Let Freedom Reign

• 14 •

THE NEED IS MINE

The lecture had been well received. I had argued for freedom and urged everyone to become a student of liberty so that he might better understand the philosophy and explain it with greater clarity. It was an enthusiastic harangue on my part, but what had been accomplished for my audience?

The more I reflected, the less satisfied I was. For the lecture had been just that—a harangue, similar to the “persuasiveness” most libertarians employ, the kind that gets us nowhere. Have I been going about things wrong?

In effect, I’ve been telling my listeners that the country needs freedom and that freedom needs them. Get in there and fight for freedom and country; you are needed! Now, what is wrong with that?

There are at least two flaws in this approach. First, there is very little motivation in some generalized and nebulous need—be it the need of country, society, ideology, or whatever. Everybody’s need is everybody’s responsibility, but everybody in theory usually turns out to be nobody in actuality.

Yes, in the case of emergencies such as war or other catastrophe, where each person fears what will happen to him if he doesn’t act, response to the call of duty can be and often is general. But when the call is in the name of freedom—particularly if the listeners are affluent—one may expect applause if the lecture is well presented, but not much more. The speaker will be admired for his labors and lauded as a rare idealist, while freedom continues to lose support. This calls to mind the matinee idol in a play that’s a flop.

The second and more important flaw is this: Freedom doesn’t need you or me any more than wisdom needs us. It’s the other way around! The need for freedom, no less than wisdom, is mine; and this goes for you, too, whoever you are. Once this fact is grasped, motivation sets in. The need for freedom is seen as a vital urgency: self-emergence. Utopian sentiments to the contrary, self-interest ranks first as the motivating force in human action.1 When and if I see that the need for freedom is an immediate, personal need of my own, you can count on me to act when freedom is threatened. And on others, too!

Freedom is not a living, thinking being and not like a plant or domesticated animal to be watered and nurtured and protected and propagated. Freedom no more has needs than it has eyes to see. Rather, it is an abstraction; indeed, it is not a thing in itself but, instead, an absence of some things: deadening restraints on creative actions.

One may harangue businessmen about their “obligations” to uphold and maintain a climate of freedom, shame teachers for neglect of their “responsibilities,” condemn the apathy of voters. But freedom does not need these persons or groups—or you or me. The concept stands, whether or not anyone supports it, believes in it, acts in accord with it. The question is: Does the individual need freedom? And my answer is, “Yes, indeed!”

Sensing the Problem

If there is such a thing as a freedom problem, it is the problem of becoming aware of one’s need for freedom. Let’s see if this need can be portrayed.

To sense one’s need for freedom is never easy, and the detection is made more difficult by the gradual erosion of freedom, that is, by the steady addition of restraints. As a rule, it takes sharp and sudden contrasts—people have to be shocked into awareness.

How sensitive one would be to the need for fresh air were its supply suddenly threatened! Imagine yourself—say in 1900—at the site where any large metropolis now stands. How fresh the air! Next, imagine a sudden dumping from the heavens of today’s atmospheric pollution that often brings tears from the eyes and smarting of the lungs. One would easily recognize the need for fresh air. But when the pollution increases gradually, over decades, most people accept it without much grumble; their sensitivity is numbed. Man’s need for fresh air hasn’t changed; but his recognition of the need has dimmed.

So it is with freedom. One’s need for freedom is no less in Russia or Cuba than in the U.S.A. or Hong Kong; no less now than when restraints on creative actions were fewer. It is the recognition of the need that flags as freedom gradually dwindles. Adaptation to the mores, whatever they are, is the natural tendency. Most Russians, for instance, do not recognize the extent of their enslavement.

Nor is there any way to overcome this natural tendency unless one is always aware of the what-ought-to-be and constantly makes comparisons with the what-is. When one is conscious of the what-ought-to-be—the ideal—the what-is automatically becomes apparent. The need for freedom then looms large. Sudden contrasts are no longer necessary for awareness.

The Need for Freedom

Why do I need freedom? The following brevities—three among ever so many—leave no doubt as to my need.

1. Man, singular, is Creation’s finest image. His destiny is the improvement, now and forever, of this image in order that he may increasingly share in Creation. Man’s purpose is a realization of his unique, creative potentialities. Man requires, above all else, not to be smothered—that is, he requires an absence of restraints against creative release. He needs “room to breathe,” as we say.

2. Man needs freedom in order to be self-responsible. No one can be self-reliant when the government coercively assumes responsibility for his welfare, security, prosperity. It is only when the individual responsibly chooses between alternatives—becomes a decision-maker—that there can be growth of the faculties essential for self-realization. It is only in the absence of coercive restraints—freedom—that man becomes his own man.2

3. Man needs freedom because it is the only state of affairs in which Creative Wisdom can flourish, without which man cannot exist. As explained in previous chapters, Creative Wisdom is that coalescence of tiny bits of knowledge—inventions, insights, discoveries, and the like—into an enormous luminosity; it is a body of knowledge that never even remotely exists in any discrete individual. It is Creative Wisdom that accounts for all the man-made gadgetry by which we live and materially prosper—everything from a pencil to a jet plane. Coalescence—the ingathering of the tiny bits—presupposes their freedom to flow. This Creative Wisdom or “knowledge in society” is equally a requirement for all social, political, moral, ethical, and spiritual achievements of high order.

Dean Inge’s, “Nothing fails like success,” comes to mind. Two or three generations of affluence—temporary in historical terms—have the superficial earmarks of success. Most of those who live so affluently in these periods become insensitive to needs, particularly to a need for any more freedom than exists in their experience. Freedom fails to prevail at the hands of these “successes.”

It takes intellectual calisthenics for one of these “successes” to recognize his need for freedom. He must go beyond his own experience to see what his needs really are, that is, he has to see that his own needs extend to the children for whom he is responsible, and to their progeny. To do what is sound and right at any point in time requires that present thoughts and actions be assessed as to their effect on some future point in time.

Freedom has no needs. But anyone who can think long-range will likely conclude, sooner or later, that “the need is mine.”

• 1The Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter, February, 1969.
• 2Even prohibiting pollution in highly polluted areas may be no solution. Pollution is becoming a problem of the whole troposphere, that is, the troposphere assuredly has containment limitations. If this view be accepted, then pollution released atop Mt. Everest could eventually wreak its havoc on Americans.