Confessions of a libertarian Monist

When you have no reason for being, you have four choices.

The first and most obvious choice is to consent to being without a reason. To most of us, this option is boring at best and depressing at worst.

The second choice is not to be, but that choice is inaccessible to most of us. Our animal instinct for self-preservation sets rather strict limits to our options.

The third choice is to invent a reason for being.

The fourth choice is to combine options 2 and 3: to invent a reason for being which effectively nullifies one’s being while not actually ending it.

I confess to you today that, for reasons with which I needn’t bore you, I have seldom had a reason for being. I simply was, whether I wanted to be or not. I rarely wanted to be but, given the instinct-based limitations of my character, there wasn’t much to be done about it.

By the time I was thirty-six years old, I had found option 1 intolerable, option 2 infeasible, and option 4 incomprehensible. Option 3 had failed me more than once–or perhaps I had failed it–but I found myself needing to try again. I decided to invent a new reason for being. My reason for being would be to live for what I believed in. Though I knew no reason for being, I was not a nihilist. I did believe in something, and I believed that living for that belief would give my life meaning.

I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed in God or goodness or love. I believed in what I could see, touch, taste, smell, and hear. I believed in the existence of the world we see and the individuals we perceive ourselves to be. I believed that individual consciousness was the irreducible fact of all existence, and I became a libertarian–of a sort.

There are many sorts of libertarians. Many libertarians of one sort or another believe that libertarians of other sorts are unworthy of the name. It’s like any other philosophy or any religion. There are libertarian purists and there are libertarians who define themselves more loosely as such. We needn’t go into the details. I was a libertarian Republican who only briefly maintained a paying membership in the Libertarian Association that existed in Massachusetts before it achieved short-lived party status here. I suppose the association still exists, but I confess that I don’t know. But as a libertarian Republican, I was not what the truest, bluest Libertarians considered worthy of the name. Too bad. “Libertarian” is not a brand.

In general, I believed that though there were legitimate uses for government beyond “anarchy plus the policeman,” those legitimate uses were few and limited. I believed that individuals must be free to choose every aspect of their lives consistent with the preservation of individual rights. I believed that that was actually best for everyone, though it meant some people would have painful choices to make.

I had invented a little catch phrase for myself, called “maximum aggregate utility.” It was like “the greatest good for the greatest number,” except that it purported to include the greatest good for all, not just for the many as opposed to the few. It was not “screw the few,” but, “What works out best overall, for everyone?”, even if some had to sacrifice some satisfaction. Within this framework of maximum aggregate utility, I believed individual choice and responsibility should still be the driving factors most of the time.

Specifics: I personally oppose homosexuality, but did not believe government should ban or explicitly approve it. I believed it would be best for government to get out of running schools and get into setting broad performance standards which private schools should meet. I believed in keeping taxes and government spending as low as could possibly be, while still providing for those who had no other means of provision. I believed in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, gender, or religion, but not in affirmative action. I personally opposed abortion, but did not believe government should either ban it or pay for it. I did not favor public prayer in schools, but did favor allowing students to pray privately in school. I believed government should build and pave roads, maintain parks, and other stuff of the like, but not subsidize artists or broadcasting. I believed government should provide minimal decent housing and medical care for those who had no other possible means of provision, but no one else.

The foregoing was all good when it amounted to mere ideology–when I was chairman of a little libertarian Republican activist group. When it came to actually trying to make a practical difference, as president of a local taxpayers’ association, it soon transpired that even this moderate libertarianism would go nowhere fast. I became a centrist, though still cherishing the somewhat libertarian values of maximum personal choice and responsibility and maximum efficiency in government. I found ways to rationalize paying for and running public schools because I knew if I didn’t very few people would listen to me and nothing would get done; but I said that, in education and all government activity, we’d bloody well better get the best possible value for the least possible expense.

