A Call to Action

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Contents

Acknowledgements..........................................vForeword..................................................xiiiIntroduction..............................................xviiChapter 1: On Human Nature................................1Chapter 2: The Primacy of Property........................15Chapter 3: On Organizational Tyranny......................33Chapter 4: On the Inverse Rule of Law.....................47Chapter 5: On the Tyranny of Taxation.....................53Chapter 6: Synopsis.......................................73Chapter 7: A Call to Action...............................79Notes.....................................................87Bibliography..............................................91List of Figures...........................................93

Chapter One

The Basic Necessities of Humanity

Over the ages of recorded history, there has been a great deal of discussion concerning the basic needs and duality of humanity. I do believe it is valuable to briefly discuss this subject for your benefit so that you might better understand the constraints and challenges caused by our own humanity when we seek to move men and woman to action.

First and foremost, for a civilization of any type to exist, its members must agree upon an informal contract at a fundamental human to human level. They must share the same viewpoint on a number of important beliefs, values, and cultural expressions. This agreement creates a bond of fellowship that keeps those members together in times of hardship or turmoil and provides a certain measure of community that not only helps differentiate that civilization from others but also provides those members a sense of identity and belonging unique among themselves.

In order for this contract to occur between fellow human beings, certain basic necessities of man must be satisfied in order for individuals to have the time and mental focus to complete the contract. Chief among these basic necessities are an individual's need to exhibit their own Identity, as well as, their need to be accepted by their fellow human beings as a valuable and worthwhile member of the community. Therefore, individual identity and individual acceptance into the group are two key and inseparable traits of the human condition. These conditions must be satisfied in a majority of citizens for a civilization to form and persist.

Without the satisfaction of these two basic necessities, human beings are not able to assemble into larger communities and build stable and lasting societies. The inability to satisfy these two basic needs of the human condition is a catalyst for individuals to pursue drastic and quite often violent means to achieve them. This state of affairs results in prolonged periods of anarchy until some dominant force is able to regain control and establish the provisions for these two basic needs. It follows that any society or civilization seeking to form and persist for any length of time must ensure the conditions exist to provide the citizenry with the opportunity to satisfy individual identity and group belonging.

It is possible that people can be forced to obey and disregard these basic necessities but only for a short time. We can see this fact in practice with the example of the establishment of the Soviet State in Russia in the 1920s. Individuals were forced to give up their individual identity for the benefit of the overall society. This was done through forced reeducation, concentration camps, and outright mass murder. Despite all of these measures, the desire of the individual to maintain an identity could not be eliminated and the Soviet State eventually fell with existing institutions such as the Eastern Orthodox Church still thriving even after roughly seventy years of persecution. As the Soviet example illustrates, even the threat of death eventually wanes as the human spirit demands recognition and a means to express itself. This is why true tyrannies do not long endure.

The only way for a civilization to survive is to satisfy these human needs in the correct proportions so as to make both the individual and the community remain in balance and committed to the survival of the civilization. Therefore, most successful civilizations allow an individual maximum freedom until the extension of that freedom infringes on the rights of another individual's freedom. This is where a mutually agreed on rule must intercede to avoid conflict and possible long term damage to the civilization. These rules in a governed society are called laws.

It is important to distinguish here that not every "law" today is truly a law but rather a legal extension of the means of control over individual liberty by external self-interested sources such as a government bureaucracy and affiliated interest groups. All so called "laws" that do not address the compromise between the freedoms of individual citizens in order to ensure the maximum freedom for both while still ensuring that the impact to individual identity and group belonging for those individuals is minimally impaired are not laws. I will discuss more about the true nature of governing law and its association with individual liberty in Chapter 4.

The duality of humanity is composed of the desire to remain an individual and stand apart from other people and the desire to belong to the group. As a matter of pure logical thought, these two aspects of the human condition stand in stark opposition to one another. If we were to continue further we might draw the obvious conclusion that no human being could ever be at peace or in balance with two opposing aspects of their nature.

