In some ways I don’t people are all that hard to understand. Whenever I see someone trying to manipulate and control someone, I know that underneath they feel inadequate and humiliated. Those feelings of inadequacy come from being abused in childhood – not having their boundaries respected.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an exception to this rule. The more someone tries to manipulate, dominate and control someone, the greater their feelings of abuse and humiliation as a child. The more dysfunctional the family.
I’ve heard it described as pride coming up shame. It’s not the normal sense of pride that’s being discussed, but more like excessive pride to the point of arrogance, the kind of “pride” that is easily insulted.
Every person I’ve ever known with this kind of conceit and pride has been insecure underneath. Terribly insecure, and in every case full of anger, sometimes hate and rage. They often want to get revenge on people.
These people also blame their blame on other people. In a perverted sense, they are right, because shame is based on what other people think of you. Guilt is based on what you think of yourself.
James Gilligan, who spent his career studying murderers, found they murdered after being insulted. They felt shamed and humiliated, and in an effort to repair their sense of self-esteem, they removed what they saw as the cause of their problems.
There is even a shorthand for what these murderers felt – being “dissed.” Disrepected.
One of my friends, who was head of security in an area surrounded by criminals, got along fine with them, and never had any trouble with them. How did he do it? He told me even though they were pimps and whores and drug sellers, street people and drunks, he treated everyone of them with respect. The poor are always with us, as was noted in the Bible, so you might as well treat these people as humans.
Gilligan realized one day what he was seeing over and over was the story of Cain and Abel, in which Cain, who had his sacrifice rejected by God, murdered his brother, whose sacrifice was accepted. Cain would not have done this unless he felt rejected and humiliated.
The curious thing about Cain and Abel is that they are the children of Adam and Eve, who are the original scapegoaters – they get kicked out of the Garden of Eden because they broke the rules, after which Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent – just the way Cain blamed Abel.
If this is not a dysfunctional family, then what is? Two self-absorbed parents blaming their problems on others. These days, what kind of parents would they make? Not very good ones, I suspect.
After all, Adam and Eve did raise a murderer. The parents brought evil into the world through scapegoating and the second generation brought violence through murder. These days, their story could be updated and made more accurate and insightful.
I think it’s clear that self-absorbed parents who blame their problems on others are going to be manipulative and controlling parents, and their children are going to grow up humiliated and shamed and prone to same problems, including violence.
Carl Jung made the comment something to the effect you can have power or love, but you can’t have both. I think he was right.
So many problems run back to childhood. What’s that old saying? As the twig is bent, so the tree grows? Not respecting children’s boundaries, abusing them physically and emotionally, controlling and manipulating them…the problems caused by these attitudes and behaviors are simply staggering when the children become adults.
John Locke wrote hundreds of years ago, “The evil man is the child grown strong.” He was as right about that as Jung was in his statement.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Stimulation of Lust
Most people think of lust only in a sexual context, but I think that’s too narrow of a definition. A better one, I think, is wanting more of what you find stimulating to the point that most people would feel overwhelmed and say “too much.”
When I think back to when I was a teenager – and to some degree I am still like this today – the one phrase I always remembering thinking is, “I want more of this.” I tell people those years were a combination of “Animal House” and “American Graffiti.”
On weekends I would not only come in a 3 a.m., sometimes I’d come in when the sun was rising. I belonged to the party group at school. I used to wonder why all the kids didn’t belong to it.
Drinking, drugs (only soft ones), girls, cruising, partying…I did it so much I realized years later many people would have said “too much.” Drinking and dancing and going home and throwing up? Yeah, probably a little too much.
I was hanging out in bars when I was 15 years old.
We had minibikes, a Styrofoam sailboat, horses, a little lake. We had a huge tractor tire inner-tube a bunch of us would stand on in the lake and bounce it up and down so it would tip over and the rest would fall over on one person. I ended up near the bottom of the lake once with people kicking me in the head.
It was a great time, and I took in all I could. Years later, watching kids go to raves and use Ecstasy, I knew exactly why they did it. It was that lust for experience and stimulation.
Yet, for all that, I wasn’t a glutton. Gluttons won’t stop. I did stop when I was satisfied. What I did, I only did on weekends. The rest of the week I was fine. A glutton won’t stop even during the week. For them, they want the stimulation to never stop.
When I didn’t have what I wanted on weekends, I would often feel bored, restless, depressed and empty. That is the opposite side of stimulation, pleasure and sensation.
Lust can be satisfied for a while, but a glutton, never. Gluttons are also lustful, but it can’t be satisfied, because they have breadth but no depth. With the “lust” I felt there was breadth and some depth, which is why the satisfaction on weekends held me through the week.
When a person is consumed by both lust and gluttony that, I think, is a big problem. They can never be satisfied.
Both lust and gluttony have traditionally been considered sins. The word “sin” though, comes from the word “harmartia,” which comes from archery and means “to miss the mark.” There is no sense of moral condemnation to it.
Both lust and gluttony are based on physical sensation. There is nothing wrong with either of them as long as you don’t go too far with them. What turns them into something better – being back “on the mark” – is when deep, permanent feeling is added to them.
The Buddha, the ancient Greeks, even Freud in his 60s, noticed that those who devote their lives to physical sensation and pleasure become degraded. Physical sensation – lust and gluttony – go up and down, up and down. Satiety to desire to satiety. When you don’t have it – boredom, depression, restlessness, emptiness.
All claimed what put people back on the mark was the addition of love, what the Greeks called Eros (which, contrary to common misperceptions) is not about sex but the desire for union.
Those teenage years for me were up and down, up and down, but that cycle was a pretty long one that went from weekend to weekend. I’ve met people whose cycle went from one day to the next. They ended up being a mess every time, because, for one thing, they were very easily bored.
This knowledge about human nature is not taught in schools, if indeed it ever was. It’s not even taught in church, unless they get it completely wrong and speak of lust as sex and gluttony as stuffing yourself. Even many parents, if not most, don’t understand it.
People have to figure these things out on their own. Sometimes, they end up in therapy, which these days is apparently a very common thing.
What I concluded many years ago there is a very small minority of thoughtful people who think about the big questions. It’s been like this for thousands of years. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “wise,” just thoughtful. They are the ones who advance society, if people will listen.
After all, look at what one man, Jesus, did to the world. And by the way, here was a man who drank wine and went to parties, so obviously he thought nothing wrong with stimulation and pleasure and sensation.
