no one is an island

As I work on writing and editing my video series, I've been thinking a lot about the interconnectedness of people. One of the arguments that is central to my whole thesis is that no one is an island--no matter how hard you try in today's world, you will not be able to escape the impact of other people. It's an appealing fantasy, but it just won't work. 

Your freedom is everyone's freedom. As MLK put it, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Rufus J. Fears, at the very end of his lecture series "A History of Freedom," also makes a very eloquent argument that allowing some group of people to be disenfranchised, no matter how rich and powerful you are, will eventually come around to bite you in the ass (my words, not his).

Honestly, it's kind of amazing to me that this is something many people just refuse to accept. In this, the year of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, I hope more people are waking up to the fact that our fates are all intertwined. As if we needed another reminder, the air in Seattle right now is an orange-grey miasma. Even if you lived in a cabin in the San Juans, fishing for your meals and warming yourself by a wood fire, you would not be able to escape the impact of other people right now.

the right tool for the job

This blog is still active (I promise), but lately I've been putting all my writing energy into putting together the speech I'm giving at Toastmasters on August 6th. The working title is "The Rights of the Minority in a Democracy." I hope to record it and post a link here.

In the meantime, just a thought I had while working this morning. Last week was rough at work, and it's especially hard to unwind when your office is also your bedroom. It got me thinking about a conclusion I arrived at way back when I started my self-improvement journey.

In a lot of aspects of life, it's a good idea to think about the opportunity cost of how you spend your time. Is it worth playing video games for an hour when you could spend that time reading, or cleaning the kitchen, or practicing piano? But if you think about all of your time this way, constantly trying to make the most of your free time, you'll burn yourself out. Sometimes playing video games really might be the best way to spend your time if it's helping you relax and unwind. The frame of mind that will help you be successful isn't always the best for being happy.

the "great person" view of history

I’ve been listening to a course called “A History of Freedom,” and even though I like the content and appreciate the professor’s ability as a storyteller, I’m nearing the end and I’m a little sick of his constant hammering on the idea that history is made by “great people,” not anonymous forces.

It’s ironic, because even though the professor seems to place a lot of importance on the individual, his view of history actually robs the individuals who influenced these “great people” of their agency and their place in history. I get tired of hearing people talk about political leaders as if they’re superhuman forces of nature. That’s not to say there are no “great people,” but they’re still just people, and like all people they are flawed, dynamic, capable of change, and influenced by other people and circumstances.

Take Lincoln as an example. I love Lincoln! I consider him a personal hero! But to view him as a superhuman figure who single-handedly won the war and freed the slaves is to oversimplify things. It robs people like Frederick Douglass, Horace Greeley, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, and probably thousands of other individual abolitionists of their place in history, and their roles in influencing Lincoln’s evolving political thought.

On this note, I learned a couple of things about Martin Luther King Jr. recently that I hadn’t known before. One was how the “I Have a Dream” speech was actually not the scripted speech he had prepared, and how he started improvising it after gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted “tell them about the dream, Martin!” Another is how MLK’s interest in Gandhi was sparked partly by a librarian named Juliette Hampton Morgan, who wrote a letter in support of the Montgomery bus boycott to the local paper.

While it’s important not to view history as a sequence of events that were somehow destined to happen, it’s also important not to view the great people of history as towers of intellect that moved mobs of anonymous people in one direction or another. Churchill was great, and the Spitfire pilots in the Battle of Britain were great, but there are probably hundreds if not thousands of other great people from that time and place whose stories are forgotten, buried, or untold. Hell, during the blitz, getting up and going to your job at the grocery store was an act of greatness as far as I’m concerned. I find those stories a lot more interesting than what kind of scotch the prime minister had with breakfast every morning.

freedom in ancient Athens

I’m listening to a new Great Course called “A History of Freedom,” and the professor kicks it off by talking about freedom in ancient Athens, touching on a lot of the things I talked about in my last post--the positive freedom of self-governance, the “general will,” and the freedom that can be granted by a benevolent dictator.

