Tether the animal within.

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

I have often thought of this, what could I do that would improve my life?  When I consider it, I realise that writing this blog has been one thing that I have done in an attempt to journal my thoughts, to try and marshall them into some order, and attempt to learn how I might become a better person (Whatever that is).

Is it that I don’t know what to do? No, not really. I know that I should chose the healthy option in the restaurant. I know I should watch the opera program rather than the titillating rubbish. I know I should read a book rather than simply look at the salacious pictures in a magazine. I should go and jog or run rather than sit and watch TV. When on holiday was the best choice to see the red light district or the old masters exhibiton? In choice after choice I know what I should do – the problem is that don’t do it. Perhaps the small improvement I could make is to “practice what I preach“, take my own advice and follow it. Why don’t I.

I don’t, because my instincts and appetites drive me to do otherwise. My base setting is to satisfy my appetites when possible, to do otherwise takes effort and an act of will. This is perhaps also what is at the base of “becoming a better person”. Our base setting is that of being the human animal. Our instincts and appetites are set to ensure we eat, mate, reproduce rear or families. But to be truly human we need to go above this and become civilised people. We need to thwart our appetites so we can work together, act altruistically, and build a society bigger than our family unit.

Although there is a trend to promote acting on our instincts, and being true to our animal origins, thankfully most of us do not do this. The reason we can walk in the town centre without being robbed, assaulted or raped is because others hold themselves in check, as we do ourselves. As a species we have left our animal bodies and developed mentally and socially, we know that deferring gratification, recognizing that others have as many rights as ourselves and cooperating allows us to have much begger and better lives.

As children or adolescents we might feel that indulging our passions and feeding our appetites is the only thing that really matters. However, as we age we realise we need much more than this. When we get older, when we are no longer as sexually attractive, too old to mate and reproduce and too weak to stop younger stronger people taking our food or posessions, we realise that we want to live in a civilised society. That is a society where we are all held to be valuable, respect is given to individuals who work for the common good and the betterment of others. This simple step of prioritising others is powerful in creating a civilised society. Indeed this is the only safe place to live for anyone other than a young fit adult, and young fit adults are only young and fit for a decade or so.

Civilisation gives so much more back to the individual, allowing us lives much richer and complex than we could ever have if we stayed at our animal level. The current trend to of people to start to define themselves by a base animal instinct, their sexual impulses, is a dangerous fashion. We are much, much more than being simply gay, straight or bi. If anything that is the least of us. If we want a better life we should look at the advice given throughout human development. This is, that it is best to curb your appetites, think of others and look for ways to create and cooperate with our fellows. Our whole cultural base, our art, our philosophy, all that is positive comes from putting aside our animal passions and looking for something better.

So if I can make one small improvement it will be to stop and think when I make a choice and ask myself do I want this as me the animal, or as me the man.

The War on the West by Douglas Murray

If you have read his earlier books, then, it is probably true, that you have already read this one. The enemies of western civilisation have been in Douglas Murrays crosshairs for some time; the loss Christianity as a guiding principle for the west, growing individualism and alienation in society, and the emergence of Islamism as an power with imperial ambitions and the myriad problems when our society no longer seems to hold ethical views in common. In many ways this book is simply a joining of the previous books into an overall thesis. This is no bad thing as Douglas Murray writes well with a clever turn of phrase and an acute eye for many of the vagaries and stupidities of or present cultural situation. He is also droll and frequently very witty, so even though the reader may feel some repitition from previous volumes it is never irksome.

Those unfamiliar with his earlier works will benefit more. This is a good summary account of the perils that we face by being blind, sometimes willfully so, to the threats our civilisation faces and by the dangers of the unintended consequences of those who do not think clearly and fully about the plans to which they agree. Like ‘Chesterton’s fence‘ we should always be aware of why certain things are as they are before we blithely change them. Western Civilisation evolved over millenia of painful years to become the the thing is it now; equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, universal sufferage and presumptions of tolerance were neither quickly nor easily won. However, they can be easily and rapidly thrown away, especially by people who presume that those who came before us were all bumbing buffoons who did not match our present day intelligence and perception.

