you go get a job, or ask me if there is something you can do to earn the money?" The neighbor went on and on with the lecture, and finally the boy said; "whatever, sorry I asked," and began to walk home.
Having cut the neighbor off in mid-sentence, the neighbor was infuriated and followed the boy home to have a talk with his father. His father told the neighbor, "I told him to go over there and ask for the money, so you could tell him why he couldn't have it, I hope you didn't give my son any money."
"No," said the neighbor, "I gave him a lecture, we had words," the neighbor explained. "Good" said the dad, "now he gets it."
The neighbor started to walk home and then the other brothers and a friend approached the neighbor trying to start a fight right there in neighborhood over his lecture to their brother. The neighbor told the boys; "don't make me hurt you," but they continued their advances with puffed up chests, then the Dad came running out to see what the problem was, and to protect his sons from the neighbor, his friend, who looked as if he was close to coming to blows; all this over the petty argument of his panhandling son, even after he was told by his father to do it.
Moral of the Story;
1-It's not okay to beg for money
2-No one owes you anything, get a job
3-If the authorities make you believe it's okay to take or attack the wealthy, you and they are both wrong.

Human Herd Dynamics

The fields of psychology, sociology, and political science should be fused into the field of human herd dynamics (with biology and engineering serving auxiliary roles).
"A riot is the language of the unheard." Martin Luther King Jr.
The riots and chaos that engulfed London last year would not come as a surprise to anybody looking at human (domesticated primate) migration patterns. Until recently England had a colonial release valve for the aggressive intuitive humans on the home islands. They simply picked up and left to escape the intolerable, stifling, and pretentious exploitation by depraved hereditary mafia.
The more "cooperative" breeds, those physiologically predisposed to conservative status quo mindset (SJs) thus became a bit more represented in the population as they bred. They remained behind and further fortified the societal structure. Social pressure within bottom castes of the herd hierarchy was effectively and continuously relieved.
That is until the adventurous ENTJs/ENTPs/ENFPs/ESTPs from former colonies began to migrate to England in the second half of the 20th century. They bred and produced a couple of generations of children that were radicalizing and destabilizing by their very existence (much like sending a team of dog breeds deemed "disloyal" by their masters into a group of "loyal" breeds).
[sidenote: It is very well possible that experiment-prone, novelty seeking, intuitive, and aggressive breeds leaving acted as a brain drain for the lower and middle classes of 1880s-1960s England. Drawing mostly from the "posh" semi-inbred higher society for scientists and theorists may have contributed to technological and ideological stagnation in 20th century England. Not mentioning the social mobility rankings that are even worse than in US and Mexico.]
Why Human Herd Dynamics (HHD)?
None of this analysis would be possible without interdisciplinary integration of social-psychology and other fields. It is 2011 AD. The time is ripe to:
1) Do a dissective and pragmatic "audit" of various major soft science fields to see which deserve to exist at all
2) Strip away the fluff from those that should exist to make them easier to relate to each other in an interdisciplinary manner, "modularize" them
3) Fuse the reformed stripped fields into one field where possible
Lets do an opening shot in this long overdue process.