However, if we were to draw this conclusion we would be wrong. This is because the human condition also possesses the ability to compromise between these two aspects. An individual's ability to compromise is one of the greatest qualities of the human condition. Without the ability to compromise there would be no ability for individuals to exist in larger groups and, consequently, no ability for a larger society of human beings to exist. It is the quality of compromise that gives mankind the ability to build and sustain a society and a civilization. However, like anything, compromise can be taken to extremes within a civilization. This is a subject I will also discuss a bit later. Suffice it to say that if you compromise your beliefs, values, and cultural homogeneity to such a level that they no longer exist then the art of compromise has gone too far.

Compromise is a limited commodity in a human being and each individual's capacity to compromise varies dramatically. There are individuals who will accept nothing but their way and storm against society and other individuals in an attempt to force their will upon them. There are others who will accept almost anything to the detriment of themselves or their possessions because their primary interest is to get along with everyone else no matter the cost. In both cases, the individual is creating conditions for themselves and those around them that are not conducive to a balanced society. Namely, a properly balanced environment between individualism and group belonging.

I have found through my study of history and various cultures that the majority of human beings are willing to compromise to their detriment so they can belong while only a few stand out from the crowd and live or die based on their ability to impose their will on others. It is the smaller group that eventually influences the larger group and not the other way around. A single minded individual with the requisite charisma can literally move mountains of people to their will.

This is a very dangerous fact of the human condition and has led to such horrors as the rise of Adolf Hitler, National Socialism, and the holocaust, Joseph Stalin's ability to massacre millions of Jews and Russians, and even the United States' own persecution and extermination of Native Americans. In all these cases (and many, many more), the majority of the population did not care and in many instances condoned the beliefs imposed on them by their charismatic leaders. All of these societies wantonly gave up their freedom to these leaders in an effort to belong and preserve their own lives. We all know, at least those of us who study history, a famous maxim well said by Benjamin Franklin that "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". Those who are willing to sacrifice a little freedom for a little security are deserving of neither. I would add that those who do practice this dreadful approach to life will always end up being the majority and the harbingers of new dictatorships.

The compulsion to bend to the will of the powerful is a negative aspect of human nature that served us well in small groups in prehistoric times but is fundamentally one of the greatest threats to any large civilization and is in fact causing disastrous consequences to our society today. Unfortunately, history also tells us that the only citizens that stand against this condition are those that are well educated, have some form of ownership and therefore something to lose, and an individual Will that abhors doing what other people want them to do. These individuals usually end up as casualties when the likes of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin take over or become the new leaders if they are able to bring a halt to these types of tyrannical individuals. In the end, it seems the masses are always led by either a benevolent or a malevolent dictator.

When a society is able to avoid a one man dictatorship, the same struggle ensues only with factions of individuals. This is the exact condition our country faces today. There are numerous factions and special interest groups filled with dedicated and single minded individuals pushing and vying against the mass of the population who really could care less and just want to get along with whoever seems likely to win. In the end, whether a single dictator or a factional dictator, the individual loses his freedom and the human spirit suffers. The good news is this menace can be fought by every individual on a day-to-day basis. I shall address how this can be accomplished later in the book.

So if we return to our original discussion about the human condition, there is also the need of every human being to attend to the needs of the human body in its attempt to survive in the natural or physical world. This concept is best captured by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In this concept, a human being is unable to achieve higher orders of thought and civilized conduct without key physical and social needs satisfied. Individualism and group belonging are aspects of social needs. However, our concern over these are limited or even eliminated by our ability to feed and shelter ourselves.

If we expect our citizens to take an active, healthy part in our society, then it is certainly clear that the basic needs of each citizen must be satisfied by the environment created within that civilization. Basic needs are not just food, water, and shelter but also labor. By labor I mean an individual's ability to contribute some measure of physical and mental effort to some end. It is in labor that all human beings find self-worth, identity, and satisfaction. An individual's labor is proof that they are able to affect the physical world in some way that is of benefit to themselves and those of their group and society. Benjamin Franklin extolled the values of labor when he commented on the condition of the poor:

"I think the best way of doing good for the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves and became richer."