Those who see our history as something unversally bad and shameful, something with no redeeming features or successes, do tend to be in the asceency in our arts and academia. As they profess themselves, they are keener to deconstruct and take down what our forebears created, than to assess and modify. These are dangerous people and we should be careful that we do not allow them to lead us, sleepwalking, back to medieval barbarism as they have in some areas of the Middle East. This book will give you some guidance as how to remain vigilant and aware.

A pleasant side-effect of reading this book was that I realised how poorly informed I was about aspects of my own cultural heritage. In an attempt to rectify this deficit I found, and started watching, the BBC series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. Though mainly about the development of art it is a fascinating story of humanity’s acheivements in the West and well worth watching. Made in 1969, it is unlikely that it would be commisioned today as it does view many of the magnificent artistic creations of the past as worthy of wonder, awe and respect. Currents programs would prefer we forgot such things and focus instead on our society’s bad behaviour and crimes. Such a one sided view is neither helpful nor healthy and may lead us to destroy what is good before we have worked out what will replace it.

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There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

G.K. Chesterton

Head, Hand, Heart: by David Goodhart.

David Goodhart has shown himself to be one of our most important political scholars in recent years. His writings have revealed prescient warnings about our society’s changes. In this book he discusses the changes which have caused ‘head ‘ work (cognitive work) to become far better respected, and renumerated, that ‘hand’ work (manual, craft work) or ‘heart‘ work (caring work) and the wide-reaching consequences this has had for our society.

As a retired consultant, and previous University Lecturer, I am clearly a product of, and one who benefitted from, these changes. As I grew up, and through the first half my working life, I never doubted that cognitive ability and academic prowess was the best yardstick against which to measure people. It seemed blindingly obvious that a meritocracy based on cognitive ability was the best path for our society to follow. However, later in my career, as I watched the deleterious effect of this strategy on healthcare I started to doubt this. I agreed that medicine and nursing had become moch more technologically able but, at the same time, the aspects of care and compassion had started to atrophy. I remember realising, while teaching medicine, that an apprenticeship model would be a much better approach to medical education (as was once the case) than a university degree course. Indeed, I am certain, that the majority of skills I had when working were learnt and gained post-graduation and while “on the job”.

While I presume most of us take for granted that intellectual abilities are important but perhaps we should reconsider the weight we place upon this; would you prefer, given the choice, that your child was 10% smarter or 10% more socially skilled, or more honest, or more brave? As a society we have plumped for cognitive skills, and :-

“Qualities such as character, integrity, experience, common sense, courage and willingness to toil are by no means irrelevant, but they command relatively less respect. And when such virtues count for less it can contribute to what social conservative critics call a ‘moral deregulation’ in which simply being a good person is not valued, and it becomes harder to feel satisfied and self-respect living an ordinary, decent life, especially in the bottom part of the income spectrum”

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We may indeed be focussing on the wrong values. David Brookes distinguished between “résumé” and “eulogy” virtues. The résumé virtues are our skills, certificates, and academic awards and are aimed at securing a job. When we die, these will not be the things remembered by our eulogist; these will be our virtues of kindness, honesty, bravery, friendliness or humour – our eulogy virtues. Our society is focussing on our résumé virtues and we are putting all our eggs in one basket in this regard and, as we all know, this is an unwise strategy.

Much of the book concerns the negative aspects of this – the devaluation of degrees and reduction of the graduate pay advantage, the loss of regard and pay to hand workers and the contribution of this prioritisation to the devaluation of caring work (He discusses other social trends which have contributed to this also). He paints a picture of a society, which was predicted in Michael Young’s “The Rise of the Meritocracy”, which is run by an isolated cognitive elite out of touch with a left-behind rump of the populace. A society prone to populist rebellions such as the Brexit vote or the votes for Trump and Le Pen.

