And not just for other people, which is the usual way of things:
I am responsible. I think. I care. I hold myself back from all sorts of desires and wishes which are impulsive, brought on by the clamour and disturbance of this corrupt over-materialistic world we live in, separated from nature and in intense competition with each other. We live in a sick society which is not going to cure itself. Like small children, we need forcibly calming down, we need to be held to account, we need to ‘learn’.
You may find this deeply disturbing as a view. But then, I’m not romantic about our so-called ‘liberties’ as Henry Porter is. I’m not a sentimentalist about old-style ‘freedoms’.
A commentator on Henry Porter’s article Each DNA swab brings us closer to a police state on the Observer website. Depressingly much more where that came from.
The neo-puritans hate their own desires and the possibility of choosing between them. They think surveillance is good because ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’, and they know you need watching in case you might do something wrong. They have bad impulses too, which by awful effort they control. The total control of the state – conceived as an undesiring arbiter of good – can relieve us of the burden of choice and keep us working for the good of society. It will free us from fear; because the freedom of bad people, who might be anyone, is what we have most to fear.
The commentator has the cart before the horse. Yes, many in society (he can speak for himself) are like small children, but how did they get like that? Who took away the link between choices and consequences?
“Like small children, we need forcibly calming down, we need to be held to account, we need to ‘learn’.”
Who are the “adults”,the likes of John Prescott?
People like that are why I am not a pacifist.
I suspect a big part of it is also freedom from guilt. How often do we hear “I have broken no laws” or “I have done nothing illegal” proclaimed in self absolution for some immorality or other. There is both an expectation and an assumption that legal = moral. No conscience, no thought, no doubt, no guilt required.
There is also an anti-empirical outlook in it.
The commenter believes that ‘learning’, which he tellingly puts in scare quotes, is something that you have done to you. It is performed on you by someone who has more of it. These people generally prefer consensus and revealed doctrine to the difficult course of (action | consequence) * thought = learning.
That same commenter goes on to say something really chilling.
and
The ‘we’re all gone die soon anyway’ assumed in the last paragraph is as strong an argument as any that these are NOT the people we want running society.
There is nothing wrong with puritanism. There is a lot to be said for a puritan lifestyle. But it must be freely chosen. Without that choice, it means nothing, and it is not puritanism but tyranny.
“You may find this deeply disturbing as a view. But then, I’m not romantic about our so-called ‘liberties’ as Henry Porter is. I’m not a sentimentalist about old-style ‘freedoms’.”
So when are you moving to North Korea?
That one is already dead, but his body hasn’t gotten the message yet and he lacks even the courage to inform it.
Indeed they do. And they are entitled to it. It’s their privilege to hate, and to live as they like (a puritan life).
But don’t misuderestimate him. When he says “we need no freedom” he wants to take your freedom, not give up his. He wants to destroy the concept of freedom, in order to take your freedom, not to give up his own, which he is entitled to do, but isn’t interested in.
Nothing new here either. It’s the old communist idea: freedom doesn’t matter, only the wellbeing of the “proletariat”, or the “people”. You are really free only when you obey “the people” (i.e.: me, the leader of the people).
I think the finest comment I have seen on this blog for quite a while was Paul Marks’ one about the desire to be controlled.
I have nothing to add beyond a simple “Fuck Off!”
Except I do. I have reams but i will just say that I think Mid is spot-on. Morality is not about rule-following. I recall when I was an undergrad a story from the a US university made the news over here. It had introduced a PC dating code. Basically it went something like this – is it OK if I kiss you? Is it OK if I remove your bra? Is it OK if I remove your panties? etc. You can imagine the kinda thing. Following that code is (a) a category A passion-killer and (b) the exact diametric opposite of respecting a prospective sexual partner as an independent, intelligent, thinking agent (I think I ought to mention Kant’s categorical imperative but it’s vastly too late in the day to bring up Kraut intellectuals – who probably never got a sniff of it anyway). When I was an undergrad the fact that a slap to the face and being categorically (and possibly imperatively) denied even the possibility of a second date kept my hands where they ought to be, mainly.
