Sunday, December 21, 2014

Freedom Man

When I was a very young man, for a time I adhered to a philosophy I called “libertarianism”, under the influence of a rather obscure author named Harry Browne, and his book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.  (No, I never read Ayn Rand.)

Later in life, I realized that one of the central premises of libertarianism, as I knew it, was irredeemably incoherent.  This is the idea that no one has the right to interfere with those of my decisions that affect “only me”.  I came to realize that, as we are members of a social species, unavoidably members of one or more overlapping communities, the conceptual boundaries of a decision that affects “only me” cannot be rationally delineated.  I also came to realize that some of the ideas that had attracted me to Browne’s version of libertarianism were less libertarian, and more like a version of classical (Greek and Roman) stoicism, absent the mystical underpinnings.  These ideas could be summed up by saying that you are responsible, on a certain level, for your own “happiness”, or physical and psychic well-being.  This is not to say that you cannot understand that you have been victimized, by fate or by other humans, but rather to say that, at any given point in your life, you are faced with real, de facto choices for how to move forward.  Regardless of how this came to pass, your future happiness is best ensured by taking responsibility for those choices, and making them  as wisely and resolutely as possible.  Further, to accept these facts, and this responsibility, is psychically liberating, in-and-of itself.

Browne’s contribution, which has had enduring value for me (long after I threw out the rest of his ideas), was to base this concept of personal responsibility in a materialist philosophy, unlike the classical stoics, who believed in a universal soul or mind, divided into parts or sparks indwelling in each of us – personal souls which desired nothing so much as to reunite with the universal.  Giving the stoical concepts a materialist base also avoids the worst rhetorical abuses of classical stoicism, like advising adherents that even if you were captured and tortured by an enemy, you could literally feel no pain, if you were true to the dictates of your own inner soul.

Speaking of the universal soul or mind (the ancient Greek term “psyche” did not distinguish between the two), leads me to a semi-related thought:  to say that there is no universal mind, and no souls to unite with it, is not the same as saying “we are tiny, isolated, alone.”   I’m not just referring to the aforementioned overlapping communities (the person who cries “we are alone” in existential angst on the denial of a supreme being hardly denies those).  But the concept of “us” as atomic individuals, as something that could be “isolated” somehow, separated from the matrix we are a part of, doesn’t seem consistent with the actual state of affairs.

The fact is, if you step back far enough, “we” hardly seem to exist – certainly not as indivisible atoms.  Physically and psychically, “we” are complexes of complexes, colonies of colonies, each, on each level, having fuzzy boundaries which rather vaguely distinguish and define both its limits and its interactions; stronger interactions each with “each other” (parts of the same organism); and generally and observably – but still vaguely – weaker ones with “the other” (the world beyond the organism).  These complexes of complexes are hardly isolated from the universe.  They could not possibly be – their boundaries are too fuzzy, and irreducibly overlap!   The “self” that feels oppressed with solitude is just a particular sub-bundle, and a rather confused one, at that, which invents a mystical purpose and something to commune with to try and solve an imagined problem.

The title I selected for this mini-piece was suggested by Jim Morrison’s song “Universal Mind”.  Which has almost nothing to do with the two disparate points of this essay.  But one of the complexes of my psyche happens to work like that.  At least I didn’t call it “Turning keys, setting people free.”  That would have been hubristic.  (And now, with my suitcase and my song, I’m off…)

No comments:

Post a Comment