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RE: The Illusion of Legality

in #philosophy7 years ago

Theoretically in the US, our individual rights are inalienable, and are granted by the simple fact of our existence as people. Recognizing that some people tend to use their freedom to impinge upon the freedom of other people, our 'founding fathers' attempted to establish when such impingement is okay and when it is not - and further attempted to devise sensible procedures for modifying these established judgments as circumstances warranted.

Of course, legal person-hood in the US was limited to white male property owners in the 18th Century. As this narrow definition of legal person-hood was expanded to include an ever-greater cross section of the US population, increasingly diverse perspectives became or threatened to become politically legitimate, and the procedures for determining when it was and was not okay for one person to use their freedom to impinge upon another person's freedom quickly proved incapable of equitably accommodating such increasingly diverse perspectives.

By this point, although the purpose of government in the US theoretically remains the protection of our naturally-endowed freedom, this purpose tends to be poorly served by what those in our government actually do. But at the end of the day, there remains widespread agreement that the government is a legitimate arbiter of social reality, however insane the results.

By human action coordinated over time, social reality is translated into the physical reality with which we must contend. Your post suggests that you are dissatisfied with the physical reality produced by the social reality in which you are embedded. My question for you, then, is this: What, exactly, might produce changes in your social reality that would give you cause to support the agreements which hold this reality together?

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I would think that redefining victim as someone who has had their free will taken or infringed upon and removing all laws that create victimless crimes would be a good start. Changing the education system to teach things that make children more self aware instead of more supportive of and reliant on the government would help. Removing any old state and local laws promoting segregation or entitlement. Removing overgrown and out of touch bureaucracy. Stop charging "free people" for the "right" to leave the country. Lots of things could help change our reality.

Totally agree that these things would make sense. However, these items are overtly political, and I'm viewing politics as hopelessly broken at present, so I'm more interested in getting underneath political reality to the social reality from which it necessarily springs.

If we assume that people are inherently free, and acknowledge the possibility that people are freely choosing - time and again - to interact with each other and the larger world in such a way as to (re)produce our increasingly wrong political system, then perhaps (a) many people have no idea what they are doing, and/or (b) many people do have an idea of what they are doing, and our social reality is to their liking. So what manner of communications/interactions with each type of person might produce changes in their thinking that would translate through their actions into a future social reality that makes more sense?

It ultimately boils down to changing the way people think. Most of us are raised with a scarcity mindset which teaches our ego to keep a running negative dialogue in our head. I can't do such and such because I need to go to work. I need to go to the job because I have to pay the bill. I have to pay the bill because I need the thing. I need the thing because so and so will judge me if I don't have it. I need them to like me because I'm not self aware enough to like myself and I care what other people think. Ultimately, I believe it's required to lead by example. We have music, movies, art, and even writing/discussions like this that raise awareness and make people think. Change the minds and change the world.

 7 years ago  Reveal Comment