Is Your Character Part of the Problem, or Helping You Find Solutions?
September 16, 2005
9:02 a.m., MT

Butler Shaffer's been working it hard this week, first in A Monopoly on Life, and today in The Market and the State. Both address Katrina's aftermath, but in his typical style, Butler offers far-reaching insights and ideas within that context. A couple of quotes, one from each piece, stood out for me:

I do not recall the author of the words that have long been burned into my mind: "a man has a moral duty not to allow his children to live under tyranny." At no time in my life has this obligation been called to accountability more than now, as our institutionalized thinking continues to play out, in exponential fashion, its implicit absurdities. The qualities that either foster or destroy a civilization are ultimately to be found only within the character and thinking of the individuals who comprise it. Our world is only as peaceful, free, loving, and creative as you and I make it; and can become violent, tyrannical, inhumane, and destructive only as our individual thinking produces such ends. [emphasis mine]

Does your character and thinking put you on the side of fostering, or destroying, civilization? If it's the former, read on for the second quote:

One of the most dangerous assumptions to infect the human mind has been the idea that people can act out of any motivation other than the pursuit of their self-interests. To war against self-interest is to war against the nature of life itself. There is no action you or I can take that is not driven by self-interest. ....

But having said that is not to confine the scope of one’s self-interested pursuits. If individuals or groups want to accomplish some objective, they are free to organize themselves and their resources to do so. [emphasis mine]

I'm a firm believer in creating your own reality -- or self-fulfilling prophecy, if you prefer to think of it that way. Not in any mystical sense, but in the very real sense of reaping what one sows. I've seen it at work in my own life, and others' lives: negativity breeds more despair, less inclination to try a different solution or re-frame the problem; a can-do, positive attitude opens up vistas of possibility, and typically one feels a sense of accomplishment for overcoming challenges and obstacles and a willingness to tackle another one.

In the face of an imploding nation-state, it can seem Pollyannish to advocate choosing a positive course. And one could adopt an ostrich strategy, and blindly focus on vacuous positives in lieu of a more realistic perspective. But if you want to solve problems, if you want to create a freer, happier situation for yourself, reality must be acknowledged and dealt with.

The highly fascist American corporocrat culture is perverse in many ways. It's breathing its last gasps, and trying with all its might to suck the life out of anyone who'll let it. It almost got me last year. To focus one's energies against this beast is to pour them into a black hole, it seems to me. Rather, if we freedom lovers focus on improving our own lives -- shedding the propaganda and the public-policy collectivism that only feeds the beast -- the result will inevitably be that we succeed in creating greater freedom for ourselves. Those steps, repeated and writ large by many, ensure a better, saner culture.

Sunni

Comments: 1 person has added a thought or two ...

On Sunday, September 18th, at approximately 2:02 a.m. Mountain time, Scott Bieser said:

Reading your comments about the power of positive thinking, for some reason, reminds me of how I felt when I formally declared my independence from the Libertarian Party -- and thereby from the mad-house of electoral politics.

It was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. I felt as if a massive burden had lifted from my shoulders. I felt giddy, and had a burst of creative energy.

And since then I have found that working for liberty through my creative skills rather than going around collecting ballot signatures or slogging through "wasted vote" arguments over and over again, has banished my old "burn-out" cycle and sharpened both my radicalism and joi de vivre (hope I spelled that right).

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