Throughout most of history, labor was the means through which individuals and societies achieved the acquisition of food, water, and shelter. It was this symbiotic relationship between need of sustenance and the ability to acquire it that formed the basis of society and formed the heart of both the agricultural and industrial eras of human history.

If we were to think of civilization as a formula, we would begin with these basic human needs as highlighted by Maslow as a prerequisite for all societies. No individual will join together in a society that cannot provide these basic needs. Figure 1 illustrates this basic concept.

If the lower order and higher order needs are satisfied, you have the necessary conditions for a civilization to exist, but not the guarantee of its existence. In addition to basic needs which are all primarily physical, we now need to add needs that are primarily psychological. Labor begins that transition by giving the body a means to exercise itself and remain healthy but this activity also positively affects the mind and makes it more able to process and conduct higher level thought. This higher level thought focuses on how an individual can improve their condition once basic needs are satisfied. This includes the concepts of individual identity and group belonging. In many cases, higher level thought is focused on how to better acquire more basic needs.

To build a productive and viable civilization, higher order thought must be conditioned and trained early in life so that an individual understands their place in society as an individual, as well as, a member of a group. The art of human compromise must be taught for all aspects of an individual's life through proper exposure and training provided by a classical education. In this context a classical education would include topics such as philosophy, civics, history, logic, etc. This concept is illustrated in Figure 2 below.

When we talk about building a viable civilization, we must understand that it is a complicated process that includes many variables, deviations, and idiosyncrasies. If indeed the formula was simple and of equal application, then one might expect that history would have recorded civilizations of equal likeness. Of course we know that history has not recorded civilizations of equal likeness. In fact, there are a great many differences between them and hence why there has never been a single world empire. The only point I seek to make is that at the root of any civilization be it the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty of China, or the Zulu nation lies the requirement of basic human needs before higher intellectual needs. You must have both to have a civilization and you must have the former before you have the latter.

Liberty and Humanity

The process of building lower order and higher order needs into a society follows very closely with the Three Steps of Liberty articulated by John S. Mill. It was J.S. Mill who clearly articulated this idea in relation to an individual's liberty. Similar to Basic Needs, Mill discussed the "Liberty of Conscience" where an individual possesses the liberty of thought and feeling with absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects.

A Liberty of Conscience is exercised without regard to others liberty and in the absence of self restraint and compromise — i.e. basic needs. If we have Liberty of Conscience, then we can possess the "Liberty of Tastes and Pursuits". Mill explains this concept as the ability for the individual to decide and plan what they want to do with their life (i.e. plan a career, where they want to live, whether or not to have children, etc.) based solely on their own character (personality and tastes). An individual can pursue their plan, but they are responsible for their success or failure, and provided that those pursuits do not harm other individuals. The idea that other individuals may find these pursuits to be foolish, perverse, or wrong cannot halt the pursuit of these individual endeavors.

The ability to conduct the Liberty of Tastes and Pursuits is based on possessing a classical education that assists the individual in understanding their individual identity and group belonging needs. Once we have the two previous liberties, Mill identifies that we now have the "Freedom to Unite" or to pursue the "Liberty of the Combination Among individuals". As with individual liberties, the liberty to unite cannot impose harm on other individuals or associations of individuals. The ability to conduct the "Liberty of the Combination Among Individuals" is based on an understanding of compromise and how to balance individual identity with group belonging.

We can clearly see that a civilization must accommodate the needs of the human condition if it is to exist at all. If a civilization seeks to maximize humanity's higher order capacities, then it must build that civilization through a classical education focused on the structures of liberty articulated by Mill. All great civilizations and indeed all great leaders must understand the necessity of comprehending the human condition and ensure that the civilization is built to accommodate the lower and higher order needs of the citizenry. If we closely examine the fall of great civilizations, we will find the primary reason was a failure of the leaders and the institutions of that civilization to understand all aspects of the human condition.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Call to Actionby Gregory H. Grzybowski Copyright © 2010 by Gregory H. Grzybowski. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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