I realise that I shall probably come in for some shtick for even mentioning any form of spiritual faith in the same breath as Libertarianism, Hey Ho!
One of my readers picked up on the fact that I said that I had arrived at Libertarianism from ‘a Quaker vantage point’ and has asked me to explain further. I could have done so in a private reply, but have decided to stick my head above the parapet. (Yet again).
I should define what I mean by spiritual faith first. It may have a different meaning to that employed by others, for the simple reason that such things are not defined in any book of rules within the Quaker fellowship. We arrive at our own personal definition.
I don’t know, for I have never met anyone who has travelled outside of our physical existence, that there is definitively a God. Some people, armed with the knowledge that there is no proof that God doesn’t exist, are happy to believe that He does, and follow their chosen religion. Others, armed with the knowledge that there is no proof that God does exist, are happy to call themselves Atheist, and denounce all religion. I struggle with the notion that an absence of proof either way means that I should join either one of the opposing camps.
I simply don’t know. I hope, I trust, I put it no higher than that, that mankind is not the highest form of existence in overall control of our planetary system. If mankind is, I would venture that we are in bigger trouble than we are capable of envisioning. I live my life on the basis that I shan’t know the answer to this question until I die – and until I do, I will assume that there may well be a God.
The Quaker fellowship doesn’t demand of me that I declare emphatically one way or the other my beliefs. There are no churches, no intermediaries, or ‘middle men’ as I refer to them, to demand that I renounce all other beliefs and publicly declare my allegiance – just a fellowship of other people very privately going about their business, living in a simple manner, trying their level best to do more good than harm. That seems to me an eminently sensible ‘insurance policy’ just in case we do have to account for ourselves one day.
A Quaker meeting is primarily in silence, a quiet dedicated hour or so set aside to reflect on how we think we have succeeded in our personal goal of ‘more good than harm’. The silence is occasionally broken by someone who feels that they have something to say, some insight that might be of use to others. There is no obligation to speak, no reason not to. There is no High Priest to tell us how we should live, or which rules to adhere to, no village elder to declare that this or that action will be condemned by this God or that God. Nor is there anyone specially commissioned to offer us a ‘get out of jail’ card if we have managed to cause more harm than good by one of our actions.
My ‘spiritual faith’ is entirely a matter for my conscience, my personal responsibility.
When I first ventured into the political bear pit, I was puzzled by the devotion of the party members – Left or Right. Conferences were held every year to decide on the party line, henceforth those who disagreed with the party line were liable to be vilified. It was almost as though they had threatened the very salvation of the rest of their chosen tribe.
You ‘were’ a Labour voter or a Conservative voter, and therefore this is what you believed. People arrived at this ‘belief’ through a process called ‘democracy’, the conference vote, and if 51% of them believed that Black was White – then the other 49% were forced to mouth the same supposition – and that was democracy on a good day!
I don’t want to be told what to think or what to do based on a man in a suit, regardless of which way round his collar is, holding up a piece of paper and saying ‘henceforth, this is what we believe’. I would prefer to make my own mind up on the basis of individual choices at a personal level.
That doesn’t make me a dyed in the wool individualist, who merely wants to get on with my life without outside interference, contributing nothing to my fellow man. I don’t hold with that notion of Libertarianism, which seems nothing more than a form of institutionalised selfishness that uses a misplaced understanding of the Libertarian label to excuse their egotism.
If I have time, money, knowledge, a spare bed for the night, even a pork chop, that is surplus to my requirements, then the Quaker principle of doing ‘more good than harm’ requires that I share it with someone who is in need – someone who is more vulnerable to the vagaries of physical existence than I am at that moment. It is perfectly possible to do that on a personal level – you don’t require a government edict to demand that you share your supper with a starving neighbour; human beings have been doing it for centuries.
Sometimes you need more than one person to give effective help to someone in need. People can and do act in concert without government intervention. There are those who will refuse to offer help when asked. So what? Let them live their individualistic existence. There are plenty of people who will help.
Many of the early Friendly Societies, groups of people who banded together to provide help and assistance for any of their number who fell on hard times, were of the Quaker belief. The idea that people can live together in peace and tolerance, mutually supportive of each other, without being ordered to do so, is one that sits easily with my beliefs.
