“Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
–Albert Einstein
Tag Archives: freedom
A Disciplined Freedom
The future of the United States is rooted in a storied past. When the first European settlers came to North America and dispersed into the forests and across the open plains, they had only their own initiative, ingenuity, and self-reliance to depend upon. No one was there to counsel them about the requirements for survival.
The meaning of freedom and responsibility were determined by harsh realities. Intrepid settlers also relied on one another as neighbors, so long as each took responsibility for themselves. Self-reliance and the acceptance of personal responsibility lead to mutual respect, and ultimately to self-respect. Whining and complaint don’t fly, however tough the circumstances.
We now find ourselves coming full circle to a time when some of the requirements of the early American frontier may become necessary once again. The physical circumstances look different, but the challenges will increasingly resemble those of an earlier time – when we were forced to stand on our own feet, depending on inventiveness, cooperation, and reliability in the context of community.
Most of us have become accustomed to the culture of dependence that easy credit and a well-funded government have engendered. But, this cannot possibly continue. Government will rapidly lose its capacity to function in the coming years. A depressed and heavily indebted economy will not support the government services we are used to, and this is likely to be with us for a long time.
As the Government finds itself unable to deliver promised commitments without devaluing the currency, our standard of living will deteriorate significantly. We will be called upon to learn the lessons of self-reliance and social responsibility demonstrated by those earlier Americans in the past who taught us a wisdom borne of hardship and hard work.
The individualism encouraged in the past by the relative freedom of unlimited physical frontiers must now be disciplined and refocused: Disciplined by the necessity to maintain our balance as we navigate through multiple crises, and refocused by the need to develop practical responses to complex material problems.
Maintaining stability will become a major concern because without it we cannot keep our families safe, and because cooperation and constructive effort cannot take place in chaos.
Some argue that creative change is born of instability, because it overcomes natural resistance to changing outdated customs. While this may be true, I don’t think we need to go looking for instability. We are not going to be able to avoid it. Good ideas and promising endeavors will be both born and destroyed in the coming days. I fear there will be no absence of opportunity for injury and trauma to our families. The ground is shifting beneath our feet.
We will have to fight for stability to get it back. If we seek to build a world where prosperity is possible, where our children can be safe and personal freedoms are respected, it will be necessary to create a stable environment for addressing problems, resolving conflict, and building capacity.
What will matter first and foremost will be our ability to work together, rising above our differences to build the foundations for safe communities, food security, and a functioning local economy.
In the coming weeks we will be thinking about how the Constitution of the United States has made such a diverse, strong-willed and combative nation possible for 200 years, and then go on to consider the social history and ideas influencing our national character.
This will be important for two reasons: It will assist us to approach the present difficulties with a balanced historical perspective, and to focus our best thinking on seeking a future we can respect and feel good about.
What are the ultimate outcomes we wish to seek?
Tom Harriman
Next week: Freedom and Stability, Finding the Balance.
For myself, alone…
“It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
–Hermann Hesse
Finding Our Strength
The choice is ours. We can acknowledge our differences, address one another with dignity, and unite in our communities to address local needs and resolve local problems. Or, we can accept a world of hostility, disorder, and ultimate collapse as our children’s inheritance – and let the vision and the treasure of the American idea slip away.
Some may say that it is too late. Or, that their principles are too important to be compromised.
I say that the United States was conceived in controversy and that the powerful vision of the founders came with recognition that strength in unity can only be founded upon diversity.
Indeed, it will be argued here that diversity is the foundation for strength, and that the United States Constitution is a visionary assertion of this belief. They gave us structure. It is our responsibility to give it character.
Given our great diversity, what exactly does it mean to be an American? The answer that we choose as a nation will determine the shape of our future. We will be returning to this question again and again throughout the forthcoming book.
We find ourselves confronted today by one of the great tests of history, a direct challenge to both the intent enshrined in the Constitution and the coherence of the American vision that has been gradually maturing for more than two hundred years.
Perhaps we have lost our way for periods of time, stumbled, gotten sloppy. But now it is time to pull together. And, in all practicality this can only take place in the context of our local communities – the home of democracy and seat of civil order.
In a free society, stability cannot be imposed from above. The kind of strength we seek is grounded in trust, and the dependability of personal relationships.
I am not writing about a “recovery” from crisis in the normal sense. Rather, I submit that we stand at the threshold of an unprecedented turning point, one that offers us a window of opportunity to reaffirm and assert our exceptional and multifaceted identity.
In considering our approach to new and unexpected challenges in a rapidly changing world, we are positioned to make positive changes, both pragmatic and ethical, that would have been impossible otherwise. I believe a creative process is now underway that would not otherwise have been possible.
A tough lesson like this can correct weaknesses and imbalances that have led to these crises, but success can only be built on the time-tested principles that have made America an attractive model for the world.