Ladies and gentlemen, to borrow a line from W. Somerset Maugham, “from nothing nothing comes.” When my invented reason for being failed me again–or I failed it again, as you prefer–I realized that I had come from nothing, I had been and remained nothing, and nothing had come of anything I’d done. You could almost say it had all been a mirage, except that it had cost me a great deal of money and the so-called best years of my life.

You will not like what follows, but stay with me. It isn’t as bad as it looks.

We are all defined by what we do, what we say, what we experience, what we think, what we feel, and what we have. But if these things define us, then there is nothing at our core and what defines us amounts to nothing as well. Our self-definition is like the accretion of extraneous matter and energy around an empty core.

When we entertain ourselves, we do so to forget ourselves. Why? Because at the core of our “selves”, our ego, there is nothing to remember. When we think, we think to fill the void within us. We manufacture our feelings to fill our emptiness, whether those feelings be good or ill. When we acquire things we acquire things to satisfy a lack within ourselves–yet if our egos, our "selves", are empty at our core, then what we have acquired, having been made by others who are also empty, really amounts to nothing. We act because if we do not act we are nothing, yet if nothing comes of nothing, our actions do not change us from nothing to something.

What stuff and nonsense! How morbid! Sick! Sick!

Really? What defines who you are? From what source does that definition derive its reality?

But there’s “something” all around us, there’s “something” happening all the time! How can you say nothing amounts to anything?

We’ve already explored the idea that all experience is merely an appearance within consciousness, that experience is a “seamless totality with no separate entities or events anywhere to be found,” to quote Rupert Spira in The Transparency of Things. The interesting thing about that idea is that it almost seems to be founded on memory (Spira is not, after all, writing of his experience in the moment, but of his reconstruction of past experience). Memory has about it the unreality of dreams. In memory indeed the separation between self and other is rendered indistinct–as it is in a dream. In waking life, however, the separation is very apparent, very tangible, to most of us most of the time. Yet in mindfulness of the Buddhist sort, in being fully present in the moment without commentary or filter, even in waking life the distinction between self and other is blurred and experience does indeed take on the aspect of a seamless totality. We reinforce distinction with thought. We reinforce separation with belief. Without them, what we experience is just This.

Thus we come to option 4, inventing a reason for being which nullifies being without actually ending it. But what it nullifies is not being, but non-being, the empty individual ego that claims to reside at our core. It affirms the Being that is real, eternal and true. For most of my life the realization of my own emptiness was a burden. Today it is becoming a source of joy.

Today I do believe in God. I believe that God is the infinite, perfect Being that eternally knows and wills all that is. All that is, is God because the Limitless cannot be limited by distinction. Yet all that is, is nothing because it exists within God and not unto itself or of itself. And God, the Limitless, may be thought of as nothing because It cannot be limited by our finite idea of what it means to be “something”. God is no thing in particular; God is All. Because I have no reason for being, other than to fulfill God’s purpose for manifesting me, my reason for being is to know my finite self as nothing and to experience God as All, and then to share that experience with the “others” God manifests around me.

Libertarianism, classically understood, is all about “enlightened self-interest.” According to this ideal, society is best served when all men and women best serve themselves, and they best serve themselves when they serve others. But many Monists (as I’ve taken to calling myself) see the Oneness of all being in a light that admits of little self-interest, or none at all. I know from experience and observation that most libertarianism is really about self-interest, enlightened or otherwise. Most actions are really about self-interest in one form or another. There is really nothing at the core of our egos, but let nothing threaten that core! Let nothing prevent that empty core from defining itself as whatever it wants to be! Even the New Age mystics follow this line of thinking, what with their law of attraction and their paradox of honoring the self while seeking the greater Self. It’s bogus, boys and girls.

If we are all One, then we must help those in need regardless of the need and regardless of our “self-interest”. If we are all One, we must eschew doing injury to “others”, either willfully or inadvertently–though, admittedly, it’s not always easy to know what is truly helpful and what is truly injurious. Easy it’s not, but it is possible. The point is to live for All, not for self.

