WEBVTT NOTE A Definition of Freedom 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 A Definition of Freedom 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Freedom is one of the most interesting concepts, and at the same time probably one of the most misunderstood and abused terms that we have in the English language. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:26.000 It is an extremely important idea. Incidentally, we have another word that means much the same thing, liberty. 4 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:31.840 In fact, the English language is particularly rich in this particular because we do have 5 00:00:31.840 --> 00:00:38.680 two words that mean essentially the same, liberty and freedom. Many languages only have 6 00:00:38.680 --> 00:00:46.480 one depending on where they are geographically, and there are a number of languages, more 7 00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:51.520 or less primitive languages, which do not have the word at all and hence do not have 8 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:58.080 The word freedom has a very interesting history. 9 00:00:58.080 --> 00:01:04.240 So far as we are able to learn at the present time at least, the word freedom first appears 10 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:12.380 in writing about 2,000 BC, nearly 4,000 years ago. 11 00:01:12.380 --> 00:01:24.860 It is found in a writing by a man named Urukagina in the Mesopotamian village of Lagash. Urukagina 12 00:01:24.860 --> 00:01:31.920 in writing at that time, and this particular writing will appear in a book by a man named 13 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:39.440 Myer, and the name of the book is History Begins at Sumer, S-U-M-E-R, History Begins 14 00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:48.280 at Sumer by Myer. And the author here tells us, and he is a Sumerian, a Sumerianologist, 15 00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:55.400 that is he is one of the few men alive who can translate the Sumerian cuneiform script, 16 00:01:55.400 --> 00:02:02.960 which is what he's dealing with, he tells us that this particular essay by Ura Kagena 17 00:02:02.960 --> 00:02:10.960 comes from Lagash and relates to a condition that Ura Kagena found in Lagash at the time 18 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:17.840 he wrote. Ura Kagena said that the people in Lagash were losing their freedom. And the 19 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:23.200 reason that they were losing their freedom, he said, was because they had a new political 20 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:31.920 leader who was sort of an alien and he had increased the taxes and the regulations and 21 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:37.060 was engaged in virtually enslaving the entire market area. People couldn't exchange or 22 00:02:37.060 --> 00:02:44.540 produce without paying a remarkably higher and ever higher taxes to this politician. 23 00:02:44.540 --> 00:02:49.940 And Ura Kageena offered himself more or less as a reform candidate, indicating that if 24 00:02:49.940 --> 00:02:54.900 If he could become king, why he would change all this, and the taxes would be repealed 25 00:02:54.900 --> 00:03:01.380 and everything would get back to the way he remembered it as being before. 26 00:03:01.380 --> 00:03:06.780 I don't know, and Mayer doesn't make it clear, just how it occurred, but apparently 27 00:03:06.780 --> 00:03:12.820 Ura Kogina won the election, or whatever they had at that time, because he became the ruler 28 00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:18.260 of Lagash, perhaps after he had made this literary appeal in the essay that has been 29 00:03:18.260 --> 00:03:19.580 unearthed. 30 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:27.180 In any case, apparently the recovery that Ura Kageena invoked, and indeed he did so, 31 00:03:27.180 --> 00:03:29.540 because the essay contains this element. 32 00:03:29.540 --> 00:03:36.020 It explains that after Ura Kageena came to power, the taxes were repealed, the laws were 33 00:03:36.020 --> 00:03:40.980 modified, the regulations were put aside, and there was something in the nature of an 34 00:03:40.980 --> 00:03:43.860 economic recovery in Lagash for a while. 35 00:03:43.860 --> 00:03:48.000 But apparently it was too little, or too late, or both. 36 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:54.580 Because about ten years after Ura Kageena comes to power, Lagash simply ceases to exist. 37 00:03:54.580 --> 00:03:58.560 It is blotted from the pages of history and has never returned. 38 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.640 Now just what caused that we don't know. 39 00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:05.440 Probably there was an invasion from an outside force. 