It is a timely book as we live through the coronavirus pandemic. We live in a time that we can certainly praise all the cognitive work which has led to the discovery of vaccines and given the glimmers of hope we now have. However, this has also been a time when we have felt a bit more for respect for those hand workers who brought us our groceries and supplies while we cowered at home, or the heart workers who tended and looked after us if we were unfortunate to succumb. This may give some impetus to his call for a rebalancing of our ideals and our society.

The book is very ‘data heavy’. All his statements are backed up by appropriate details. At times this makes it a bit slower reading but thankfully his style is clear and precise and the sociological data is livened at times with anecdotes and personal experiences.

This book made me think about many things that I once took for granted and made me reconsider and change my position on a number of fundamental topics. I can’t imagine that there is a better recommendation for a book than that.

The Libertarian Paradox

There is a paradox at the heart of libertarianism. We have evolved as a species to be cooperative and only able to exist in social groups. We are a social animal and one which has had unmatched success in colonizing our globe, mastering our environment, and consuming our planet’s resources. Much of this success is testament to the innate skills and abilities we have evolved to allow us to live and work communally and cooperatively.

However, we still have a need to know how to curb our passions and desires and how to see the world from our fellow citizen’s perspective. As our success now brings the problems associated with overconsumption, and excess, we need these even more today than before, Particularly the majority of us that now live in cities and large towns with high levels of population density. The need for these skills has been revealed strongly by the coronavirus pandemic as we all need to review our own personal desires for contact, travel, and social interaction with the need to keep ourselves and our friends and family safe.

It is this need to control ourselves which is at the heart of the libertarian paradox. It has been long recognised that this control must either arise internally or externally. As Edmund Burke (1766-94) knew, when he wrote, “Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.” In essence, the more virtuous we are the less rules we require. If libertarians were highly moral, and driven by strong internal ethical codes, they could indeed live in a society with a negligible state.

Unfortunately, most libertarians are not so driven. They appear more driven by their passions and desires than by following the needle of their inner moral compass. I am much more likely to see libertarians preoccupied with rules regarding drug use or sexual behaviour (and the sating of appetites) than arguing how to promote mutual self-respect between people. Similarly, their preoccupation with free speach is more often concern about any possibility of limiting the ability to insult or hurt others by one’s words, rather than worries about any restrictions to religious thought or considerations on methods of worship. Ironically, those promoting liberty often seem to be those who give rise to the very concerns that cause liberty to be restricted. Libertines do not make a good advertisement for libertarianism.

This is a perennial problem in politics. Common sense tells us that those who have a deep desire for power are those that really should never have it. Libertarians should be aware of this and also consider Burke’s other warning that “Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.”

The Fix by Damian Thompson

I came across this book in a rather circuitous manner. I had accidentally downloaded a religious podcast from The Spectator magazine’s website and had this as my accompaniment to my morning walk. It was a surprisingly interesting look at the actions of the church in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown and painted a very pessimistic view of its future. I looked up the podcaster and found it was Damian Thompson and, having found his podcast interesting, decided to risk purchasing one of his books. This is how I ended up reading about the growing problems of addictions in our society.

This is a easily readable book which details the alarming rise in addictive behaviours of which we are all aware. There are many statistics here, many of which are quite frightening. It is not limited to the growth in recreational drug abuse but also details the rise in prescription drug abuse, the effect of sugar addition, alcoholism, computer gaming and addiction to pornography. The adverse effects of these problems are also described and enumerated. The numbers are made to come to life with anecdotes and real-life stories. This includes his own experience when he had major problems with alcohol and drug abuse and dependency.

As I read the book the scale of the problem we have became clear to me and also the amount of change that our society and culture has witnessed in a short space of time. Perhaps most arresting are the changes that have occurred in our eating and sexual habits. For many generations these have quite removed from their basic biological and natural functions and now function predominately in a cultural sense and are much more malleable. Unfortunately, there are those who will use this malleability against our better interests and who will promote consumption and behaviour which is damaging to us, both as individuals and as a society. There is interesting speculation that as individuals and as a society we are getting more satisfaction from objects and things than from people and relationships, and that our psychological attitude to things fuels this problem.