The Blogosphere is a Friendly Society – I still say that even after recent experiences! – it can be mutually supportive, it can achieve far more collectively than any of us do individually. I christened it the Blog Society as opposed to Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. It should form the backbone of the Libertarian movement, for it allows all those who subscribe to it to step up to a call for help or ignore it at will, no vote required, no orders given.
There will be those who mock and sneer; there will be others who use the Blogosphere to write lengthy philosophical treatise on why their political movement is the one you should be following - but the ungoverned blogosphere is the perfect environment for the Libertarian movement to exist unfettered and to do ‘more good than harm’.
That is why I have nominated Andrew Withers as the new Libertarian leader, for I know that he will take the movement in a new direction, one which I believe will benefit all of us. A direction closer to the philosophy of the early Friendly Societies rather than the foul mouthed, vitriolic and destructive Anarchism that we have become associated with.
If you doubt that this is what the Libertarian movement has become associated with – then read some of the reports on the recent student riots, where the phrase Anarchist/Libertarian was freely bandied about by journalists. The two words have become interchangeable in many minds, aided and abetted by a MSM that is keen to see the status quo of Left/Right maintained.
Libertarianism is in desperate need of re-branding! The solution is in our own hands – we don’t need to be told what to do, we are Libertarians after all.
7 comments:
You say you want a party with "no orders given" but this ignores the fact that co-ordinated action is much more effective than random uncoordinated action.
I admire the approach of Sir Tim Berners-Lee when he brought the World Wide Web into existence. The Web is a technical masterstroke, but its real success is getting everyone to actually do it. I've read the story in the book "Weaving the World Wide Web" -- twice. It's a model of how to make things happen in the modern world.
He used the analogy of a bobslay being pushed down a track. Once the bobslay builds momentum it's an unstoppable force for change, but at first he had to tour the world and ensure all the participants were pushing in the same direction. Most he'd assist with practical programming advice. Only Mosaic - the splitters that became Internet Explorer - did he cut off with the "accidental" organisation of a rival technical conference. Above all he articulated and promoted his vision of how things should be, and because it was a good vision people followed in their own interest. They did not need to be compelled or pressured, but they were co-ordinated and they were helped.
I have a finite amount of enthusiasm for activism - and it varies - at the moment I'm very excited by the possibilities for a new direction and a reinvigoration of the party - but I know that for all the pushing I do now I won't keep pushing at the same pace forever. I will eventually need to step away from the bobslay and come back to it later to give it another shove.
You can bet there will be people standing in front looking to push it back, and others thinking it should take a different track and pushing sideways.
Unless the leader actively reaches out and recruits activists to do jobs for him then the numbers of people pushing will dwindle at random - as it is now - and the momentum will be lost and another huge burst of energy will be needed to get it going again.
Unless the leader shows them which bobslay to push on and in which direction then the bobslay won't move at all. This hasn't been done so far and I present as evidence the stalled progress of the party as it stands.
We aren't pushing a little bobslay on an iced track, we're pushing a freight train across America -- uphill. It's going to take years of steady progress. We need to get serious about this whole pushing thing.
So good to read you again Anna and, as always, writing such sense.
I believe that you are right that Libertarianism needs to re-brand. It is far too easy for the MSM and others opposed to our views to use the misunderstood terms 'Anarchist' and 'Libertarian' to stop others from even listening to our message.
I am not a good enough marketeer to make any positive suggestions other than to say that I believe that if enough opinion makers were to have libertarian concepts presented to them in the right way they would change their opinions. Consequently the vast majority would then have their opinions changed because most people (95%?) get their opinions second-hand without any personal investigation or verification.
So we do not have to influence many minds. It just has to be enough of the right minds.
You present two issues.
Regarding the existence of God I prefer to start the other way around, as I did in my own experience, and try to get answers to the questions of what everything is.
And to summarise it I leave one question: Can order occur spontaneously in randomness?
Regarding the Libertarian I am inclined to agree that the violence and mentally coercive scene does not really have a part with libertarianism.
I have become interested in libertarianism because it seems to come closer to the truth than any other political and/or economic system. Individual freedom and individual responsibility is obviously the only way that works.