40 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:10.000 It may have been aided and abetted by some type of economic collapse from within. 41 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:14.300 We simply don't have enough data to know exactly what did occur. 42 00:04:14.300 --> 00:04:21.300 We only know that Ura Kagena is the last ruler of Lagash, that he came to power as a reform 43 00:04:21.300 --> 00:04:27.220 candidate somehow and put in the reforms according to this essay. 44 00:04:27.220 --> 00:04:30.220 And this is where we first find the word freedom in writing. 45 00:04:30.220 --> 00:04:31.980 I think that's fascinating. 46 00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:37.220 To think that the first time the word appears in literature is in a complaint about high 47 00:04:37.220 --> 00:04:38.220 taxes. 48 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:42.540 I think, you know, it's an interesting thing about people. 49 00:04:42.540 --> 00:04:50.900 We tend to value the things that we don't have. And when men are relatively free, they 50 00:04:50.900 --> 00:04:55.820 don't really value freedom because they're not really aware that they have it. It's 51 00:04:55.820 --> 00:05:01.540 just like a man who has a good well and a plentiful supply of water. It's not particularly 52 00:05:01.540 --> 00:05:06.760 valuable to him because it's right there and he has all that he wants and can use. 53 00:05:06.760 --> 00:05:13.260 But then when the well runs dry, or when the person doesn't have his freedom, then he 54 00:05:13.260 --> 00:05:20.520 begins to really evaluate it very highly, and the less he has of it, the more important 55 00:05:20.520 --> 00:05:29.780 it seems to become to him. And I think this, in a sense, is the way we work as people. 56 00:05:29.780 --> 00:05:34.820 I think it could be expressed with the little jingle that perhaps you remember. As a rule, 57 00:05:34.820 --> 00:05:42.820 When a man's a fool, when it's hot, he wants it cool. When it's cool, he wants it hot, always wanting what is not. 58 00:05:42.820 --> 00:05:49.820 And that's just a little way of explaining how our value system works. We value things that are scarce. 59 00:05:49.820 --> 00:05:56.820 And the more scarce they become, if they have a high utility to us, the more we value them. In fact, they become priceless. 60 00:05:56.820 --> 00:06:01.820 And yet, if we have an abundance of the same thing, it becomes less and less valuable to us. 61 00:06:01.820 --> 00:06:06.540 and we are sated by it and finally we grow indifferent to it and in a sense this has 62 00:06:06.540 --> 00:06:09.820 been the nature of freedom. 63 00:06:09.820 --> 00:06:15.900 So anyway, we have the word arising there in the Middle East, in Mesopotamia, perhaps 64 00:06:15.900 --> 00:06:18.180 around 2000 BC. 65 00:06:18.180 --> 00:06:22.740 From that time on the word has a sort of a migration. 66 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:26.400 It is picked up in other languages. 67 00:06:26.400 --> 00:06:34.460 It crosses toward the north and we find words that are derived from the same stem arising 68 00:06:34.460 --> 00:06:41.600 in the Balkan languages, in the Germanic languages, in the Slavic languages, and ultimately in 69 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:47.960 the Norse languages. There is a very similar word or words that all come from the same 70 00:06:47.960 --> 00:06:54.720 root. And somewhere in process it also gets into English. Now whether it comes into English 71 00:06:54.720 --> 00:07:01.520 from very early sources in the Akkadian and Sumerian tongue, or whether it gets there 72 00:07:01.520 --> 00:07:05.720 from the Germanic or the Norse languages, I don't know. 73 00:07:05.720 --> 00:07:10.820 We only know that the word freedom does get into English, and that's generally the way 74 00:07:10.820 --> 00:07:11.940 it has migrated. 75 00:07:11.940 --> 00:07:16.720 It originated in the Middle East and then seemed to go north, and possibly north and 76 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:17.720 west. 77 00:07:17.720 --> 00:07:24.420 Now, the word liberty, on the other hand, is of Greek origin, or possibly pre-Greek. 