This week Donald Trump stated that "The war with Iran will be over when I feel it in my bones". This is an ideal example of how the subjective operates, which is what I see freedom and all civics revolving around. Donald Trump was bringing the subjective very close. Let's review what freedom is all about.
Democracy is freedom because it means that the people rule themselves. The president or prime minister is like a hired manager, rather than a "ruler". 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, was considered as the triumph of democracy. But now we can see that it was actually the peak of global democracy, and it has been in slow decline ever since.
FREEDOM IN TERMS OF THE SUBJECTIVE
Civics refers to any constitution or legal system. A constitution is a written plan of government. What I have today is a way of explaining the basis of all constitutions and legal systems that is simple and concise in a way that I have never seen civics explained anywhere else.
My way of thinking about civics issues, such as legal systems and constitutions, revolves around the concept of the subjective. The subjective is all-important in fully understanding any human enterprise. There is nothing complex about the subjective, a subjective is simply someone's opinion or wish.As a simple example, the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship can be most effectively described in terms of the subjective. In a dictatorship or absolute monarchy, the entire society is subject to the whim of the king or dictator. If a powerful person says that a lesser person is guilty of a crime, then that person is guilty of the crime. These whims of the all-powerful are their unchecked subjectives. We could say that, in a dictatorship or absolute monarchy, the subjective is very close.
All attempts to apply checks and balances to power to bring about a more equitable society from the Magna Charta until now have been attempts to manage and control the subjective, to keep it at as much distance as possible even if it cannot be eliminated altogether. In fact, any system of law or government can be defined as management of the subjective.
In free societies, this management of the subjective usually takes the form of the establishment of fixed laws, legal processes, checks and balances, basic rights and, the presumption of innocence in the event of criminal charges. Such a civic structure is akin to the building of a house to provide shelter from the elements. Except in this case, the elements to be sheltered from are the subjective. The subjective cannot be entirely eliminated but the reason for civic structures in free societies is to keep it at a distance.
Of course for the structure to serve it's purpose, the laws must be consistently applied. Inconsistent application of the law is allowing the subjective back in. This creates a lack of flexibility, which is somewhat inconvenient at times, but it is this lack of flexibility that keeps the subjective at a distance and maintains democracy.
Politics is merely the determination of the various possible slants of the civic structure. For example, two possible slants on freedom are "freedom to" and "freedom from". What about smoking? Should people in a free society have "freedom to" smoke in a public place or "freedom from" being exposed to smoke? Then there are guns. Should people have "freedom to" own a gun or "freedom from" having people with guns around them?
The subjective is only so if it is different from the subjectives of others. If everyone had the same opinions about everything, then there would be no such thing as the subjective. This means that we can check the subjective by matching it against the subjectives of other people. Two of the best-known ways in which this is done is political elections and trial by jury.
However, the opinion of the majority is not the way to create a free society in every way. Ownership, of a home for example, means the right to exercise one's own subjective while being free from the subjectives of others. But to be free from the subjectives of others in a free society, you must acknowledge that they are also free from your subjective.
The reason that human societies put so much effort into creating the structures necessary to manage the subjective is that the subjective is a part of our natures. People, as a whole, are not naturally inclined to live by high principles. People tend to prefer themselves above others and to think that their particular group is special.
It indeed requires some special people to live by the principles espoused by the world's democracies. But the basic meaning of democracy is that no one is special. Thus democracy is a vast undertaking aimed at checking the subjective, and keeping it as far away as possible.
It is true that expression of the subjective provides flexibility. It is also true that a dictatorship or absolute monarchy is more flexible than a democracy, because the subjective is closer. But democracy seems to be superior at providing a better life for more people, meaning that democracy is one of those things that is more difficult in the short term but is worthwhile in the long term. When a civic structure is less-than-perfect or the people have difficulty living by it, the subjective will creep back in.
As in so many things concerning human beings, the best course of action is not one extreme or the other but an effective blending of the two. The same principle applies to the management of the subjective in a free society. Having no control over the subjective would create the law of the jungle.
This means that a free society must fall somewhere between the two. There must be a partial, but not complete, control of the subjective. This is accomplished by dividing society into two spheres, the public and the private sphere. The difference between the two lies in how the subjective is handled.
