On which hill do we stand?
One of the things I love about stoicism is the freedom of action that it encourages, we set a target with the aim of getting what we want, be that safety, security or a happy and healthy life, and then we manoeuvre to get that thing. If we can cut a straight line to that target, great, take the short cut through all the nonsense, want to be wealthy, buy assets not handbags and lattes, want to be healthy, daily fasting, walking, a good night sleep and black coffee, done. When there is not a direct path, we can take the path of least resistance even if it takes us around the garden and over the hill, we have our compass to get us to where we want to go. It is not a static philosophy, we do, learn, grow as beings of consciousness, adapt, find the road less travelled, work around the system to get what we want but sometimes we can run into roadblocks, there are forces and people who want to take away our freedom for their advantage, and if they can not, they are happy to tear the house down and destroy everything that is good or bad, they just want a do over, they hate themselves and the world that they are in. Not everything can be avoid sometimes you have to tackle a problem heading on, you just have to decide which fights you have to have.
It is the nature of the world that someone always sees an advantage in the counterpart of whatever is the status quo, when there is conflict, some want peace and others wants to fight to the death on the hill they are standing on, and once they are on that hill they are committed, they will not be moved. Whilst there is not open civil war in our society, there are deep and painful splits that are dangerously balanced, which is the most dangerous kind, if one side is weak and the other is strong, they will not engage, but when they are equal or close to, there will be a fight, like in nature between two equal sized bull, these are the fights where there is death and injury.
That is the position that we are edging towards, we can hear the posturing, the growling, the warning charges, and when it is a whole society rather than two bulls, it can take years of manoeuvring but when the moment comes for conflict it will happen instantaneously and it will be to the death and defeat of the other. Social media, the collapse of authority both political and scientific, the lost of objective truth and facts, the tribalism of primary interest, people did not use to be defined solely by what they ate, whether they would take a vaccine, how they are victimised, who is the most victimised, denying the earth is round or biological exists, these are all symptoms and signs of a coming war because the truth is the first victim of war. The war might not be physical, but there is going to be winners and losers, there will be a conflict over power and money, we might not round up the hated minority and send them off to a re-education camp but they will be isolated and cut off from resources and freedom.
In general I prefer to invite you to question yourself to get to the answers that work for you, but that does assume a world where you have freedom to be yourself, to act with freedom, speak, think and do as you wish. There are always limitations, we are dealt the cards that we get and it is up to us to play the hand that we have, life is not fair, it is a genetic lottery, ugly, short, stupid, you have no control over that, and your life will be different because of those things and there is nothing you can do about, apart from playing the best game that you can, it is sad but I did not decide what we should value. However I do think that how we treat the most unfortunate is a marker for how well we are doing as a society, and in a world that judges value with money, the money solution is an universal basic income, which gives everyone of us an equal stake and respect for our individual value, it is the ultimate game of monopoly where everyone gets to past go and collect £200.
Instead of just saying that this is the market and we are paid what we are worth, it recognises that what we are worth to society is based on luck and that changes, it use to be that the physically strong took all the value and hoarded it, we now see that as bullying and yet the intellectuals are doing the same, hoarding their wealth, but they should be smart enough to realise that they have become the greedy bullies that they feared, they should be better, and when the next valued class takes over (probably social intelligence), they will be left behind as well. Perhaps the same is true for the questioning approach, it assumes that everyone can question themselves and the answers will lead to better outcomes, but as the alternative is to tell people what to do, to give them guidelines and rules to follow, I can only say that I would hate that.
I want the freedom to question, to discuss, to see the other side of an argument, that might just be the hill I wish to die on as not standing on that hill, is a world that I do not want to exist. The freedom to be different, to have opinions, to be wrong and change my mind, I do not want a list of rules, I want freedom and I want you to have that freedom to offend me, to disagree, to be disagreeable, rude, to say what you want. The only freedom I do not want you to have is the freedom to control what I do, to tell me what I can say or think, to tell me what I am, to define me, give me a list of words I can say and which I can not, fuck you to the moon if you think this silly liberal is going to listen to a single command, my mother told me, I should stand up to the strong and protect the weak, which if it was universally followed would result in a world that guarded what was important to everyone. It would put an responsibility on everyone to stand up for what they believed in.
And I believe in the freedom to get on with what you want to do and to allow others to do the same, to mind your own businesses, to let others make their own choices freely. I want everyone to have the resources for the basic things in life, to not have to watch people being publicly killed by homelessness, to support those who are ill and sick both physically and mentally, to have the freedom to speak, to be wrong, to learn. You can not make a horse drink water, you can only lead them to it, people will still be idiots and fools, they will still make poor choices, how else do we know what good choices are, if we do not have examples of the opposite, just look at the choices rich kids make, all the money in the world and yet, they waste the opportunities that they have and learn that money only solves the problems that can be solved by spending money.
That is what freedom looks like, the freedom to fail, to get it wrong, that is how we learn, we need that freedom, we need to be able to say the wrong thing, to think it and then change our minds. When our language is controlled based upon who you are, when it constantly changes to catch out those who can not adapt quickly, when your assumed intention means everything you say is seen as hateful, when one idea invalids everything you say, when listening to the wrong person makes you guilt by association, when you are labelled as dangerous so that everything you think is written off as the fruit of the poisoned tree. That is a world where the moderators and judges of the public conversation has overwhelming power, they become dictators, drunk on their own power and everyone ends up on trial and convicted by a hanging jury.
We only develop as growing beings of consciousness by having the freedom to be imperfect, and there is not a single person in the world who is perfect. I want a world that is forgiving, that has mercy and a desire to understand each other by listening and finding the areas of common understanding, we agree that violence is wrong, that theft is wrong, why is it that forcing other people to live in the same way as you is not, that should be in the front of the line, and yet that freedom to be yourself without shame, to live your own life is under attack. This might not matter to you, and yet I value being able to be myself so highly that it is the hill I am happy to stand on and protect, I am glad to have found it, I hope you find the hill that you care about because if you know which hill you stand on you have something you care about beyond yourself, you have a purpose and a reason for the fight that is a life worth having, you have meaning and a hope to illuminate your life even in the darkest of times, stand and be proud that you are more than just surviving, you have join the fight back against the darkness, and all you have to do is hold your ground, brave warrior.
