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Sunday, September 9, 2018

The False Choice Between Liberty and Community

Imagine, if you will, the following thought experiment:  You have a choice between two villages in which to live.  In Village A, everything would be decided by consensus and you would have to ask permission for literally everything you do, and you would live to be 80.  In Village B, you can be your own boss, do your own thing, and not have to answer to anybody, but you would die at 50.  Which village would you choose?

If you are like most people, or at least most men, you chose the second one, right?  I know I sure would.  But these deliberately absurd examples are simply caricatures of Matriarchy and (the false promise of) patriarchy, respectively.  And this false choice between liberty and community is most likely how the idea of patriarchy was initially sold to men in the first place.  In reality, the decidedly Faustian promise of "every man a king" only applied to the top 1% of men, while the remaining 99% of both men and Women were serfs (if not outright slaves) to one degree or another.

The truth is, of course, far more nuanced than this overly-simplistic (and intellectually dishonest) thought experiment would imply.  There really is no dilemma at all.  Liberty and community need not be at odds with one another--except, of course, under patriarchy in which everything is a zero-sum game at best.  As Carol Brouillet notes in her essay "The Feminist Perspective", the literal meaning of "community" comes from Latin, meaning "free sharing of gifts".  And that is what life would likely be like with Women in charge overall.  And while macro-level decisions would indeed be made by consensus for the most part, there would really be no need for micromanagement, thus essential individual liberty would not be in any real danger.  We would all be sovereign over our own bodies and minds by default, as there would not be any reason why we wouldn't be.  Food for thought.

In other words, the false choice between liberty and community is just another patriarchal Big Lie that all too many people believe.  In fact, it would have to be in the top five of the list of Big Lies, right up there along with "everybody and their mother must work for a living", "everybody must procreate", "humanity is separate from and above Nature", and especially "men are the superior gender and should thus rule the world".  All of these assumptions are absolutely FALSE, and we must dispense with these at once.  Yesterday.

6 comments:

  1. I READ IT & I NEED CLARIFICATION. YOUR FRAMES OF REFERENCE ARE DIFFERENT THAN MINE, SOMETIMES I HAVE TO STRAIN TO FOLLOW THE REASONING. NOT YOUR FAULT, IT'S MINE. RIGHT NOW I AM WRITING SOMETHING SO I CANNOT FORM THE QUESTIONS. I WILL READ IT AGAIN LATER TO FORM THEM. THANKS FOR THIS.

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  2. I REALLY WANT TO GET TO THE ONE WITH THE THREE THINGS LOST IN PATRIARCHY. THAT I GOT RIGHT AWAY.

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  3. ALSO YOUR VOCABULARY IS DIFFERENT THAN MINE & I WOULD NEED TO LOOK UP WORDS & TERMS - THAT COULD BE WHAT CONFUSES ME. EXAMPLE - WHAT IS A ZERO-SUM GAME?

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  4. You're very welcome, Rasa. A zero-sum game means that in order for someone to win, someone else has to lose (i.e. win-lose paradigm). Casinos, for example, as well as Wall Street. In contrast, a positive-sum game is when one person can win *without* another person having to lose, or perhaps both sides benefit (i.e. win-win paradigm). Economic growth, for example, at least in theory. A negative-sum game is when both sides lose to one degree or another (i.e. lose-lose paradigm), even if the "winner" is simply the one who loses the least compared to others (tariffs and trade wars, for example, and in fact any sort of war in practice).

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  5. Patriarchy and capitalism are zero-sum games at best, and ultimately negative-sum games in the long run. Where as Matriarchy is a positive-sum game, as is liberty in general. It is mutually beneficial. Liberty is like love, the more you give, the more you get.

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  6. And of course, no one is free when others are oppressed. And no one is truly happy for long while others are miserable.

    https://medium.com/@yurialexandrovich/how-to-raise-a-human-child-db9bde3b719c

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