If we’re used to filling our void with self-interest, this is not an easy philosophy to practice. If we find ourselves still interested in politics, we face immediate cognitive dissonance. Coercion is bad, choice is good, but we want to promote the welfare of all, not “maximum aggregate utility.” Maximum aggregate utility is not a zero-sum game like the “greatest good for the greatest number”; it does admit of expanding aggregate utility. But it also admits that if you want to do the best for everyone, someone may not be happy with it. Promoting the welfare of all, on the other hand, means reducing the threats to everyone’s well-being, eschewing harm to anyone’s well-being, and in the current state of the world that is impossible.

I have a friend, an atheist, who says human nature never changes. I disagree. I believe the influence of ethical religion over the past few millennia has changed human nature from mere refined animalism to something more nearly approaching what we like to call humane values. Compassion barely existed in the human heart before God was said to require it. But ethical religion that mattered was always supported by government power, and the state religion in turn usually supported that power. In our secular, individualist (libertarian) world, that is no longer true. Or is it? Today someone’s prevailing ethics are still supported by government power, and the “religion” of ethical humanism in turn supports that power. That means some people are forced to adhere to ethics they don’t really accept.

Libertarians everywhere–if they read this, which few of them will–would be aghast at what I’m about to say: The ethical force of humanist-supported government power hasn’t all been bad. White people would still despise and effectively enslave nonwhites, had it not been for the power of government to enforce some degree of racial equality. Now most people agree that racial bigotry and discrimination are evil. Men would still despise and effectively enslave women, had it not been for the power of government to enforce some degree of equality between the sexes. Now most people will admit that women should have equal opportunities with men, and will grant them. The rich would despise and effectively enslave the poor had it not been for the power of government to equalize opportunity and economic rights, and today most people think of ruthless economic exploitation as a a bad thing. And so it goes.

The next frontier is healthcare. Barack Obama is about to make us bear one another’s burdens whether we like it or not. Ideally in fifty years it would never occur to anyone that anyone should go without the best healthcare society can provide.

I fear that this ideal will not be realized in any meaningful way because the president’s methods will make the ideal of healthcare meaningless. His plan will deprive insurers of the ability to insure. Consumer choice will be only partly matched by consumer responsibility, and in the end healthcare will become impossible to provide in the way we expect and demand.

Maybe we demand too much. Maybe we will end up providing too little.

Healthcare is the next frontier, but we are still stumbling along the uneven trails of the old ones, including education, housing, and employment.

Despite being a Monist who wants everyone to be happy, healthy, educated, clothed, sheltered, and fed, because all are One, I can’t get past the sense that sometimes we create more division than unity by forcing our ideas on others. Sometimes we spoil what we want to achieve by trying to do things we really have no idea how to do, and it might have been better to forebear. Sometimes it might be best for us, as individuals and communities, to figure things out for ourselves and take the consequences if we err. Until we get over our self-interest and learn to provide for ourselves and one another with a whole heart, we will continue to err and take the consequences anyway.

They’ll just be consequences redistributed.

I believe that the One’s eternal will is perfect and perfectly expressed in the reality It manifests. But I hope It will manifest a more efficient and effective way than statist-corporatist socialism for us to come together and realize the Oneness that we are.

[Disclaimer: For those who know that I work for an insurance company, I am obliged to point out that the opinions expressed above do not necessarily represent the views of my employers.]

Unraveling the mystery of silliness

The other day an acquaintance asked, with genuine puzzlement, why certain very bright people had come up with certain silly ideas or made some rather silly blunders.

Knowing the people and their situation, I jestingly said: “They work within a dampening field. Everyone who walks through that door immediately loses 50 percent of their intelligence.” It always seems as if these people and almost everyone around them are either woefully uninformed or unable to think, despite the fact that some of them seem pretty intelligent and have advanced educations.

