Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Aretha Franklin, Respect
I’ve been reading the November 2009 issue of Astronomy magazine today- specifically, Bob Berman’s “Strange Universe” column. This month he asks us, “Can you imagine?”
An excerpt regarding advanced topics in science such as string theory or quantum theory which cannot be imagined:
Picture this: You’re an astronaut on a planet with red polka-dot clouds. The surface is a vast rubber sheet. As you bounce along, you suddenly see a flock of flying bulldogs. The pack leader hovers in front of you like a hummingbird and speaks perfect English: “Welcome, Can you help settle a debate we’re having?”
“Um, sure,” you say.
The alpha bulldog whispers: “Who was the greatest baseball player of all time?”
You guess, “Ruth?”
And that’s what they all wanted to hear. The dogs excitedly bark, “Ruth! Ruth!” as they lick your face until you’re covered with slobber.
The point isn’t that I’ll never make a living writing fiction. It’s this: There’s no such thing as polka-dot clouds, rubber planets, or flying dogs. Yet you had no trouble picturing the whole thing. That’s because our minds easily weave familiar elements into a new context. Titan’s surface or flying dogs present no challenge for our imaginations.
But now consider Galileo’s observations of Saturn’s rings. Even after decades of studies, he never figured out what he was seeing. He thought the rings were like teacup handles. It took nearly half a century before Christiaan Huygens finally got it right. That’s because Saturn’s shape lay outside human experience. On Earth, there is no example of a ball surrounded by unattached rings. Spiral galaxies resemble nautilus shells, nebulae look like clouds, star clusters like spilt sugar. Alone among nature’s marvels, Saturn had no analog.
A bear wanders past my window once or twice each year. At first glance, I always think: huge black dog. Then the truth hits. One’s initial impulse is to perceive the familiar.
We are all prisoners of our backgrounds and experiences. Conceptual struggles arise when, as with Galileo, there are no associations, no past experience. You cannot explain the color blue to a person born blind.
Equally inconceivable are any extra dimensions beyond the width, depth, and height of everyday 3-D objects. If additional “string” dimensions exist, they cannot be pictured-by anyone. We’ve all been “born blind” to them.
I’ve often wondered to myself why freedom is so much easier to sell as fiction- Heinlein, Firefly/Serenity and the like are great examples. How many people have been introduced to ideas about freedom first in fictional form and only later seriously considered it in terms of real life applications?
I believe Bob Berman- though writing about a totally different topic- has written something very insightful about advancing pro-freedom ideas.
We live in a world where more and more people are being “born blind” to freedom. With children being brought under government influence earlier and earlier in their lives and that influence growing more and more extensive, what associations, what past experience with freedom do they have? And without that past experience, how much harder is it for people to wrap their heads around notions such as that taxes are theft, that government is just legalized thuggery, that we are responsible for caring for each other rather than government, etc.? It’s somewhat easier for many people to get to minarchism than voluntaryism, but even that can be difficult when the idea is ingrained in our culture that we turn to government to solve our problems first rather than leaving it as a last resort.
I think back to my most outstanding memory of the 2005 Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Jane Shaffer gave a talk on raising libertarian children which I almost skipped because I don’t have and don’t plan to have any kids. However, I was glad I stayed for her talk as it turned out to be one of the best of the entire summit. The most memorable (for me) point made that weekend came at the conclusion of her talk. As I recall, she wrapped up by recommending that parents make sure that their children get some taste of freedom as they are growing up. Once they taste it, she said, they will not forget it.
I think that is true of children but also of adults, and I think that is why pro-freedom arts are some of our most effective modes of communicating pro-freedom ideas. They allow us to contextualize these ideas in a non-threatening, fictional form- a form which approaches the audience on the premise that it need not be believed. And then, not threatened or challenged, the audience takes it in, allowing a seed to be planted. In some form, they have tasted freedom. And once they taste it, it can be very, very hard to forget.
