link to original reddit post by /u/Onyournrvs
The past year of relative isolation has given me a lot of time to think about my life and my relationship with the liberty movement. I've thought about what I hope to achieve and how I might be able to achieve it - for myself, for my friends and family, and for the world at large - and what I've come to realize is just how much of our struggle to achieving liberty is an internal battle rather than external one.
When examining problems and contemplating solutions related to liberty and individual freedom, we often tend to first look outwardly at the actions of others which we perceive to be at odds with our ability to achieve our goals. We focus on what other people do and how those actions negatively affects us. Then we internalize it. It becomes deeply personal and we feel victimized by it because, often, we are powerless to stop it. We assume the worst about people and their motives. They must be doing it on purpose and it must be because they hate us. It's the only answer that makes any sense. They must be mean or selfish or spiteful or malicious. At best, they're willfully ignorant or simply too brainwashed to realize that what they do and believe is harmful to us. It makes us feel angry and scared and anxious until we grudgingly accept the inevitable hopelessness of it all.
Then we begin to slide.
The world is never going to change, we think. In fact, it's only getting worse and I'm going to have to fend for myself. It's me against the world and I'm probably going to lose. We fall headlong into an existential crisis, bouncing between our certainty that all is lost and our desperation to prepare for the inevitable because our very lives are at stake and the whole world hangs by a thread, on the verge of devolving into a melee of all against all where only the strong few with the guns and the beans and the gold will survive.
And even as we're powerless to stop the world from crumbling at our feet, we are quick to identify the culprits. We know exactly who's to blame. It's all the fault of the liberals or the banksters or the politicians or the socialists or the sheeple who blindly go along with whatever they are told. They'll get their comeuppance one day...you just wait and see, you grumble to yourself as you strip and oil your carbine and stack your bullion.
But is this reality? Does this accurately reflect the world we actually live in? Is it all just hopelessness and despair and are the libs really out to get us?
We all live in our own heads and are wired to presume that our perceptions about the world are accurate. We are highly resistant to information that contradicts our perceptions and, conversely, receive hits to the pleasure centers of our brain whenever we encounter information that confirms them. We form tribes, seeking others of like mind while rejecting those who disagree with us. Over time, our thinking becomes increasingly binary. Partisan. There is only right and wrong. You either agree with me or you reject me. You are either part of the in-group or you are part of the out-group. You are either my friend or you are my enemy.
Simple arguments are best. Nuanced, well-researched and well-reasoned arguments are costly and time consuming and, ultimately, unpersuasive. Besides, no one really wants to consider the other side's perspective or that other options may exist or that, perhaps, we might be wrong. No! Keep the arguments simple and never waver from your position. What is different is wrong and what is wrong is evil. Any other position is simply equivocation. There is no room for a middle ground and no tolerance for compromise.
This binary thinking makes us extremely vulnerable to manipulation and control. We are easily divided and pitted against each other by unscrupulous, power-seeking sociopaths. These parasites confirm our suspicions and fan our anger. Moreover, owing to our highly-attenuated sense of justice, we easily become addicted to the moral outrage and self-righteousness these manipulations breed. Those opposing us deserve what's coming to them, we're told, and don't believe for one second that they won't do it to us if we don't do it to them first.
With this oppositional line of reasoning as our default position, how can we possibly hope to achieve liberty? We've allowed ourselves to believe that we must first crush our enemy completely before we can ever hope to be free.
What we fail to realize is that this way of thinking about others moves us further from liberty rather than closer to it and if we persist in this way then we will most assuredly never be free.
The Simple Truth
The vast majority of people are fundamentally good - honest, thoughtful, kind, hard-working - and nearly all people want the same things - happiness, success, security, companionship, and good health. Moreover, most people want these things for other people too, not just for themselves.
We don't have to take this claim on faith either because it's so easy to demonstrate.