Not surprisingly, these thoughtful people keep coming to the same conclusions over and over, e.g. pleasure goes up and up, and down, ultimately never satisfies, and in the long run degrades the person who devotes his or her life to it. That’s what lust and gluttony, without the addition of Eros, will always do to people.
When I think back to when I was a teenager – and to some degree I am still like this today – the one phrase I always remembering thinking is, “I want more of this.” I tell people those years were a combination of “Animal House” and “American Graffiti.”
On weekends I would not only come in a 3 a.m., sometimes I’d come in when the sun was rising. I belonged to the party group at school. I used to wonder why all the kids didn’t belong to it.
Drinking, drugs (only soft ones), girls, cruising, partying…I did it so much I realized years later many people would have said “too much.” Drinking and dancing and going home and throwing up? Yeah, probably a little too much.
I was hanging out in bars when I was 15 years old.
We had minibikes, a Styrofoam sailboat, horses, a little lake. We had a huge tractor tire inner-tube a bunch of us would stand on in the lake and bounce it up and down so it would tip over and the rest would fall over on one person. I ended up near the bottom of the lake once with people kicking me in the head.
It was a great time, and I took in all I could. Years later, watching kids go to raves and use Ecstasy, I knew exactly why they did it. It was that lust for experience and stimulation.
Yet, for all that, I wasn’t a glutton. Gluttons won’t stop. I did stop when I was satisfied. What I did, I only did on weekends. The rest of the week I was fine. A glutton won’t stop even during the week. For them, they want the stimulation to never stop.
When I didn’t have what I wanted on weekends, I would often feel bored, restless, depressed and empty. That is the opposite side of stimulation, pleasure and sensation.
Lust can be satisfied for a while, but a glutton, never. Gluttons are also lustful, but it can’t be satisfied, because they have breadth but no depth. With the “lust” I felt there was breadth and some depth, which is why the satisfaction on weekends held me through the week.
When a person is consumed by both lust and gluttony that, I think, is a big problem. They can never be satisfied.
Both lust and gluttony have traditionally been considered sins. The word “sin” though, comes from the word “harmartia,” which comes from archery and means “to miss the mark.” There is no sense of moral condemnation to it.
Both lust and gluttony are based on physical sensation. There is nothing wrong with either of them as long as you don’t go too far with them. What turns them into something better – being back “on the mark” – is when deep, permanent feeling is added to them.
The Buddha, the ancient Greeks, even Freud in his 60s, noticed that those who devote their lives to physical sensation and pleasure become degraded. Physical sensation – lust and gluttony – go up and down, up and down. Satiety to desire to satiety. When you don’t have it – boredom, depression, restlessness, emptiness.
All claimed what put people back on the mark was the addition of love, what the Greeks called Eros (which, contrary to common misperceptions) is not about sex but the desire for union.
Those teenage years for me were up and down, up and down, but that cycle was a pretty long one that went from weekend to weekend. I’ve met people whose cycle went from one day to the next. They ended up being a mess every time, because, for one thing, they were very easily bored.
This knowledge about human nature is not taught in schools, if indeed it ever was. It’s not even taught in church, unless they get it completely wrong and speak of lust as sex and gluttony as stuffing yourself. Even many parents, if not most, don’t understand it.
People have to figure these things out on their own. Sometimes, they end up in therapy, which these days is apparently a very common thing.
What I concluded many years ago there is a very small minority of thoughtful people who think about the big questions. It’s been like this for thousands of years. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “wise,” just thoughtful. They are the ones who advance society, if people will listen.
After all, look at what one man, Jesus, did to the world. And by the way, here was a man who drank wine and went to parties, so obviously he thought nothing wrong with stimulation and pleasure and sensation.
Not surprisingly, these thoughtful people keep coming to the same conclusions over and over, e.g. pleasure goes up and up, and down, ultimately never satisfies, and in the long run degrades the person who devotes his or her life to it. That’s what lust and gluttony, without the addition of Eros, will always do to people.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Dangers of Impulsivity
People who are stupid and impulsive end up in prison; those who are smart and impulsive end up in therapy.
There is a time and place to be impulsive – when it’s safe and appropriate to do so – but in general, I have found impulsive people are far more wrong than they are right, because they act and talk without thinking.
Almost all prisoners have one thing in common: they are impulsive. “I didn’t think about what would happen,” they lament, puzzled. Since the average IQ of a prisoner is 93, most are pretty stupid. So, stupidity plus impulsiveness equals being in a locked cell, sometimes for a long time.
I have known smart people who are impulsive. All have problems because of their impulsivity. Most have ended up in therapy. One was told by his therapist: “You are impulsive.” It didn’t seem to penetrate.
People who are impulsive are ruled by their feelings. Animals are ruled by their feelings. Yet animals will flee at danger. Impulsive people will go right over a cliff because of their impulsivity. It’s as if they put their reason in neutral.
Impulsivity is in a sense an addiction. I’ve seen people who are impulsive about sex and drugs. Can’t say no. Some have ended up dead; others with ruined lives, And some of them have been very smart people, at least IQ-wise.
Why are people impulsive? Without feelings you cannot be happy, but being impulsive – which is being ruled by your feelings – cannot make you happy. It’s as if they are trying to suck up every feeling that comes their way, but they don’t appear to have stable or deep feelings for the most part, and since they cannot see into the future, lack imagination. Thus, I can only conclude impulsive people are not happy or imaginative people.
As G.K. Chesterron noted, the ancient Greeks made Apollo the god of reason, imagination, and sanity. Another, Dionysius was, in a word, the god of partying. It takes all of them to make a whole, sane person – not just reason and feeling, but imagination, Because without that imagination -- sanity -- you cannot see into the future. Most especially, your own future.
There is a time and place to be impulsive – when it’s safe and appropriate to do so – but in general, I have found impulsive people are far more wrong than they are right, because they act and talk without thinking.
Almost all prisoners have one thing in common: they are impulsive. “I didn’t think about what would happen,” they lament, puzzled. Since the average IQ of a prisoner is 93, most are pretty stupid. So, stupidity plus impulsiveness equals being in a locked cell, sometimes for a long time.
I have known smart people who are impulsive. All have problems because of their impulsivity. Most have ended up in therapy. One was told by his therapist: “You are impulsive.” It didn’t seem to penetrate.
People who are impulsive are ruled by their feelings. Animals are ruled by their feelings. Yet animals will flee at danger. Impulsive people will go right over a cliff because of their impulsivity. It’s as if they put their reason in neutral.
Impulsivity is in a sense an addiction. I’ve seen people who are impulsive about sex and drugs. Can’t say no. Some have ended up dead; others with ruined lives, And some of them have been very smart people, at least IQ-wise.
