By Ed Democracy
Where We, the People, Need to Go
We, the people, need to teach each other how to organize sustainably to keep our power where it originates - WITH US! - so that we, the people, can use our power when we need it for our local human good purposes - "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Where We, the People, are, Now
We, the people, are thoroughly divided & conquered by the many ideologies to which we subscribe in an effort to make sense of the world. Almost all of them make some sense here & there, while none of them is sufficient to guide humanity through a sustainable future. None of these worldviews (...these -isms) can be said to be OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people. Therefore, we, the people, must embark on a process to gather common people to create a common worldview based on common human needs using common sense and common decency to create a new social contract. This process must use the best of the old ( democracy 1.0 ) - townhall-style meetings - with the best of the new ( democracy 2.0 ) - internet, social media, teleconferencing, etc.. The process must be transparent & inclusive for all who would like to participate in developing a social contract OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people! Unless and until, we, the people, embark on this process and make enough forward progress to break the inertia of current events to get on our own course under our own steam (or sail) in our own vessel - until then - we will remain a prisoner of events under the boots of bureaucratic tyrants! To this end, I am developing AmericanCommons.com to begin this process.
Where We, the People, Have Been
Here are a few pieces - excerpts & links by/on Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Russell, and Chomsky - providing the historical depth of background necessary to contextualize and clarify the meaning of the current text of human history in which we, the people, find ourselves. Also, an interview piece with Chomsky referencing what he calls, "Hume's Paradox".
Force and Opinion
Noam Chomsky
Z Magazine, July-August, 1991
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The Untamed Rabble
Hume's paradox of government arises only if we suppose that a crucial element of essential human nature is what Bakunin called "an instinct for freedom." It is the failure to act upon this instinct that Hume found surprising. The same failure inspired Rousseau's classic lament that people are born free but are everywhere in chains, seduced by the illusions of the civil society that is created by the rich to guarantee their plunder. Some may adopt this assumption as one of the "natural beliefs" that guide their conduct and their thought. There have been efforts to ground the instinct for freedom in a substantive theory of human nature. They are not without interest, but they surely come nowhere near establishing the case. Like other tenets of common sense, this belief remains a regulative principle that we adopt, or reject, on faith. Which choice we make can have large-scale effects for ourselves and others.
Those who adopt the common sense principle that freedom is our natural right and essential need will agree with Bertrand Russell that anarchism is "the ultimate ideal to which society should approximate." Structures of hierarchy and domination are fundamentally illegitimate. They can be defended only on grounds of contingent need, an argument that rarely stands up to analysis. As Russell went on to observe 70 years ago, "the old bonds of authority" have little intrinsic merit. Reasons are needed for people to abandon their rights, "and the reasons offered are counterfeit reasons, convincing only to those who have a selfish interest in being convinced." "The condition of revolt," he went on, "exists in women towards men, in oppressed nations towards their oppressors, and above all in labour towards capital. It is a state full of danger, as all past history shows, yet also full of hope."
Russell traced the habit of submission in part to coercive educational practices. His views are reminiscent of 17th and 18th century thinkers who held that the mind is not to be filled with knowledge "from without, like a vessel," but "to be kindled and awaked." "The growth of knowledge [resembles] the growth of Fruit; however external causes may in some degree cooperate, it is the internal vigour, and virtue of the tree, that must ripen the juices to their just maturity." Similar conceptions underlie Enlightenment thought on political and intellectual freedom, and on alienated labor, which turns the worker into an instrument for other ends instead of a human being fulfilling inner needs -- a fundamental principle of classical liberal thought, though long forgotten, because of its revolutionary implications. These ideas and values retain their power and their pertinence, though they are very remote from realization, anywhere. As long as this is so, the libertarian revolutions of the 18th century remain far from consummated, a vision for the future.
One might take this natural belief to be confirmed by the fact that despite all efforts to contain them, the rabble continue to fight for their fundamental human rights. And over time, some libertarian ideals have been partially realized or have even become common coin. Many of the outrageous ideas of the 17th century radical democrats, for example, seem tame enough today, though other early insights remain beyond our current moral and intellectual reach.
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The same failure inspired Rousseau's classic lament that people are born free but are everywhere in chains, seduced by the illusions of the civil society that is created by the rich to guarantee their plunder.
[THE SOCIAL CONTRACT OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT
by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762) Translated 1782 by G. D. H. Cole, public domain]
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[ Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian]
You've said the real drama since 1776 has been the "relentless attack of the prosperous few upon the rights of the restless many." I want to ask you about the "restless many." Do they hold any cards?
Sure. They've won a lot of victories. The country is a lot more free than it was two hundred years ago. For one thing, we don't have slaves. That's a big change. Thomas Jefferson's goal, at the very left-liberal end of the spectrum, was to create a country "free of blot or mixture" -- meaning no red Indians, no black people, just good white Anglo-Saxons. That's what the liberals wanted.
They didn't succeed. They did pretty much get rid of the native population -- they almost succeeded in "exterminating" them (as they put it in those days) -- but they couldn't get rid of the black population, and over time they've had to incorporate them in some fashion into society.
Freedom of speech has been vastly extended. Women finally received the franchise 150 years after the revolution. After a very bloody struggle, workers finally won some rights in the 1930s -- about fifty years after they did in Europe. (They've been losing them ever since, but they won them to some extent.)
In many ways large parts of the general population have been integrated into the system of relative prosperity and relative freedom -- almost always as a result of popular struggle. So the general population has lots of cards.
That's something that [English philosopher] David Hume pointed out a couple of centuries ago. In his work on political theory, he describes the paradox that, in any society, the population submits to the rulers, even though force is always in the hands of the governed.
Ultimately the governors, the rulers, can only rule if they control opinion -- no matter how many guns they have. This is true of the most despotic societies and the most free, he wrote. If the general population won't accept things, the rulers are finished.
That underestimates the resources of violence, but expresses important truths nonetheless. There's a constant battle between people who refuse to accept domination and injustice and those who are trying to force people to accept them.
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[ ED: So I went to research the original Hume for more depth & background. Here is an excerpt of a 5-page piece by Hume where he covers about 5,000 years of human history with the few controlling the many via manipulation of opinion as referenced by Chomsky, above: ]
ESSAYS, MORAL AND POLITICAL. (1741-1742, 1777)
by David Hume
NOTHING appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or praetorian bands, like men, by their opinion.
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[ ED: Here's an excerpt from the Kant piece we have discussed:]
IMMANUEL KANT
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.
But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the great masses a few will always think for themselves, a few who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for each person's calling to think for himself. But it should be particularly noted that if a public that was first placed in this yoke by the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke--so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.
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[SOURCE URL:
IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784)
[ WIKIpedia entry on Kant piece:
