More Ruminations on How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Two months ago, I read Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, a long out-of-print work of pop philosophy, once prominent in libertarian and objectivist circles. I often find myself thinking about Browne's ideas, many of which are unsound (e.g. his consequentialist morality), but others which seem rather revolutionary to me. Not that he is the first to espouse them -- but that they seem particularly insightful to me at this time.

Browne is principally concerned with the mental 'traps' that people find themselves in. These are self-imposed and inaccurate limitations that people maintain in their minds, like the proverbial elephant held in place by a weak chain.

The identity trap is the belief that you must be someone other than yourself; that you must adopt and conform to pre-existing identities, rather than invent one of your own. I remember as a young man identifying with geek subculture and intentionally trying to develop a taste in anime, which was much in vogue with local geeks. It never took, no matter how much money I spent. There are other, more serious identities that I have tried to nurture: American, Christian, evangelical, librarian, among other masks that I have wished myself to have and to project. But I don't have to impress anyone. I can just be myself.

The morality trap is that I must conform to an externally-provided moral code, instead of creating my own. No one has authority to dictate my moral code to me. I reject all authority over my life, for I am a sovereign individual. This was quite a reversal for me, for the "spiritual formation" processes of ministry and seminary directly taught and advocate submission to earthly authorities as a lifestyle. Richard Foster's discipline of submission is a good example of this line of thought. I'm contemplating Harry Browne's book in this very manner. Instead of thinking "How can I let this wise person influence and mentor me?", I'm asking "What's good in here? What's bad?" and tossing out the bad without a second thought.

Which brings us to one of the government traps; that there is a moral duty to obey the law -- any law. Browne rejects this notion, and so do I. The law and morality may overlap, but nothing is morally mandatory simply because it is legally mandatory, and vice versa. I might obey the law because it is moral, or I might obey it because I fear the consequences of disobeying it, but I need not obey it simply because it is the law. Now this is a trap that doesn't really effect me, as I had no plans to break any laws. This was not a barrier that ever really existed in my mind, as I never strongly attributed morality to government. But Browne explained clearly what was for me hazily intuitive.

A fourth trap was the unselfishness trap -- that I have a moral duty to help others. Now I think that Browne goes too far on this one, but it is helpful that he attacks selflessness at the conceptual level. It is a critique that, to my knowledge, does not exist outside of objectivism, and all assumptions should be questioned. I still think that it is good to be generous to those in need, if for no other reason than an awareness that at some point, each of us is flat on his back and in need of a hand up (which I suppose is not really an argument for selflessness, but selfishness). So I'm unsure of what to make of this trap, but for the moment, I think that it's important that when I am selfless, it is because I desire to do so, not because I feel a moral duty imposed by others to do so.

Related to this trap is the burning issue trap/utopia trap, which is that there is some immediate social, moral, political issue which requires collective action and sacrifice in order to make the world a better place. I don't think that there is. Right now, I think that I'll take care of myself and my family, and let the world burn down around me, if need be. This is because I'm not convinced that there really are any hobgoblins to fight (to apply H.L. Mencken's perspective more broadly). Also, as Browne points out, crusaders tend to end up exhausted with little to show for it. Certainly I have spent much of my life in various causes, and have not accomplished much, for myself or anyone else.

Browne's insight was that there was no issue or cause greater than himself. I like that idea. Browne takes it too far. In his desire for 'freedom', he abandoned his wife and, worse, his daughter. I see myself as obligated to my wife, as I chose to marry her, and to my daughter, as I chose to bring her into the world. And, for that matter, neither have ever acted in a way unworthy of my obligation. So I would tentatively say that there is no cause greater than myself and my family, which is a far smaller circle of obligations than I have ever imposed on myself than before.

I may occasionally talk about political issues here, and at other fora. But I'm very intentionally avoiding any movements because my focus should be on myself and my family, and nothing else. I do not give money to any cause nor march in the streets for any controversy.

Now let's flip the concept of 'obligation' on its head and proceed to another trap that Browne describes: the rights trap. This was particularly hard for me to accept (although the first time I read it, I knew that it was true) because it was very counter to how I have envisioned the world as long as I can remember. What Browne means is this: rights don't exist. At all. You either have something, or you don't. If someone steals the fresh milk bottles off your porch in the morning (Browne wrote this book a long time ago when there was still home milk delivery), you may get angry at the thief. You may deliver eloquent speeches from your front porch about the evils of thievery, and how this person has violated your right to property. But none of this will bring your milk back.

