In the name of change?

Where has the peace gone, who stole our stability, when did our sense of having common values disappear, we now have individual set of ideas, a list of things we stand for as long as we are not pushed to defend them. We regard them as are our natural rights even if we do not know where they came from and only value them as a benefit, it never occurs for a moment that they are a privilege, that they are not given and are not an inherent characteristic of human beings. Privilege is only a bad thing for those who abuse it and lack responsibility for their protection and universality, and there are precious few left in a position to fight for them. This is a time when privilege is seen as evil and subject to a relentless witch hunt, and yet we all have them, even if only in relative terms compared to previous eras, and what has been seen as our rights are really the hard earnt privileges of those who have paid with blood for them, which we are happily washing our hands of, in a world where no one is prepared to pay for them anymore.

These privileges are important, to be able to love who we want, to own property, to trust the written word of other (by contract law), to be educated, to hold property freely, have access to health care, the freedom of speech (and to offend as people did to protect the right of sexual freedom), to be free from violence, to be at liberty and earn a living from freely given labour, to act in any manner that is not illegal, to have representation in our government and not to impose our values on others so that they can not do the same to you, these are not given they are taken. Freedom is not a single thing it is a patchwork of privileges that stitch together to make a modern, happy and healthy way of living together, or at least it did, as there is an underlying organising principle that is required, which is the free citizen who upholds those freedoms and sees them as a privilege that must be protected and even sacrificed for, and it must be by choice, not motivated by fear or threats.

There was never a moment when these rights were given out, there was no moment on a mountain when they were gifted to us, these privileges where fought for in stages, one step at a time, they creeped up on us, there were relative freedoms in the past but they stuttered into existence, people had to get a taste for them, fairness did not come into it, freedoms comes with costs. Fair rents came at the expense of profiteering landlord and they were not happy about it, kings and queens sat upon thrones of racketing and extortion (or taxes if you prefer their formal name), and they put down rebellions without mercy, that is not to say you did not get good landlords, lords or monarchs, but fairness should not depend upon the wheel of luck. Freedom is a pie where we can all get a small slice or one person can get all of the pie and the rest of us are subject to their freedom to do whatever pleases them, that is why we do not have the limitless freedom, we share it.

No system that humans have come up with yet is perfect, far from it, but at least freedom is spread about a lot more now, rather than concentrated in the hands of a few people, as we are seeing that top heavy control is very dangerous, luckily any system that relies on a few people is inherently unstable and will collapse in the end (even if they do a huge amount of damage in the meantime). However these changes both for good and bad take a long time in general, even if there are flash moment when a lot happens in a short time, the so-called interesting times that no one wants to live through but that everyone loves remembering as they are so dramatic at a distance, when the reality was that they were bloody, messy and painful for all concerned. Whilst the first casualty of war is truth, the rest of them are people and in their millions when things get carried away, and each one is an excuse to carry on the payment in blood that is required to make people realise it is not worth the price, that is the only way war ends when someone stops being willing to pay the price.

Of course it is easier to maintain what you have rather than fight for more, the price is the willingness to speak out against those things that you think is not just wrong but actually harmful to all of us, and then pay the cost of making that stand, it might be your career, your reputation, it might hurt finically, even your liberty but it is cheaper than your life. However you do not get to choose the fights that you have, they will find you, you can just agree with everything that your friends say and never have point of view of your own, but that just makes you a passive victim of whatever thoughts your group has, if you are happy in your group that might be fine for you, just know that you are the subject and you have given service to a king, you are no longer your own person.

There will certainly be people out there who will be thinking, great I have idea that I care about, so now there are no limits on what I am prepared to do to fight for this freedom that I valued so highly, to which people I say, are you sure? We can all be wrong, more often than we care to admit, science is consistently wrong about it's facts, every year it finds out that one in twenty of it's facts are inaccurate, and it changes it's mind, have you changed your opinions on one in every twenty things that you believe this year, I haven't, and that is just the facts not opinions that you have about the facts. Many of the things we really disagree on are our judgements of what is good and bad, and so much of that is relative thinking that you can be wrong in ways that you are not even aware of, as a general rule if you can not stronghold someone else's opinion, that is make a strong argument for their point of view, you have not understood your own opinion well enough to understand the subject.

As an even more general rule, if you have a set of opinion that are identical to a large number of other people, if you have your kind of people, you have joined a team, a side in some social sport that has more in common with organised soccer violence than an intellectual position, you do not reason yourself into groupthink, you give up reason and become a corporal in an army for the “right” side. If you do not disagree on a single subject that is not a friendship based on mutual respect, that is dominate submissive relationship where you have lost power, your boundaries and independence, that relies on shame and social punishment if you deviate from doctrine which you must repeat even if it makes no sense. If you can not explain something clearly to a seven year old, you probably do not understand it well enough to be sure that you are right.

The less we are sure about most things, the healthier your point of view is, which means that when we are sure, we can be confident that it is worth fighting for, if we were to defend a child from being attacked we would be sure in our actions, we would not have doubt even if we were to hurt someone we would not have regrets or shame, that is the degree of confidence that you need to be firm in our convictions. When we have that we process the drive to make the changes that are necessary and no more, we do not get to make a paradise on earth, but do get to make it a more pleasant place especially in the small part of the world that we exist in, and it does not matter what is happening else where, we are responsible for our part of it, we get to deal with the problems in front of us, that is where we can act and where those actions are the most effective. Of course if it is in alignment with a greater vision there is a greater chance that is a good action, though if you are using a theory to justify a low quality action that is a sign that your greater vision is wrong.

Forget the world, forget your country, forget the theory that you wish to follow, you might act from a position of how you want the world to be but it here, the actual actions that you are taking, that is where you are that you get to act in the name of change and it is here that you will have to live with the consequences of your actions, be mindful, be decisive and act in the smallest way possible, and when you have seen the results, act a little more and stop as soon as you can, as it is anyway easier to destroy than create, sometime the best action is to do nothing, to wait for a better opportunity. There is often more power in what you refuse to do, when you refuse to submit to groupthink, when you refuse to conform, or change how you act, when you do not comply, when you do not play their game. If you hate capitalism, do not buy things, if you hate the media, do not watch it, hate cancel culture support your artist directly, hate Nazis do not act like one, there are always simple steps to change, take the smallest one you can, that is how you change the world, one action at a time. We are the sum of the actions we take, our character is formed and judged upon those action, act in the name of good change, act with good faith, and the awareness that you might be wrong, and act anyway because if you don't, who will?