G'day, my name is Bruce Robertson and this is Pirate Philosophy, the channel in which I describe the Pattern Paradigm, an original philosophy that is rigorous, logical and accurate; and one that I claim makes better sense of the world than any other philosophy. Welcome.
In this video I want to discuss freedom; what it is, what barriers there are to freedom and why it is important.
So what is freedom? Well, it can have a variety of meanings but the one that I will be using in this video is in regard to freedom of mind: the ability to make choices and to make choices free of fetters and restrictions. Freedom is a state of mind.
And the opposite of freedom, I shall call slavery. And I don't mean this in a physical sense where a person is an actual slave but rather as a state of mind where one is a slave to perceived restrictions that seem to curtail one's freedom of choice.
To give an example of what I mean: Suppose you have a job as an employee at some company where you have a boss.
There are two ways you can view this. One. You are a slave to your job. You have no choice but to follow the instructions of your boss in order to keep your job and provide an income upon which you can survive.
Or alternatively you can view the situation as one in which you have choices. You can consider yourself to be in a state of self employment where your boss is your customer to whom you provide services and try to keep happy, so that the company keeps paying you money. Then, if the situation is not to your satisfaction you have a choice to seek out a different customer to whom you can provide services and get paid.
In the first state of mind you are a slave without choices, in the second you are free to make choices.
Another example is in the domain of addictions, whether benign or harmful. The addictions I am talking about could be anything from television to heroin from gambling to alcohol. The difference between freedom and slavery is whether one has the addiction or the addiction has one.
Suppose you have an addiction, then If the addiction has you, you are a slave to your addiction. You have no choice but to submit to your addiction. However, if instead you have the addiction, then you are free to choose to indulge in your addiction or to choose to let it go and do something else instead. Your choice will depend upon whether you consider the benefits of the addiction outweigh the downsides or not.
Freedom is the ability to make choices based upon what one knows about the world and what one considers will be most likely to bring one happiness in both the short term and the long term. It is all about the ability to make choices.
In the video PP13 'The logic of decision-making', I describe the logic of decision-making. To summarise the logic very briefly: for a particular situation, one considers all the possible courses of action and for each one, one examines its possible consequences and how these consequences could impact on one's personal happiness in both the long-term and the short-term. Having done that one then simply chooses the course of action that one expects will bring oneself the greatest amount of happiness.
But this process is essentially for a free person. All too often in modern society there appear to be restrictions upon one's freedom of choice. I discuss this in the video PP 17 'Culture and schisms' where I describe how culture can impose restrictions upon one's freedom of thinking and freedom of choice.
These schisms would include things like 'you should do this..', 'you shouldn't do that'. I refer to them as 'schisms' as they can act as a discontinuity in one's thinking and decision-makiing.
We live in a world of human activity where social customs and constraints seem to dominate people's thinking. It is far removed from the more natural world of our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors where social customs and constraints were effectively non-existent.
And some people might say that fitting in with social customs and mores is what life is all about, as society is paramount and the individual is of less importance. But this would be a naive viewpoint. For thinking and choices are processes that take place only within the minds of individuals. And incidentally, when I talk about 'mores', I am referring to the customs and conventions of a society.
When one is growing up, one has little choice but to adopt the culture of one's society and the values of one's parents or caregivers. For at that time one has a very limited knowledge of the world and one lacks the means by which such culture and values can be evaluated as to their merits or lack thereof. So they simply exist as words in one's head and as imperatives in one's decision-making. In other words they are a block to one's freedom of choice.
It is only as one progresses in life and can understand the usefulness and limitations of society's mores, that they will cease to act as blocks to one's decision-making, but instead can be used as useful caveats or suggestions. And once this has been achieved, one can be free of their imposing influence. However, if this cannot be achieved, then one remains a slave to one's culture.
Freedom requires a good model of the world and an understanding of how the different elements, aspirations and restrictions all fit together. The process of understanding was discussed in the video PP27 'Knowing vs Understanding'. For without a good model of the world and an understanding of how it functions, one is, in effect, making decisions in the dark.
All I want to do in this video is to show how such cultures and values are flexible and are not set in stone; they were created by ordinary people like you and me. And the people who created them were following their own personal pursuit of happiness and they may or may not have had the best intentions for other people.
And since they are not set in stone, they can be modified to fit one's own experience and knowledge of the world or alternatively one can simply accept them as they are.
It is a matter of finding a balance between society and oneself.