Why are people impulsive? Without feelings you cannot be happy, but being impulsive – which is being ruled by your feelings – cannot make you happy. It’s as if they are trying to suck up every feeling that comes their way, but they don’t appear to have stable or deep feelings for the most part, and since they cannot see into the future, lack imagination. Thus, I can only conclude impulsive people are not happy or imaginative people.
As G.K. Chesterron noted, the ancient Greeks made Apollo the god of reason, imagination, and sanity. Another, Dionysius was, in a word, the god of partying. It takes all of them to make a whole, sane person – not just reason and feeling, but imagination, Because without that imagination -- sanity -- you cannot see into the future. Most especially, your own future.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Understanding and Empathy
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. -- Carl Jung
The difference between understanding and empathy is not subtle. It is indeed a chasm. Understanding without empathy is wanting power over someone; understanding with empathy is more akin to love.
It is possible to understand someone and not even like them. That’s the problem, If one person understands another and is a predator, they can use that power to charm them, to control them – even if they don’t like them, and especially if the other person thinks they are liked.
This ability to understand and control without empathy has been noticed for a long time. The words, charm and spell (as in casting a spell) mean using words to essentially hypnotize people. The word “glamour” comes from the same word as “grammar.” All mean the use of words to, for want of a better word, ensorcel the susceptible, to gain power without love over them.
Certain people have an almost instinctive ability to understand someone without having any empathy for them. They are the character disorders: the psychopaths, the narcissists, the borderlines, the histrionics.
In a way, they instinctively understand how to use propaganda to brainwash the susceptible. Politicians are masters at this, and the gullible public falls for it every time.
These people can come across as charming and interesting, and have the ability to mark their mark feel special. I have heard the term “love bombing” for what they do. They can see the weaknesses in someone and know how to exploit and manipulate them.
They tend to zero in on people who are kind, generous, trusting, eager to please, self-reflective, competent, talented or “gifted” and, most importantly, people who have a desire to cooperate or work things out and a non-confrontational personal style.
But these predators have no empathy. To them, the other person is always at fault, even (or especially) if they are the ones truly at fault. For all their ability to read others, they have a permanent blind spot concerning themselves.
Yet, understanding is part of empathy. Without understanding, I’m not sure it’s possible to be empathic. The difference is that in empathy the attempt is made to put oneself in the other person’s shoes. Exploiters and manipulators cannot do that; the other person is just a thing to them, one to be exploited.
“Putting yourself in someone’s else’s shoes.” If I had to define empathy in one sentence, that would be it.
But how to do it? Of course, there is the intellectual part, which I think is essential. But I think the emotional part is how empathy really happens. And a lot of it is imagination, to imaginatively put yourself into another person’s shoes.
Any number of writers come to mind. Stephen King, for one. How can he imaginatively write about so many different characters, and get them so right, unless he could imaginatively put himself into their shoes?
Conversely, do unimaginative people have trouble feeling empathy? People who can be described as literal-minded? I think they can feel empathy for a very small circle of people, but beyond that, I doubt it. They don’t seem to have the ability to put themselves into someone’s shoes and understanding and empathizing with them, even if they don’t agree with them.
This lack is why some people make no attempt to understand their “enemies.” They see no reason to understand them and find it intellectually, emotionally and morally easier just to define them as evil and let it go at that. They just want political power over their enemies so they can destroy them, and as Hannah Arendt pointed out, political power if the ability to turn someone into a corpse.
The exploiters, the character disorders, because of their lack of empathy and their blind spots, don’t know when they are destroying people, even if they claim to “love” them. I have seen this with my own eyes in people’s relationships.
The truly empathic can put themselves into someone else’s shoes and understand them, even if they don’t agree with them. That’s the real definition of understanding and empathy.
The exploiters and the manipulators – the predators – can understand someone, but there is no empathy. They cannot put themselves into the other person’s shoes and they cannot understand their side, because to them the other person doesn’t have a side.
Most of us want empathy quite badly. That’s the rub, isn’t it? Then we make the mistake of thinking that because someone understands us, they like us, and therefore empathize with us. But if they are exploiters and manipulators, no matter how charming and interesting they are, they don’t like us, as hard as it is to believe. Because we are only there to serve their needs.
The difference between understanding and empathy is not subtle. It is indeed a chasm. Understanding without empathy is wanting power over someone; understanding with empathy is more akin to love.
It is possible to understand someone and not even like them. That’s the problem, If one person understands another and is a predator, they can use that power to charm them, to control them – even if they don’t like them, and especially if the other person thinks they are liked.
This ability to understand and control without empathy has been noticed for a long time. The words, charm and spell (as in casting a spell) mean using words to essentially hypnotize people. The word “glamour” comes from the same word as “grammar.” All mean the use of words to, for want of a better word, ensorcel the susceptible, to gain power without love over them.
Certain people have an almost instinctive ability to understand someone without having any empathy for them. They are the character disorders: the psychopaths, the narcissists, the borderlines, the histrionics.
In a way, they instinctively understand how to use propaganda to brainwash the susceptible. Politicians are masters at this, and the gullible public falls for it every time.
These people can come across as charming and interesting, and have the ability to mark their mark feel special. I have heard the term “love bombing” for what they do. They can see the weaknesses in someone and know how to exploit and manipulate them.
They tend to zero in on people who are kind, generous, trusting, eager to please, self-reflective, competent, talented or “gifted” and, most importantly, people who have a desire to cooperate or work things out and a non-confrontational personal style.
But these predators have no empathy. To them, the other person is always at fault, even (or especially) if they are the ones truly at fault. For all their ability to read others, they have a permanent blind spot concerning themselves.
Yet, understanding is part of empathy. Without understanding, I’m not sure it’s possible to be empathic. The difference is that in empathy the attempt is made to put oneself in the other person’s shoes. Exploiters and manipulators cannot do that; the other person is just a thing to them, one to be exploited.
“Putting yourself in someone’s else’s shoes.” If I had to define empathy in one sentence, that would be it.
But how to do it? Of course, there is the intellectual part, which I think is essential. But I think the emotional part is how empathy really happens. And a lot of it is imagination, to imaginatively put yourself into another person’s shoes.
Any number of writers come to mind. Stephen King, for one. How can he imaginatively write about so many different characters, and get them so right, unless he could imaginatively put himself into their shoes?