Consider that each of us does not, as a rule, choose to surround ourselves with friends who are dishonest, thoughtless, mean, horrible people who seek only misery and failure and isolation in their lives. Instead, we choose friends whom we consider to be good people. None of us is unique in this regard. We all do it. We all seek out and surround ourselves with people whom we consider to be good. If we all do this, then it stands to reason that most people - the vast majority of people, in fact - are what we would all consider to be good.
But this recognition leads us to a troubling conclusion. If most people - the vast majority - are fundamentally good, then how is it possible that half or more of them can also be our enemy? If most people are good and half are our enemy, then what does that say about us? Is it possible that we might be the bad people? I don't think I'm a bad person. In fact, I'm fairly certain I'm a good person, so I must be wrong about those other people. They're not mostly good and must actually be bad. Right?
Perhaps there's a simpler answer.
What if, unbeknownst to us, we are being manipulated into making hasty generalizations about whole populations of people based on spurious or inconsequential information? What if we are being induced to negatively and harshly judge people's entire character on minor perceived difference or beliefs that may or may not even exist or be strongly held in the first place? Are we really condemning people for their faults or mistakes, no matter how small or transient they may be?
We are all flawed, each and every one of us. We all have bad days (or weeks or months or even years). We all have our vices and our personal shames and our regrets. We've all acted hypocritically, in direct opposition to our own moral compasses. We've all entertained terrible thoughts and occasionally acted on some of them. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, we've all betrayed someone. We've all lied to someone. We've all hurt someone.
Despite all of these flaws, however, we're not all wallowing in self-loathing. At our core, we still consider ourselves to be fundamentally good people. So, we rationalize our actions or, if we cannot, we learn to forgive ourselves. We recognize that what we did was wrong. We apologize to and seek forgiveness from those we harmed. We resolve to be better people in the future. We extend this forgiveness to our in-group. We are quick to give our friends the benefit of the doubt and to be understanding.
Yet, we rarely consider the same for those we don't know and almost never for those we consider to be our enemies. Despite the ease with which we are willing to forgive ourselves and our friends for our respective shortcomings, we are loath to extend that same charity to others.
Authoritarians thrive on our lack of empathy. They don't want us to understand each another. They don't want us to agree to disagree. Authoritarians can only retain their power over us if we are constantly at each other's throats, unwilling to talk to each other and unwilling to compromise. Anything less than total capitulation by the other side is tantamount to defeat, we're told. Every election is the most important of our lives and the complete destruction of our culture and our way of life perpetually hangs in the balance.
The greatest lie of them all, however, is that there can ever be a victory between the political right and left.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The political right and the political left are simple two sides of the same authoritarian coin. A two-team sports league, each the other's sole rival. As long as this lie persists, as long as people believe that one and only one side can win, we will never be free of authoritarianism and tyranny and theft.
Before we can live in a world free from institutional violence and authoritarian control, we must first learn to become more empathetic individuals. We must resist the urge to reflexively see the other as our enemy and instead work to build more understanding communities. We must extend to others the same forgiveness and benefit of the doubt that we give to ourselves because they are just as good and just as deserving of it as we are.
Resist the temptations of despair and moral outrage. Do not let authoritarians manipulate and divide you. Take a moment to get out of your own head and try to put yourself in your neighbor's shoes. Talk to them and actually listen to what they have to say. Understand why they do and believe the things they do and recognize just how much you have in common rather than dwelling on differences that, more often than not, simply don't matter.
We all want acceptance. We all want the benefit of the doubt. We all want to be forgiven for our misdeeds. But in order to get those things from others, we must first be willing to give it. As lovers of liberty, we have the opportunity to lead by example and be the change we want to see in the world. People are drawn to goodness and virtue like moths to a flame because it's what each of us strives for in their own life and we understand and recognize it in others intuitively.
We are all good people who more or less want the same things. Reject the lie that there can only be one winner and one loser. Reject the implicit violence of right/left politics. Don't give authoritarians the power they crave to control your life by pitting you in a contrived, winner-take-all fight against your neighbor because it's a game you will never win.
The only winning move is not to play.