Athens during the fifth century BC was a direct democracy. Citizens didn’t elect representatives the way we do. Instead, all major decisions were voted on by an assembly of all the adult male citizens. Government offices were filled by lottery. An ordinary farmer could become a ranking official for a term just by having his name drawn randomly. We can see how it’s a place where the positive freedom to govern one’s self requires a pretty significant sacrifice of negative freedom. This is exemplified in the quote from Pericles:

“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in public affairs is a man who minds his own business. We say he has no business being here at all.”

Then along comes Socrates. Socrates has no interest in public affairs. He is interested in deeper philosophical ideas, and questioning long-held beliefs and traditions. He says, “no honest man can survive in your democracy.” This doesn’t jibe with the Athenian devotion to duty and democracy, and Socrates is condemned to death by a jury of his peers for the crime of “corrupting the youth.”

In another Great Course, “Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation,” the professor describes how the trial of Socrates destroyed Plato’s faith in democracy. Plato was a student of Socrates who went on to write “The Republic,” which put forward the idea that the best form of government would be monarchy under a “philosopher king.”

This eventually came to pass with the rise of Alexander the Great, a student of Aristotle, who was himself a student of Plato. Alexander really does appear to have been a great philosopher, and his empire does seem to have been a place where people enjoyed peace, security, freedom of religion, and economic prosperity. But it was still an empire, built on war and death, and when Alexander died, it all fell apart as the men he left it to turned on one another.

So what do I take from all this? First, I think the trial of Socrates was probably on the minds of some of the founders of our country when writing the First Amendment. While the democracy of ancient Athens sounds great for a lot of reasons, it also demonstrates the sort of “tyranny of the majority” that can arise from such a system. This brings me back to my idea that civic engagement is essential to freedom, because unless we have the freedom to associate and exchange ideas with one another (and not only have that freedom but also use it), we can’t have a truly free and vital democracy.

Second, I think the rise of Alexander demonstrates the appeal of believing that a single “great person” can sweep aside all of society’s problems if given absolute power. This isn’t to say that Alexander wasn’t an amazing figure, nor is it to say that everyone who shows strong support for a candidate for office is acting on blind faith in some super-human leader. But no matter how great things might have been under Alexander the Great, no matter how tremendous his impact was on history, it wasn’t worth the cost in lives and liberty. The ends never justify the means.

positive and negative liberty

One time in high school I was talking to my friend Jay, who like a lot of my friends growing up was from a more politically conservative household. I casually mentioned that I was waiting for a library book that was being shipped from another library the next county over. When Jay learned that the local library system had a fleet of trucks that brought books from one library to another every day, he said, “I wonder how much that costs the taxpayers.” I argued that whatever the cost was in taxes, it was probably worth it to give kids access to every library book in the area, instead of just the library books available in their town.

Jay and I were arguing about two different types of freedom, defined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Jay was arguing in favor of negative liberty, which can be broadly defined as “freedom from”--in this case, freedom from taxes. I was arguing in favor of positive liberty, “freedom to”--in this case, freedom to access a wealth of knowledge. The United States was founded on both concepts of freedom: the freedom from tyranny and oppression, along with the freedom to “the pursuit of happiness”; freedom from arbitrary government, along with a freedom to govern one’s self. The difficult task of a democracy is to maintain a balance of both, because too much of one without the other can be a dangerous thing.

John Locke is regarded as the father of negative liberty. Locke’s writings are a little difficult to get a handle on today, because at the time he was arguing with people who genuinely believed that monarchy was the only legitimate form of government, and that monarchs derived their right to rule from God. At the time, Locke’s idea that people should be free from the rule of a monarch was pretty radical.

One of Locke’s key concepts was the idea that the law should protect an individual’s rights to land ownership. This had a big influence on Thomas Jefferson during the conception of the United States government (Locke wrote that people have the right to “life, liberty and property”--Jefferson replaced “property” with “the pursuit of happiness”) . Property rights are central to our idea of freedom, and for good reason. Privately-owned farms are more productive than communal ones. The pride of home ownership is important to vibrant neighborhoods. Intellectual property rights are vital to a dynamic business economy.