78 00:07:24.420 --> 00:07:29.940 As to that, I cannot be sure at the moment. Certainly it is a Greek word, or a word of 79 00:07:29.940 --> 00:07:37.380 Greek origin. The Greeks used it. It was translated from the Greek into the Latin, and the Romans 80 00:07:37.380 --> 00:07:41.660 used it. They used the word liberty, not the word freedom. The French picked it up from 81 00:07:41.660 --> 00:07:47.700 the Latin, and they have a word for liberty. And then the English language got it either 82 00:07:47.700 --> 00:07:54.100 from the French or the Latin. And so in English we have both words, the word of liberty and 83 00:07:54.100 --> 00:07:59.700 and the word of freedom, and both mean essentially the same thing. The concept apparently was 84 00:07:59.700 --> 00:08:06.660 more or less a commonly held concept dating to a very early time in human experience, 85 00:08:06.660 --> 00:08:12.340 and this is how the concept was originally. Etymologically speaking, it was formed with 86 00:08:12.340 --> 00:08:19.100 this thought in mind, that freedom is a condition that relates to the in-group. That is, within 87 00:08:19.100 --> 00:08:28.340 a clan or a tribe or, if you like, within the fray trees or the gens. The people there 88 00:08:28.340 --> 00:08:33.480 are free. That is to say, they are not under suspicion. They can do as they please. We 89 00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:39.580 trust them because they are part of our group. But everybody outside of our group must be 90 00:08:39.580 --> 00:08:47.260 viewed with suspicion and potential enmity because they are not free. Thus, freedom was 91 00:08:47.260 --> 00:08:54.020 not viewed as a general condition or even a condition that could be considered as desirable 92 00:08:54.020 --> 00:08:59.620 on any kind of a general base. It was simply a privileged condition. We thought of it that 93 00:08:59.620 --> 00:09:07.180 way as a privilege inhering to those persons who are on the inside. They are a part of 94 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:13.380 our family. They are a part of our particular culture. Then, of course, in the early days 95 00:09:13.380 --> 00:09:20.260 What would happen would be an individual would perhaps come into a territory where he was 96 00:09:20.260 --> 00:09:25.620 not a member of the in-group and he would be taken in very much under suspicion. 97 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:33.140 He would be watched, possibly treated very badly for a while until we began to trust 98 00:09:33.140 --> 00:09:37.420 him, at which point there would usually be an adoption ceremony and he'd be adopted 99 00:09:37.420 --> 00:09:38.420 into the tribe. 100 00:09:38.420 --> 00:09:44.900 Actually, what would happen would be that at the moment of his adoption, he is granted freedom. 101 00:09:44.900 --> 00:09:50.500 That is, the freedom is bestowed upon him that would be the same kind of condition that would 102 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:56.340 exist among the other members of the tribe. He's accepted as a brother and then has freedom the 103 00:09:56.340 --> 00:10:03.860 same as everyone else. So actually, the word related to a privilege condition at the outset. 104 00:10:03.860 --> 00:10:10.920 Now, with the passing of time, people began to apply the word in a more broadened sense. 105 00:10:10.920 --> 00:10:20.440 It related to a general condition in which two or more people could be together and no 106 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:22.860 rules would be invoked on anybody. 107 00:10:22.860 --> 00:10:29.580 In other words, the concept then developed as follows, that if two men are in the same 108 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:37.540 in general locality, and neither man imposes force or interferes with the will of the other 109 00:10:37.540 --> 00:10:44.660 man, then a condition of freedom pertains. However, the minute one person takes control 110 00:10:44.660 --> 00:10:50.220 of the second person, then we have lost the concept of freedom and something other than 111 00:10:50.220 --> 00:11:00.540 and Freedom exists. Now, it would be very easy to see that the word freedom, then, has 112 00:11:00.540 --> 00:11:06.500 a moral connotation. It would exist in what I have called the moral theater, which is 113 00:11:06.500 --> 00:11:13.660 the area of human behavior in which interpersonal relationships occur. And freedom only has 114 00:11:13.660 --> 00:11:22.160 application in that area. Obviously, if we have a man alone on an island, and there's 115 00:11:22.160 --> 00:11:27.340 no other person there, he would really have no use for the word freedom. Of course he 116 00:11:27.340 --> 00:11:31.500 would be free. There would be no one there to inhibit him. So naturally, his freedom 117 00:11:31.500 --> 00:11:38.160 is not in question, and the idea that he is free, or might not be free, would perhaps 118 00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:43.040 This never even occurred to him. It would be the same as, say, the word theft. What 119 00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:49.000 use would the word theft be to a man on an island by himself? The concept is inconceivable 120 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:56.900 because theft would be impossible. These words that have moral context always relate to an 121 00:11:56.900 --> 00:12:03.020 inter-human relationship. So when we think of a condition of freedom, we think of a condition 122 00:12:03.020 --> 00:12:09.740 in which more than one person is present but none of the persons in present impose their 123 00:12:09.740 --> 00:12:14.820 wills on any of the other persons and that would be a condition of freedom. 