Conversely, do unimaginative people have trouble feeling empathy? People who can be described as literal-minded? I think they can feel empathy for a very small circle of people, but beyond that, I doubt it. They don’t seem to have the ability to put themselves into someone’s shoes and understanding and empathizing with them, even if they don’t agree with them.
This lack is why some people make no attempt to understand their “enemies.” They see no reason to understand them and find it intellectually, emotionally and morally easier just to define them as evil and let it go at that. They just want political power over their enemies so they can destroy them, and as Hannah Arendt pointed out, political power if the ability to turn someone into a corpse.
The exploiters, the character disorders, because of their lack of empathy and their blind spots, don’t know when they are destroying people, even if they claim to “love” them. I have seen this with my own eyes in people’s relationships.
The truly empathic can put themselves into someone else’s shoes and understand them, even if they don’t agree with them. That’s the real definition of understanding and empathy.
The exploiters and the manipulators – the predators – can understand someone, but there is no empathy. They cannot put themselves into the other person’s shoes and they cannot understand their side, because to them the other person doesn’t have a side.
Most of us want empathy quite badly. That’s the rub, isn’t it? Then we make the mistake of thinking that because someone understands us, they like us, and therefore empathize with us. But if they are exploiters and manipulators, no matter how charming and interesting they are, they don’t like us, as hard as it is to believe. Because we are only there to serve their needs.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Safe, Effective, and Illegal
For the record, my drug use consists of a German white wine called Auslese.
That's it. I don't even use aspirin, because it doesn't work on me. Minimum, I need Tylenol with Codeine, which can legally be bought through the mail from Canada. I'm too lazy to get some.
However, unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale as a teenager, from ages 15 to 17, on weekends. Then I quit. Some years later, I realized my use coincided exactly with that prison known as high school, which drove me so crazy I did little more than daydream in school and party on the weekends.
But, I haven't touched the stuff for decades. Except . . . .
A few years ago, as I was walking down a handicapped ramp to my car, my feet flew out from under me and I crashed to the ground on my back. The pavement was dry, and I still have no idea what happened. It was as if the Angel of Death had grabbed my ankles and pulled from the front.
Yes, I know there is irony in the fact I was almost crippled by falling down the handicapped ramp. I was even able to smile about the whole thing after I stood up.
I hit the concrete the hardest I have ever hit the ground in my life. That includes all the tumbles I took on ice during the winter. I found that it is an instinct to hunch your back so the back of your head doesn't hit. But I now understand how people get killed by falling down.
One second I was vertical. A fraction of a second later, I was horizontal. Gravity is not your friend. Neither is the law that mass times acceleration equals velocity.
I lay on the ground for a few seconds, wondering if I was hurt. No cracking of bones, no fountains of blood. No pain, either. Bizarrely, when I fell, I rotated my left wrist, so the soda I was holding in my left hand barely spilled.
Somehow, the keys which I was carrying in the same hand ended up 20 feet away. It took me five minutes, from the point of impact, walking in an ever-widening spiral, to find them in the grass.
The fall happened on a Thursday evening. I was fine until Saturday night. Then my left hip started to ache. Badly. So badly I was ready to go to the ER. I knew there was no major damage, just a bruised muscle or tendon. But no matter which position I was in, my hip hurt. And it hurt so badly I knew sleep was out of the question.
A few years ago I had tendonitis in my left shoulder, which is a swollen tendon. It hurt like you wouldn't believe. I ended up at the ER. The cost: $500, for a shot of painkiller. "That's all we can do for it," the doctor told me.
Fortunately, my insurance paid for most of it, but I swore I would never go to the ER again unless I was taken there unconscious. $500 for a painkiller? No wonder medical costs are out of control.
As I lay there with my aching hip, I wondered what I was going to do. I had no painkillers in the house, and nothing over-the-counter would even touch the pain I was feeling.
Then it occurred to me . . . before the State in its stupidity had made marijuana illegal, doctors prescribed it for all sorts of maladies. Lack of appetite, for one, as everyone knows. That I knew about, considering how much French vanilla ice cream I inhaled on Friday and Saturday nights when I was in high school.
When it was banned, doctors opposed it. Hemp, as it was called then, was used for too many disorders to be so cavalierly dismissed by the ignorant and incompetent in government.
I remember doctors had prescribed it for insomnia, as a muscle relaxer for pregnant women, and for pain.
So, I called up a friend of mine and explained the situation. He, of course, laughed hysterically. "So," he giggled, "you're going to be a 'hepcat' and take a 'toke' of some 'reefer,' huh? I'll see if I can find a 'lid' somewhere." Lid? No one's called it a "lid" since about 1974. And "hepcat" went out in, what, 1956? Oh, he was having a fun time mocking me.
He gave me an amount about the size of a pea. He even lent me a pipe. I felt ridiculous, puffing on that tiny pipe like I was 16 again, but enough pain overcomes anything.
Much to my surprise, after about two minutes the pain in my hip started to go away. Not completely, but enough so that the pain was tolerable. And the muscles loosened up enough so that I could get up without groaning and cursing and staggering around like Frankenstein's monster. And I got sleepy. And I wasn't high, either.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, the injury had healed enough so I could get around with a little bit of hobbling and grimacing. A few days later I was fine.
The total cost, according to my friend, if he had charged me for the amount I used, would have been a few dollars. That is obviously a heck of a lot less than $500.
Please don't tell me all about the horrors of drug use. I know all about them.
I've seen kids shoot up when I was 15 years old, I've seen them die from ODs in ditches and from sniffing paint, I've seen alcoholics act completely normal when sober and like they were possessed by demons when they were drunk.
So, the attempts to equate the responsible, occasional use of a medicine by an adult, with the collapse of society, is simply ridiculous.
As far as I'm concerned, it should be part of everyone's medicine cabinet. Unless, of course, you have no problems shelling out $500 for an ER visit, just to get one shot.
That's it. I don't even use aspirin, because it doesn't work on me. Minimum, I need Tylenol with Codeine, which can legally be bought through the mail from Canada. I'm too lazy to get some.
However, unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale as a teenager, from ages 15 to 17, on weekends. Then I quit. Some years later, I realized my use coincided exactly with that prison known as high school, which drove me so crazy I did little more than daydream in school and party on the weekends.
But, I haven't touched the stuff for decades. Except . . . .
A few years ago, as I was walking down a handicapped ramp to my car, my feet flew out from under me and I crashed to the ground on my back. The pavement was dry, and I still have no idea what happened. It was as if the Angel of Death had grabbed my ankles and pulled from the front.
Yes, I know there is irony in the fact I was almost crippled by falling down the handicapped ramp. I was even able to smile about the whole thing after I stood up.