Thus far, this book is much like any other on the subject but he there is something rather different. He challenges the currently dominant disease model of addiction. Although there are many interesting biological differences which have been seen in those with addiction problems there is no evidence which supports the idea of a simple biological basis to addiction itself. We all have the same neural systems which could lead us to the same problems if the circumstances are right. We all have the same “desire” and “like” circuits in our brains. Recognising this helps explain the primary importance of the factor of “availability” in the genesis of addiction. Availability is not simply a matter of supply and price, though these are important, social and cultural attitudes (approval, tacit or explicit) also play their role in whether something is available.

However, perhaps most importantly, the disease model has the risk or removing something that all addicts, and all addiction specialists, know to be the most important factor in breaking addictive behaviours; namely free will. There is a danger that the disease model portrays the addict as a hopeless victim at the mercy of their neurochemistry. No one will argue that there not serious problems with some compounds and the physical effects of their withdrawal which drive some people to continue their use in the face of great and increasing harm. However, an important factor in whether one starts to use something, continues to use, and most importantly manages to stop using is act of will. We need to bolster this rather than undermine it – we need to counter feelings of helplessness not engender them.

Although the book is rather old now (2012), much of what he has written has proven to be prescient rather than alarmist. It is now an even more important issue than before. At a societal level the war on drugs is destroying our communities, at the individual level our levels of obesity and diabetes are responsible for the untimely deaths of many, and in the area of relationships there is developing evidence of the damage being done by pornography on our sex lives. The effects of our addictions may, soon, “become a higher priority for the developing world than its ancient enemies, poverty and disease.“

Monogamy through the eyes of chickens.

I have been feeling increasingly sorry for Emrys this last month or so. Emrys is our rather elderly Sussex cockerel and over recent times has started to look rather the worse for wear. He is the only cockerel we have who has a name as he was a gift from a neighbour and arrived named. My wife has continued to use the name since so he is quite unique amongst our poultry in having a name (Though I think secretly my wife has names for some of the ducks also. I sometimes call the stag turkey names, but these vary on how annoying he is and are not fit for printing). Emrys and his flock live at the front of the small holding and the other flocks of hens and their cockerel are spread as far apart as possible. This gives them space to roam and, initially at least, reduces the fighting.

As time passes, and as the birds get more adventurous and curious, the area around their base, that that they call home, gradually expands. A few months ago, Emrys’s flock’s area grew until it butted against the newest cockerel and his flock’s area. Cockerels do not mix and never make good neighbours. Most cockerels view any other cockerel as the spawn of the devil, even if it is their own offspring, and see their presence as a reason to fight. These fights are vicious, and can sometimes can be fatal to one of the birds, though usually they are short-lived, noisy, flashes of talons and beaks until one party retreats. Although often in these quick spats they can inflict serious damage on each other.

Emrys has been losing these fights. He has lost a

Emrys after losing again

lot of his plumage and carries some scars on his comb. Sometimes he is bloodied and hides away in the bushes. His nemesis, the other cockerel, steals his ladies during the day luring them away with promises of treats and food. I know there are dangers with anthropomorphism and I am not sure how much Emrys understands of his situation, I hope not too much, but it is very hard to not feel sad when you spy him, on his own, obviously just having lost a spat and watching his wives playing with the other group. But is does bring home to you the many positive advantages that we, as a species, have experienced but failed to arrive for chickens. When one looks into the eyes of a chicken, or regards their scaly legs and talons, it is very easy to see their relationship to the dinosaurs. Looking at them is like peering down the tunnel of the years to primitive times.

 

 

Chickens and other fowl are different to other birds. The vast majority of birds, about 90%, are monogamous. Some may just be monogamous for one breeding season, some for a series of seasons, and some species mate for life (famously swans, albatrosses, owls and eagles). It is generally assumed that the development of monogamy, in bird and other animals (including ourselves), was very valuable in ensuring the development of vulnerable offspring. Having both parents actively involved in the rearing of children helps their survival, this is especially important when the young are born immature and very vulnerable as with birds, and especially so with humans.