Having a sense of one's rights necessarily brings one into unhappiness because one cannot always take and hold those rights. Here's a personal example: I think that the Church has wronged me, and therefore must compensate me in various ways in order to have me back. This is a different statement from saying that I think that the Church has wronged me, and therefore must compensate me for its violation of my rights. I can write long, angry speeches, letters, or blog posts about the wickedness of the Church, and incessantly present demands to the Church about its obligation to pay me back, and harangue Church leaders to repent, but none of these things will actually result in justice. The Church is very unlikely to respond to anything other than force, and as I have no force to bring to bear, I'm better off trying to avoid getting suckered in the future, rather than demanding that the world conform to my view of my rights. Now if I ever, say, acquire pictures of Bishop Timothy Whitaker having sex with a chimpanzee (especially a male chimpanzee) then I would have some force to offer and could probably extract said compensation. But I can't even envision a scenario in which that would happen.

You have what you have because you have it, not because it is your right to have it. You can get what you can get not because it is your right to get it, but because you can get it. 'Rights' have nothing to do with reality.

Wheh! That was a long explanation. But that's because my mind has long been attuned to issues of right and wrong, nobility and wickedness, and just and unjust causes. It's part of my personality.

Lastly, there is the despair trap. Browne writes about how to find freedom in an unfree world. It'd be nice if each of us could be completely free from all impingements upon our freedom to rule our own lives. But this is pretty much impossible. Browne himself admits that he is not completely free. But he writes that a lot of people, because they cannot be completely free, do nothing to become freer. Because they cannot have perfection in this life, they do not try for improvement. For example, a person may feel crushed by a poisonous marriage and a toxic job, but because she does not think that she can be free of both of these problems, she does not to relieve herself of one of them. The hypothetical perfect becomes the enemy of the realistic better.

That's what I'm trying to do: become freer. I'll graduate from seminary in December (I'm in now only because I'll bump up on my employer's payscale when I graduate; enough money to make it worth my while). I intend to celebrate, in traditional Asbury Theological Seminary fashion, by getting roaring drunk. I may even get out my hookah and smoke some tobacco. I may not become completely free in December, but I would have crossed one master off my list. And that's a damn good thing.

More Thoughts on Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

I've finished reading this book. I like Browne's assertion that the individual is the only legitimate judge of how he or she shall live. But I disagree with him on some points.

1. Consequentalist morality.
Browne asserts that morality is entirely relative to the individual, and that such a system works:

Neither do I have to worry about whether anyone is "getting away" with anything. I am not the world's policeman. I know that everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his acts are right, he'll get good consequences; if they're not, he'll suffer for it. The consequences are the only standards that matters -- and I'm certainly not needed to impose those consequences. (349)

This strikes me as incredibly unrealistic. Under this moral system, if a thief breaks into your house and robs you, he hasn't done anything wrong so as long as he doesn't get caught and face consequences.

At minimum, a moral code requires individuals to respect each others' lives, liberty, and property, because...well, because people have a right to live, live as they choose, and have stuff so as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's rights to do likewise.

2. Marriage.
Harry Browne rejects marriage as a concept. He thinks that no relationship should be a permanent commitment, but only at the consistent mutual desire of all of the parties involved. To an extent this is true, but he envisions love as an uncontrollable emotion that can either come and go. But love can be an action verb, a conscious decision made between consenting parties. Marriages can be crushing and soul-consuming, but they don't have to be.

3. Children.
I see the decision to be a parent to be a permanent commitment over a lifetime. I may not always financially support my daughter for her entire life, but I will always love her, and I will certainly support her until she is able to take that responsibility for herself. Browne proposes that if a parent grows weary of a child, simply place that child up for adoption and be free. In his understanding of parenting, a parent is not morally required to remain in the parent-child relationship indefinitely. Browne himself had not seen his own daughter for nine years at the time that this book was published, and he was okay with that, because it was an acceptable price to pay to get free from his marriage. As he sees it, the desire to be free is cause enough to abandon spouses, children, and anything else that impedes one's personal freedom.