I hit the concrete the hardest I have ever hit the ground in my life. That includes all the tumbles I took on ice during the winter. I found that it is an instinct to hunch your back so the back of your head doesn't hit. But I now understand how people get killed by falling down.
One second I was vertical. A fraction of a second later, I was horizontal. Gravity is not your friend. Neither is the law that mass times acceleration equals velocity.
I lay on the ground for a few seconds, wondering if I was hurt. No cracking of bones, no fountains of blood. No pain, either. Bizarrely, when I fell, I rotated my left wrist, so the soda I was holding in my left hand barely spilled.
Somehow, the keys which I was carrying in the same hand ended up 20 feet away. It took me five minutes, from the point of impact, walking in an ever-widening spiral, to find them in the grass.
The fall happened on a Thursday evening. I was fine until Saturday night. Then my left hip started to ache. Badly. So badly I was ready to go to the ER. I knew there was no major damage, just a bruised muscle or tendon. But no matter which position I was in, my hip hurt. And it hurt so badly I knew sleep was out of the question.
A few years ago I had tendonitis in my left shoulder, which is a swollen tendon. It hurt like you wouldn't believe. I ended up at the ER. The cost: $500, for a shot of painkiller. "That's all we can do for it," the doctor told me.
Fortunately, my insurance paid for most of it, but I swore I would never go to the ER again unless I was taken there unconscious. $500 for a painkiller? No wonder medical costs are out of control.
As I lay there with my aching hip, I wondered what I was going to do. I had no painkillers in the house, and nothing over-the-counter would even touch the pain I was feeling.
Then it occurred to me . . . before the State in its stupidity had made marijuana illegal, doctors prescribed it for all sorts of maladies. Lack of appetite, for one, as everyone knows. That I knew about, considering how much French vanilla ice cream I inhaled on Friday and Saturday nights when I was in high school.
When it was banned, doctors opposed it. Hemp, as it was called then, was used for too many disorders to be so cavalierly dismissed by the ignorant and incompetent in government.
I remember doctors had prescribed it for insomnia, as a muscle relaxer for pregnant women, and for pain.
So, I called up a friend of mine and explained the situation. He, of course, laughed hysterically. "So," he giggled, "you're going to be a 'hepcat' and take a 'toke' of some 'reefer,' huh? I'll see if I can find a 'lid' somewhere." Lid? No one's called it a "lid" since about 1974. And "hepcat" went out in, what, 1956? Oh, he was having a fun time mocking me.
He gave me an amount about the size of a pea. He even lent me a pipe. I felt ridiculous, puffing on that tiny pipe like I was 16 again, but enough pain overcomes anything.
Much to my surprise, after about two minutes the pain in my hip started to go away. Not completely, but enough so that the pain was tolerable. And the muscles loosened up enough so that I could get up without groaning and cursing and staggering around like Frankenstein's monster. And I got sleepy. And I wasn't high, either.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, the injury had healed enough so I could get around with a little bit of hobbling and grimacing. A few days later I was fine.
The total cost, according to my friend, if he had charged me for the amount I used, would have been a few dollars. That is obviously a heck of a lot less than $500.
Please don't tell me all about the horrors of drug use. I know all about them.
I've seen kids shoot up when I was 15 years old, I've seen them die from ODs in ditches and from sniffing paint, I've seen alcoholics act completely normal when sober and like they were possessed by demons when they were drunk.
So, the attempts to equate the responsible, occasional use of a medicine by an adult, with the collapse of society, is simply ridiculous.
As far as I'm concerned, it should be part of everyone's medicine cabinet. Unless, of course, you have no problems shelling out $500 for an ER visit, just to get one shot.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The Brainwashed as Cannon Fodder
"Those who control language, control the perception of reality."
The United States was originally referred to as "are," as in, "The United States are a good place to live." Each state was free and independent. The federal government was a small, fetid backwater in the swamps of D.C.
Shortly after the War Between the States, it became, "The United States is a good place to live," meaning the federal government was paramount, and the states were no longer free and independent.
Were the Founding Fathers alive today, they would be appalled. Were the average citizens of the late 1700s alive, they too would be appalled. The federal government is about 50 times bigger than they ever imagined it should be. They never imagined an enormous military, crashing around the world, or a Federal Reserve Bank (which is not federal, has no reserves, and is not a bank), or a President who could start decades-long wars without a declaration of war.
Ask yourself this: what good has the federal government ever done? Very little. When you compare the bad it has done to the good (however you define "good") it's not even close. Especially when you take into account the number of people killed by the feds.
The "federal government," in a sense, does not exist. It's a group of people -- a very small group, merely a handful, who have captured it and use it to serve their own interests. The media and the public schools have taught people that the federal government represents the interests of the entire nation. It doesn't.
In other words, a mere handful of people have conned millions of people that they, that small handful, are the nation. And mass man, brainwashed sheeple that they are, has marched off to war, become cannon-fodder, and died by the hundreds of thousands, or in some places, hundreds of millions. Not for their families, not for their friends, not for their nation....but for a handful of people who have grabbed control of the federal apparatus.
As the twig is bent, so the tree grows. That saying applies to children, who supposedly become adults.
Vifredo Pareto, who should be taught in kindergarten, claimed the mass of men are Sheep. The rulers are either Lions, who use force, or Foxes, who use fraud. In a nutshell, nearly everyone is one of the Sheep, eaten (literally) by Lions and Foxes. And most of the time, the Sheep stick their heads into the mouths of the Lions and Foxes! Unbelievable.
Here's what we're taught: Things should be top-down, federal government on top, down to the individual at bottom. The Lions and Foxes are the ones who count: the Sheep are expendable.
The way it should be: things should be bottom-up, individuals and families first, then neighborhoods, counties, states, nation. The federal government, the Lions and Foxes, should be absolutely last, never to be trusted. They should know they can easily be hung by their heels, like Mussolini.
The federal government has now become a behemoth, a Blob, a Black Thing that interferes in the intimate life of everyone.
You can no longer trust the public schools or the mainstream media. How many times have any of them told people their very worst enemy is the federal government?
Here's what else we are taught: we are good and our "enemies" are evil. Here is good, on our side; there is evil, over there, with our enemies. That is the basis of all political and war propaganda.
The reality: good and evil are a continuum. When we see things as good and evil, we will always see ourselves as good, and those who are not-us as evil. That allows us to scapegoat them, to project all our problems on them, allows us to maintain the fiction of our innocence and goodness, and therefore to dehumanize and murder those Others, thereby getting rid of our problems -- even though it never happens that way. What happens instead is war, destruction, catastrophe.
