Can You Imagine a Free Society?
Oct 17th, 2009 by Kirsten
Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Aretha Franklin, Respect
I’ve been reading the November 2009 issue of Astronomy magazine today- specifically, Bob Berman’s “Strange Universe” column. This month he asks us, “Can you imagine?”
An excerpt regarding advanced topics in science such as string theory or quantum theory which cannot be imagined:
Picture this: You’re an astronaut on a planet with red polka-dot clouds. The surface is a vast rubber sheet. As you bounce along, you suddenly see a flock of flying bulldogs. The pack leader hovers in front of you like a hummingbird and speaks perfect English: “Welcome, Can you help settle a debate we’re having?”
“Um, sure,” you say.
The alpha bulldog whispers: “Who was the greatest baseball player of all time?”
You guess, “Ruth?”
And that’s what they all wanted to hear. The dogs excitedly bark, “Ruth! Ruth!” as they lick your face until you’re covered with slobber.
The point isn’t that I’ll never make a living writing fiction. It’s this: There’s no such thing as polka-dot clouds, rubber planets, or flying dogs. Yet you had no trouble picturing the whole thing. That’s because our minds easily weave familiar elements into a new context. Titan’s surface or flying dogs present no challenge for our imaginations.
But now consider Galileo’s observations of Saturn’s rings. Even after decades of studies, he never figured out what he was seeing. He thought the rings were like teacup handles. It took nearly half a century before Christiaan Huygens finally got it right. That’s because Saturn’s shape lay outside human experience. On Earth, there is no example of a ball surrounded by unattached rings. Spiral galaxies resemble nautilus shells, nebulae look like clouds, star clusters like spilt sugar. Alone among nature’s marvels, Saturn had no analog.
A bear wanders past my window once or twice each year. At first glance, I always think: huge black dog. Then the truth hits. One’s initial impulse is to perceive the familiar.
We are all prisoners of our backgrounds and experiences. Conceptual struggles arise when, as with Galileo, there are no associations, no past experience. You cannot explain the color blue to a person born blind.
Equally inconceivable are any extra dimensions beyond the width, depth, and height of everyday 3-D objects. If additional “string” dimensions exist, they cannot be pictured-by anyone. We’ve all been “born blind” to them.
I’ve often wondered to myself why freedom is so much easier to sell as fiction- Heinlein, Firefly/Serenity and the like are great examples. How many people have been introduced to ideas about freedom first in fictional form and only later seriously considered it in terms of real life applications?
I believe Bob Berman- though writing about a totally different topic- has written something very insightful about advancing pro-freedom ideas.
We live in a world where more and more people are being “born blind” to freedom. With children being brought under government influence earlier and earlier in their lives and that influence growing more and more extensive, what associations, what past experience with freedom do they have? And without that past experience, how much harder is it for people to wrap their heads around notions such as that taxes are theft, that government is just legalized thuggery, that we are responsible for caring for each other rather than government, etc.? It’s somewhat easier for many people to get to minarchism than voluntaryism, but even that can be difficult when the idea is ingrained in our culture that we turn to government to solve our problems first rather than leaving it as a last resort.
I think back to my most outstanding memory of the 2005 Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Jane Shaffer gave a talk on raising libertarian children which I almost skipped because I don’t have and don’t plan to have any kids. However, I was glad I stayed for her talk as it turned out to be one of the best of the entire summit. The most memorable (for me) point made that weekend came at the conclusion of her talk. As I recall, she wrapped up by recommending that parents make sure that their children get some taste of freedom as they are growing up. Once they taste it, she said, they will not forget it.
I think that is true of children but also of adults, and I think that is why pro-freedom arts are some of our most effective modes of communicating pro-freedom ideas. They allow us to contextualize these ideas in a non-threatening, fictional form- a form which approaches the audience on the premise that it need not be believed. And then, not threatened or challenged, the audience takes it in, allowing a seed to be planted. In some form, they have tasted freedom. And once they taste it, it can be very, very hard to forget.
Hey Kirsten:
Better than imagining a free society what you and your friends are doing is far more important than imagining. By living as much of your creed as you can and blogging about it, you are documenting your very on little experiment and letting the results speak for themselves. I really do look up to you for doing it. Not to mention you give me a great micro-vacation option that I need to exercise more often.
You and I are both atheists who were done wrong by the catholic church, but I think the early Roman christians might provide a good example of how to guide society more in the direction you want. When they were in their insurgency period, they took Roman society over by the success of their charity and of building individuals up in a society that specialized in tearing them down. Building is always no lose game. Even when you’re thrown to the gladiators. Look at how the Iraqi resistance was organized right under the Americans nose in the mass prisons where well over 90% of the inmates were not aligned with the resistance at all. Likewise it was not American success in the battlefield that chased the British away, it was American success in the farm fields, shops, and early industry. Ah, so my vision…..
I would expect that a society would be more free if individuals were willing to establish some degree of physical independence to balance out our current out of balance, interdependence. And to help each other do that. After 6 years of self industrializing I have to admit that this process is much harder than I thought it would be. And I seemed to notice from my visit out there, that for many reason you all are meeting with difficulties. But again like I said, it’s a direct measure of the difficulty of the problem, and when a set of solutions are found, that success will speak for itself and act as an example to guild peoples visions and expectations. Whether you like it or not, you’re a vanguard.
Yet another thought. Why do people dream so well about freedom? Because by our nature, we wish to exercise our will, and dream of doing so without negative feedback. Look at how a lot of people paint Hitlerian Germany, or Stalin style Soviet society. They are many times painted as the extensions of these men’s will. Even when discussing politics very very few people say, “When I have extremely limited abilities to impose my will on my fellow man, there’s a whole list of things I want to do.”. We all know how that thread really goes. I think our nature to try and exersise our will drives us to maximize the freedom’s of ourselves at the expense of the freedoms of others. Which of course is a formula for disaster.
For some more varied conversation than usual, you might want to go post your comments over here: http://www.fr33agents.com/ where this is a featured guest blog post.
Also, can you e-mail me your phone number? I was going to call you earlier today, but I couldn’t find it. I thought I would recognize it in the incoming call list by the area code, but I was wrong.
[...] children a taste for freedom. It will stay with them for a lifetime. I was recently reading a friend’s blog and she pointed out that letting your children experience freedom makes them remember it and want [...]