The manipulators, statists, elitists who throw their superiority in one's face, hate that, of course, and will try to denigrate it every step of the way. Their personal swill troughs are at stake!
I have met con men, including financial advisers and estate agents, who use the same tactics.
My perception is that people love and respect the truth if you can get it to them through all the deception and obfuscation that has been established. If one can transcend all the "narratives" they have been fed.
To do that, I think, is fairly simple but requires considerable self discipline.
If I may I am going to repeat a comment I put somewhere else:
It seems to me that we don’t actually need to get stuck into the enemy at all.
Being as we are interested in what we perceive as being reality, the truth, then “truth rules” apply. The first truth rule is that you don’t have to fight for it. The liars have to fight because they are trying to maintain what is, truthfully, an untenable position/situation. All that truth requires is that it be simply presented. The presence of truth causes lies to evaporate, okay, sometimes with difficulty, but basically, simply to evaporate.
To get into fighting lies is an engagement trap of the enemy. You are then on his terms.
All we need to do is present reality, which is of course already there, so what we do, in fact, is just remind people of what, truthfully, they already know.
Reality cannot be broken. It can be distorted (which distortion must be compensated to bring the whole back to reality) but it cannot be broken.
As an atheist, I quite like the sound of Quaker-ism, apart from the "not drinking alcohol" bit.
As to the history of 'Libertarianism', I preferred the old fashioned Adam Smith classical liberal view, which was mainly about economic liberation (from the real slave owners, - the land 'owners'). Although they hinted at how bad Big Government could be (in which they were quite correct), they were fighting quite a different battle at the time.
To boil 'Libertarianism' down to important but secondary issues like allowing smoking in pubs, turning off the traffic lights etc, while reversing the whole process of trying to liberate us from the real slave owners (who thrive just as well under BIg Government as under the minimalist government that we had a century or two ago is to miss the point - perhaps deliberately (there is a large overlap between the Faux Libertarians and the NIMBYs and Home-Owner-Ists and worshippers of privatised tax collectors).
John, I cannot help feeling that you have a somewhat idealistic view of the truth.
When one is talking about economics and politics there are many who lie and distort the truth on purpose and there are even more who lie and distort the truth through self delusion.
Telling the truth is often not enough because not everybody is at the right point in their personal development to understand or appreciate that it is truth. Many simply are not ready emotionally to accept what can be uncomfortable truths.
I was one of those people. Had I encountered Libertarianism - classical liberalism in my twenties I simply would have passed it by and continued to believe all sorts of idiotic and idealistic ideas.
Being truth it still would not have had the slightest impression on my wrong-headedness.
Yes, Westerlyman, it is a battle. Not least, with one's own capacity for self deception.
(It is a problem with libertarians, too. Getting all assertive and controlling, and "I know best", when that is the very motivation that screwed things up in the first place!)
To my thinking it is where discipline comes in, which can be tedious. If one can resist all the temptations to slip off the simple facts of a situation, one can penetrate right through to the heart of the matter. Well, that's my theory.
In practice, indeed, there are many difficulties.
But the principle is simple.
If someone had presented the facts, devoid of any prejudice or compromise, perhaps the light would have gone on in one of those revelationary moments, in your twenties?
I am still getting there and have been through all sorts of compromises. Sometimes it seems it's the only way we can survive?
"If you doubt that this is what the Libertarian movement has become associated with – then read some of the reports on the recent student riots, where the phrase Anarchist/Libertarian was freely bandied about by journalists."
Never mind what journalists bandy about, there is more than an association between libertarian and anarchist. They are overlapping. This doesn't apply to some schools of anarchism but it certainly applies to anarcho-capitalism.
The Libertarian Party should be for all libertarians. As long as people agree to the sine qua non of libertarianism, then there should be a place at the table for them.
Libertarianism does not need re-branding. If it is misrepresented, then challenge the misrepresentation, don't run away from the challenge.
It's a fair point that the libertarian bloggosphere needs to evolve, and ranting and cursing can only go so far, but such blogs were key to carving a place and a presence for libertarians in the blogging world, and should not be written out of our history. Let those who are more measured and erudite lead by example.
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