The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle
Against Authority, Rose Wilder LaneFor a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto,
Murray N. RothbardConsider that each of us has a master "win-lose switch" in our mind. It is a graduated switch like those used for big direct-current electric motors. Rather than just "on" and "off" settings, it is a graduated switch with eleven settings from "0" to "10". If we set our master switch to "zero", we are completely turned off - a total loser. If we set our master switch to "ten", we are the complete winner.
Of course, there isn't just one master switch that controls the extent to which we win or lose in life. We can think in terms of a win-lose switch in every area of life we care to specify. For example, I can think in terms of my health win-lose switch, my fitness win-lose switch, my relationship win-lose switch, my money win-lose switch, etc.
In each area of life, I can think of my win-lose switch as being a measure of my relative success in that area. Success is winning; failure is losing.
Now comes the question: How do I move the handle of the switch to a higher setting? In the case of the big DC motor, as the switch is turned up, more electricity is supplied and the motor runs faster. (If the switch is immediately turned from "0" to "10", the motor will overload and burn out.)
For the purposes of success or failure in life, humans can be said to run on information. The quality of information determines success or failure. Improving the quality of information is the equivalent of moving the switch to a higher setting. The human brain can be thought of as a computer. The information in the brain can be regarded as a program. To improve human functioning, we need to improve the quality of the program - move the switch to a higher setting.
As in the case of the DC motor, the switch has to be moved up gradually. A person with information at the level of "2" in an area of life, if suddenly confronted with level "8" information, may suffer overload and may not be able to handle and integrate the information. A person with level "2" information can handle and integrate level "3" information - if there is a motivation to consider this "higher level" information.
The problem is that many of us believe that much of our information is already at level "10" and that we have little further to learn. Suppose that in the area of health most people (including doctors) operate on level "2" information. Someone makes a series of breakthrough discoveries that boosts his health information to level "8". He presents his level "8" information to people with level "2" information. They can't handle or integrate the new information. The denounce the purveyor of level "8" information as a crazy crank.
This phenomenon applies to most humans, no matter how intelligent. In fact, it may even be that the higher his intelligence, the more difficult it tends to be for a person with level "2" health information to handle and integrate level "8" health information! With intelligence may also come vanity and arrogance.
So the first step in improving your information is to realize that in some areas of your life, the level or quality of your information might be lower than you think it is.
"Among the innumerable mortifications
which
waylay human arrogance
on every side may well be
reckoned our ignorance
of
the most common objects
and effects, a defect of which we
become more
sensible by every
attempt to supply it.
Vulgar and inactive minds
confound
familiarity with knowledge
and conceive themselves informed
of the whole
nature of things
when they are shown their form
or told their use; but
the speculatist,
who is not content with superficial views,
harasses
himself with fruitless curiosity,
perceives only that he knows less."
-
Samuel Johnson
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature
leads, or you shall learn nothing."
- T. H. Huxley
"Wipe your glasses with what you know."
- James Joyce
"Write what you "know" on a roll of toilet paper, wipe your
backside with it, and flush it down the toilet."
- Frederick Mann
For those of you relatively new to freedom, here is some recommended reading.
The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle
Against Authority, Rose Wilder LaneFor a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto,
Murray N. RothbardConsider that it might be a basic principle that freedom and coercion are incompatible. Coercion is the initiation of force, threat of force, or fraud by which a person or group impose their will upon another or others. Coercion is the overwhelming of another's will. Coercion can also be used to forcibly or fraudulently take the property of others.
Many people believe that certain things can only be done through coercion and we must have a government to coerce people. The book, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, brilliantly makes the case that initiated coercion is evil and unnecessary.
Of course, two boxers enter the ring to coerce each other. The best coercer wins. This form of coercion is compatible with freedom because it is based on mutual consent with full knowledge of the possible consequences. Similarly, if two people want to fight a duel, the believer in freedom will use no more than persuasion to attempt to stop them.
Obviously, anyone may also use force, threat of force, or bluff in self-defense against a coercer. If a burglar violates your property, you may use force in self-defense.
Suppose I see a young child about to run across the street into the path of an oncoming bus. I grab the child and forcibly restrain her. I coerced the child. I overwhelmed her free will. By using coercion, I saved her life. Then I must apologize for having coerced her. I have no right to practice such coercion. Nor do I have a duty. My coercion is, in a sense, evil. I use my superior strength to overwhelm another's free will. I justify my coercion by claiming that my superior wisdom and judgment enabled me to foresee what the child didn't see. My superiority enables me to save her life.
Can we formulate a principle: The only permissible coercion is that coercion - to prevent a greater evil - which I personally initiate, perform, and take full responsibility for?
Some people say, "I believe in freedom and individual sovereignty, except for ..." The problem is that if you add up all the coercive exceptions of the people who profess their love for freedom and individual sovereignty, you get the modern slave-state such as the U.S.A.