David Frum and Richard Perle wrote a propaganda book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. In their book, the United States is good; those who disagree with it are evil. That is how simplistically the authors see things.
Both writers see things as top-down, federal government first, as representing the entire nation. They also see good and evil as separate categories, instead of the continuum it is.
Of course, neither of these anti-American cowards has any intention of fighting. That's for the brainwashed sheeple. Their job is to tell people what they are supposed to die for -- not family, not friends...but for the handful of people who have captured the federal government. And Frum and Perle, and others like them, see themselves as part of the federal government. To them, your job is to die for their beliefs.
The astonishing thing is the number of people who think they are defending their country when instead they are fighting for the federal government. And I repeat, the federal government consists of a handful of people. Those hundreds of thousands of people are fighting and dying for a handful of people, whose interests are the exact opposite of the citizens.
If nothing else, remember these things:
Things should be bottom-up, not top-down.
Good and evil are a continuum.
The federal government does not exist and is instead a handful of people whose interests are opposed to the citizens.
When people become aware of what is being done to them, it cannot be done to them anymore. It's easy to manipulate people who are unconscious. Those who aware of what is going on, cannot be manipulated.
The United States was originally referred to as "are," as in, "The United States are a good place to live." Each state was free and independent. The federal government was a small, fetid backwater in the swamps of D.C.
Shortly after the War Between the States, it became, "The United States is a good place to live," meaning the federal government was paramount, and the states were no longer free and independent.
Were the Founding Fathers alive today, they would be appalled. Were the average citizens of the late 1700s alive, they too would be appalled. The federal government is about 50 times bigger than they ever imagined it should be. They never imagined an enormous military, crashing around the world, or a Federal Reserve Bank (which is not federal, has no reserves, and is not a bank), or a President who could start decades-long wars without a declaration of war.
Ask yourself this: what good has the federal government ever done? Very little. When you compare the bad it has done to the good (however you define "good") it's not even close. Especially when you take into account the number of people killed by the feds.
The "federal government," in a sense, does not exist. It's a group of people -- a very small group, merely a handful, who have captured it and use it to serve their own interests. The media and the public schools have taught people that the federal government represents the interests of the entire nation. It doesn't.
In other words, a mere handful of people have conned millions of people that they, that small handful, are the nation. And mass man, brainwashed sheeple that they are, has marched off to war, become cannon-fodder, and died by the hundreds of thousands, or in some places, hundreds of millions. Not for their families, not for their friends, not for their nation....but for a handful of people who have grabbed control of the federal apparatus.
As the twig is bent, so the tree grows. That saying applies to children, who supposedly become adults.
Vifredo Pareto, who should be taught in kindergarten, claimed the mass of men are Sheep. The rulers are either Lions, who use force, or Foxes, who use fraud. In a nutshell, nearly everyone is one of the Sheep, eaten (literally) by Lions and Foxes. And most of the time, the Sheep stick their heads into the mouths of the Lions and Foxes! Unbelievable.
Here's what we're taught: Things should be top-down, federal government on top, down to the individual at bottom. The Lions and Foxes are the ones who count: the Sheep are expendable.
The way it should be: things should be bottom-up, individuals and families first, then neighborhoods, counties, states, nation. The federal government, the Lions and Foxes, should be absolutely last, never to be trusted. They should know they can easily be hung by their heels, like Mussolini.
The federal government has now become a behemoth, a Blob, a Black Thing that interferes in the intimate life of everyone.
You can no longer trust the public schools or the mainstream media. How many times have any of them told people their very worst enemy is the federal government?
Here's what else we are taught: we are good and our "enemies" are evil. Here is good, on our side; there is evil, over there, with our enemies. That is the basis of all political and war propaganda.
The reality: good and evil are a continuum. When we see things as good and evil, we will always see ourselves as good, and those who are not-us as evil. That allows us to scapegoat them, to project all our problems on them, allows us to maintain the fiction of our innocence and goodness, and therefore to dehumanize and murder those Others, thereby getting rid of our problems -- even though it never happens that way. What happens instead is war, destruction, catastrophe.
David Frum and Richard Perle wrote a propaganda book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. In their book, the United States is good; those who disagree with it are evil. That is how simplistically the authors see things.
Both writers see things as top-down, federal government first, as representing the entire nation. They also see good and evil as separate categories, instead of the continuum it is.
Of course, neither of these anti-American cowards has any intention of fighting. That's for the brainwashed sheeple. Their job is to tell people what they are supposed to die for -- not family, not friends...but for the handful of people who have captured the federal government. And Frum and Perle, and others like them, see themselves as part of the federal government. To them, your job is to die for their beliefs.
The astonishing thing is the number of people who think they are defending their country when instead they are fighting for the federal government. And I repeat, the federal government consists of a handful of people. Those hundreds of thousands of people are fighting and dying for a handful of people, whose interests are the exact opposite of the citizens.
If nothing else, remember these things:
Things should be bottom-up, not top-down.
Good and evil are a continuum.
The federal government does not exist and is instead a handful of people whose interests are opposed to the citizens.
When people become aware of what is being done to them, it cannot be done to them anymore. It's easy to manipulate people who are unconscious. Those who aware of what is going on, cannot be manipulated.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Rose Wilder Lane, Libertarian Babe
I generally vacation in the Missouri Ozarks, and have since I was a kid, with my parents, when we would go to Branson before it turned into a senior citizens' entertainment mecca featuring, of all things, one Shoji Tabuchi, an Asian fiddle player with a huge toothy grin and a Moe Howard bowl haircut.
He's completely normal, though, compared to the Ejector Seat, in which two people are strapped into a seat, with their arms across their chests (perfect for a fitting ready-made into a pine box, in my opinion) and hurled shrieking a few hundred feet into the air in-between two elastic cables anchored to two towers. I opined I wouldn't go on it for less than $1,000 cash, since I had no desire to being catapulted into the sky like those knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when they answered the questions wrong at the bridge. Instead I played miniature golf at the place next door, which featured a real crashed Indiana Jones-type airplane stuck on top of a gigantic fake rock shaped like a skull. Branson's now an unusual town, to the say the least. And I got a hole-in-one, too.