But if government’s only job is to protect property rights and avoid constraining individual liberty, then what happens if one successful businessperson starts buying all the land in town and charging rent to tenants? The tenants may want to become landowners, but even though there are no legal constraints preventing them from doing so, there are economic constraints imposed by their having to pay rent to the landlord, and the landlord owning all of the good land in the area. They are free from arbitrary laws preventing them from owning their own land, but they are not free to actually become landowners.

This brings us to the problems with negative liberty. The political activist Emma Goldman wrote:

“True liberty...is not a negative thing of being free from something, because with such freedom you may starve to death. Real freedom, true liberty, is positive: it is freedom to something; it is the liberty to be, to do; in short the liberty of actual and active opportunity.”

Political theorist Hannah Arendt demonstrates the historical importance of positive liberty in her essay “The Freedom to be Free,” in which she compares the American Revolution with the French Revolution, and asks why one led to the foundation of a lasting democracy while the other descended into chaos and gave rise to an empire. She argues that France’s problem lay in the fact that it’s people were so poverty-stricken that when they were freed from tyranny, they had no interest in sitting down and debating the best way to form a republic--they needed food and clothes first. As Arendt put it:

“The men of the first revolutions, though they knew well enough that liberation had to precede freedom, were still unaware of the fact that such liberation means more than political liberation from absolute and despotic power; that to be free for freedom meant first of all to be free not only from fear but also from want.”

In short, freedom means more than opening someone’s prison cell and saying, “you’re free!” They need more than freedom from, they need freedom to. If you kill the king but don’t build a new form of government, you’ll just end up with a different king. Democracy actually requires the positive freedom of self-government, whereas negative freedom alone can be provided by a benevolent dictator. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it when summarizing Isaiah Berlin’s essay:

“As Berlin admits, on the negative view, I am free even if I live in a dictatorship just as long as the dictator happens, on a whim, not to interfere with me (see also Hayek 1960).”

This brings us to the concept of positive liberty: the freedom to. If John Locke is the father of negative liberty, then the father of positive liberty is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau believed that individual freedom was achievable through the community, with everyone working together toward a common goal, or “general will.” The Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, begins with a declaration of a general will:

“Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace; and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the sea coasts and rivers than was at first intended, so that we can not according to our desire with convenience communicate in one government and jurisdiction…”

The framers of the Articles of Confederation were agreeing that they didn’t want Emma Goldman’s negative freedom “to starve to death.” By entering into “a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor upon all just occasions,” they were agreeing to be free of hunger, want, and fear.

So what could possibly be controversial about this kind of freedom? Well, Rousseau gets into trouble with this passage from his book “The Social Contract”:

“Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.”

The contradiction here is obvious: how can someone be “forced to be free”? How do we decide what the “general will” is?

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a champion of positive liberty and opponent of negative liberty, took things a step further by saying:

“The state does not exist for the citizens; on the contrary, one could say that the state is the end and they are its means.”

To Hegel, we achieve freedom only by fulfilling our role within the state. This is nationalism, and it should come as no surprise that Hegel was a great admirer of conquerors and emperors, including Napoleon.

So now we’ve seen both extremes. If our only ideal is negative liberty, we can end up with a government that refuses to protect people from being enslaved by one another (by the way, John Locke, despite all his talk about freedom, was an investor in the slave trade through the Royal African Company). On the other hand, if we only believe in positive liberty, we can end up throwing ourselves at the mercy of an emperor. How do we balance the two?

Let’s go back to my conversation with my friend Jay. I was the one arguing against the negative freedom from taxes, in favor of the positive freedom to check out library books, so I obviously lean a little more toward one type of liberty than the other. I personally tend to be a little bit skeptical of champions of negative liberty. I grew up with a lot of friends like Jay, and in their arguments I heard a desire for a type of freedom that I don’t think is really reasonable to expect, or even desirable--a freedom from other people, a cabin in the woods where they will never be bothered by anyone ever. I think this kind of libertarian ideal of negative liberty is pretty much impossible to achieve in a world as densely populated and technologically advanced as ours.

On the other hand, I certainly don’t think guys like Jay need to be somehow “forced to be free,” whatever that means. I think they can enjoy a lot of the freedoms they value by participating in the democratic system and civil society that safeguard those freedoms. This lies in exercising the positive freedoms that I think we sometimes take for granted in America: the freedom to assemble; the freedom to associate with whomever we want; the freedom to vote; the freedom to participate in a civic society that is separate from both business and government.