Coercion is the essence of slavery. Coercion is the negation of individual freedom, self-ownership, and individual sovereignty.
Can we formulate another principle: Become wise, strong, and powerful - or suffer coercion?
Some forms of coercion imply that the information of the coerced or victim is no good and/or the victim can't think for himself or herself (can't process information). Therefore the coercer must decide for the victim. For example, compulsory state education and anti-drug laws imply that people are powerless victims, nothings, and nobodies who can't think for themselves. Most coercive bureaucracies operate on the same principle: creating dependency, helplessness, and powerlessness.
In a way, when you coerce someone you force your victim's switch towards the "zero" or "lose" setting. When you allow someone else to coerce you, that person has control over your switch and moves your switch towards the "zero" or "lose" setting.
Freedom Technology (the knowledge, methods, and skills for living free) can also be described as the methods whereby you gain control of all your win-lose switches and move them towards the "ten" or "win" settings.
Outwitting tyrants and coercive bureaucrats and defending against their coercive incursions could be thought of as defending your switch. Blowing away the bogus power of tyrants is an advanced aspect of freedom technology. It is based on the fundamental that tyrants only have the power granted to them. Withdraw the power and the tyrants topple. The power of tyrants is primarily derived from the psychological control they exert over the enslaved "free will" of their victims. This principle is covered in Boetie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (circa 1553).
The first step, of course, is to take responsibility for your own switch. If you don't control your own switch, someone else will. When you obey someone else, you relinquish control of your switch. Become a master of your own life, or someone else will enslave you.
Consider the possibility that ignorance, weakness, and coercion corrupt while wisdom, strength, and power ennoble. Did Lord Acton - "power corrupts" - get it wrong? Maybe it is the weakness of those in power that corrupts. Maybe it is the weakness of the followers that sustains corrupt leaders. Author Stewart Emery wrote, "Weakness corrupts and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely" - Actualizations (Doubleday, NY; 1978).
What are the consequences of the notion that power corrupts? It subtly plants the notion that power is evil; therefore weakness, powerlessness, and helplessness are good. The result is that people experience themselves as weak, powerless, and helpless. They believe they can't solve their own problems. They can't free themselves, therefore government must change itself to free them.
Twenty-five-hundred years ago Lao Tzu, a famous Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching wrote that the biggest problem in the world was that individuals experienced themselves as powerless. Today this is still our biggest problem.
If someone gave you information identical to information you already have, how much would you value the information given? Well, you might put a small value on it because it confirms your knowledge and maybe helps you feel more secure. But it is unlikely that you would pay much for it.
It follows that the most valuable information could be the most different from the information you already have. But there is a problem: New information could be different and useless or different and useful. We apply our minds to decide.
Please do not summarily reject information in this report because it is very different from what you now know. Even if initially you object strongly to new information, you may find that your objections are satisfactorily answered later.
Sometimes when two people communicate it is as if suddenly a brick wall jumps up between them. This usually happens when one person reacts with resistance to something the other says or does. And sometimes the other person then reacts with resistance to the resistance...
Such invisible brick walls become barriers to further communication. Probably the most prevalent way such brick walls are brought about is when one person says or does something that makes the other wrong - or when the other person feels or perceives being made wrong.
Another way such brick walls come about is when a communication is perceived as threatening. Consider the possibility that the information that would be most valuable to you might be information most different from some of the information you now hold. If this is so, then the information potentially most valuable to you could also seem the most threatening.
Some of us build invisible brick walls around us to "protect" and "isolate" us from people of different color, culture, class, race, age, sex, political or religious persuasion, etc.
We have the ability not only to control our own invisible brick walls, but also to influence the brick walls of others to a considerable extent. This is an awesome power wielded by the most charismatic.
By becoming more aware of our own brick walls and those of others, we gain control over invisible brick walls - and increase our power to communicate.
Consider the possibility that in many areas of life you've been consistently lied to (often unintentionally) by parents, friends, teachers, preachers, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, lobbyists, doctors, scientists, etc.
Dr Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician who discovered in the 1840s that puerperal or childbed fever could be virtually abolished if doctors washed their hands in a chorine solution. This is a superb example of a new inside angle (described below). The Semmelweis story is told in Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science by William Broad & Nicholas Wade (Simon & Schuster, NY; 1982). In the 1840s puerperal fever typically caused a 10-30% mortality rate in maternity hospitals throughout Europe. Semmelweis reduced the mortality rate in the division of the obstetric clinic where he worked in the General Hospital of Vienna from 18 percent to 1 percent. But he failed to convince his colleagues and superiors. Instead of listening to him and disinfecting their hands, they hounded, persecuted, and fired him - for daring to suggest that they wash their hands properly. In the autumn of 1860, after the dismissal of Semmelweis, in the same ward where he had demonstrated how to virtually eradicate childbed fever, 35 out of 101 patients died.