On the last trip, while looking for the Gloria Winery, which has great but inexpensive wine even though the winery turned out to be a shed with an acre of vineyard and a trailer in which the couple who owned the place lived (along with their little dog), we ended up visiting Mansfield, a tiny sleepy town which turned out, much to our surprise, to have been the long-time home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was not only author of the Little House on the Prairie books, but who wrote every one longhand while sitting in a home-built chair in their farmhouse on the outskirts of town. The house is a museum now, with very low ceilings, since Laura was 4'11 and her husband Almanzo 5'4". You should see their beds.
A connection that I somehow had never made is that Rose Wilder Lane, author of the early libertarian classic, The Discovery of Freedom, was Laura's and Almanzo's daughter. I didn't realize it until we were wandering through the museum and I saw a copy of Discovery, next to several pictures of Rose, one of which caused me to say, "Oooh, a babe." But since she died in '68, when I was busy learning not to fall off of my Stingray bike and to cover up the burns in the carpet I made with my chemistry set, it was never meant to be. She was most definitely a babe, though.
After blurting out that comment, SWMBO (She-Who-Must- Be-Obeyed) asked, You think she's attractive? Yes, I answered. Aw, that's so cute of you, SWMBO answered.
I wouldn't know if I'm a fan of the Little House books or not, since I've never read any of them. I never watched the TV series, not even once, since I could never get past Michael Landon morphing from a Teenage Werewolf drooling shaving cream to Little Joe to Pa. I did read Farmer Boy, which was Almanzo's biography that Laura wrote, and one which I would highly recommend. I still can't get out of my mind ten-year-old Almanzo getting up at 3 a.m. in the middle of a howling blizzard to move the cows around so they didn't freeze solid and tip over. That's not a joke, either. It really happened.
Laura didn't start writing her books until she was 65, long after Rose had become a successful novelist. The rumor, one that we will never know is true or not, is that Rose heavily edited the books and got them into shape for publication. In other words, the skinny is that she pretty much wrote them for her mom. It's a bit ironic that Laura became far more famous than Rose, and still is today. Unfortunately, there are no living descendents, so the line of this talented family has died out.
None of the family was born in Mansfield, although they all ended up there, including being buried. We missed the cemetery, though. Rose was born in Des Met (when it was called "Dakota Territory") in 1886 and died in her sleep at the age of 83 in '68, right before she was to embark on a three-year tour of the world. At the age of 78, in 1965, she was reporting from Vietnam for Woman's Day Magazine.
Rose started writing around 1910 and was a successful novelist long before she published The Discovery of Freedom in 1943. Before that, she was most famous for her novels, which are adult versions of her mother's books, although I had never heard of them until I was in the museum. Nearly all of them are about her life in the Ozarks, including one that has the Politically Incorrect title of Hillbilly.
She was (of course?) predominately a home-schooled child, since she was so bored by school in her hometown that her parents allowed her to educate herself at home. Having been in the farmhouse, I know that her parents had a small room off of the living room, set aside as a library with about 300 books, all of them, as far as I could tell, hardbacks. I don't think they had paperbacks in those days.
As an adult Rose had become a stanch opponent of Communism after seeing it in practice in the Soviet Union (unlike many red-diaper dips of that time, who remained enamored of it, a feat that required not only closing their eyes but their brains and consciences), and became one of the most influential libertarians of the middle of the 20th century. She even became the adoptive grandmother of Roger MacBride, the Libertarian Party's candidate for President in 1976.
She opposed the quasi-socialism and creeping taxation of the New Deal so strongly that she gave up quit her high-paying editorial job with the National Economic Council so as not to pay Social Security taxes. She regarded Social Security as unstable and prophetically called it a "Ponzi scheme."
In a pamphlet called "Give Me Liberty" she wrote, "In 1917 I became a convinced, though not practicing communist. In Russia, for some reason, I wasn't and I said so, but my understanding of Bolshevism made everything pleasant when the Cheka arrested me a few times.
"I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. Also I will tell you why the relative freedom of human spirit is better – and more productive, even in material ways – than the communist, Fascist, or any other rigidity organized for material ends."
In 1958, famed libertarian Robert Le Fevre was so strongly influenced by The Discovery of Freedom he asked Rose to come visit his "Freedom School," which he had founded to promote the principles he said her book had taught him. She became a regular lecturer there for several years.
Her extensive correspondence had an effect, too. About it she wrote: "Twenty one years ago... I used to spend all my time, every day, at my typewriter following up every least lead that I could find. Example: I heard a high-school debate among all pro-New Dealers on the radio, and wrote to each of them. One replied, with all the Welfare State collectivist notions that had been put into his head, but he didn't seem wholly unintelligent, so I kept on writing to him for some months, apparently with no effect, finally getting no answer. Now he turns up as publisher of National Review, telling people that I – i.e., my letters – changed his whole life."
Even though The Discovery of Freedom is Rose's most well-known book, she said years later it was "a very bad book" because of some minor mistakes in it. Still, it has had a profound influence, even now, after all these decades.
What's it about? The book is an attack on statism, nationalism, and what Hayek called the "fatal conceit" of central planning. She starts her story with the old observation that for most of history, people had lived in squalor, with only a few minor improvements through the millennia. What brought them out of it was liberty, the free market, and the emergence of property rights. It has been a kind of miracle, the wealth it has created.
In the first part of the book Rose lays out the one permanent conflict in history: between individual freedom and illegitimate authority (the subtitle of the book is "Man's Struggle Against Authority"). Even today those who seek to impose rule from above call themselves "progressives," when they are nothing of the sort. Like Hayek, like von Mises, like Rothbard, Rose understood it was a backward attempt to impose barbarism and poverty on the human race, to turn the clock back thousands of years.
The first printing of the book, in 1943, was a thousand copies. There wasn't a reprinting until 1971. Since then, it was become one of those early classics, one of those, like Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine, that can be read and enjoyed by everyone. It's an optimistic book, with passages like this:
"The revolution is only beginning. When all living men know that men are born free, the energy of twenty-two hundred million human beings will be released upon this earth.
"A hundred million have made America. What will twenty-two hundred millions do?"
Such cheerfulness and optimism will appeal to anyone who looks to the future, knowing that even with the two-steps-forward-one-step-back history of humanity, things, ultimately, will get better. It will be due, as it always is, to liberty and the free market.
He's completely normal, though, compared to the Ejector Seat, in which two people are strapped into a seat, with their arms across their chests (perfect for a fitting ready-made into a pine box, in my opinion) and hurled shrieking a few hundred feet into the air in-between two elastic cables anchored to two towers. I opined I wouldn't go on it for less than $1,000 cash, since I had no desire to being catapulted into the sky like those knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when they answered the questions wrong at the bridge. Instead I played miniature golf at the place next door, which featured a real crashed Indiana Jones-type airplane stuck on top of a gigantic fake rock shaped like a skull. Branson's now an unusual town, to the say the least. And I got a hole-in-one, too.