The field of economics should not exist anymore and should be replaced by engineering completely (president or prime minister having a panel of engineering advisers instead of economic ones). Engineering IS real economics. Additionally, engineering deals with expanding the material power of the herd (unlike the obsolete 20th century pseudo-science of economics). Finally, lets kick this worthless discipline while its down one more time and say that "auditing" economics will do a lot more good than auditing entities like the federal reserve. We'd be treating the root of the problem rather than the symptoms.
This brings us to dealing with another economy, the economy of power within the multiplicity of the human herd. This means:
a) political science (the science of perception creation/management, a sister field to marketing as it is known in eastern Europe),
b) sociology (the healthy kind that studies the entire herd with focus on movers and shakers rather than current sociology which serves as a spying apparatus for power elites) and
c) psychology (positive psychology aided by biology rather than the current corporate quackery that is negative psychology).
Perhaps our old friend Nietzsche can help us somewhat with this since he was one of the first to describe the social world in a purely physical and biological way. A couple quotes naturally:
"All unity is unity only as organization and co-operation--just as a human community is a unity--as opposed to an atomistic anarchy, as a pattern of domination that signifies a unity but is not a unity." 561 (1885-1886)
"in place of 'sociology', a theory of the forms of domination. In place of 'society', the culture complex, as my chief interest (as a whole or in its parts)." 462 (Spring-Fall 1887)
We can see how sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science can be merged into one as they're all fused on their periphery already. What's left and doesn't fit is to be swallowed up by fields like history and marketing. Political Ponerology and Between Two Ages are good examples of how all encompassing disciplinary fusion can be done. HHD would naturally have a human as the smallest unit of analysis and total planetary population as the largest.
In essence HHD would look at:
1) How various breeds originate, develop, maintain, and expand clusters of force within the total herd
2) How these clusters of force interact with each other and the rest of humanity, what basic patterns of power arrangements occur
3) How clusters of force should be arranged within regional political units and the global unit as a whole. In this we would be guided by biology and engineering as they show us the needs of humans and the most efficient way to fulfill these needs via a 21st century version of utilitarianism (one which takes into account not just the individual's need for pleasure but also for personal autonomy and power)
Before the reader accuses the Human Herd Dynamics study as something Aldous Huxley would dream up, it is key to know that our rulers already research and make practical use of HHD informally. Currently, the fusion of various fields is well on the way and we're just speeding up the existing processes via an organizational and linguistic streamlining. Of course it would also unleash mass popular dissemination of "forbidden" knowledge as key intuitive connections that scholars make will be sped up due to merging of the fields. In turn, we'll see healthy and major transformative ripple effects on society, political institutions, shared values, individual's self-appraisal, popular movements, etc. Considering the challenges and evolutionary leaps that await us in the decades ahead, the simplification, streamlining, holistic merging, popularization, and democratization of the soft sciences is a top priority for peacefully building the technocratic world of tomorrow. HHD can thus become a self referential discipline that affects and is affected, that illuminates yet evolves with us in a mutually enriching way.