The simplest and clearest illustration of the public and private spheres of society is the ownership of property. One's own home is the private sphere. In a free society, part of the total property must be privately owned but not all of it. Freedom, like so many other facets of society, is best defined in terms of the subjective. Freedom is really freedom from the subjectives of others balanced with free expression of our own subjective.
Aside from ownership, opinions also illustrate the difference between the public and private spheres of society. In a free society a person can express their opinions, the subjective, but cannot force their opinions on others, thus preserving their subjectives. The freedom of expression is the public sphere whereas the protection from force is the private sphere.
I find this concept of the subjective to be extremely far-reaching. It is a vital consideration in news and, in fact, any information that we may receive. A lot of what you read in the news is someone's opinion, or their subjective.
I define the difference between a religion and a philosophy. A religion was in the "simple realm" because fundamental religious statements such as "there is a god" or "Jesus is the Son of God" must be either true or false, there is no middle ground in such statements.
Philosophy, in contrast, fell into the "complex realm" because fundamental philosophical statements cannot really be forced into the true or false labels. One philosophy may prove to be preferable to another, but it cannot be strictly said that either is "true" or "false". Put simply, religion is more concrete while philosophy is more nebulous.
The same concept can be applied to news regarding the subjective. We can have a simple news statement or a complex news statement. This simplicity or complexity does not refer to the actual complexity of the news event. Rather, it concerns the presence or absence of the subjective.
A news statement such as "There was an earthquake today and seven people are confirmed killed" is a concrete statement that contains no subjective. This would thus be a news statement in the simple realm.
However, a statement like "Conditions are worse than they were last week" contains a considerable amount of opinion, or subjective, that other observers may not agree with. This represents the complex realm. Advertising is, of course, filled with subjective. A line that a certain pizzeria has the best pizza in town is an ideal example of the subjective.
The subjective exists because we all see the world through our own lenses. All of us are products of different experiences. None of us has complete knowledge and few people are entirely free of any bias.
This concept of the subjective and it's management provides effective definitions of what freedom is, how democracy differs from dictatorship or absolute monarchy, the functions of all constitutions and legal systems, the difference between the public and the private domain and, the definition of news.
Freedom is thus a currency, just like money. The two are connected since we can use money to meet the demands caused by our needs, thus reducing the demands on our freedom as a currency. In other words, we can exchange freedom, for a period of time, to work for money. The difference is, of course, that, unlike freedom, most of us are not born with money.
So, I think we can take a broad view of the operation of society in terms of freedom.
Freedom consists of the two possible slants, "freedom to" and "freedom from". Freedom is a part of the nature of human beings and, since we are complicated, we can expect that freedom will also be complicated. A simple example that I have cited here is smoking. Should people have "freedom to" smoke or, should other people have "freedom from" second-hand smoke.
There is a wide spectrum of freedom from "freedom to" to "freedom from". We have a tendency to see ourselves as free, and those without our particular stripe of freedom as not free. It would seem to me that extreme "freedom to" is tantamount to the lawless "Law of the Jungle". I have never been quite sure why it is called that, since exactly the same rule of survival of the strong at the expense of the weak, applies in the arctic tundra as well.
On the other hand, extreme "freedom from" is a dictatorship. Dictators tend to enact strict controls to be "free from" some type of insurgency or internal or external threat. Like so many other things having to do with human beings, there is a peak factor of quality right in the middle.
It is quality, by the way, which I define as differentiating living things from inanimate matter. Quality is this optimum peak of efficiency. For living things, both quality and quantity matter. With inanimate matter there is no such thing as quality, but only quantity.
The law is an attempt to establish an optimum peak in the spectrum of freedom. We give up some of our nomadic "freedom to", such as taking things belonging to others, in exchange for "freedom from" other taking things belonging to us. The concept of public and private property can also be plotted on the spectrum of freedom. Public property represents "freedom to", while private property represents "freedom from".
Any type of contract is based on this use of freedom as a currency, based on an exchange between the two sides of the freedom spectrum. Marriage, for example, is basically giving one's "freedom to" date others in exchange for "freedom from" one's spouse dating others. When we go to work to earn money, we are exchanging some "freedom to" spend the day at the beach instead, in return for "freedom from" lacking the things that we need.
As we know, there is an economic spectrum from far right capitalism to far left communism, with many shades of socialism in between. This economic spectrum is also a function of the freedom spectrum which I am describing here. Capitalism represents the "freedom to" side and communism the "freedom from" side.