Kirsten blogs at 
Why do people dream so well about freedom? Because by our nature, we wish to exercise our will, and dream of doing so without negative feedback. Look at how a lot of people paint Hitlerian Germany, or Stalin style Soviet society. They are many times painted as the extensions of these men’s will. But no matter how powerful the individual or even the organs of the state, there’s no way what those groups of people did was the effect of the individual dictators. Just as what we are doing in Iraq now, the events of WWII and the early Cold War were the events of many many individuals executing their own wills. Even when discussing politics very very few people say, “When I have extremely limited abilities to impose my will on my fellow man, there’s a whole list of things I want to do.”. We all know how that thread really goes. I think our nature is to try and exercise our will and that drives us to maximize the freedoms for ourselves at the expense of the freedoms of others so as to minimize negative feedback. Which of course is a formula for disaster.
I’m not sure what you mean by this part, Andrew: Even when discussing politics very very few people say, “When I have extremely limited abilities to impose my will on my fellow man, there’s a whole list of things I want to do.”.
I think our nature is to try and exercise our will and that drives us to maximize the freedoms for ourselves at the expense of the freedoms of others so as to minimize negative feedback. Which of course is a formula for disaster.
What are your thoughts on overcoming this either personally or more broadly across humankind?
The first point was that when just before someone usually goes on to wax wistfully about the great world they would create, it’s almost always prefixed with “Once I get power.” or “If I were powerful.”. Powerful over others. And I think that’s natural, I think it’s hardwired.
How to overcome that. Well I guess at first order you have to show it. You’ll loose a lot of people right there because they want to keep their faith in the concept of the enlightened, just, leader that has power over people to enforce their enlightened justice. So, how to break that? … I’m not so sure that you can. I think it’s a inbred human condition that that will always plague us. I think you can nip at it from the sides, and with some you might make headway. But I think the question may be how to help people become analytical instead of emotional beings. I think that’s impossible on large scale.
The first point was that when just before someone usually goes on to wax wistfully about the great world they would create, it’s almost always prefixed with “Once I get power.” or “If I were powerful.”.
I think this really explains the Libertarian Party in a nutshell.
And I think that’s natural, I think it’s hardwired.
I have optimism that much of humanity will evolve beyond this sort of thinking eventually. I think about how much change has taken place regarding things like the status of blacks or women or homosexuals or the place of religion and science in our daily lives, and I believe we can move beyond a hell of a lot. I’m just not really sure what would set such a paradigm shift into motion.
I think your point about progress is correct there has been some. But has it been at a fundamental level? I’ll give an example. A very gay friend of mine is 46 so he came out in the 80’s just as the gay community was starting to really press for inclusion into society and the body politic. Yet while we were duscussing the ins and outs of obtaining a secuirty clearance and the nature of what constitutes a legitimate intrusion vs an illegitimate of that voluntary process, I was really shocked to see that now that he was included in the “in” crowd, he had no problems with applying the rules and investigations on us to the rest of society. So as soon as he was allowed in, he was all for a powerful central power focus so long as he thought it furthered his interests. And I think that’s where people like us and many others differ. We look at central power and see fundamental problems with the entire concept, while most people look at centralized power and want it for themselves.
So why did we come to the conclusion that there is a problem with the concept and not who gets to play? For me it was being familar with the past 120 years of world history from an academic point of view, and a personal memory of how much this country has changed since the 1970’s. It’s taken me 33 years to get there, and it took about 25 of those years to really have the lession driven home. Maybe things will change if we radically extend lifetimes and preserve memories. Think about how different you are now than you were even 15 years ago.
But I really want to think more about the “What I’d do once I divest myself of power, thers’s a lot of cool things I want to do.”. Sounds sort of waldon’ish. Is there a escapeist-engagement meme hiding in humanity that can be awoken? That’s the direction of thought I want to further explore.
Andrew