We will go on to consider the foresight of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that led to the system of protections, the checks and balances that makes this nation what it is. First, however, let’s examine the reasons that diversity has ensured American strength – not as a nice idea, but as a pragmatic necessity.
When, as individuals or groups, we address a problem or plan a project, the more varied the perspective and experience that is brought to bear, the more creative and effective will be the solutions found. This is an irrefutable truism.
In many institutions, and particularly in government, people are often afflicted with a condition called ‘group-think’. Everyone thinks the same way and listens only to those they most respect or fear. Consequently, groups often ignore obvious fallacies and misperceptions. Not only that, they tend to scorn perceptive critics as trouble-makers.
Our resistance to accepting diversity is often based in our discomfort with those we perceive as “outsiders”, who look or think differently than we do, or who come from unfamiliar cultural backgrounds. Yet, differences constitute the essence of diversity, and they can sometimes stimulate our thinking in ways we can ill afford to live without.
Why are we afraid of new and different ways of thinking? No one is asking us to change our minds.
Aristotle said that “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
The opportunity to explore the world through the eyes of other people is a blessing and a gift. A life filled with diversity is an adventure that never stops giving.
Tom
Next week: Unexpected Wisdom
Good Neighbors Are Earned
Where to begin? If local communities are to serve as the foundation for healing the American spirit and reclaiming our sense of purpose, we must learn to make them strong – dependable, trustworthy, and resilient.
Many of us are not well acquainted with our immediate neighbors, much less those around the corner or down the road. If we want good people to depend on in a serious crisis, this has to change. Many problems are more easily resolved when we team up with others. Think food security, or friends we can trust when the banks close or the power goes out.
I have shared my concerns with you about the critical role of local communities. I have explained why I believe local communities and networks of communities will become the essential platform on which Americans reorganize themselves to identify common values, plan a common future, and forge a common purpose.
Building on the solid ground we foster in neighborly relationships, community is the only place in these extreme days where we have both the ability and the opportunity to control our destiny.
As each of us looks around and assesses our circumstances, how can we begin?
Those of you who are naturally outgoing will find this discussion simplistic. But for others the challenge of reaching out to strangers and proposing a common endeavor will be imposing.
There are several kinds of challenges to consider. These include: 1) getting acquainted with strangers and developing friendships, 2) explaining our motives honestly and our ideas effectively, 3) cooperation in addressing local needs, and 4) proposing more ambitious endeavors.
Community-wide efforts can include a wide array of possibilities. For example, these might include local security considerations, growing and preserving food, educating children, initiating small business enterprises, and troubleshooting technical problems that require creative thinking or specialized skills, such as electrical power, safe drinking water, and waste disposal.
All these possibilities can be placed on the table when we are first getting acquainted. Hearing a range of possible benefits for engaging in mutual assistance can jump-start resistant minds.
However, it is probably best not to try to fix all the ills of the world on the first visit. Unless you already know someone well, the first step will be to get acquainted and to find reasons to spend more time together. A warm, friendly first visit can be the basis for later, more substantive engagement.
Always begin interactions by inviting people to share their feelings and views before you do. This will provide you with a basis for effective engagement, and it will make them more receptive to you. Do not pry or press. But, if you can get another person talking, you will find them far more open to hearing from you.
Once new acquaintances begin to warm to you, invite them to think with you about ways the community can be improved. Invite ideas, and then suggest some of your own. If you find an opening, share your hope.
Try to avoid or downplay the more serious political or emotional issues, if possible, until you have secured a stronger positive connection.
If you meet unreceptive people, don’t push. Be friendly, stay in touch, and make yourself useful. As time passes, watch for ways to demonstrate the practical benefits of a mutually supportive community.
Soon we can begin to introduce people to each other. Small social gatherings can help people get acquainted. While remaining informal, we can introduce ideas by floating questions. What problems or unmet needs do we know of? Who has skills? What skills would be we like to learn? How can we assist one another?
As we come to know one another better, we can begin to discuss our willingness to rise above our differences when needs are great or the stakes are high.
First we are human, then we are neighbors, and, finally, we are Americans who care. As individuals we can be none of these things in isolation.
The future is of immense importance – but reality begins at home.
Tom
Next week: Finding our strengths.
The Forward Edge of History
The unprecedented vision that came into being with the birth of the United States is today impaired by increasingly bitter and antagonistic rhetoric that precludes dialog. If Americans care to participate in a constructive process leading to renewal, we must navigate carefully through the currents of instability.
Violence begets violence in a downward spiral, rhetorical or otherwise. Words can ignite fierce, uncontrollable fires.
When the financial world came unraveled in 2007-08, Americans discovered that startling failures of foresight, responsibility, and common sense involved the very people and institutions we most depended on.
