Can you imagine a public school funded with a voluntary pool; administered by people without the authority to use force; a school that teaches children the basics of reason and reduction, hones their skills in communication, emboldens their wills and skills and graduates them into the world well prepared to engage it at the age of say 16 or whenever their capacities demonstrate?
Can you imagine a big city police force where officers wear everyday clothes not uniforms, sometimes they carry a gun, sometimes they leave it in their car, and spend most of their time chatting with people in the local hang outs, and mentoring youngsters struggling to majority with the natural lessons that motivate a respect for the rights of their fellows?
Can you imagine a tremendous spaceship dock between the earth and the moon where spaceships are built to send adventurers into the great void toward surveyed stars; a place crowded not only by engineers and workers but pioneers, pilgrims and explorers as well; all of them reaching for the stars, and for the resources and the wisdom those distant worlds contain?
Can you imagine?
Not many can; at least most of our fellows in this wold cannot imagine to the capacity that they might, or perhaps that they should be able.
Just about every settled nook and cranny of our world is ruled by a single basic ideology: Control.
Imagination is the enemy of control. Imagination is freedom.
Fear is the primary tool for controlling men because fear destroys the capacity to imagine. Fear operates in our minds at a level so that when it is invoked senses and sensibilities shut down.
The mind stops accepting input, instead it turns all resources toward solving the present problem. However fear is invoked in a mind it has touched a survival function and there is little to no room for any other thought, especially the aesthetics of what might be, when fear provides a mindless solution: look away.
Fear is the enemy of imagination. Imagination is freedom.
Can you imagine?
I have witnessed among activists in all tribal political realms a propensity to use fear. One only needs to turn on CNN or Fox to see the work of propagandists feeding the minds of good people with evil thoughts. These mechanisms of control do not move society forward, they slow it down. It is an organic reaction within the hierarchies of power to stresses on their holdings from below, a market of subjugation played and paid with a currency of depression and angst.
The bulk of those who engage the public, to move minds, are employed by men who only know how to profit by burdening society – having set themselves as gatekeepers to relief at the points of pain. Compounding the effect and the problem is that it is more important to men of power that they own a larger portion of the pie. They are not at all interested that the pie grows. For these men progress is the enemy.
So how does a philosophy that is based on freedom compete in a world owned by men who wield their power in these ways? We eschew fear.
Can you imagine?
Imagination is Freedom. Imagination is the enemy of Fear.
The wills of men constantly seek to soar. The power of fear, in a world controlled by evil men is an illusion and a phantasm and no more. Replace the image.
When you fix in the minds eye an image of what it truly wants, fearful images are transformed. Hope is the opposite of fear, it is the same energy but it is directed by the mind outward and not inward.
Hope is the greater motivator over fear. In our world it is not as easy to invoke because we are fearful ourselves. When people’s minds are turned inwards by fear, they are more malleable, more fluid seeking the fastest path to level and thus easily channeled downwards. There in is the weakness of evil. Those who provoke fear, feed hope as well. It is this thin lie that is what needs to be replaced. We lose minds when we try and emulate the control structures use of fear, it is our enemy. Where we win – as libertarians, anarchists or freedom lovers of any stripe – is in providing hope.
Can you imagine?
Imagination is Freedom. Imagination is the enemy of Control.
The world ascribed by a libertarian and anarchistic philosophy is a beautiful one. It is a world of peace, freedom, respect and empowerment. It is a world where men are reaching for stars, and pursuing science with great zeal. It is a world of happy creative people taking understanding of the gestalt of humanity to higher levels. It is a geometrically radiating sphere of progress, unfettered by men who would ruin for reward.
Imagine what might happen if we as a body of practicing philosophers, as a movement in our outreach, we reversed out tendency for selling ourselves with the fear of fear:
The injustice, the horror, the evil, and all that we revile as institutional violence and fraud. What if instead, we sought to abrogate fear entirely?
Imagine what might be accomplished if retired our practices of investing time, energy and resources testing philosophical purity among the already converted. What if instead we set free the wings of imagination and hope in our friends, family and neighbors?
Imagine what we might win should we shape our goals toward replacing the lies of control in the minds of our fellows; replacing them with well illustrated and beautiful truths of a world living in freedom. Imagine what friends we might make in releasing them from bondage, for helping them empower their wills.
Can you imagine?
What image of a free society do you keep in your mind’s eye that moves you? What do you want out of liberty that you believe in it and that motivates you to advocate for it?
This is a great article, Mathew. Thanks for writing it; its getting bookmarked.
Next year in New Hampshire.
Thanks Chip. If you have a moment. Do you think you might paint a picture of what next year in New Hampshire could and should look like? Not what needs to change, but what does a moment of joy look like in that changed state next year? Please feel free to choose your reply medium. I like images myself 🙂
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egm6322.s09.xyz.pic17.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Egm6322.s09.xyz.pic17.jpg
Actually, the reference to “Next year in New Hampshire” is a shameless knock off of the blessing traditionally given during a seder; next year in Jerusalem.
I’ll be happy to paint a picture for you, though. It’ll be all the more challenging given that i dont live there. And i want it to be a realistic picture yet a hopeful one.
One thing that i see happening in NH next year is a more robust medical marijuana law in anticipation of full legalization. The state will probably not legalize before VT or ME do, but i do see the spread of legalized cannibis to all of New England in the next decade. Probably sooner. Decriminalization will pass in NH perhaps as early as next year.
NH will also pass Constitutional Carry legislation, becoming the first state on the east coast besides VT to do so, and it will be the first legislature to do so (VT has Con Carry because of an early 20th century court case) . Unfortunately Gov. Hassan will likely veto, but she will risk an override.
Porcfest 12 will be a rousing success. And as a surprise at the end of 2015, FSP will get 20,000 signers and trigger the move earlier than expected. The squealing from NH statists will be a schadenfreude moment to remember. By way of celebration over the holidays, in state porcs will celebrate with their partners over the holidays triggering a small boom in baby porcs in the following year.
On the bitcoin front, at least one major grocery store chain in NH will begin to accept cybercurrencies.
Thanks for provoking thoughts.
As for your parting questions, they stumped me at first. My images are more about participating in finding a solution than what the solution will look like or what I’ll do when we get there.
Chip if you will forgive and allow me to project my imagination into your vision:
I see a New Hampshire prospering in a new economy with a truly progressive manner.
I see its cities are free of drug addicts, managing its problems with reasonable and medically informed social policies. A place where adults never live in fear of being raided for selectively enforced prohibitionist laws.
I see people freely trading in a medium of exchange free of currency and the encumbrance of government debt; transacting their lives free of social manipulation and institutional theft..
I see a community where citizens walk the streets secure in themselves and in their neighbors. A New Hampshire in peace, free from rampant crime because of their progressive approach to organic policing.
I see freedom attracting a tipping point flood of strong libertarian minded people to New Hampshire and the beginning of the Second Great American Experiment In Freedom.
Matthew, if youre of a mind to do it, you might want to think about writing some stuff for FSP. You have a way of words that is quite poetic.
Sandy Pierre (here at LM) writes for shire free news. Heck, im sure Carla Gericke at FSP would appreciate a hand.
David Burns,
I think that it is the hard part some times. We are motivated by fear a LOT. It usually isn’t until you stop and think about it that you realize how hard it is to try and imagine a future, much less a good one.
Thats a good point. Fear is the soul killer. I guess i’m an optimist at heart because ive never had a problem visualizing a better future.