124 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:21.700 Now it is obvious that the opposite of the word freedom at least in one sense is the 125 00:12:21.700 --> 00:12:23.660 word slavery. 126 00:12:23.660 --> 00:12:29.660 If a person is enslaved, well certainly he cannot be free and it follows that if he is 127 00:12:29.660 --> 00:12:36.640 is free, he is not a slave. These would be mutually exclusive terms. And I think we recognize 128 00:12:36.640 --> 00:12:44.680 that. Most people have had a very strong feeling of antipathy toward slavery. We don't like 129 00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:51.240 it. We don't like it for ourselves. We certainly don't approve of the condition generally. 130 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:57.240 We are opposed to slavery. At least we're in the record books as opposing slavery. We 131 00:12:57.240 --> 00:13:03.640 certainly favor freedom. And yet this word is subject to all kinds of interpretations. In fact, 132 00:13:03.640 --> 00:13:14.440 I think there's a very profound difference of view here. Possibly Abraham Lincoln put his finger on 133 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:20.280 this difference about as well as anyone has ever done it. I can't quote him precisely here, and I 134 00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:27.160 And I don't have the quote handy, but he did say at one point that the world needed a good 135 00:13:27.160 --> 00:13:29.280 definition of freedom or liberty. 136 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:30.800 I don't remember which word he used. 137 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:32.300 I think he used liberty. 138 00:13:32.300 --> 00:13:36.560 But he said the world was very much in need of a good definition of liberty. 139 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:42.100 And apparently we were somewhat confused about it because with some the word meant the right 140 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:48.040 of a man to do as he pleases with himself and the products of his labor. 141 00:13:48.040 --> 00:13:52.400 And with others it seemed to mean the right of a man to do as he pleased with other men 142 00:13:52.400 --> 00:13:58.320 and the products of other men's labor. And clearly, here are two different and contrary 143 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:03.680 things, and yet we tend to call them both by the same name. Obviously, that is merely 144 00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:09.360 to confuse meanings, and we better have different names. And if the one is freedom, then its 145 00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:15.700 opposite must be slavery. And of course, I think we've pretty well accepted that view, 146 00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:21.460 as Mr. Lincoln expressed it, and let me go on record as accepting it right now. I think 147 00:14:21.460 --> 00:14:28.140 freedom in essence means that a man may do as he pleases with himself and whatever it 148 00:14:28.140 --> 00:14:36.100 is that he owns. And I think that if a man does something with another man or with something 149 00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:41.500 that the other man owns, that that is not freedom or liberty, that in fact I would have 150 00:14:41.500 --> 00:14:54.140 Now, in trying to find a good definition for freedom, possibly the best and the most succinct 151 00:14:54.140 --> 00:15:01.660 definition that I have ever heard has been this. It is a human condition in which there 152 00:15:01.660 --> 00:15:10.660 is a total absence of coercion. And I have no real objection to that definition, providing 153 00:15:10.660 --> 00:15:18.580 only that it is thoroughly understood. I'd like to show you where the danger is in that 154 00:15:18.580 --> 00:15:28.300 definition unless it is thoroughly discussed and grasped. You see, freedom is a condition 155 00:15:28.300 --> 00:15:36.300 that occupies a middle ground. It is in essence a medium of human exchange. It's a little 156 00:15:36.300 --> 00:15:49.820 Money is a condition that makes exchange possible between people. 157 00:15:49.820 --> 00:15:59.820 Now we are aware that slavery is the opposite of freedom. If a man is a slave, clearly he is not free. If he is free, clearly he is not a slave. 