We were stunned by the foolishness that came to light in the very places where we were most vulnerable. Suddenly we recognized a profound disregard for the interests of both citizens and nation – by the same institutions we had previously regarded as models of dependability.
In retrospect, however, we can see that this crisis had long been coming, and that it revealed far more than political and financial irresponsibility.
We have seen the broad social deterioration that comes with unethical behavior and the loss of principled values. Respected national leaders have stained themselves. We have even seen immoral and deeply hurtful actions committed by religious leaders and clergy, the supposed exemplars of integrity.
Where will it stop? In addition to the material damage done to our lives, the rampant failure of responsibility appearing at the core of our society is demoralizing. Indeed, it strikes at the foundations of civilization.
It is easy to get caught up in our feelings at a time like this. It will be necessary to modulate our speech and better manage our emotions if we wish to reaffirm the ultimate purpose of this great nation. Times of peril require that we communicate carefully and avoid contributing to inflamed passions, however offended we may be.
Hurled accusations and inflamed rhetoric make it impossible to hear potentially valid reasoning behind the anger.
The trouble with blame is, first, that it tends to be indiscriminate. It blinds us to the plural identities of those who disagree with us, or who have just made some bad mistakes. We can sometimes fail to see that we share similar values and commitments with those who anger us.
Secondly, blaming will block our ability to respond to looming perils that endanger us all. A fierce storm has come upon us. We need to take responsibility for addressing immediate circumstances.
Make no mistake: A great storm like this will alter everyone’s perspective. So, let’s start with priorities we know to be essential, to ensure the safety and security of our communities. We will build from there.
In so doing we will learn much of what the future will require of us. It is essential that we transcend personal fear, resisting its attendant passions, and learn to work with those around us. Otherwise it will be impossible to respond effectively to the complex challenges of a rapidly changing world.
Some of you have expressed serious doubts that this is possible.
I never said it would be easy; I said we have no choice. If we are unable to confront crises shoulder-to-shoulder as loyal countrymen, freedom will be lost in the chaos of a deepening storm.
It will be helpful if we can see the end in the beginning – the vision of a civil society where respectfulness, fairness, and moral responsibility prevail and freedom of expression is nurtured and defended.
This is a vision and purpose that might just be worth our learning to get along, even for the most doubtful among us. And, it is something we can work on in our own communities.
Patience, composure, steadfast determination, and, most of all, the American generosity of spirit are among the virtues that will be called upon again and again in this day.
We will not escape this great turning point in human affairs. It will inflict tests upon us whether or not we respond with dignity and compassion, whether or not we take our rightful places at the forward edge of history.
Tom
Next week: Where to begin.
A note to new readers: Several chapter drafts for the forthcoming book are posted on this site. See especially Chapter Six: The Ground of Freedom, and Chapter Nine: The Individual in Society.
Lessons From a Painful Past
The 20th Century brought an immense wealth of marvelous advances into the world – scientific, intellectual, cultural. Yet it was a century of appalling violence, the most destructive in all of human history. An estimated 167 million to 188 million people died at human hands.
The century that produced communism, facism, and nationalism also saw the invention of highly efficient weaponry, and a willingness to direct it against civilian populations on a massive scale.
Perhaps it would be wise for us to look at our current problems in historical context. Will we, as Americans still enjoying the relative isolation afforded by two great oceans, recognize how easy it is for terrible things to happen?
A balanced perspective would lend wisdom to our endeavors and offer important lessons. At the present historic turning point humankind can least afford to repeat the horrifying errors of the past. And how easy it would be to do.
In his 2006 book, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, the historian Niall Ferguson, who I have introduced to you previously, wrote that “the hundred years after 1900 were without question the bloodiest century in modern history, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era. . . . There was not a single year before, between or after the world wars that did not see large-scale violence in one part of the world or another.”
I believe Niall Ferguson’s analysis is of value to us because he departs from the typical explanations blaming weaponry and fascist governments, as significant as these were, and instead identifies ethnic conflict, economic volatility, and declining empires as the true causes.
In short, he reminds us of our human vulnerability to emotional insecurity, fear, and tribalism.
The “confluence of crises” I am writing about involves elements of all these things, but also a range of newly emerging concerns that have become apparent more recently, and are related more or less to the material limits of population growth, environmental and resource sustainability, and the capability of technology to maintain critical systems or mitigate major problems.
In every case, regardless of the particular nature of oncoming crises, the challenges we face as individuals and families come into focus as we respond to immediate threats. And, as Dr. Ferguson points out, it is the overreaction of people under pressure that leads to the most terrible violence.
It is my view, as most readers know, that our local communities are the only place where we have the capability and reasonable hope of controlling our lives going forward.
The difference between a violent past and a civilized future will depend entirely on the manner in which we relate to one another, approach problems, and organize our local affairs. In a word, the distinction between past and future will be our attitude.
