How important is liberty to you?
How important is liberty to you?
How important is liberty?
For me, it is absolutely the most important right/tool for life.
I believe that liberty is the ONLY way to truly ‘pursue happiness’ and likely not for the reason you think. The right to freedom of thought (liberty) is so important, that free individuals must also maintain the potentially dangerous personal right to bear arms in order to guarantee it (see “What do the majority of y’all think of 2A rights?”). Yet freedom of thought can slip away quickly. Our psychological defenses must therefore remain up. This is skepticism. Simply, free and independent thinking must never be surrendered-to or compromised by, any other individual or group, and especially not the “experts”. Our physical freedom and personal happiness depend upon it.
Alarmingly, free thought and its expression are now under serious attack[1] by a pandemic of the irrational (the WOKE/Marxists).
Why is liberty important:
Freedom of thought has everything to do with the brain and how it learns. Authentically wise people are produced ONLY in liberty. Whereas, ignorant or “woke” people come about when the thoughts of these individuals are directed and limited early in life (e.g.,4 Critical Theory). The woke are irrational because their thoughts are pathologically and purposely undiversified. Moreover, because these individuals are irrational, they readily become future agents of control for others. It is societal poison.
A. The pursuit of happiness.
Happiness arises when ‘the understandings’ in a person’s brain more or less match reality. Whereas human suffering occurs when an individual’s mental understandings do not comport with reality. The closer a person understands the world around them, the more content[2] and successful the person will be.
However, so much of what we think we know is provided by others. In irrationality, people learn ideas, they don’t earn them. This is why skepticism is key. Yet skepticism is only the beginning. Reason is required to find better truths so that the individual can update the beliefs already warehoused in their brains.
B. Reason
Reason is not complex. It is both the scientific method and philosophy’s first principles. Reason is about pursuing absolute truth, but understanding that one can never claim to know it. Reason requires pursuing all known and unknown explanations for what a person observes. Rational people then attempt to disprove any and all hypotheses produced until only one remains (a truth of high confidence). The disproving process is how one earns beliefs. It produces knowledge.
C. Freedom of thought (i.e. liberty)
If a rational person wants to accurately answer a particular question, all possible ideas must be on the table. It is the only way. It is the habit a reasonable person acquires.
When thoughts/liberty is limited, the ability to revise the brain’s understanding for life is reduced. As a result, limited thinking becomes the mental habit of an irrational individual. And it is a bad mental habit.
If a person is unable to adjust their thoughts/understandings to match reality, the results from their life’s efforts will be unsatisfactory. Their efforts will not produce hoped-for results. Their success in life will thus decline, and the pursuit of happiness impossible.
Footnotes