158 00:15:59.820 --> 00:16:16.300 The Tyrant is the person who creates the slave. 159 00:16:16.300 --> 00:16:21.980 But very few of us think of the tyrant as being a person who has lost his freedom. 160 00:16:21.980 --> 00:16:27.460 Rather, we think of the tyrant as a person who has full freedom. 161 00:16:27.460 --> 00:16:32.560 In fact, he may be having a little more freedom than the average person, because he's not 162 00:16:32.560 --> 00:16:36.840 only free to do as he pleases with himself, but he's free to do as he pleases with another 163 00:16:36.840 --> 00:16:44.860 person. And so we don't think of the tyrant as being the antithesis of freedom. Rather 164 00:16:44.860 --> 00:16:51.320 we think of the tyrant as being another free man. But now we have two types of free man. 165 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:56.980 We have a free man who is neither a tyrant nor a slave, and then we have a free man who 166 00:16:56.980 --> 00:17:03.840 who is a tyrant but not a slave. Now clearly that would have to confuse us because then 167 00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:12.260 when we say a free man we don't know whether we're referring to a non-slave or possibly 168 00:17:12.260 --> 00:17:17.780 we might be referring to a tyrant who is a non-slave because there could be two types 169 00:17:17.780 --> 00:17:25.980 of non-slaves. There could be a free non-slave and there could be a tyrant non-slave. So 170 00:17:25.980 --> 00:17:33.900 Our language hasn't quite made this point clear. I would like to stress the fact that the real enemy 171 00:17:33.900 --> 00:17:40.380 of freedom isn't the slave. The slave is merely the victim of a lack of freedom. 172 00:17:41.100 --> 00:17:47.180 The real enemy of freedom is the tyrant, but we usually don't think of the tyrant as being opposed 173 00:17:47.180 --> 00:17:53.820 to freedom. In fact, let me tell you what we do. When we think we're in danger of being enslaved, 174 00:17:53.820 --> 00:18:01.540 Institute. Our natural tendency is to try to become a tyrant over the guy that we think 175 00:18:01.540 --> 00:18:13.500 might enslave us. So we become the prime foe of freedom in an effort not to lose freedom. 176 00:18:13.500 --> 00:18:19.980 We become the very force that enslaves others in order to prevent us from being enslaved. 177 00:18:19.980 --> 00:18:27.660 Now clearly that is not an absence of coercion. That is coercion. But somehow we don't see 178 00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:34.180 that very well. We recognize coercion when the other fellow is invoking it. But when 179 00:18:34.180 --> 00:18:38.940 we invoke it on the other fellow, well that's justified and it's not really coercion, you 180 00:18:38.940 --> 00:18:46.940 see. And this is precisely the problem. We are very, very much opposed to slavery. But 181 00:18:46.940 --> 00:18:52.720 But we are not nearly as opposed to the practices that create it. 182 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:58.380 The reason is that we don't want to be a slave, but we really don't object to being a tyrant. 183 00:18:58.380 --> 00:19:03.320 If only we could be a successful tyrant and enslave everybody else, why how great that 184 00:19:03.320 --> 00:19:05.680 would be because then we really would be free. 185 00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:10.060 And now we've made a complete circle intellectually and have gone back to the early primitive 186 00:19:10.060 --> 00:19:15.460 times where the word freedom is not a word relating to a general condition, but is only 187 00:19:15.460 --> 00:19:21.860 Clearly a word relating to a particular in-group and we will use all the force we need to make 188 00:19:21.860 --> 00:19:28.480 everybody else a slave just so that we'll be free and we call this the process of making 189 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:36.780 certain that we are free. Isn't that appalling? Clearly it is not freedom that we are talking 190 00:19:36.780 --> 00:19:44.120 about. We are merely talking about our license to have power over the other fellow for any 191 00:19:44.120 --> 00:19:51.600 Any one of a whole series of reasons that we could easily drum up. Our ability as rational 192 00:19:51.600 --> 00:19:59.720 beings relates to our fundamental ability to infer and to rationalize a situation in 193 00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:08.560 our own favor. And so we could create arguments by the score to justify the enslaving of other 194 00:20:08.560 --> 00:20:15.480 are people because, one, they have a different background. Therefore, they could not be free. 195 00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:19.820 Because their freedom could endanger us. Or maybe they're of a different race, so clearly 196 