I disagree. The desire to be free does not provide justification to abandon all commitments of responsibility.

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

My current read is How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. Browne was professional investor and writer, as well as the Libertarian Presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000.

This book was first published in 1973, and is Browne's treatise on how to avoid falling under the control over other people, institutions, and ideas that enslave us. His objective is to teach readers how to become freer from these fourteen 'traps'.

They are:
1. Identity trap
2. Intellectual trap
3. Emotional trap
4. Morality trap
5. Unselfishness trap
6. Group trap
7. Government trap
8. Despair trap
9. Rights trap
10. Utopia trap
11. Burning-issue trap
12. Previous-investment trap
13. Box trap
14. Certainty trap

These traps are mostly states of mind, whereby a person incorrectly assumes that they cannot -- or should not -- be free and rule themselves. Browne attempts to cut through these faulty beliefs.

The book (so far) seems strongly Objectivist. It is not a strictly libertarian work, and directly rejects libertarian or other political activism. Browne advises that, in the face of government restriction, one should avoid government, not confront it. Don't organize against government, because that will incur retaliation from government. Just keep a low profile and focus on your own desires. Your goal shouldn't be to free society, but to free yourself -- to care about your happiness and only your individual happiness.

It's quite an interesting work. Here's a passage from The Morality Trap:

There are plenty of people who will be delighted to tell you how to live. You'll hear the words "moral" and "immoral" often enough.

A person who tells you to act "morally" might have any one of a number of reasons. He might really believe that your moral conduct is essential to the future of the world. Or he may believe that he's God's appointed policeman. Or he may be using morality as a weapon to pressure you to do what's best for him. Or he may just have nothing better to do with his time.

Whatever his reason, remember that it's his reason. Too often, morality is used merely as a tool by which one person hopes to manipulate another.

Your reasons for how you live will necessarily be your own. No one knows you as you can know yourself. And only from that self-understanding can you hope to create a code of conduct that will bring you the freedom and happiness that you crave....

Personal morality is an attempt to consider all the relevant consequences for your acts. If you think out of morality for yourself, it should open up a better life that will be free from the bad consequences that complicate matters....

When you decide to take matters into your own hands, someone may ask you, "Who do you think you are? Who are you to decide for yourself in the face of society and centuries of moral teachings?"

The answer is simple: You are you, the person who will live with the consequences of what you do. No one else can be responsible, because no one else will experience the consequences of your actions as you will.

During my own long exit from Christianity, I slowly came to realize that the leaders of the Church who claimed authority over my life -- to whom I had willingly yielded authority -- had only self-serving motives. It would have been difficult for them to be more blunt and explicit that they really didn't care about what happened to me and my family. They had broken covenant with me, therefore I was under no obligation to heed their will in any matter.

The expectation and birth of my daughter really sharpened my thought processes. I was a father. I held my child in my arms minutes after she was born and promised her that I would do all within my power to provide for her and protect her. The Church had done nothing but drain me and my family emotionally, physically, and most importantly, financially. As a husband and a father, it would have been recklessly irresponsible for me to remain a Christian.

I had to get out of that cult before it destroyed us all. So I did. To be a good father to my child, I had to be a fully functional human being, and so I acted accordingly.

Responses were numerous, and usually supportive. Some, not so much. Some questioned who was I to dare to speak out against the Church. Some suggested that I had a moral obligation to God to continue to remain under its domination (God and the Church being synonymous). To reject this obligation imposed upon me was immoral.

Who am I to determine right and wrong? Who am I to oppose the Church? I am human being. And for the sake of myself, my wife, and my child, I will be as free a human being as I possibly can.

No god worthy of my worship would condemn me for having done so. And if a god sends me to hell for refusing to sacrifice my daughter for the petty whims of liars and frauds, then to hell I will gladly go.

Explaining Away Failure in the LP

Via Catallarchy, we have an analysis of the Libertarian Party's repeated failures:

The truth? America's closest thing to a third party cannot even do to George W. Bush what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore (an accomplishment that might have done our country and the world tremendous good, even without electing a candidate.) Libertarians are not only on the fringe. We are pathetic. If the LP had pulled a Nader in just one state, the salvation and gratitude of the Union might have been overwhelming. But no, men like Browne cannot even see how we let the country down.