Community-building is the context in which we can best respond, creatively and constructively, to the degradation taking place around us. It can provide us with the means to build trust with friends and neighbors and to take responsibility for meeting local needs and addressing local problems.
Here it is that we can undertake to work together for the greater good as loyal compatriots. Here it is that the real needs of real lives can be identified and addressed.
And, it is in the process of problem-solving and working shoulder-to-shoulder that we can begin to know, understand, and influence one another.
We must be realistic. Great numbers of people remain under the influence of ingrained prejudices of ethnicity, gender, religion and class. This will only change as we rise above our differences to address the felt-needs we face together in a difficult world.
Patience and determination make many things possible, but necessity brings everything sharply into focus. Interpersonal alienation wanes as we identify common concerns and develop a deepening sense of unity around common purpose.
Tom
Next week: Seeing the end in the beginning
A note to readers: You may find related chapter drafts posted on this site of some interest. See especially Chapter Six: The Ground of Freedom, and Chapter Nine: The Individual in Society.
The Real American Revolution
“The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”
–John Adams (Second president of the United States)
Crisis and Opportunity
I am addressing these words to Americans for two reasons. I believe we have entered a period of severe, successive and interacting crises that promises to be deep, grinding, and long-lasting.
Secondly, I am concerned about the potential consequences of the increasingly bitter antagonism and disunity current among the American people.
Many of you are aware that the present predicament has been developing gradually over time. We have seen the loss of a once vibrant civil society, deterioration of the nation’s economic base, and a profound loss of social coherence and moral responsibility.
We each have a personal decision to make. Do we wish to recover the integrity of the United States as a constitutional republic? Are we prepared to rise above our differences, to engage personally with our neighbors, to instill the American spirit in safe, dependable communities?
These are among the questions that have inspired the forthcoming book. Our circumstances are already extreme. Nothing will be easy.
The United States and the world have arrived at an unprecedented turning point. We face a formidable array of complex crises. The challenges are diverse, profound, and mutually reinforcing. Some will impose themselves suddenly, others gradually, but all will ultimately converge as they impact upon our lives.
What is most extraordinary is the number and variety of crises that are emerging into view at virtually the same time: social and economic, moral and material.
An abbreviated review is offered here to demonstrate this diversity.
1) Increasing social instability characterized by a dramatic loss of civility, and by unrestrained anti-social behaviors that include accelerating incidences of brutality and mass murder.
2) A banking and monetary system that favors the financial elite rather than the American people, and which has become dominated by self-serving individuals who appear incapable of recognizing that their risk-taking behavior threatens the well-being of everyone, including themselves.
3) Massive government indebtedness, which constricts the economy and threatens Americans (and many others) with a dramatic devaluation of our dollar.
4) Ancient and deteriorating infrastructure that we depend on every day: bridges, municipal water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. These will be almost impossible to upgrade or replace by governments already hobbled by indebtedness and shrinking revenues.
5) An exponentially increasing global population. With this comes rapidly increasing risk of global epidemics, as well as inevitable food shortages caused by falling water tables and a continual loss of arable farmland.
6) The rapid development of advanced technologies without a commensurate advancement of moral maturity or conscious sense of responsibility.
7) Degradation of the natural environmental systems that provide us with clean air and water, the consequence of population pressures and the long-term aggregate build-up of toxic substances derived from motor vehicles, household products, and industrial pollution.
8) A failure of parenting, and the emergence of a generation of youth untethered from reality and having little sense of moral, personal, or social responsibility.
9) Last, but not least, a profound loss of moral compass, balance, and integrity on a societal scale. This dramatic deterioration is overwhelming the values and norms of the past, and it is a crisis that impacts on all others.
There is more.
During the past century we have seen the emergence of integrated and digitized global systems that include transport, communication, and surveillance technologies, and a unified global monetary system. Consequently, no crisis can take place in any context without impacting on the whole.
A profound structural transition is taking place in human affairs that many have yet to recognize or understand.
How can such dire circumstances be called an opportunity?
For Americans the opportunity lies in the disruption of our lives – a disruption so profound that it cannot fail to alter our perspective, our thinking, and our willingness to cooperate with one another for the sake of local safety and security – whatever our politics or religion or the color of our skin.
And, if we can build viable local communities we can also begin the dialog to identify the practical extent of our shared values, and to develop a sense of shared vision and purpose that we can respect.
We must resist being dragged down, demoralized. We cannot react out of fear. We will stand firmly together, rising to the promise of our humanity with honor, dignity, and resourcefulness.
The identity of the nation is at stake.
Tom
Next week: A Confluence of Crises
The right to be different…
“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.”
–Charles Evans Hughes
Honesty
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
–Thomas Jefferson
“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.”
–George Bernard Shaw
A Freedom of Differences
“Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.”
–Voltaire
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
–Thomas Jefferson
“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
–Nelson Mandela
Liberty and the American Idea 