00:20:19.820 --> 00:20:24.960 they should be enslaved. Or perhaps they have different economic resources. Or perhaps they 197 00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:29.540 speak a different language. Or perhaps they have a different religion. Or whatever difference 198 00:20:29.540 --> 00:20:34.680 they may have, they must belong to some other group. And it's only our group that is entitled 199 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:38.880 of Freedom. So freedom is going to be the privileged situation that we have within our 200 00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:45.680 own boundaries and everybody else can be enslaved because that makes us free. And I would like 201 00:20:45.680 --> 00:20:52.780 to suggest that freedom means the absence of slavery, not the absence of your enslavement 202 00:20:52.780 --> 00:20:59.320 or my enslavement, but the absence of the condition of slavery. And that means the absence 203 00:20:59.320 --> 00:21:13.780 Freedom is a condition between men in which slavery and tyranny are absent, coercion is 204 00:21:13.780 --> 00:21:19.300 absent all the way around. When you have that, then you have freedom. Now, we're talking 205 00:21:19.300 --> 00:21:26.300 in terms of trying to find a world, trying to create a social arrangement that will be 206 00:21:26.300 --> 00:21:34.660 The beneficial that will tend to upgrade human living that will create a far more meaningful 207 00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:38.500 way of our getting along with each other. 208 00:21:38.500 --> 00:21:46.180 We've discovered that wherever you have aggression or the imposition of tyranny, you have frustration. 209 00:21:46.180 --> 00:21:51.800 The frustration leads to other aggression and we have this interrelationship of cause 210 00:21:51.800 --> 00:22:15.660 Today, many people are afraid of freedom. And I can certainly sympathize with them and 211 00:22:15.660 --> 00:22:21.660 understand why. Because there are so many people running around who are equating freedom 212 00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:27.200 with their right to do as they please with other people and with other people's property. 213 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:32.900 And of course this is not freedom. This is license. This is to invoke tyranny. But the 214 00:22:32.900 --> 00:22:39.900 cure being offered is to enslave them so that they can't do it, and that's tyranny too. 215 00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:47.140 That is not the way to proceed. The correct way to proceed is to recognize that danger 216 00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:55.900 to Freedom comes from either side. And the free man makes up his mind that he will be 217 00:22:55.900 --> 00:23:03.960 free through processes that do not involve either his becoming a slave or his becoming 218 00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:12.260 a tyrant. So the free man will simply not participate in any kind of an action which 219 00:23:12.260 --> 00:23:17.180 which would cause him to be a part of an enslavement process. 220 00:23:17.180 --> 00:23:25.900 Now, curiously, this is fascinating to me, curiously, it's easier to avoid becoming 221 00:23:25.900 --> 00:23:33.780 a tyrant than to avoid becoming a slave because the tyrant is made with my energy and I can 222 00:23:33.780 --> 00:23:40.780 control my own energy, but the slave is made by somebody else's energy, you see. 223 00:23:40.780 --> 00:23:48.380 And so I have control of my own energy, and I can definitely decide that I will not be a tyrant. 224 00:23:48.380 --> 00:23:55.300 Whether or not I'm enslaved is another question, and naturally I don't want to be enslaved. 225 00:23:55.300 --> 00:24:00.520 But if I can ever get it through my head that I can deal with other people in such a way 226 00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:09.780 that I can retain my freedom and in process not enslave or inhibit them, not coerce them, 227 00:24:09.780 --> 00:24:16.580 And I'm on the right track. And that is precisely what I think we must do. Now, the interesting thing, 228 00:24:16.580 --> 00:24:24.580 if we understand the nature of man sufficiently well, we can detect practical steps, practical 229 00:24:24.580 --> 00:24:31.540 ways and means wherein we can avoid this universal tendency that we've had for perhaps ten thousand 230 00:24:31.540 --> 00:24:37.260 years to try to preserve our own freedom at the expense of everyone else, and instead 231 00:24:37.260 --> 00:24:42.480 move practically and realistically along a line that will take us into a condition where 232 00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:50.080 we simply operate in freedom without invoking coercion on anyone, and at the same time without 233 00:24:50.080 --> 00:24:54.580 being willing to accept coercion on ourselves. That's the point. 