Can you see now how all of the operation of society can be broken down into the exchange between "freedom to" and "freedom from"?
The vast majority of people would prefer to live in a "free" society. But there are the two slants on freedom, the "freedom to" and "freedom from". The reason for politics is to determine what the balance will be.
Democracy is like an exercise program in that it is difficult to do but we are better off if we do it. Dictatorship has never gone away because there are always people who find it easier to let someone do their thinking for them. The ultimate "freedom from" can be to let someone else do your thinking for you, to bring the subjective very close because it requires effort to keep it at a distance.
One issue with democracy is that it is possible to be a democracy on paper but it is someone outside the electoral process, or even someone outside the official government altogether, that holds the real power. Maybe there is a certain group or family that is able to arrange it so it is their members that always hold the important positions of power, and the official democracy ends up meaning little.
The striking difference that I notice between dictatorships and what most people would consider as "free" societies is in the nature of the laws. "Free" societies tend to have laws that are clear and well-defined while dictatorships tend to have laws that are subjective and open to interpretation. Of course, because it brings the subjective closer.
We should all be law-abiding citizens. But there is such a thing as having too much respect for authority. People in positions of authority are made of the same kind of flesh and blood as everyone else. They make mistakes and are sometimes vulnerable to corruption. A hallmark of dictatorships is that someone in a uniform is always right. Dictators really like people who have unquestioning respect for authority.
Another hallmark of dictatorships is the leader having a security organization that answers directly to him and to which he can issue orders without answering to anyone. The security organization is outside the structure of the ordinary military. This is sometimes referred to as a "Praetorian Guard".
Politics may work against freedom and democracy. If there is a minority, ethnic or religious, and a majority, and the ruler is from the majority, obviously democracy will mean that the minority will be dominated by the majority.
Many have wondered why America has so many different police departments. The answer is "freedom". There is no single powerful security organization that a potential dictator might seek to gain control of. Britain works in a similar way, with no national police force. Some western countries do have national police forces.
Dictators usually come to power through the democratic process but then find a way to seize more power. A popular route to dictatorship is for a president to amend the constitution to make himself "president for life", or for the indefinite future.
We tend to prefer people who don't complain about things over people that do complain. But complaining is part of the mechanism that keeps a society free. If people never complain about anything you can be sure that they will eventually lose their freedom. Dictators really like people who just fit in, do what they're told, and never complain.
Democracy goes against human nature because we like to think that we are special. But what democracy basically means is that no one is special. Everyone has inherently equal rights. If we want to be special we have to earn it, and we have to earn it as an individual. No one should be special just because of who they are, but that goes against the human nature of wanting to be special.
Dictators don't like individualists and people who think for themselves. Every dictator promotes a strong sense of community. It is much easier to control a society where people think as a group, as well as where "everybody knows everybody else's business".
Dictators prefer people to socialize at community events or in the marketplace. This makes it easier to see who's friends with who and helps to preclude private socializing that might result in people plotting to start a separate church or a political party that might threaten the dictator's authority.
Part of the difficulty of being free is that if we are free, because we live in a free society, then the people around us must also be free. We want to be free but we want the people around us to think like we do and "fit in" with us. But freedom means that the people around us might think completely differently from us and have no obligation to agree with or to "fit in" with us. Freedom does not mean to agree but to agree to disagree.
Being free means being exposed to "fake news" because the only way to be free of potentially "fake news" is to give someone the power to decide for us what is and isn't "fake news". But then that person would have the power of a dictator and we would no longer be free. This is just one of the prices of being free.
Freedom is not a panacea. Freedom itself will not bring about a paradise because it only allows us to be more of what we are. How well freedom works depends on what we are. Freedom is just better than not being free.
If we bring a group of people to a free society who are not able to handle freedom they will tend to make the "community" into an unofficial collective dictatorship. There will be "unwritten rules", beyond the written law, and the less able to handle freedom they are the more "unwritten rules" there will likely be.
A major disadvantage of dictatorships is that people tend to be promoted based on "who you know", rather than "what you know". Giving people jobs based on their friend and family connections ultimately weakens the society.
I see a true sign of democracy as being the ability of anyone to get a phone without registering the phone number.
For more about freedom there is the compound posting "The Meaning Of Freedom" July 2021.
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