Thinking takes place within an individual mind as does decision-making; so any ethical philosophy needs to place the individual at the heart of its ethics. It is pure folly to try to create a rigorous ethics based upon society and group dynamics alone as Standard Western Philosophy tries to do. This was discussed in the video PP19 "Is morality a good ethical system?'. (And incidentally, the decision reached was: 'No'.)
However, the world is filled with ethical systems that put groups and societies at the heart of their ethics. This results in the world being permeated with what can perhaps be described as hand waving propaganda. And by 'hand-waving' I mean using faulty logic or relying on subjective opinions. And propaganda is an attempt to get people to believe things for which there is scant evidence.
In this way groups of people try to impose their vague values upon other people. But since they are without firm foundation and rigorous logic, this can only be considered as propaganda, even if they try to bolster their questionable arguments by claiming that they are 'true'. In this way they try to make slaves of us all. But there are no moral truths, there are only moral guidelines.
But that said, there may still be some merit in the mores. propaganda and social etiquette as they can have pragmatic usefulness for the sustaining of a harmonious society. It is just that such mores, propaganda and etiquette are not set in stone; nor are they derivable from first principles. They are no more than empirical guidelines.
Incidentally this is commensurate with David Hume's famous claim that you "can't get a 'should' from an 'is'".
All mores needs to be tailored for each particular society on the basis of what works best for the harmonious functioning of that society. It needs to be based on pragmatism rather than esoteric theory.
Should one choose to move away from mainstream mores and morality, one would need to proceed with caution. For there is much wisdom in the mores and etiquette of society and there may well be risks involved in taking them at less than face value. Especially one would need to take into account the laws of one's country, as these may have considerable influence on the consequences of one's actions and their possible effects upon one's own long-term happiness or indeed on one's short-term happiness.
Some people may well understand the situation and yet choose to remain within the mores of their society and that is their choice. It is certainly a safer option. While others may choose to push the boundaries a bit and find out what might be possible.
The point I want to make is that it is a choice, a choice that can be freely made. Inevitably a person will choose a course of action that they consider will bring them the most happiness.
It is also possible that some people may consider that the tradition and scholarship of mainstream philosophy, which I call 'Standard Western Philosophy' is beyond doubt or question as it appears to be so logical and established and which is claimed by its proponents to be 'true'. However I have shown in the video PP18 'Are disembodied statements meaningless?' and in PP20 'What is Truth?', how the assumptions of Standard Western Philosophy are unjustifiable and its logic is fatally flawed.
And incidentally, Standard Western Philosophy has no philosophy of freedom and, de facto, it would appear that any sort of freedom is anathema to them.
In effect, Standard Western Philosophy only exists in a sort of fantasy world and one in which words without understanding predominate. By 'fantasy world' I mean a world that has no more relevance to the real world than 'Narnia' or 'Middle Earth'. And while this may seem controversial, it is the only rational conclusion to draw regarding a philosophy that has such a tenuous connection to the real world as Standard Western Philosophy. Hence its tenets are, at the least, suspect and many of them are simply irrelevant. And should someone blindly and meekly accept the tenets of Standard Western Philosophy without understanding them then they can be considered to be a slave.
In place of this I have developed The Pattern Paradigm philosophy which I have been describing in these videos and which I claim is well founded in its assumptions and which has a clear, explicit and simple logic. So, this philosophy the 'Pattern Paradigm' can be used as a foundation for achieving freedom and for rejecting the propaganda of those who would try to restrict one's freedom.
At the heart of the Pattern Paradigm is the thinking of the individual. And it follows from this that everyone has the freedom to make choices for themselves to achieve their personal happiness.
In conclusion: Everyone has an innate right to freedom. Freedom is the ability to pursue one's own happiness without hindrance or encumbrance from other people. And perhaps most importantly, freedom is the ability to use one's mind to its full capability. It is important to realise that one can be free; free to pursue one's own personal happiness and free to enjoy the magic of life.
Freedom is the natural state of mankind; and without that freedom, mankind risks losing its humanity.
Well, that is all I have for you today. I hope you have enjoyed this video and if you have any comments, please leave them in the section below. And if you would like to continue this journey with me, please subscribe to my channel, give it a thumbs up and perhaps ring the bell. You can also visit my website: ThePatternParadigm.com for transcripts of all these videos. Also If there is a topic that you would like me to cover, then let me know in the comments below and I will do my best to cover it.
Thank you.
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