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.