This monogamy helps young develop more safely. It also results in closer bonds between family members and is possibly the evolutionary driver to our human experience of love. If we are to mate and stay with one individual we need an extremely strong feeling of attraction which can outweigh the pressures of sexual attraction of other potential mates. Love of one partner to another, of a parent to a child, of a family member to another is the primary glue that allows us to join people together and create families and society. Although there is a current tendency to decry monogamy as traditional, old-fashioned and out-of-date most research concludes that monogamy is a valuable and core element of stable societies. A paper by Heinrich et al summarised thus :-

In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide. These predictions are tested using converging lines of evidence from across the human sciences.

A recent review in The Economist explored the link between polygamy and war. Worrisomely it showed that in areas where polygyny was allowed, more than one woman per man, then violence and war were much more common. It also explored the reasons underpinning the breakdown of monogamy and the risks that this holds for society. Unfortunately as the Koran blesses polygyny there is considerable growth in the practice in Islamic areas. This does tend to act as a destabilising influence on society in these regions and, as the article discusses :–

Wherever it is widely practised, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking of multiple wives) destabilises society, largely because it is a form of inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of young men. If a rich man has a Lamborghini, that does not mean that a poor man has to walk, for the supply of cars is not fixed. By contrast, every time a rich man takes an extra wife, another poor man must remain single. If the richest and most powerful 10% of men have, say, four wives each, the bottom 30% of men cannot marry. Young men will take desperate measures to avoid this state.

This has lead to the finding that “Polygamous societies are bloodier, more likely to invade their neighbours and more prone to collapse than others are.” Although the research shows this I knew this already  from watching Emrys. He is unable to cooperate with his neighbours, he can’t develop friendships with others, his whole life is fighting, preparing for fighting and trying to subdue his harem. It unfortunately seems that if as a society we start to abandon monogamy we might start to live a bit more like Emrys, and, had Emrys the ability to think, he’d tell us this is not a good idea.

Hey Emrys ! Were these your wives ?

 

There is always something to be ashamed of (*)

When I made the jump and left the city for the rural life I was uncertain about how some aspects of my life might change. I was, however, quite sure that moving to a smaller community would be better. In his book, Sapiens: A brief history of mankind, Yuval Harari suggests that the largest group that we can live amongst comfortably, knowing our family and neighbours, is 150 of our fellows – above this number we need to call on cultural developments to substitute for our personal knowledge of people. In essence, up to 150 people – then first hand knowledge and gossip allow us to cope, above this we need extra strategies.

In the city I was aware that I was in a huge amorphous mass of people. Because we lived closely packed together our privacy became important. It was important to keep your life separate from your neighbours as we lived cheek by jowl with them. When the situation forces you to live close with your fellows and en masse it becomes important to keep your distance. Paradoxically, though I lived in a large group I knew relatively few people, I knew my immediate neighbours, but relatively few others in the street. I knew very little about people living 100 yards from my front door.

In place of my local community I had my professional community. I mixed with other NHS consultants, lawyers and teachers, in short I mixed with people like me. We would meet and bemoan why others  did not see the world as we did and could not see how correct we were in our analyses.   In the days before social media there were already echo chambers and I lived inside one. My already skewed viewpoint became increasingly bent by agreement and repetition.

When I moved, one of the first obvious differences I noted were the simple benefits of living in a small local community. Within a very short period I knew my neighbours;  I knew the shop workers, the staff that worked in the local farmers market, the farm workers, the foresters, the mechanics,  the people who worked the land adjacent to ours. I quickly discovered that I knew many more people, not just by sight but their name and history, than I ever had known when I lived in the large city.