But then… just look at the smoking ban. If I was ever round anyone’s house I would ask before lighting up. If I was told not to I wouldn’t and wouldn’t be resentful. Now what’s wrong with that? Everything, according to the government, which is the reason somewhere in this house is a set of standardized anti-smoking signs for my wife to put up on her 1st floor, sole-trading, working entirely via the net (two clients in person in three years) office door. My father-in-law who hates smoking is outraged that the council decided (or whatever they do) to deface an historic landmark in Lancashire he knows with a HMG standard no-smoking sign. I dunno, have they added them to churches? because I frequently visit the local one for a ruminative cheroot. I actually believe the smoking ban to be the greatest land-grab in UK history. It is absolutely appalling that at my local the bartender would call the fuzz (or something) if I lit-up and then out in the beer-garden has bummed smokes off me. I wanna smoke in his boozer. He wants to smoke in his boozer, 70% of the clientele want to smoke but nobody does because The Man (not from Del Monte) says “No”.
What shocks me is how we just all follow this shit. How we all follow laws that are clearly bonkers.
“Like small children, we need forcibly calming down, we need to be held to account, we need to ‘learn’.”
Quite right, and if I ever find buddy, the one who wrote this, I’ll learn him good and proper with my foot up his arse. He’s admitted he’s too stupid and lazy to learn the easy way and he’s crying out for some pain therapy and I’m fine with that, pain therapy it is.
Nick M
It might interest you to know that the University that instigated the PC dating code has gone out of business.
Antioch College in Ohio had to fold up due to lack of students.
All Glory to the laws of supply and demand.
I don’t think these “puritans” hate their own desires so much as hate everyone else’s. Primarily because so many other peoples desires are realized through individual effort.
Behind all this loser’s self-important blather is only the eternal whine of the spoiled two-year-old: “Someone has more than I, no one does what I say, they are BAD, and it’s not fair!”
Nick M is spot on. The real question is why the rest of us continue to acknowledge, much less tolerate this infantile crap. Just tell them to Fuck Off.
Jacob,
When he says “we need no freedom” he wants to take your freedom, not give up his.
I think he strongly implies that no-one should have any freedom because it is a burden to him, and his insight that it is a burden is superior: if I have choices then that is distressing, and needs to be stopped.
It is in other words a classic example of the widely current anti-rational position that intentsity of feeling makes a universal truth.
Mid,
There is both an expectation and an assumption that legal = moral.
Indeed. And equally, if not more widespread, is the authoritarian assumption that ‘illegal’ = ‘immoral’. That that something is illegal is sufficient argument that the person who does it is in that rigid category of ‘criminals’ (which brings us back to universal DNA testing for those stopped by the police), imagined as people who are wicked for its own sake. And also that it is a stronger argument against something than that it is wrong that it is illegal. Both those conceptions are frequently found in official announcements and propaganda campaigns.
A proud victory for militant fruitcakery.
Unfortunately, it is seen as a hallmark of good analysis to completely contadict everything that society generally holds dear.
MDC,
to completely contadict everything that society generally holds dear
It works for me. If ever I have the means to retire, I might write a blog (and newspaper column?) called contrariwise. Much of what society (which is to say a majority) holds dear is nonsense.
Though I suspect I might find you a more congenial person, what with your approval of freedom and all, you are committing the same sin against reason as the original nutter, I suggest, by assuming there are values belonging to an entity called “society”, and that their rightness derives from their presumed origins.
There’s very little evidence that a majority of the population does hold freedom dear. If it does, it is certainly unable to comprehend how threatened freedom is.
Guilt has a large part in this and must have something to do with a hangover from Christianity, or at least certain parts of this. Self-loathing, distrust of reason, etc, explains some of this attitude.
As I remarked a while ago, it is still quite rare to get an example of such people openly stating that they don’t want freedom, they don’t want responsibility; they just want to behave and be like children.
As Ron said, why doesn’t this jerk just emigrate to North Korea or somesuch? He’ll fit right in.
People like that are the reason why I believe in lamp posts and good quality rope.
Mid and Nick M make very good points.
An individual learns, a person is taught. One is proactive, the other is passive.
I have learnt all my life. Kidults expect to be taught.
It might interest you to know that the University that instigated the PC dating code has gone out of business.
Antioch College in Ohio had to fold up due to lack of students.
That might just be the best thing I have read all year.
People get the government they deserve. And that is true for us libertarians as well. As long as we allow the dynamic of grandiose schizophrenics (leaders) and wallflowers (the easily led) to create the vampiric State that drags us down the rabbit hole, we deserve to have our cheeks swabbed for littering.