On the last trip, while looking for the Gloria Winery, which has great but inexpensive wine even though the winery turned out to be a shed with an acre of vineyard and a trailer in which the couple who owned the place lived (along with their little dog), we ended up visiting Mansfield, a tiny sleepy town which turned out, much to our surprise, to have been the long-time home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was not only author of the Little House on the Prairie books, but who wrote every one longhand while sitting in a home-built chair in their farmhouse on the outskirts of town. The house is a museum now, with very low ceilings, since Laura was 4'11 and her husband Almanzo 5'4". You should see their beds.
A connection that I somehow had never made is that Rose Wilder Lane, author of the early libertarian classic, The Discovery of Freedom, was Laura's and Almanzo's daughter. I didn't realize it until we were wandering through the museum and I saw a copy of Discovery, next to several pictures of Rose, one of which caused me to say, "Oooh, a babe." But since she died in '68, when I was busy learning not to fall off of my Stingray bike and to cover up the burns in the carpet I made with my chemistry set, it was never meant to be. She was most definitely a babe, though.
After blurting out that comment, SWMBO (She-Who-Must- Be-Obeyed) asked, You think she's attractive? Yes, I answered. Aw, that's so cute of you, SWMBO answered.
I wouldn't know if I'm a fan of the Little House books or not, since I've never read any of them. I never watched the TV series, not even once, since I could never get past Michael Landon morphing from a Teenage Werewolf drooling shaving cream to Little Joe to Pa. I did read Farmer Boy, which was Almanzo's biography that Laura wrote, and one which I would highly recommend. I still can't get out of my mind ten-year-old Almanzo getting up at 3 a.m. in the middle of a howling blizzard to move the cows around so they didn't freeze solid and tip over. That's not a joke, either. It really happened.
Laura didn't start writing her books until she was 65, long after Rose had become a successful novelist. The rumor, one that we will never know is true or not, is that Rose heavily edited the books and got them into shape for publication. In other words, the skinny is that she pretty much wrote them for her mom. It's a bit ironic that Laura became far more famous than Rose, and still is today. Unfortunately, there are no living descendents, so the line of this talented family has died out.
None of the family was born in Mansfield, although they all ended up there, including being buried. We missed the cemetery, though. Rose was born in Des Met (when it was called "Dakota Territory") in 1886 and died in her sleep at the age of 83 in '68, right before she was to embark on a three-year tour of the world. At the age of 78, in 1965, she was reporting from Vietnam for Woman's Day Magazine.
Rose started writing around 1910 and was a successful novelist long before she published The Discovery of Freedom in 1943. Before that, she was most famous for her novels, which are adult versions of her mother's books, although I had never heard of them until I was in the museum. Nearly all of them are about her life in the Ozarks, including one that has the Politically Incorrect title of Hillbilly.
She was (of course?) predominately a home-schooled child, since she was so bored by school in her hometown that her parents allowed her to educate herself at home. Having been in the farmhouse, I know that her parents had a small room off of the living room, set aside as a library with about 300 books, all of them, as far as I could tell, hardbacks. I don't think they had paperbacks in those days.
As an adult Rose had become a stanch opponent of Communism after seeing it in practice in the Soviet Union (unlike many red-diaper dips of that time, who remained enamored of it, a feat that required not only closing their eyes but their brains and consciences), and became one of the most influential libertarians of the middle of the 20th century. She even became the adoptive grandmother of Roger MacBride, the Libertarian Party's candidate for President in 1976.
She opposed the quasi-socialism and creeping taxation of the New Deal so strongly that she gave up quit her high-paying editorial job with the National Economic Council so as not to pay Social Security taxes. She regarded Social Security as unstable and prophetically called it a "Ponzi scheme."
In a pamphlet called "Give Me Liberty" she wrote, "In 1917 I became a convinced, though not practicing communist. In Russia, for some reason, I wasn't and I said so, but my understanding of Bolshevism made everything pleasant when the Cheka arrested me a few times.
"I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. Also I will tell you why the relative freedom of human spirit is better – and more productive, even in material ways – than the communist, Fascist, or any other rigidity organized for material ends."
In 1958, famed libertarian Robert Le Fevre was so strongly influenced by The Discovery of Freedom he asked Rose to come visit his "Freedom School," which he had founded to promote the principles he said her book had taught him. She became a regular lecturer there for several years.
Her extensive correspondence had an effect, too. About it she wrote: "Twenty one years ago... I used to spend all my time, every day, at my typewriter following up every least lead that I could find. Example: I heard a high-school debate among all pro-New Dealers on the radio, and wrote to each of them. One replied, with all the Welfare State collectivist notions that had been put into his head, but he didn't seem wholly unintelligent, so I kept on writing to him for some months, apparently with no effect, finally getting no answer. Now he turns up as publisher of National Review, telling people that I – i.e., my letters – changed his whole life."
Even though The Discovery of Freedom is Rose's most well-known book, she said years later it was "a very bad book" because of some minor mistakes in it. Still, it has had a profound influence, even now, after all these decades.
What's it about? The book is an attack on statism, nationalism, and what Hayek called the "fatal conceit" of central planning. She starts her story with the old observation that for most of history, people had lived in squalor, with only a few minor improvements through the millennia. What brought them out of it was liberty, the free market, and the emergence of property rights. It has been a kind of miracle, the wealth it has created.
In the first part of the book Rose lays out the one permanent conflict in history: between individual freedom and illegitimate authority (the subtitle of the book is "Man's Struggle Against Authority"). Even today those who seek to impose rule from above call themselves "progressives," when they are nothing of the sort. Like Hayek, like von Mises, like Rothbard, Rose understood it was a backward attempt to impose barbarism and poverty on the human race, to turn the clock back thousands of years.
The first printing of the book, in 1943, was a thousand copies. There wasn't a reprinting until 1971. Since then, it was become one of those early classics, one of those, like Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine, that can be read and enjoyed by everyone. It's an optimistic book, with passages like this:
"The revolution is only beginning. When all living men know that men are born free, the energy of twenty-two hundred million human beings will be released upon this earth.
"A hundred million have made America. What will twenty-two hundred millions do?"
Such cheerfulness and optimism will appeal to anyone who looks to the future, knowing that even with the two-steps-forward-one-step-back history of humanity, things, ultimately, will get better. It will be due, as it always is, to liberty and the free market.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)