Sometimes we forget that this isn’t a libertarian country, so a libertarian policy might not be the best. A lot of our arguments require that large parts of society already be fully libertarian as well, or it just wouldn’t work. Unfortunately that is not the world in which we live.
We live in a very complicated, constructed system. If we don’t argue from that awareness, we’re simply arguing as to a brick wall. We want people to “wake up” to our message of liberty, and I would argue that it’s not liberty but dogma by which they are repelled. People hate all dogma except their own.
People tend to find their own personal identity inside their philosophy. They become their philosophy and they view the world through that philosophy. Everything comes through a filter that judges its purity to the philosophy. Almost everything fails the test.
Philosophy is a tool to help us understand the world, but if we start to find our identity inside it, it has become a religion with its own dogma, and we’ll fight over it. That’s how wars start.
The egoic mind will use anything it can to keep itself occupied and keep you living in your head. This was me all the time. Most of my life I was asleep at the wheel. My ego was running amok. I neither realized it nor knew I could stop it; so I want to share something simple that helped me a lot.
We can evolve beyond this egoic inclination to live inside a philosophy. Rather than living inside it, we can think of it more like a compass that we are holding in our hand. We can hold our libertarian philosophy in our hand using our imagination. Humor me and do it now: put your hand out in front of you, and transfer it from your head to your hand. Sometimes it helps to physically grab it off of your head.
Now look at it in your hand: it’s a tool, and a powerful one. It helps us to navigate life. We have other tools too and we use them all the same way. We hold them in our hands, not our heads. We don’t allow ourselves to live inside them.
This may seem a bit weird: new things can. You’ll find it’s surprisingly natural to do though, and then you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this before. But your ego wants to control you, so we fall back to living inside our thoughts over and over. It’s a practice to maintain it. This is the beginning of consciousness.
This is not about watering down or compromising, but rather a step toward enlightenment. We become present, and accepting of the way the world really is. This enables and empowers us to be agents of change. We will seek to understand people and why they have their beliefs, we will communicate liberty effectively, we will love and respect those that disagree with us, and we will rise above all the internal divisiveness that has plagued our movement for years. Our world will be a better place for it.