Perhaps it’s not all our own fault, some of our libertarian fathers and grandfathers share some of the blame, not acting properly when freedoms were eroded over the last century – schooling socialzied to turn out lobotomized zombies, taxes going through the roof, the explosion of the bureaucracy and its regulations, the list goes on. Somewhere along the line, at least speaking for the US, the majority of free loving people allowed themselves to be cowed. Debating and writing and theorizing instead of fighting. The Quote of the Day by Jimmy Stewart down the page is painfully true. Having the freedom to complain how one is half a slave so long as one doesn’t do anything practical about, and ignores the vast potential for a large loss of the remaining half, isn’t much to live for.
Abiding the decisions of the “leaders and the led” that go one iota over protecting life and property compromises freedom too drastically. Conning ourselves that being half free is better than no freedom at all seems to be our problem at the moment. Freedom then is just a state of mind with little practical reality. Either we are free or we aren’t. A lack of freedom isn’t merely concrete and bars or a jackboot on your throat. It is being a de facto slave. Having your decisions, actions, and behaviors truncated by theft, having what is left to you “saved” in State approved ways that really is merely a loan, or at best liened upon. If every action I take is rebuttable and asset is confiscatable, I am not free.
Same over here in the U.S.
We have people complaining that too many choices make life difficult. Our politicians say that we can’t keep our own money because we would “spend it the wrong way”. Plus that growing list of subjects that no one is allowed to disagree with.
Perhaps that’s why the Left over here is so comfortable with Islamism. Both demand utter submission to their world view.
Nice idea Brad,
any suggestions as to how permission can be withheld?
Ok. We need to be told what to do. Fine. Told by whom ?
That commenter clearly belongs (acording to his opinion) to the ones who know better, and the implied statement is: “no need for freedom, do as you are told (by me).”
Since sheep need to be led, there has to be some leader, and he necessarily has freedom of choice. So, there cannot (logically) be a total lack of freedom. Those who speak out against freedom, speak about the sheep, not about themselves.
Liberties (or liberty) and freedom are just that – liberties and freedom.
They are NOT “liberties” and “so called freedom”.
Nor are they a “social construct” (if by this is meant that they are somehow something that can be discarded on a whim without evil consequences). Such things as rape are not wrong because “our society” says they are wrong – they are wrong (period). If you threaten a person with violence to get them to hand over there stuff or to be your slave, this is violating their liberty (again – period).
The person Midwesterner quotes sounds like a evil character escaped from an Ayn Rand novel – a relativist about everything, apart from government power.
As for governments teaching us moral virtue.
“Of one thing I am certain, it is not from the State that we can expect moral improvement”.
W.E. Gladstone.
I can think of no better way of underming personal morality and the strength of civil society than to increase the role of government. Such action, by definition, undermines the web of civil interactions that are what civil society is.
Statism must tend to towards pushing human beings away from self control and moral virtue – and towards deceit and corruption.
Civilization is painfully (very painfully) built up over the centuries. It is say to see how many people think it can be just discarded because there are “other ways of doing things”.
So they are – tyranny.
But they are not good ways of “doing things” – and they lead back to the hunter gatherer pack.
The laws of political economy and the laws of ethics are not like the laws of physics – it is possible to break them.
But it is not possible to break them without bad consequences.
“But I want the products of an advanced civilization and the social justice morality of the hunter gatherer pack”.
THIS is the “freedom” that the collectivist writer IS in favour of (freedom from reality).
But he can not have both these things (in the long term) – the universe is not like that.
Here is a story in the Daily Mail, that says a lot about freedom in England(not).
A teenage science student has been banned from applying for a training programme with the Environment Agency because she is white and English.
The recruitment agency handling the scheme told Abigail Howarth, 18, that there was no point in her submitting an application because of her ethnic background.
But bizarrely she could have applied if she had been white and Welsh, Scottish or Irish.
Here’s the link to the full story
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=473249&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
Is it possible the commenter is neitherr a puritan nor afraid of freedom, but is simply a gimp?
National Daily Newspapers;falling circulation, falling profits.
Locals?
Part of big corporations, agile, targeted marketing;profits at record levels, investment in new plants all over the country(the 1971 Yorkshire Post has been refitted several times).
They are vulnerable.
They are the places where the Agents of the Socialist Caliphate will infiltrate at a serious level. Soon.
But they will have to kick out the common sense first, which will destroy the business model eventually.
But not for at least another 15 years.
By which time we should have government funding of the ‘free’ press to preserve it in aspic.
I am told that the Yorkshire Post is a newspaper of strong conservative (not “Conservative” as comrade “Dave” Cameron would understand the word) opinions. I hope that this is true.
In the 19th century (early 19th century) the “Leeds Mercury” represented the good (as opposed to the bad) side of 19th century liberalism – including opposition to government schools.