Very few people actually want liberty. Most of those who talk of it won’t do what it takes, but frankly expect it will be handed to them. Liberty unearned is just another nuisance in the long run.
Earning liberty is not necessarily a matter of killing tyrants and their lackeys. That’s really a very small part of a much bigger picture. Liberty is living self-contained, reducing dependency to a minimum. Not necessarily to control all the variables, but to minimize exposure to outside forces. For the most part, those outside forces invariably aim at reducing our liberty. We can’t prevent the necessity of living with the rest of the human race, but we can be more of a giver than a taker, and that’s what “independence” means.
By now it should be obvious most humans don’t want that, aren’t ready for it, and can’t be gotten ready for it. The American Colonists were, by most estimates, one-third loyalists, one-third didn’t care, and one-third were willing to fight for a different system. Despite all that rhetoric about liberty, only a precious few actually wanted it. Most of the rebels were simply looking for a different brand of dependence.
It’s easy to live-and-let-live when you aren’t entangled in the affairs of others. Since living in isolation is hardly a solution, we should rather choose our dependencies very carefully. You have to realize there are trade-offs, and those pure visions of full liberty won’t ever happen in real life. Since it is necessary to live in some form of community, let me suggest the one with the least danger to liberty is blood kin. Not perfect, but better by far than any other situation when you contemplate the long term. At the same time, kinship can be measured in different ways, depending on the context. However you define it, kinship-based community is your best hope for maximum independence.
An example is my much beloved Linux in particular, and Open Source in general. The whole issue revolves around “do-it-yourself” (DIY). The Linux Community is pretty much a hobby group, but the aim is to cut unnecessary ties to the commercial offerings. Sure, plenty of the Linux users are just “me-too” hobbyists trying to be cool with the gang. These are the users who are such noisy fan-boys and fan-girls, because they have no interest in your independence, nor their own, just trying to be a member of their own favorite club. They are very dependent. And all too soon, many of them will wander off, looking for their next social dependency fix. That there are so many passing through is what makes Linux discussion forums so noisy. It’s a high turnover, and each one has to pass through the same stages. Meanwhile, there remains a core of those who actually use this stuff.
The whole concept of Open Source is pretty much “have it your way.” If you’ll take the time to learn, like a real DIY survivor, you can change a lot things to make yourself comfortable. Those of us who understand will be glad to teach you so you don’t need us as much. Poke and explore on your own, because I might need your discoveries some day. The only real difficulty is there are so very many options, it’s pretty hard to find the right combination, and no one of us ever really knows it all. So we keep in touch. And as your needs change, so will your evaluation of what is comfortable. It will never be perfect, but adapting to the underlying system is the best hope of liberty.
We could do that with a lot of things. Can you grow your own food? Can you fix your own shoes, or make new ones? Do you know anything at all about vehicle maintenance or home repair? How much of your daily life would be in real trouble if most of the commercial activity around you goes away? Can you pick up and move to a better place?
I remain convinced we are seeing the end of Western Civilization. No, not in the catastrophic sense of everyone dying and taking it with them to the grave. It’s dying in the sense it can no longer adapt, because it has chased itself into too many false corners, trapped and struggling while the backside is being eaten alive. Vestiges of its influence will be found here and there in future civilizations, but this one as a whole is dead.
As the system around us shuts down, it will scramble for more control, more resources, more of everything. It will make demands which cannot possibly be met, then punish everyone for failure. Western democratic government is a mindless beast. And your greatest sin will ever be rejecting its demand you plug into it for full dependence. Those are don’t need government are the greatest threat to it. If you plug in, it will kill you, sooner or later. Sure, you’ll recognize all the images from popular culture: take the red pill, use the force, go west, liberty or death. You might get yourself killed that way, but you’ll die all at once, not slowly bleeding away into nothing.