In a book published in 1861, Semmelweis presented his statistics and findings. He sent copies to medical societies and to leading obstetricians in Germany, France, and England. Despite his copious and undisputed statistics, he was completely ignored.
Thirty years after Semmelweis' discovery, Lister and Pasteur succeeded in convincing doctors that they should disinfect their hands.
The Semmelweis-reflex is the automatic rejection of the obvious, without thought, inspection, or experiment. It was so named by author Robert Anton Wilson. The results that Semmelweis produced made it obvious that his possible discovery needed to be inspected, experimented with, and thought about.
You may think that in the enlightened age of 1997, humans no longer suffer from the Semmelweis-reflex. This would be a mistake. During the past twenty-five years, numerous authors have written several dozen books - published by "mainstream" publishers - on why compulsory state education should be abolished. The results of this cruel form of mind destruction are obviously disastrous. Yet most people, when confronted with the suggestion that compulsory state education be abolished, will summarily reject the suggestion without examination. The Semmelweis-reflex in action.
Compulsory state education is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Here is a partial list of authors who have exposed aspects of the cruel mind destruction I refer to: Samuel L. Blumenfeld, John Taylor Gatto, Paul Goodman, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Jonathan Kozol, Neil Postman, Ayn Rand, William F. Rickenbacker, Phyllis Schlafly, and Charles Weingartner.
This is probably one of the most powerful success principles ever formulated. Here are its elements:
During the past few years, I have been studying the U.S. Constitution and the related issue of common law jurisdiction. Knowing this information and how to apply it provides me with huge advantages when it come to running a private business. However, people (such as most attorneys and accountants) who "know" all about the law tend to be limited by their "knowledge" to the inside angles that can be applied here to operate a real free market business.
In order to adopt the inside-angle orientation, there are certain obstacles you may have to overcome:
For years, Ted Hampton has been operating his business according the the traditional advice of his attorney and his accountant. When Ted, who is wide open to new inside angles, found out about the constitutional and common law inside angles, he naturally changed the way he operates his business. However, his attorney and accountant wouldn't even look at the inside angles. They had to protect their "knowledge". The practices of the attorney and accountant had been built up over many years based on their "legal knowledge". The constitutional and common law inside angles, if valid, would completely destroy the foundation of their professional careers. The fear of this prevents the attorney and the accountant from even considering constitutional and common law inside angles. They know little about the U.S. Constitution and common law. Furthermore, their licenses to practice involve allegiance to statutory or legislated law. If they were to practice constitutional and common law, they might be disbarred.
Every single human being, anywhere on Earth, needs better inside angles. No matter where you live or what you do, there are inside angles you can apply to improve your wealth, your health, your happiness, your work, your business, your relationships, your sex-life... you name it. Everybody needs better inside angles.
The scientific and technological history of Earth is the history of inside angles that were discovered, developed, communicated, and applied. E=mc² is an example of an inside angle. The notion that the Earth is round was an inside angle at the time when most people believed it was flat.
Any subject, activity, or business you care to think of could be improved by new inside angles. Everybody needs better inside angles. The discovery, communication, and application of inside angles have increased human power phenomenally and will continue to do so. Inside angles have repeatedly transformed the world and will continue to do so.
The general formula:
Have you ever tried to drive a car that fires on only a few cylinders? It doesn't go very well. Consider the possibility that most humans fire on only a few cylinders. Imagine that each cylinder has a win-lose switch. Freedom technology has to do with persuading people to turn up their switches so they fire on all cylinders.
Of course, a human has many more than eight cylinders. There may even be several cylinders we have not yet discovered.
Personally, I continue to work on turning up my switches and finding more switches to turn up. I am open to others to assist in this never-ending endeavor. To the extent that I can turn on my selling switch, I sell the ideas of freedom technology to others. They continue the process. There is a basic principle here: Any one person can set in motion a process or sequence of events that will transform the world.
Philosopher and psychologist Nietzsche indicated that human consciousness is in its infancy. Suppose the universe is 15-billion years old, that humans have existed for about 200,000 to 300,000 years, and that humans have been conscious for maybe 5,000 years. In evolutionary terms, our consciousness is in its infancy. We are at the level of a baby just beginning to learn to crawl.
Consider that all the problems in the world - unhappiness, crime, drug abuse, suicide, rape, terrorism, government, war, pollution, poverty, famine, child abuse, depression, unemployment, inflation, homelessness, unhealth, etc - are a consequence of the fact that human thinking skills are still at a very primitive infancy level.
What if we are like primitive, backward, barbaric infants who are yet to learn to crawl - but we deceive ourselves into believing that we are the finest Olympic athletes?
Let us learn to crawl, walk, run, and jump!
17 Steps to Freedom (Index of Steps)
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1997