It was, and is, a pleasant feeling to recognise your fellows when out and about. It gives a warm feeling of community and sense of security. During the recent storms it was our neighbours who sorted out the problems of fallen trees and blocked roads well before the local authority even thought about responding. When I have had problems with livestock it has been neighbours who have assisted and I have, in my turn, assisted them. When walking through the town centre I can recognise the faces of strangers and visitors to the area as I know who is local and who is just passing through.

In the main I like this but I have been aware that this is not a simple relationship but something that strikes at the core of living in a community. Because I know others, they know me, this means my reputation is much more important than it ever was before. When you are anonymous it doesn’t matter much about your reputation.  If you committed some heinous crime life would be much harder in a small community. True, if there were exonerating circumstances these may be more likely to be recognised (and taken into account), but failing this if you become the outlaw then you might prefer the anonymity of the city rather than the gaze of your fellows.

However, even at a much smaller level this reliance on reputation and knowledge of our fellows is important and, I feel, has beneficial effects on our behaviour. Imagine you are driving through town and someone pulls out suddenly and cuts you up. In the city it is all too easy to jerk the finger and shout the expletives, you’ll never see them again. In this community you might look in the car window and see your elderly neighbour on the way home after a worrisome visit to the doctors, you really don’t want to be shouting and gesticulating. Indeed had you done so you would rightly feel ashamed about your uncouth behaviour.

In the town if you drive along and notice someone with a flat tyre it is quite easy to drive past and reassure yourself that they will have phoned for help. Here, in this community,  you will know that you could be recognised, even if you do not recognise them, and it will be known that you did not help.  Passing on the other side would be the wrong thing to do, your reputation would suffer, and you would tend to feel shame and guilt that you had not taken the opportunity to help a fellow in need. In smaller communities you will tend to work with the same people again and again rather than interacting with many people on single, or a few, occasions. This allows you to develop your reputation by repeatedly showing such characteristics as honesty, fairness, punctuality or diligence. In short, you are able to demonstrate your honour.

I had not anticipated that a move to a smaller community would put me in closer contact to feelings of shame and its opposite honour. I am glad that it has as it has reconnected me with my own core beliefs. I know what I think is important and I now have to try to live in accord with these principles. This rediscovery of shame is important and beneficial. It is through shame that we change our behaviour, without it we can plod on seemingly oblivious to our failings and mistakes. I fear in larger societies we have substituted a culture of dignity for a culture of honour. We have substituted the right to respect for the duty to earn it.  While this may help maintain social cohesion by asking very little of individuals other then a modicum of good behaviour it means we lose some of the ability for self-improvement.

In a culture which has little role for shame, and tends to feel that we should accept everyone for who they are regardless, there are few prompts for people to improve themselves. As I have reported before, I wish people had cared enough about me, and dared, to comment on my gluttony and obesity so that shame may have driven me to diet  – rather than, as was the case, fear of death from diabetic complications prompting me to do so. For many of the current problems by which we are beset, are often the consequences of excess, indulgence or of short term thinking – an early experience of shame might be much preferable to the later damage experienced.

Most religions, indeed most moral codes, stress the importance of self awareness and self scrutiny so that we may be aware of our failings and correct them. The story of Adam and Eve in the bible can be read as mankind’s discovery of shame and recognition of our failings is integral to Christianity (“Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.” Ecclesiastes 7:20) . Likewise recognition of misdeeds and repentance are core constructs in the Jewish (Teshuva) and Islamic faiths (Tawba) and means whereby we instruct ourselves to become better people.

If we build an increasingly shameless society, one in which we are fearful of judging our own or others behaviour, we should not be surprised if it behaves in a shameless manner. If we take away one of our checks and balances we can expect to see increasing problems with excessive consumption, poor interpersonal relationships and failure to be good custodians of our environment. Let’s hear it for shame ! Even in large societal groups we still need shame,  the exhortation that “If it feels good do it !” is fine as long as it is accompanied by the knowledge “If it is wrong don’t do it”, you need both halves of the equation to live well.

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(*) In this case it is my grammar, and ending a sentence with a preposition, which causes my blushes – “There is always something of which we can be ashamed” – Sorry, I’ll try harder. This is something I won’t put up with !