There’s another quote from Rousseau that I think gets to the point of my idea of positive liberty:

“Every man is virtuous when his particular will is in all things conformable to the general will, and we voluntarily will what is willed by those whom we love.”

It might sound corny or naive, but I honestly think it’s the part about “those whom we love” that’s crucial. It’s one thing to watch pundits and politicians debate about this or that legislation and then cast our vote, but it’s another thing to talk about issues with friends, family and neighbors. Having friends like Jay growing up helped me understand political conservatism and libertarianism a little better than I would have if I had been insulated from different opinions. I was able to bring Jay around to my side of our little library disagreement not necessarily because I’m a great debater, but because we already had an established friendship based on trust and respect.

Not to sound overly alarmist, but I think this is something we’re losing in America right now - a sense of mutual respect, community, and common interest, for and with one another. I personally think we’ve gotten a little too fixated on negative liberty at the expense of positive liberty. As much as we all might want to sometimes, we’ll never be free from other people. But maybe that’s a good thing.

anger

In my last post I talked about how I had been avoiding the news because the headlines over the last few years have mostly just made me angry, and how recent events have made me realize I can’t keep my head in the sand anymore. Since then I’ve been trying to stay more informed, and I’ve also been trying to acknowledge and analyze the feelings that rise up in me as I do. One thing I’ve learned is that I can only really manage a feeling by confronting it, not trying to ignore it or make it go away.

To keep myself calm, I think of a lecture from the series “Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature” about anger. The professor talks about how some philosophers view anger as the only humane response to the suffering of others:

“To make this argument, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum appeals to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s experience of being rescued from a Nazi death camp. On seeing the horrors of the camp, Wiesel recounts, an American soldier started yelling and cursing. Rather than finding the soldier’s behavior upsetting or offensive, Wiesel found his behavior justified, reasonable, and genuinely humane.”

In contrast to this example, the professor then talks about Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. The story goes that when Avalokiteśvara became aware of how much suffering there was in the world, she was so overwhelmed that her head split into eleven pieces:

“The buddha Amitābha, upon seeing her plight, gave her eleven heads to help her hear the cries of those who are suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempted to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that her two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha came to her aid and appointed her a thousand arms to let her reach out to those in need.”

He then asks which you would rather encounter if you were a person in need: the angry soldier, or the compassionate bodhisattva. I see the value of both, and I don’t think it needs to be an either-or question. But I’ve started to realize that I need to work on being more compassionate and less angry. There are horrible people doing horrible things in the world, but instead of wasting my energy fixating on them, I need to be paying more attention to the victims and to the good that is happening. Like anything, it’ll take practice, but I need to stick with it.

humbled

I was really humbled at work on Wednesday. In the morning our new department director scheduled a meeting for later that afternoon, and when we all called in he said he wanted to talk about current events. Then he broke down in tears, and had a really tough time getting the words out.

In the conversation that followed, many of my co-workers surprised me with their personal interest in the subject and the depth of their knowledge about it. I really respected the vulnerability they demonstrated, and their willingness to speak up and express themselves.

I stayed quiet, mostly because I’ve been avoiding the news. Some time last year, I started to realize that the headlines just made me angry, and I made it a practice to stay off social media and news apps. I started easing myself back in by listening to Marketplace every morning earlier this year (which turned out to be perfect timing to be aware of the pandemic as it entered the U.S. and started to spread), but then I fell off the habit again.

I’ve been thinking over the last few months about how, if it weren’t for my wife giving me the important news about the pandemic, I would have no idea what’s going on. It’s really not fair of me to appoint her my liaison to the outside world, and I had been thinking I should change that. But current events finally pushed me over the edge. As infuriating as it is that our country’s president cannot be the leader it needs during a time of unprecedented crisis, I can’t let that fury drive me away from public life entirely.

The first thing I read after wading back into the news was the statement by Jim Mattis released yesterday. The takeaway quote for me:

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us...We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

I’ll have more to say about this quote in another post.