I had been told by organizers that Mr. Browne would debate me about pragmatism vs. idealism. Finding instead a camp meeting, featuring monologue pulpit sermons, I grew frustrated listening to calls for perfect fealty to the precise liturgy of Received Faith, reiterating that failure after failure at the ballot box need never provoke significant reflection upon the message itself.

No, we must stick to a purist party line that the American people have relentlessly rejected (in one form or another) for 70 years. No tweaking. No fresh approaches to replace stale ones. No gradualist proposals for free-market alternatives that might compete with statist solutions. No concessions to an American consensus that the best-educated people in world history have generally ratified in biannual elections for three generations. No, we must continue to rant at our neighbors that their consensus is 100% idiotic. Hallelujah.

Mr. Browne preached that we must reject incrementalism and stick to "educating" the foolish, unenlightened masses, hoping that someday, like the Berlin Wall coming down, a sudden change of state will miraculously occur. This has all of the hallmarks of a religion, not a political agenda grounded in assumptions of individual sovereignty.

In a market, you would laugh at a businessman who kept blaming his failures on the customers. Or whimpering that the market is biased to favor big players. A competitor with a good product should be able to get past such obstacles.

[snip]

Blaming citizen-ignorance is the profoundly stupid and hypocritical premise of LP platonism and the root of all its failure. It must be called what it is. An emotional crutch and the core reason why a party based on adult-sovereignty relentlessly insults Americans instead of offering them pragmatic alternatives. The fault is not theirs, it is ours.

My impression is that the Libertarian Party (of which I am a reluctant member) consists of three coalitions: Randians, anarchists, and Constitutionalists. Randians are devotees or fans of Ayn Rand (but not necessarily full-blown ultra-wacko Objectivists). Anarchists view all forms of government activity as some kind of criminal enterprise. We Constitutionalists mostly want to enforce the Tenth Amendment, which would naturally curtail federal power.

The anarchists are, by far, the dominant voice in Party leadership. They are completely unwilling to compromise with the American people, who are not anarchist. Result -- winning less than 1% in Presidential elections, year after year.

BTW, I didn't even vote the LP ticket last year. Post 9/11, I became a single-issue voter (national security) and voted for Bush, although I did vote Libertarian in every other race.

Personal Laws, II

Last November, I described an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which a one-shot character had a list of 102 personal 'laws'. These were aphoristic principles that guided her life. In the past year, I've been intentional about formulating such life lessons. I keep a MS Word document on my hard drive listing these thoughts, and each one goes through a probationary period before being accepted as both true and important. Here are some of the results, including some probationary laws, with explanations:

• Don’t poke the snake with a stick. Avoid conflict whenever possible, and avoid people who are dangerous. Do not assume that you can contain their wickedness at a boundary.


• Just because you’ve done stupid stuff doesn’t mean that you have to keep on doing stupid stuff in order to be consistent. This is a reflection of Harry Browne's Previous Investment Trap. Consistency is a vastly overrated virtue, and it is better to admit that you were wrong and stop going in the wrong direction.


• Not everyone who is on your side is on your side. In a group interpersonal conflict, individuals may choose sides for purely selfish or strategic reasons, rather than those that they state openly.


• There is nothing inherently ennobling about hardship. My concept of masculinity long held that a man undertook great and challenging tasks and overcame obstacles. Suffering for a cause is noble. I now think otherwise.


• Go where the cheese is. Taken from the book Who Moved My Cheese?, anticipate that shit will fall out of the sky, and be prepared to move as conditions change. Be on the lookout for change, have a backup plan for everything, and implement it immediately when the change occurs. That you do not like the change will not prevent it from taking place.


• ‘Should be’ got nothing to do with it. Partially inspired by Harry Browne's Rights Trap, this rule asserts that just because something ought to be has no bearing on what will actually happen. Protesting violations of rights, ethical codes, or even written laws will not help you at all.