(This phenomenon is also commonly observed in politics and public policy.)

My acquaintance is not a scientist or a science fiction fan, so she didn’t know what a dampening field is. To clarify, I went online and found the following definition at Yahoo! Answers:

In broadcasting, it is an electromagnetic field that counteracts another electromagnetic field, i.e., a radio or television broadcast. The common name for it is "jamming" as in jamming a signal.

I sent her this definition with the following addendum:

In an area surrounded by a synaptic dampening field, a preselected percentage of brain synapses fail to fire, or their signals dissipate before reaching neighboring neurons. The selection is set by increasing or decreasing the intensity of the dampening field at its generation point.

There are also brainwave dampening fields that can impede the generation of brainwaves, or cause them to generate at a lower frequency, so that instead of the normal waking Beta or optimal-functioning Alpha brainwaves, all individuals within an affected area generate only Theta or Delta brainwaves, indicating near catatonia or deep sleep, respectively.

Later, with specific reference to the people my acquaintance had in mind, I added:

Some synaptic or brainwave dampening fields have been found to autogenerate, emanated by the habitual, concentrated self-serving thought of the affected
area’s occupants or their “thought leaders”. It has also been found that some areas seem to be naturally afflicted with synaptic or brainwave dampening
fields. Through interviews and observations of the areas’ occupants, researchers have hypothesized that these dampening fields are generated by the collective “negative” karma of the occupants or their leaders. Research is ongoing to validate this hypothesis.

Of course, none of these addenda are true or even scientifically plausible. They are my sardonic humor mixed with New Age technobabble. (I can, however, think of some authors who would probably endorse these ideas as facts.) But the mystery remains: Why do smart people do stupid things?

There is actually an easy answer. Often smart people do stupid things because they have an idea, a desire, or a fear that preempts other important considerations. They don’t weigh those other considerations adequately vis-a-vis their particular predisposition. Sometimes they’re just so busy thinking about one thing that they forget other things. Or the opposite may be true: They’re thinking about too many things at once and not giving adequate attention to the subject at hand. Then again, they may just not have the information they need to make an informed choice. They may not realize they lack this information or may not know how significant the lack of information is.

This easy answer only gets us part of the way to unraveling the mystery, though. Stupidity can be infectious. A group of intelligent people gathered to resolve a problem can easily fall into stupid groupthink. But it goes beyond even this. Whole organizations can be infected by the mindlessness of their leaders.

I don’t mean that these people literally haven’t got minds. People in leadership positions wouldn’t have reached them without any minds at all. They’re not using their minds to best advantage. In this case mindlessness is the opposite of the Buddhist concept of mindfulness–being fully present and attentive in the moment, looking deeply into everything within us and around us so that we truly understand it. So the employees or group members infected by their leaders’ mindlessness do things just as hurriedly or just as sloppily, and make decisions just as poorly, as their leaders. It may be because too much is being demanded of them. It may be because the demands being made of them are not rational. Members or employees who feel they can’t leave “go along to get along” rather than mount a hopeless fight against the prevailing mindlessness.

How, then, to react to this infectious stupidity? Anger is self destructive and frustration only builds upon itself to create more frustration. Humor often borders on contempt, and sometimes crosses the border. Contempt is the convenient answer, but it’s also the wrong one. Who among us can truly claim never to have made decisions guided by the wrong considerations? So who are we to judge others for doing the same? How about compassion then? Compassion is fine so long as it isn’t really just concealed contempt: “It isn’t right for me to despise them, so I feel sorry for them.” In that case the two are not different.

I think the best answer has two parts:

First, we can learn to see ourselves in those making the dubious choices, and to see them in ourselves. We are not really different from them. Only the contexts and content of the choices are different. Then our compassion can arise from love rather than contempt, and maybe we can even make use of it.

Second, if we are caught in one of these dampening fields and can’t make use of our compassion to make the situation better, we should recognize that and get busy today making other plans.