My Highest Value In Life
Freedom is my core principle of life. I have spent most of my adult life thinking about freedom and what it actually is. I have come to the conclusion that it is the underlying metaphysical reality and foundation of all life.
Let me try to make sense of it here.
When attempting to explain to people why I believe in freedom, anarchy, voluntaryism and the free market, I tend to use many different approaches.
Arguments For Freedom
Religion & Spirituality
When speaking to a Christian, I may tell the Bible story of the prophet Samuel and his warning to the people of Israel of what will happen if they choose to have a king to govern over them. I may quote Jesus a few dozen times and talk about Tolstoy and his belief in Christian anarchism. The morality route is a good one when trying to preach the virtue of anarchism - you can't go wrong with the Golden Rule ("Also, do you know what is totally like the Golden Rule - the non-aggression principle! What's that? Oh, I'm about to tell you!"). Also, the invisible hand of the market and the spontaneous order become synonyms for The Big Guy In Heaven.
Economics & Market Forces
With an economist, atheist or anyone else who won't really stand for me name-dropping biblical figures or invoking morality, I might try the utilitarian approach and attempt to present all the benefits of freedom by trying to explain why psychologically we are not made for bondage and we cannot thrive under it.
Duh, right?
I throw in economics (Austrian, behavioral), psychology, sociology, talk of incentives, human drives, happiness...basically anything I can come up with.
The moral and the utilitarian argument for freedom are one and the same in my mind - the distinction between them is more about knowing your audience and what might trigger a bit of understanding. Because freedom is so multi-dimensional and multi-faceted, you can reach its conclusions from many different vantage points.
However, there is a third argument for freedom, one that I can't share with most people because their eyes glaze over and I lose them to their (to them the less weird and more interesting) inner dialogue about the pros and cons of corn bread. This argument explains and refines both the moral and the utilitarian, but makes both somewhat irrelevant. It does this not because the moral or the utilitarian arguments are wrong, but because they are not needed for someone who has fully embraced the third way of seeing life.
Vibration
The third argument for freedom is a vibrational one.
Where the moral argument rests on the fact that it's not cool to steal or kill or hinder someone's freedom, and the utilitarian on the facts that freedom tends to inspire and allow more productive, more creative and thus more desirable outcomes, the vibrational argument explains exactly what freedom is and what denying it means.
The moral and utilitarian aspects of freedom still leave a person seemingly at the mercy of force and undesirable conditions. They deal with explaining a world where we are merely little pieces, insignificant and less powerful than we might desire to be. The vibrational aspect liberates the person fully and requires no one to join in for freedom to be fully exercised.
A VIBRATIONAL UNIVERSE
We live in a VIBRATIONAL UNIVERSE and we are, as a part of it, VIBRATIONAL BEINGS. Our thoughts are what determine our vibratory state, and our vibratory state attracts to it other things that vibrate like it (things, people, situations, weather, thoughts, etc...). This means that we are completely and fully in control of our lives. This means that EVERYONE gets a vibrational vote and contributes to the way this time-space reality is shaped. As vibrational beings, we are all connected in beautiful, invisible ways. The physicality of our world, as necessary as it is for all of us to be able to have a shared experience, is also an illusion of sorts.
As VIBRATIONAL BEINGS having a physical experience (an experience accompanied by a temporary period of amnesia - "where do we come from?", "where do we go after we die?"), we introduce all sorts of resistance into our daily lives.
This resistance manifests as negative emotion. Fear, anger, depression, frustration - these are all signs that we are THINKING thoughts that run contrary to what the inner voice inside is thinking. When we feel love and appreciation and passion, we are in alignment with this part of us and we feel happy. When we feel anger, disgust or despair, we think thoughts that the inner voice within us would never think, and we feel bad.
This inner voice, our INNER BEING is the broader, larger part of us that is non-physical in nature and it is connected to the non-resistant, pure-positivity, creative Universe. This UNIVERSE wants our desires manifested, it wants life to grow and expand and it places no limitations on our power to manifest these things. This UNIVERSE is FREEDOM & JOY & GROWTH. When we, as individuals, are in the zone, flow, in a state of non-resistance, we manifest our desires through the powerful giving nature of this universe.
We have the creative power of our thoughts and the ability to focus those thoughts. We have an emotional guidance system that helps us see if we are on or off track. We have all the tools for a truly creative and free life, if only we exercise those tools.
THE VIBRATIONAL ARGUMENT FOR FREEDOM
In the last line of The Law, Frederic Bastiat told us that "liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and his works". What does that mean? It means that life is set up so that the happier and freer we feel, the better our life will be. This is not only a statement of psychological insight (that we can be happy and free under any condition), but a metaphysical one - the Universe is set up in a way as to grant us our desires.
The faith part? You can't use a technology unless you understand how it works. If you understand your place, creatively and spiritually and physically, in this Universe, then you can proceed to exercise you freedom.
When Jesus talked about the Golden rule, he was not talking (solely) about morality, but about a metaphysical principle - what you do to others is inflicted upon yourself through your thoughts.
The vibrational argument for is this:
YOU ARE ALREADY FREE - ALL IT TAKES IS A RESPONSIBLE MANAGING OF YOUR VIBRATION FOR YOU TO LIVE A FREE LIFE.
No rules can bind a truly free person, unless that person places undue attention on the bondage caused by those rules. And then no amount of fighting can correct for the misalignment of thought. But a truly free individual can grow a strong vibration of freedom that can influence all those who gravitate to that person.