Can Society In Ultra-West Nations Survive A Breakdown Of The Family Unit?

The nuclear family is the core unit of society in those new nations carved out by European migrants in territories over the seas previously occupied by indigenous tribes. The latter, like the traditional societies of Asia and Europe (or parts thereof), are composed of kin family units.
These migrants would, in the main, have left established nations in Europe or sundry kingdoms or principalities, for religious, economic or official policy reasons (eg. Britain's cultural cleansing of those deemed to be criminal, or otherwise undesirable).
The nation, as a territory-related people, is a socio-political construct (or artificially created entity), arising in Europe no more than five centuries ago. Presumably reflecting the schisms within Christianity, tribes of a coherent people, bonded by a shared religious belief, history, territory, language, other cultural traditions, and consanguinity demarcated the defining boundaries (both geographical and tribo-cultural) to ensure separation from non-congruent or competing tribes.
Purely as an aside, at its height, European colonialism extended the reality of nationhood outside Europe by establishing national borders. These boundaries created new nations, disregarding pre-existing kingdoms or ethnic enclaves, often dividing peoples, just to achieve a balance of power between the European nations. The resultant tribal wars (eg. between India and Pakistan) may, however, have offered economic opportunities to the neo-colonisers of the modern day.
Migrating multitudes mixed peoples from source countries in the new territories in a manner not evidenced before. Without extended family support, necessary self-sufficiency developed. The subsequent eventual development of ethno-religious conglomerates probably resulted in loosely-knit communities.
However, the American scholar Francis Fukuyama has recently written about the great disruption to US society. Could one wonder whether the killing of the indigenes and the despoliation of their cultures has left some kind of debilitating residue in the national psyche? Be rational, obey the law, and look after your self-interest: these were apparently posited as a guide to a life expressing personal initiative in a land of opportunity.
Whatever the relevance of the above, Fukuyama's analysis is shadowed by a casual but extended observation of Australian society.
In Australia, where individualism is somewhat leavened by state welfare, this author's experiences and acute observations over six decades lead him to the following conclusions. The family unit, the fulcrum of society, and the vehicle for the transmission of the youth of the nation to their future, has been fractured. In the absence, or a substantive denial, of available extended family, a breakdown of marriage or cohabitation of duration leaves children in a parlous situation. There is no kin back-up available.
Since up to 40% of marriages are reportedly at risk, and since many, many fathers are allegedly denied continuing close relationships, as dictated by nature, with their children, what happens to the psychological needs of the children in broken families? Only recently has there been any admission that the children are adversely affected. Earlier claims that there is no evidence of damage did not seem credible, when one considers the imperatives of nature.
Yet, only the career needs of mothers, and their success in balancing motherhood and work, fill the media reports. The extended periods spent in professional care by babies and little children, the denial of their right to nestle at length in the arms of the mothers and, when older, to ask a million questions about all those interesting things out there, and to talk about all that, is never the subject of interest in the media. Why not? Fortunately, in low-employment districts, the children are seen to be receiving the entitlements designed by nature.
Then, there is a perceivable diminution of mutual respect, the reported denial by many youngsters of personal responsibility to contribute to the operation of the family unit, the audible spoilt child in the shops, a reported increase in the number of single mothers, and the seemingly escalating exploitation of welfare (especially the disability pension) by able-bodied people.
Fukuyama identifies in his analytical book 'The Great Disruption' other evidence of social alienation (but in the USA). He instances mealtimes, now lacking the 'structured rituals' of yesteryear, when families ate together, with parents thereby enabled to offer information and counsel to their offspring and, reciprocally, for the latter to talk about matters of relevance to them. This reinforces the bonds of the family.
Fukuyama also instances the risks of blending separated part-families, and the deleterious effects of broken homes on school learning.

The Many Benefits Of Culture Study For All

Do you ever wonder why you act differently from those living in the other parts of the world? If this is something that you want to learn in details, then, culture study could be the best option for you. By studying the societies across the globe, you will see the implications of the difference in location and the evolution of various behaviors.
There are some people though who need not travel abroad in order to experience varied traditions as they already exist in the country where they live. United States is a great example of such a country. It is advisable that people residing in here be educated to on how to cope with their condition. People find it more difficult to live in a multi-cultural country than in a country that only has one.
Besides surfing the internet for some information that may help, going to school and getting the appropriate subjects could be more meaningful. For some, they spend months of vacation or work in the country of their interest just to study culture.
There are many benefits that we can get from culture studies. In fact, through it we learn other areas of study besides the society. These are anthropology, archeology, geography, history, economics, civics and political science.
It is interesting to know that all these can show how human behaviors are developed and how they work in the process of interaction among individuals in the different societies. For example, through history societies continue to gain more information that they will need to preserve and promote themselves. This is a great factor that shapes the way people think, act and live in general.
Intertwined with the study of anthropology (the evolution of man), culture study equips learners with the necessary skills in finding a job and interacting with the different people around them. By studying the human body and connecting it with norms and traditions, we get informed about the racial differences that we must avoid in order to work and live in harmony with other people. In fact, you can also connect psychology to this as it sees how different minds work and interact to different situations.
When paired with the economic or political science, knowledge about different cultures help us figure out the importance of laws that govern not only our country but our neighboring countries as well. It helps us answer certain questions like why do we need to follow rules and what impact can our actions make to other people.
Culture study, in general, allows us to understand how the different cultures came about. It also gives an overview of how peoples' behaviors vary from one place to another. With this, we can never judge or delegate which one is inferior or superior to which. Any change in them can impact affect the world we live in some way so we better embrace with them keen understanding. If done right, they can help raise generations of citizens that are responsible and exuding great ethical and moral values.