234 00:24:54.580 --> 00:25:01.740 You know it's interesting. Man begins, as many scholars say at least, in a state of 235 00:25:01.740 --> 00:25:07.100 of Nature. Now whether this is true or not, I don't want to debate, but let me assume 236 00:25:07.100 --> 00:25:12.580 that it's true for purposes of making this illustration. Clearly it is true that man begins 237 00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:18.820 his experience in this world we live in, in a condition where he's not organized, and 238 00:25:18.820 --> 00:25:24.260 we can call this a state of nature. That is, however many men there may be, they live in 239 00:25:24.260 --> 00:25:30.780 a condition where they are dealing directly with nature and they aren't organized, and 240 00:25:30.780 --> 00:25:35.580 And quite frankly, when they aren't organized at all, where nothing has been put together properly, 241 00:25:35.580 --> 00:25:40.580 they are a marginal existence case. They can hardly make it. They need the help of each other. 242 00:25:40.580 --> 00:25:45.580 They need to get organized. They're in a condition of freedom. Oh, sure. Completely free. 243 00:25:45.580 --> 00:25:50.780 There's no organization. There's no arrangement. There's no contract. There's nothing to prevent them from being free. 244 00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:56.580 So they're free. But they don't value freedom because they've got a lot of it. What they value is organization. 245 00:25:56.580 --> 00:26:01.740 So then they get busy and they start organizing. And they organize how to put the pieces together 246 00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:05.520 so that they get precise and predictable results which is what they want, what they've got 247 00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:10.640 to have. And as they do this, then they become impatient and they want to organize more and 248 00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:15.220 more and get more and more results because this is the way you get results. You put the 249 00:26:15.220 --> 00:26:20.360 pieces together. And so we become impatient of each other. We are no longer necessarily 250 00:26:20.360 --> 00:26:25.540 content by working with the man when he wants to work with us. But we say let's use a little 251 00:26:55.540 --> 00:27:01.540 were in process. And so now we don't have that. And remember what we don't have becomes 252 00:27:01.540 --> 00:27:06.140 very valuable. So we discover that freedom is gone and we say, gee whiz, we've got to 253 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:10.660 get our freedom again. And so we begin to squirm and wiggle and we begin smashing up 254 00:27:10.660 --> 00:27:15.420 organizations or getting out of them because we can't stand the pressure and the oppression 255 00:27:15.420 --> 00:27:20.580 that they invoke here because they've been done incorrectly. And presently we either 256 00:27:20.580 --> 00:27:25.180 where we either overthrow the organization that we have or we expel ourselves from it 257 00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:29.620 and then we sweep back all the way across and we come into a condition of non-organization 258 00:27:29.620 --> 00:27:30.900 where again we're free. 259 00:27:30.900 --> 00:27:34.400 And the minute we get there we say, wow, we're in trouble. 260 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:37.380 We don't have any economic goodies anymore. 261 00:27:37.380 --> 00:27:38.540 Let's get organized. 262 00:27:38.540 --> 00:27:43.580 And so we start the same process again and this is precisely what humankind has done 263 00:27:43.580 --> 00:27:44.580 for millennia. 264 00:27:44.580 --> 00:27:50.060 We've gone back and forth between the extremes of non-organization and freedom on the one 265 00:27:50.060 --> 00:28:00.060 and tight compulsive organization and non-freedom on the other hand. Now, somewhere in the middle 266 00:28:00.060 --> 00:28:06.820 is where we're going to maximize human well-being. Somewhere in the middle we're going to find 267 00:28:06.820 --> 00:28:17.260 out how to organize human energy along libertarian lines so that we do not invoke either tyranny 268 00:28:17.260 --> 00:28:24.580 or Freedom. Many people look at a libertarian and wonder if he is a person on the extreme 269 00:28:24.580 --> 00:28:30.060 right or a person on the extreme left. I'd like to suggest that a libertarian is a person 270 00:28:30.060 --> 00:28:35.060 in the extreme middle. And that's where we are. We want to understand what the truth 271 00:28:35.060 --> 00:28:42.060 is and work to make a maximization of human well-being. Thanks very much.