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Liberty + Responsibility = Freedom

It can be quite messy when you find you are and anarchist or libertarian. The is a great deal of good writing on the subject and many fora in which to debate the issues of individual freedom and the dangers posed by the state.

The messiness arises from a variety of factors but two are particularly important. The first is a problem of nomenclature. The words anarchy and libertarian mean very different things to different people. In particular there is a problem in that the words have quite different meanings depending on whichever side of the Atlantic Ocean you find yourself living. (Debates on the internet often cross this divide without participants knowing and taking the different vocabulary into account).

Here in Europe anarchy has a long an established tradition with its roots in the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Krotopkin,  Pierre Proudhon,  and Rudolph Rokker among others. Anarchists split from the socialist tradition because of obvious incompatibility over their views of the state but they shared the socialists concerns for the poor, their egalitarian impulses and their opposition to discrimination and unfairness. Their tradition is seen in America in the writings of such luminaries as Emma Goldman or Benjamin Tucker. It is not unusual to see the term “libertarian socialist” or “anarchosocialist” in Europe, as the dividing line in Europe is the role of the state and personal autonomy rather than the other aims of socialists.

In America such  groupings  (e.g. libertarian socialist) would be seen as unusual and even a “contradiction in terms” as the origins of libertarian thought  are different and follows the works of early writers such as William Godwin and Lysdander Spooner, and later the works of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand and Robert Nozik. The philosophical base is also individual liberty but there is an acceptance of the capitalist economic system as the best way to deliver material prosperity to people. In Europe these groups would often be considered “Classical Liberals” , or unflatteringly “Neo-liberals“.

This difference in terminology often leads to messy confusion and  one needs to know a lot more about a someone who calls themselves an ‘anarchist’ or ‘libertarian’ before you can guess at their opinions or moral view of the world. Hence, the proliferation of adjectives to try and explain their positions : left-libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, libertarian socialist, agorist, etc. etc. However, this problem is relatively easily solved. A bit of reading or discussion will normally clarify what the persons views are and how they see the world. A much bigger problem and mess arises when people discuss liberty.

Most people view individual liberty as an obviously good thing. It is something to be fostered and promoted, and when we see attempts curtail liberty most of us try to stop this. However, it is impossible to promote liberty without recognising the need at the same time to promote responsibility. Liberty without responsibility is impossible. Indeed as George Bernard Shaw said “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it”. Many people are happier to feel safe than to feel free; they would happily subject their freedom to the authority of the state if the state keeps them fed, warm and free from crime.

If a society was going to give up the role of the state as the guarantor of safety then it requires that individuals ensure that safety themselves. They may behave as they wish, but if we are free to pursue our own aims then we must be responsible for our actions, we must accept and deal with the consequences that follow. This responsibility will replace the state. Responsible individuals will want to work cooperatively with their fellows to their mutual advantage. Responsible individuals will want to curtail some of their desires today for safety and security tomorrow. Responsible individuals will want to make friends and allies, will wish to help others, as it may furnish the social capital that they might need to all on in the future. In short, if there is no state then there needs to be a big and effective society. If we need an effective society we need responsible individuals. In the past religion has, in part, provided this, in the future, it appears, we are going to have to find this on our own.

A failure to recognise the essential unity of liberty and responsibility has lead to the many rather sad and tawdry aspects of anarchist and libertarian writings. Often liberty has been mistaken for libertinism and calls for equality of opportunity have been barely concealed brutalism in furtherance of injustice. Libertarians and anarchists must by necessity hold themselves to higher standards, they cannot call on the excuse of duty or law, they must be responsible for their actions. However, being free and responsible is the essence of living as Viktor Frankl  recognised when he wrote the following in his book “Mans search for Meaning.

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our question must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual

Indeed he proposed a Statue of Responsibility on the East coast to remind us of we need both sides of the equation :-

RESPONSIBILITY

+ LIBERTY

= FREEDOM

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Responsibility  on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast