Great piece. A lot of people think they are using free will when they are actually programmed. Once aware of the programming, then one has to work through the impulse which can override free will choice via habit, patterns, and familiarity. I think a big part of it all is learned to recognize which contracts that were consented to unconsciously and/or even as a baby and releasing the hold it has over us. I certainly started having a lot of fear and emotions come up through the revocation process to learn to differentiate as a living woman and separate from the fiction that tries to control human's free will via said programming that manipulates emotions and desire. There is also the response vs reaction, such as something happening anyway that was not consent but is a violation under natural law, like someone coming on your property. I like where you are going with this and look forward to reading the follow up.
Thank you; I look forward to writing it too. Sometimes, I am amazed at what revelations occur not before writing, but WHILE writing.
In addition to social and governmental programming, and illegitimate contracts, there are other things that limit free will too. Upbringing, biology, and culture all have an influence. It's complicated. But all of that is the ocean and the weather. We still decide where to steer our own ship!
Great comment Angela! Regular honest self evaluation and growing awareness and discernment will facilitate finding the great rewards of using our free will rightly and not misusing it to our hurt. A growing ability to think critically and tell the truth to yourself will get us there. A mechanism can react, but it takes reason, strength and love to properly respond so you do not become a victim of those who think they can remove the freedom to choose granted by the Divine Presence within.
Thanks for this. The centrality of the concept of consent is why my mission statement is to inspire and enable forward-thinking entrepreneurs to build decentralized jurisdictions with consent-based governance. Coercive political governments/representative democracies are not consent-based in any sense. Even if you consent to your own enslavement, support for an institution that enslaves individuals without their consent is a rejection of God.
I haven't formalized it here, but what do you think thus far of my suggestion that some sort of "consent principle" is closer to the mark than the nonaggression principle?
Great point Joyce. People like to claim faith in God, but place their confidence in the "arm of flesh" the supposed wisdom and care of bureaucrats and politicians, and mistakenly consent, thus giving up the very freedoms that should be their birthright from the Divine Presence. It is one of the reasons I rejected the SS "benefits, " big Pharma, and the medical mafia and placed my trust in Something higher and It has not failed me.
Excellent Christopher! Great discussion between you and HumblyMy Brain!
I believe there is the True Divine God represented in the Bible - though not often enough while the Usurper who masquerades as God is overly represented and is a huge tyrant.
The True Divine God is an Anarchist against the Usurper.
Totally agree. The Bible is like the tree described in its beginning, a book of both good and evil. The evil political hands through which it has passed have added and removed many things, but the discerning reap the good seed and discard the tares. For those who do not listen carefully to the the Voice from within it is a stumbling block and a tool the devious use to manipulate and control them.
Anarchist-Todays world “Anarchy” would mean rejecting the worship of money - “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). He taught that we cannot serve both God and wealth (Matthew 6:24).
"vs making something happen in your life and others."
Quite so. Ultimately, we must only choose anarchism/panarchism/voluntaryism/consentism for ourselves. That's the whole idea—someone else may not want it. We mustn't impose things on others.
As One who was raised without religion - lots of love and Ethics, but no religion - I ponder things like this... I might suppose that if there is a God, We'd be mighty pressed to define that One.
Keep making my monarchist friends read 1 Samuel 8. God doesn’t think highly of any king but Jesus. God literally says the people who want a king don’t love Him enough….
Two or three of the guys in my Church book club. Three years at the yearly book selection I put Samual into the hat to read (we read about two books from the Bible and various faith related books for about 6 weeks each every year).
I think it is more about not having to be concerned with politics, they think, if there was a monarchy. Of course in a monarchy a responsible citizen needs to know when it is time to storm the castle and depose a bad king……. But I think I’m the one that gets down in the weeds and looks at real monarchies and the way they actually were/are run.
1) the tight mesh and multiple layers of “democratic” governance, with its taxes at every level and its meddling into every aspect of life; its ability to declare an “emergency” and go completely tyrannical; and its slow drift in an authoritarian direction, or
2) a monarch and a few nobles who consider themselves rulers by divine right, but whose cupidity and caprice may sometimes sleep, and cannot be directed everywhere at once anyway…
Maybe there are two kinds of free will. The will to move about freely as a physical action. Then there is the will to think freely. In the first instance, one may be "detained" or restricted for some reason (possibly even medical) but the other cannot be touched by the forces of evil or government (usually one in the same).
This is fascinating. And you have for the first time, addressed one of my biggest issues with philosophical libertarianism.
Might I suggest the term "assent"? It means to agree to something freely, to your core with aa deep understanding of what you agree to (with respect to the limitations of human knowledge).
Fair warning, it's a philosophical/theological term borrowed from Catholicism. As it happens, Cardinal Newman wrote a whole book on this concept and covers his take on the Catholic view on this question.
My biggest problem with libertarianism is the ultimate in pacifism. It can't really exist in reality. The open borders thing is also a problem because it undercuts property ownership.
Consent is between humans. Assent is between human and God. I will have to think about that more to articulate the why.
"My biggest problem with libertarianism is the ultimate in pacifism."
—I think most libertarians are not pacifists. They simply argue (I think rightly) that coercive force should never be initiated. But all libertarians I know are perfectly fine with protective force being deployed in defense or response when coercive force is initiated. Maybe some are full pacifists, but I have not met them. Most of the ones I know are armed to the teeth!
"The open borders thing is also a problem because it undercuts property ownership."
—Absolutely correct. Open-borders libertarianism is Mickey Mouse libertarianism. Support for open borders by a libertarian means that libertarian has not carried his own principles out to their most logical conclusions. (I have written on this; let me know if you'd like a link.) Same-sex marriage falls into that same category. It's cheap, flimsy, Beltway libertarianism. Pay it no heed!
"Consent is between humans. Assent is between human and God. I will have to think about that more to articulate the why."
—Understood. I have to tell you, though, I am already going out on a limb by suggesting something is better than the NAP. Libertarians are used to the word "consent." If I try to change that too, I might get burned for a witch 🤣
Can God create a rock so big God can't lift it? That's a question challenging God's omnipotence. To answer either “yes” or “no” is to admit there's something God can't do. It's logically impossible to perform two different acts that can't both be performed—in this case, both being able to create a rock that one can't lift and being able to lift it. The original question presupposes this: God is omnipotent if and only if God can do what is logically impossible. That's a questionable presupposition. Perhaps omnipotence requires only the ability to perform acts of lesser degrees of impossibility, such as being able to do what is physically or practically impossible. It's physically impossible to travel faster than light. But it's not logically impossible that, under certain conditions, something could exceed light speed. It was never logically or physically impossible for humans to travel to the moon. But at one time, it was practically impossible because the needed technology didn't exist.
In my view, the ability to create a being with his own will—a will even its Creator cannot deploy for him—is the supreme act of creation. A rock, a star, a swirling galaxy—impressive, but still (seemingly) inanimate. But a being that can make its own choices—choices that no one else can make for him—THAT'S a feat!
Excellent start. It calls to mind a song I attempted to compose some years ago which I called, "A God Forever Scarred." It was an attempt at a creative way to put into words an idea I had in answer to Why did God design his plan for salvation. My answer was so that in eternity we would remember the story with such vividness that we wouldn't fall again. My song started with the line, "How could I look into his face? His face forever scarred by thorns pressed cruelly into into his brow? How but humbly crushed at his feet?" I went on to consider the scars in his feet, then from the spear thrust into him, then his nail scarred hands. Eventually I gave up on the song as melodramatic and overwrought, but I still think there is something to be said for it serving as a preservative in heaven. For if God were to recreate us so that we could not fall again, wouldn't that how he would have originally created us? I don't know, but isn't that similar to what you were thinking?
"Eventually, I gave up on the song as melodramatic and overwrought."
—Maybe try the song as just a poem?
"I don't know, but isn't that similar to what you were thinking?"
—I know for sure (I mean, as sure as one can be about such things) that God would not have created us as unfree robots. Free will was a great and necessary gift. Since free will can only be respected through respecting consent, that means that other humans must do so; otherwise, they are assailing God's great gift of free will.
That's really all I am saying—it is an earthly argument that references God a little. IOW, humans respecting humans' consent is a necessary component of morality (oh, and by the way, not doing so is an affront to God). That's really all it is; it's not much of a theological argument beyond that. I am not really delving into why we are here or what comes later or those sorts of questions.
Thank you for the shoutout Christopher! I am also enjoying the enlightening discussion on this topic and idea that you're working on. I'm interested to see where this all leads to.
Me thinks the word "peace" is an over-used, mis-used word. I've no quarrel with its denotation; it's the connotation that's the problem. Often appears in the "narradigm" following wars and conflicts; more often than not needing coercion & external enforcement to maintain it. I'm proposing we supplant it with the word "Harmony" as it connotes an organic origin and is self-sustaining. Thoughts?
I heartily recommend this discussion of Christopher Cook's.
Shall the child of God consent to slavery, and thus make their enslavement their choice and right? Awl through the earlobe, and Bob's your owner?
How about privacy? Does its loss harm the person, or their property? Is it an attack on their liberty? Those who wrote our Constitution failed to imagine many torts, and wherever rights or wrongs are enumerated, the document fails us.
We must consider the case of the many who daily surrender to slavery and invasive monitoring, and that large subset of them who would so continue, if coercion were to disappear.
As to freewill being the gift of God, I take it we are not speaking of a god who at the same time holds over us infinite reward and eternal punishment, by way of incentive.
Owners and their armies of trained churls are the reason we are none of us the anarchists we are evolved to be, if my speculations about late prehistory are close. If they are not still the chief enemies of freedom, I am far off the mark. There is nothing the chained dog hates more than the sight of one running free.
Then we must escape them AND force them to look at their own wickedness.
"We are leaving. We are not taking anything from you. We are not asking anything of you. We are not forcing anything on you. We are just leaving. What reason do you have to stop us?"
Hm. Giving me chill bumps-- or are they ruby ridges? I think we may need to buy New Zealand, and develop a highly effective force field, but count me in.
A territorial polity (New Zealand with a force field) would be lovely. However, the likelihood of achieving that on a large scale is currently close to nil. Very small territorial polities are more feasible, and some are starting out as SEZs and ZEDEs (Prospéra, Ciudad Morazán, e.g.) or de facto autonomous zones (Cheran, Zomia, e.g.). They will have a long uphill climb, but they are on one important track.
But another possibility is semi-territorial and non-territorial polities. These too will have a long uphill climb, but they too are an essential part of the freedom puzzle.
It means a lot to me to hear you say that. I am not observantly religious, and though I do quietly believe, I do not generally use or make religious arguments. So I appreciate the fact that you took and understood it in the spirit in which it was intended.
Great piece. A lot of people think they are using free will when they are actually programmed. Once aware of the programming, then one has to work through the impulse which can override free will choice via habit, patterns, and familiarity. I think a big part of it all is learned to recognize which contracts that were consented to unconsciously and/or even as a baby and releasing the hold it has over us. I certainly started having a lot of fear and emotions come up through the revocation process to learn to differentiate as a living woman and separate from the fiction that tries to control human's free will via said programming that manipulates emotions and desire. There is also the response vs reaction, such as something happening anyway that was not consent but is a violation under natural law, like someone coming on your property. I like where you are going with this and look forward to reading the follow up.
Thank you; I look forward to writing it too. Sometimes, I am amazed at what revelations occur not before writing, but WHILE writing.
In addition to social and governmental programming, and illegitimate contracts, there are other things that limit free will too. Upbringing, biology, and culture all have an influence. It's complicated. But all of that is the ocean and the weather. We still decide where to steer our own ship!
Absolutely!
Great comment Angela! Regular honest self evaluation and growing awareness and discernment will facilitate finding the great rewards of using our free will rightly and not misusing it to our hurt. A growing ability to think critically and tell the truth to yourself will get us there. A mechanism can react, but it takes reason, strength and love to properly respond so you do not become a victim of those who think they can remove the freedom to choose granted by the Divine Presence within.
Indeed.
Thanks for this. The centrality of the concept of consent is why my mission statement is to inspire and enable forward-thinking entrepreneurs to build decentralized jurisdictions with consent-based governance. Coercive political governments/representative democracies are not consent-based in any sense. Even if you consent to your own enslavement, support for an institution that enslaves individuals without their consent is a rejection of God.
You're walking the walk!
I haven't formalized it here, but what do you think thus far of my suggestion that some sort of "consent principle" is closer to the mark than the nonaggression principle?
Absolutely. The nonaggression principle is necessary but not sufficient. Consent is the more essential principle.
Thank you for that feedback. It helps me to know that I am on the right track!
Great point Joyce. People like to claim faith in God, but place their confidence in the "arm of flesh" the supposed wisdom and care of bureaucrats and politicians, and mistakenly consent, thus giving up the very freedoms that should be their birthright from the Divine Presence. It is one of the reasons I rejected the SS "benefits, " big Pharma, and the medical mafia and placed my trust in Something higher and It has not failed me.
Excellent Christopher! Great discussion between you and HumblyMy Brain!
I believe there is the True Divine God represented in the Bible - though not often enough while the Usurper who masquerades as God is overly represented and is a huge tyrant.
The True Divine God is an Anarchist against the Usurper.
Thanks :-)
Totally agree. The Bible is like the tree described in its beginning, a book of both good and evil. The evil political hands through which it has passed have added and removed many things, but the discerning reap the good seed and discard the tares. For those who do not listen carefully to the the Voice from within it is a stumbling block and a tool the devious use to manipulate and control them.
So True Hat!
Anarchist-Todays world “Anarchy” would mean rejecting the worship of money - “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). He taught that we cannot serve both God and wealth (Matthew 6:24).
Thank you for your thoughts.
Curious—how specifically does that pertain to anarchism and consent?
Consent vs Anarchy: Permission for something to happen vs making something happen in your life and others.
We Choose Our Battles. Hopefully.
"vs making something happen in your life and others."
Quite so. Ultimately, we must only choose anarchism/panarchism/voluntaryism/consentism for ourselves. That's the whole idea—someone else may not want it. We mustn't impose things on others.
As One who was raised without religion - lots of love and Ethics, but no religion - I ponder things like this... I might suppose that if there is a God, We'd be mighty pressed to define that One.
Still, an interesting discussion!
Keep making my monarchist friends read 1 Samuel 8. God doesn’t think highly of any king but Jesus. God literally says the people who want a king don’t love Him enough….
Two or three of the guys in my Church book club. Three years at the yearly book selection I put Samual into the hat to read (we read about two books from the Bible and various faith related books for about 6 weeks each every year).
I think it is more about not having to be concerned with politics, they think, if there was a monarchy. Of course in a monarchy a responsible citizen needs to know when it is time to storm the castle and depose a bad king……. But I think I’m the one that gets down in the weeds and looks at real monarchies and the way they actually were/are run.
And the weeds definitely matter.
I don’t want any king.
But if you were to offer me a choice between
1) the tight mesh and multiple layers of “democratic” governance, with its taxes at every level and its meddling into every aspect of life; its ability to declare an “emergency” and go completely tyrannical; and its slow drift in an authoritarian direction, or
2) a monarch and a few nobles who consider themselves rulers by divine right, but whose cupidity and caprice may sometimes sleep, and cannot be directed everywhere at once anyway…
Well, that’s a tough call.
Do you have a fair number of monarchist friends? I guess it is making something of a comeback…
Maybe there are two kinds of free will. The will to move about freely as a physical action. Then there is the will to think freely. In the first instance, one may be "detained" or restricted for some reason (possibly even medical) but the other cannot be touched by the forces of evil or government (usually one in the same).
Totally. There are bunch of moving Viktor Frankl quotes on exactly that notion.
Thanks Christopher!!!
The need for this article shows how derailed it has become.
🙌😉
Right on. If they keep derailing, I guess we'll just have to make our own tracks :-)
Amen to that!!! :))
This is fascinating. And you have for the first time, addressed one of my biggest issues with philosophical libertarianism.
Might I suggest the term "assent"? It means to agree to something freely, to your core with aa deep understanding of what you agree to (with respect to the limitations of human knowledge).
Fair warning, it's a philosophical/theological term borrowed from Catholicism. As it happens, Cardinal Newman wrote a whole book on this concept and covers his take on the Catholic view on this question.
Thank you. 😊
What was your big issue with philosophical libertarianism that it addressed?
And what is it that you like better about assent as opposed to consent?
My biggest problem with libertarianism is the ultimate in pacifism. It can't really exist in reality. The open borders thing is also a problem because it undercuts property ownership.
Consent is between humans. Assent is between human and God. I will have to think about that more to articulate the why.
"My biggest problem with libertarianism is the ultimate in pacifism."
—I think most libertarians are not pacifists. They simply argue (I think rightly) that coercive force should never be initiated. But all libertarians I know are perfectly fine with protective force being deployed in defense or response when coercive force is initiated. Maybe some are full pacifists, but I have not met them. Most of the ones I know are armed to the teeth!
"The open borders thing is also a problem because it undercuts property ownership."
—Absolutely correct. Open-borders libertarianism is Mickey Mouse libertarianism. Support for open borders by a libertarian means that libertarian has not carried his own principles out to their most logical conclusions. (I have written on this; let me know if you'd like a link.) Same-sex marriage falls into that same category. It's cheap, flimsy, Beltway libertarianism. Pay it no heed!
"Consent is between humans. Assent is between human and God. I will have to think about that more to articulate the why."
—Understood. I have to tell you, though, I am already going out on a limb by suggesting something is better than the NAP. Libertarians are used to the word "consent." If I try to change that too, I might get burned for a witch 🤣
Great to see you continuing the work! It's Ratio. Yes, the one. I left over a year ago. What did I miss?
Hey Ratio!!
What did you miss? LOL
That's an interesting chart.
Can God create a rock so big God can't lift it? That's a question challenging God's omnipotence. To answer either “yes” or “no” is to admit there's something God can't do. It's logically impossible to perform two different acts that can't both be performed—in this case, both being able to create a rock that one can't lift and being able to lift it. The original question presupposes this: God is omnipotent if and only if God can do what is logically impossible. That's a questionable presupposition. Perhaps omnipotence requires only the ability to perform acts of lesser degrees of impossibility, such as being able to do what is physically or practically impossible. It's physically impossible to travel faster than light. But it's not logically impossible that, under certain conditions, something could exceed light speed. It was never logically or physically impossible for humans to travel to the moon. But at one time, it was practically impossible because the needed technology didn't exist.
Interesting thoughts.
In my view, the ability to create a being with his own will—a will even its Creator cannot deploy for him—is the supreme act of creation. A rock, a star, a swirling galaxy—impressive, but still (seemingly) inanimate. But a being that can make its own choices—choices that no one else can make for him—THAT'S a feat!
Excellent start. It calls to mind a song I attempted to compose some years ago which I called, "A God Forever Scarred." It was an attempt at a creative way to put into words an idea I had in answer to Why did God design his plan for salvation. My answer was so that in eternity we would remember the story with such vividness that we wouldn't fall again. My song started with the line, "How could I look into his face? His face forever scarred by thorns pressed cruelly into into his brow? How but humbly crushed at his feet?" I went on to consider the scars in his feet, then from the spear thrust into him, then his nail scarred hands. Eventually I gave up on the song as melodramatic and overwrought, but I still think there is something to be said for it serving as a preservative in heaven. For if God were to recreate us so that we could not fall again, wouldn't that how he would have originally created us? I don't know, but isn't that similar to what you were thinking?
"Eventually, I gave up on the song as melodramatic and overwrought."
—Maybe try the song as just a poem?
"I don't know, but isn't that similar to what you were thinking?"
—I know for sure (I mean, as sure as one can be about such things) that God would not have created us as unfree robots. Free will was a great and necessary gift. Since free will can only be respected through respecting consent, that means that other humans must do so; otherwise, they are assailing God's great gift of free will.
That's really all I am saying—it is an earthly argument that references God a little. IOW, humans respecting humans' consent is a necessary component of morality (oh, and by the way, not doing so is an affront to God). That's really all it is; it's not much of a theological argument beyond that. I am not really delving into why we are here or what comes later or those sorts of questions.
Thank you for the shoutout Christopher! I am also enjoying the enlightening discussion on this topic and idea that you're working on. I'm interested to see where this all leads to.
Thanks, I am too—it’s a great adventure!
Me thinks the word "peace" is an over-used, mis-used word. I've no quarrel with its denotation; it's the connotation that's the problem. Often appears in the "narradigm" following wars and conflicts; more often than not needing coercion & external enforcement to maintain it. I'm proposing we supplant it with the word "Harmony" as it connotes an organic origin and is self-sustaining. Thoughts?
I would have to think about it more, but at first blush, what you say makes a lot of sense.
I heartily recommend this discussion of Christopher Cook's.
Shall the child of God consent to slavery, and thus make their enslavement their choice and right? Awl through the earlobe, and Bob's your owner?
How about privacy? Does its loss harm the person, or their property? Is it an attack on their liberty? Those who wrote our Constitution failed to imagine many torts, and wherever rights or wrongs are enumerated, the document fails us.
We must consider the case of the many who daily surrender to slavery and invasive monitoring, and that large subset of them who would so continue, if coercion were to disappear.
As to freewill being the gift of God, I take it we are not speaking of a god who at the same time holds over us infinite reward and eternal punishment, by way of incentive.
"Those who wrote our Constitution failed to imagine many torts, and wherever rights or wrongs are enumerated, the document fails us."
—We might argue, as Lysander Spooner did, that it has either surely failed us, or surely it was designed to fail.
"large subset of them who would so continue, if coercion were to disappear."
—And we should not attempt to reason with them, convert them, or impose anything upon them. We should simply try to escape them.
Owners and their armies of trained churls are the reason we are none of us the anarchists we are evolved to be, if my speculations about late prehistory are close. If they are not still the chief enemies of freedom, I am far off the mark. There is nothing the chained dog hates more than the sight of one running free.
Then we must escape them AND force them to look at their own wickedness.
"We are leaving. We are not taking anything from you. We are not asking anything of you. We are not forcing anything on you. We are just leaving. What reason do you have to stop us?"
Hm. Giving me chill bumps-- or are they ruby ridges? I think we may need to buy New Zealand, and develop a highly effective force field, but count me in.
"ruby ridges"—clever!
A territorial polity (New Zealand with a force field) would be lovely. However, the likelihood of achieving that on a large scale is currently close to nil. Very small territorial polities are more feasible, and some are starting out as SEZs and ZEDEs (Prospéra, Ciudad Morazán, e.g.) or de facto autonomous zones (Cheran, Zomia, e.g.). They will have a long uphill climb, but they are on one important track.
But another possibility is semi-territorial and non-territorial polities. These too will have a long uphill climb, but they too are an essential part of the freedom puzzle.
Have you read any of Chapter 2 of https://christophercook.substack.com/t/thedistributednation?
No, my friend, I wish I could afford to subscribe to the best stacks, like yours, but I cannot.
I'm not religious, and I think this is a great discussion about ageny and morality.
It means a lot to me to hear you say that. I am not observantly religious, and though I do quietly believe, I do not generally use or make religious arguments. So I appreciate the fact that you took and understood it in the spirit in which it was intended.