Civic Involvement as a Parental Duty

In his most recent column, Jonah Goldberg wrote this intriguing statement:

And that’s what I love about dogs. They just don’t care about such things, and they encourage you not to care either — at least while you’re with them. You can’t say the same thing about children, because they grow up and inherit the society we leave behind. Being a good parent requires caring about politics.

Emphasis added. I understand his argument, but I think that it's overstated. It's the same reasoning as Harry Browne's "burning issue trap": that some pressing threat against the common good requires personal sacrifice.

It's possible for one person to have a meaningful impact on public life, but unlikely, and an individual's resources of time, money, and energy are finite. One must spend them wisely.

I'd like to build a better world for my daughter to live in, but I think that my chances of success are extremely low. I can, however, build a better life for her. That lies within my resources; saving the world does not.

So I could, for example, spend a hundred hours writing letters to Congressmen arguing for Second Amendment rights, or I could spend an hour playing with her. The latter is more likely to benefit her than the former.

This is why, though I am very sympathetic to the Tea Party movement, I have not joined any of their protests or made any monetary donations. Because of the unlikelihood that I will effect any significant change on the nation as a whole, any time, money, and energy that I spend on that movement simply deprives my daughter of that same time, money, and energy.

Now if everyone took this attitude, this country would go to hell in a handbasket very quickly. But I'm not trying to be everyone; I'm trying to be me. I'm not trying to determine how everyone should live; I'm trying to determine how I should live. I'm not trying to make my daughter's future world a better place; I'm trying to make her individual life a better one to live. And I think that therein lies my true parental duty.

The Myth of Freedom

Shots Across the Bow has a great post up asking "Are you a citizen or a subject?" He argues very persuasively (not that I needed much persuading) that a government that promises to give you everything is subjugating you, rather than liberating you. Money quote:

If a man owns your house, your bank account, your job, and your health care, he owns you. Period. Just ask a coal miner from West Virginia about the company store.

"You load 16 tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store."

The whole post is prime cut libertarian red meat. But I'd like to take this problem in another direction.

At the age of seventeen as a young and overly confident political philosopher, I was one day pontificating to my father about the virtue of freedom. My much wiser father's response was simply "There's no such thing as freedom. You're always a slave to someone."

At the time, I did not understand him, but within a few years I did more than I would care to. I learned a simple truth: everyone is a slave to their employer. If your financial safety is dependent upon some other person or company, that person or company owns you. Your boss at work has the power of financial life and death over you and your future.

Thus our lives may be filled with a hundred petty tyrants who hold sway over us. Now not every boss shall be a tyrant, but all have the power to be tyrants. And as Harry Browne once said, "The problem is not the abuse of power; the problem is the power to abuse."

Unless you're financially independent, you'll always live under a dictator. Possibly and usually a benevolent one, but not necessarily so. Get used to your chains.

HT: Instapundit

The Church and Political Stands

As a general rule, I think that the Church (meaning both the collective Body of Christ and denominational bodies) should be cautious about taking stands on political issues. When I wrote about this yesterday, John Meunier responded:

I'm intrigued by the desire to have Christians active but the church silent.

Doesn't this run counter to all our talk of Christianity being fundamentally a communal or social religion? We talk about how tough it is to have a genuine Christianity that is private. Why does that stop when Christian conviction impinges on the political realm?

Imagine this scenario: I serve as Chairperson of the General Board of Church and Society, and that agency is filled with like-minded libertarian Christians. One day, after prayerfully examining the Scriptures and current events, we announce:

"The Social Security program is thievery, as it takes resources from people without their consent. It is therefore contrary to the commands of Christ, who never advocated theft to alleviate poverty. We condemn the criminal enterprise of Social Security and call its advocates to repent of their sin and seek the grace of God."

The next day, news sources run the headline: "United Methodist Church Demands Immediate End to Social Security." Sincere, faithful Christians who are members of the UMC but disagree with this position on Social Security face the insult of one of their church agencies denying their fidelity to Christ.

Wouldn't that bother a lot of you?

And I hope that it would bother you for more reasons than merely because you disagree with the policy analysis. Harry Browne once said of overreaching government "The problem is not the abuse of power; the problem is the power to abuse." In like manner, the problem here is not the Church taking a stand on political minutiae contrary to yours; the problem is the Church taking a stand on political minutiae.