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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Being Pissed-Off Is Not Enough : The truth is that libertarians spend a huge number of brain-cycles on the concept of justice, and especially on all the ways they’ve been done wrong. These things should not occupy us as they do. Being Pissed-Off Is Not Enough By Paul Rosenberg Published: 12 October 2009 If you are busy addressing the evil in the world, who is addressing the good? – Russell Means The truth is that libertarians spend a huge number of brain-cycles on the concept of justice, and especially on all the ways they’ve been done wrong. These things should not occupy us as they do. This is not to say that we don’t have reason to complain; after all, we’ve been born into a situation where one group of well-armed men tells everyone else, “Do what we say or we’ll hurt you.” Once you break through the brainwashing of your childhood and understand this, being pissed-off is entirely normal and entirely justifiable. It is not, however, something upon which to build a life, or even a philosophy. Understand this: The things we complain about are legitimate and we should be mad, but they are surface issues; they are not the real deal. We need to see beyond injustice and our preoccupation with it. Being pissed-off is not nearly enough. WE DEFEAT INJUSTICE, THEN WHAT? Preventing injustice is not an end in itself – it is merely necessary to allow our work to proceed without molestation. Does justice matter? For sure! But it is not the central issue – it is only necessary to keep destroyers away from our real work. The purpose of law is to prevent successful coercion. It is necessary, even crucial, but it is not the end goal. Otherwise, once we kill injustice, we have nothing else; we are abandoned in a void. Think of it this way: Let’s say that we were fully successful in getting rid of the state; then what? What do we do after the celebration party? Play with this scenario for a minute: It’s over. The state is gone. No big boss is telling you what to do any longer. There’s nothing to be angry about except some intermittent, garden variety crime. Now what do we do? I hope you are not drawing a blank, but most of us do when presented with this scenario. Here’s the big point I’m trying to make: Whatever we would do after the celebration ends is what we should be doing now. THE PURPOSE OF LIBERTY Liberty is not an end in itself. It is fundamentally important, but it is not the final goal. The real goal is for life to be expressed it the world. We have almost incalculable potentials. We possess the incredible gift of consciousness. We are – literally – the engines of creation. Think about it: Humans can choose to create. However we wish to define our component parts (mind, brain, soul, heart, psyche, will, desire, whatever), we can use them to create things that have never been before! We can also use them to continuously improve ourselves! What really matters is that this set of abilities, which I will simply call “life,” is used; that it is expressed in the world to the fullest extent possible. No one has the faintest clue as to how far we can go, what we can become, or what we might be like a hundred or a thousand years down that path. But it is certain that we are capable of massive improvement. In fact, we are capable of massively improving almost everything we touch! We need to do this, not merely be “getting ready to do it.” THE TRAP OF REACTION When you focus on the bad things that are happening, you are forever reacting to external stimuli. Again, some level of this is necessary, but if you fall into a pattern of doing it, you become unstable. Always reacting to external things leaves you no time to build a sound internal foundation and to work on the things that matter most. You are the mechanism that matters; your central goal is to improve and use that mechanism. If you want to do this, and improve the mechanism, your focus will have to be internal. If you had a magic box, keeping it from being stolen would certainly matter to you, but the whole purpose of protecting it would be to use it. The magic box is your life, and reacting to outside threats is not enough. To make things worse, people that constantly react to threats end up at the mercy of the largest current threat. So, if a more serious threat than the forcible removal of earnings or the loss of rights comes around, it will find them in their usual reactionary mode; they will react according to the threat, and not according to their principles. The big threat will come and their principles will fail. It happens all the time. IDENTITY When we focus on externals, we define ourselves by what we do. When we focus on internals, we define ourselves by what we are. Because of this, fighting injustice is a faulty foundation for identity. Identity needs to be independent of external factors. For it to be solid, it must rest on internal factors. LIBERTY IS HARD Liberty is not easy, and it is a mistake to pursue it in the hope of getting specific payouts. That is the wrong goal, and chasing it will end up hindering the cause. Liberty is right because it is the only thing that allows human potential to be realized, not because it stops abuses. Those are side-effects. Liberty is the essential condition for an advanced human existence, but there is a fundamental difference between the thing itself and the environment that allows the thing to thrive. Liberty is the necessary environment; the expression of life is the thing. Goethe once said, We are always getting to live, but never actually living. This must not be true for us any longer. We must begin living as if we had already triumphed over injustice. Today.
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#3. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
Does justice matter? For sure! But it is not the central issue – it is only necessary to keep destroyers away from our real work. Now he tells me! I'll keep that in mind whenever your ethnic brethren mention 'social justice', Mr. Rosenberg.
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