Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: On liberty

Comments from my last journal entry indicate I need to strongly define my definitions for the "self-evident rights" found in the Declaration of Independence. It appears I have different definitions than is common for America, though any Roman Catholic Scholar will find my definitions somewhat mirror those in Summa Theologicae by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Liberty to me is much harder to define than the Right to Life, mainly because I'm not at all sure that a life I see as slavery, isn't really one of liberty. Many choose the harder path to salvation. However, we are all human, and as humans, we have certain needs and wants in common. Abraham Maslow defined a hierarchy of needs and wants in the human animal. I'm not so sure I agree with everything he wrote, but if you move sex from Physiological level to Safety level, I'm pretty close.

All rights are really duty to higher governmental, economic, and parental units, and Liberty is the same. Liberty means that we are living in a society that provides enough support for us to provide the Physiological needs for ourselves, and work towards Safety level wants, and maybe most important, to do so in such a way that the time taken up in pursuit of Physiological needs + Safety leaves resources in our lives for pursuit of the higher wants. If all of your time is taken up pursuing Physiological needs then you'll never have time for Safety needs. If all of your time is taken up pursuing Physiological and Safety needs, then you'll have no time for the higher joys of being human, and it is those joys that we term the profits of liberty.

liberty is not "needs being met"

[Bill Dog]

Liberty means that we are living in a society that provides enough support for us to provide the Physiological needs for ourselves,...

You've defined Liberty as indirect Socialism ("society needing to provide us enough support so that we can provide for our own needs", which is just one level of indirection away from "society needing to provide for our own needs").

It's the classic dueling "equality of outcomes" by the Left vs. "equality of opportunities" by the Right, in the context of which should govt. (or

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

You've defined Liberty as indirect Socialism ("society needing to provide us enough support so that we can provide for our own needs", which is just one level of indirection away from "society needing to provide for our own needs").

Based, of course, on the idea that if you're spending 18 hours a day being a subsistence farmer, then you have no choices at all, no "liberties". What society gives us towards liberty is the time to have liberty. It is in fact the only thing society can give us.

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[Bill Dog]

Why are you introducing a character working 18 hours a day? Even still, if there's no one telling him how he must meet his ends, then he has liberty. The hypothetical lack of opportunity to pursue any of the activities higher on the pyramid *feels* like a lack of liberty, but it is not. Any more than a black sweater ceases to be a black sweater when the lights go out and you can't see it anymore.

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Why are you introducing a character working 18 hours a day?

Because that's the default human condition for an Agricultural Society with NO safety net- subsistence farming.

Even still, if there's no one telling him how he must meet his ends, then he has liberty.

Without corporate and personal welfare, that's the default human condition for meeting ends- you're right there's no one telling him how to meet his ends, but then again, there's nobody giving him any alternate opportun

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[Bill Dog]

...- you're right there's no one telling him how to meet his ends, but then again, there's nobody giving him any alternate opportunities either.

Since when does life owe you anything? I don't understand the focus on looking towards other people or entities to take care of you. Not only are the American people crooked and irresponsible, they're also immature.

If I serve you in any way it's because the Lord moves me to do so in that instance. But otherwise I and others are not here to service your needs.

If ther

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Since when does life owe you anything?

Since some White Guy with a gun came in and took away hunting rights and built the Dalles Dam to destroy our fishing rights.

I don't understand the focus on looking towards other people or entities to take care of you.

Well, I'm fine with that too- nobody asked for civilization or property rights, the main things preventing me from taking care of myself.

Not only are the American people crooked and irresponsible, they're al

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[Bill Dog]

You seem to be temporarily stuck in the mindset that really all that liberty essentially equals is the right to roam, and consume some cache of unclaimed resources at your leisure. That sounds like the Garden, not post-Fall earth. See Genesis 3 [biblegateway.com] -- For screwing up, women were awarded things like pain in childbirth, and men got a life-time sentence of hard labor working the land:

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

You seem to be temporarily stuck in the mindset that really all that liberty essentially equals is the right to roam, and consume some cache of unclaimed resources at your leisure.

NO. That's life, not liberty. LIFE alone requires that.

That sounds like the Garden, not post-Fall earth.

It is the Garden. There is no reason why we can't have the Garden- several thousand human beings live in the Garden today, though Cain and the Snake are quickly approaching totality in killi

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[Bill Dog]

Sorry, you've gone completely off the deep end here -- in most of this I don't know what you're saying, and the rest I just completely disagree with.

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Ok, I'll try to make both more clear a bit:

1. Liberty, to me, is the freedom of having free time to do what I can, after I've done what I must. Thus, unless I can *first* provide everything necessary for my LIFE, I can't have any liberty. The right to roam and consume caches of unclaimed resources- well, that's just life, it's something we all must do. Reading poetry, listening to music, watching sci-fi shows- that's liberty.

2. Daniel Quinn is an ex-Catholic anthropologist who came up with the theory t

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[Bill Dog]

Okay, #2 explained what you were talking about. Permaculture sounds like an interesting idea, but is prolly too associated with paganism, environmental extremism, and socialism to really take off. Certainly describing it in terms of recreating the Garden doesn't go over too well with people like me -- it sounds too "we don't need God, we can have heaven here on earth by our own hands".

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Permaculture sounds like an interesting idea, but is prolly too associated with paganism, environmental extremism, and socialism to really take off.

Well, that's the sad part. In this country, you're probably right.

Certainly describing it in terms of recreating the Garden doesn't go over too well with people like me -- it sounds too "we don't need God, we can have heaven here on earth by our own hands".

It's more "plant what God intended to be here and Trust Him that it will

Manifest Destiny

[Mer_panacea]

>it is those joys that we term the profits of liberty.

Profound words..

In the past oftentimes war had become the big trigger to more liberated stage of human life. But we didn't have to worry about total elimination of humankind in even all out war. Time has changed and now we need to use only human wisdom in order to liberate human nature more and more, without experiencing a war.