420 Can you enjoy freedom while being both unique and social?
Article #419 presented the metaphor of guard rails that help us stay on a bridge even though we make no physical contact with them. Today we expand the idea that the most effective form of guard rails is self-control.
Reviewing yesterday’s article, each of us obeys a unique set of personal controls that keep us on course. Social order lies in identifying the principles that acknowledge this condition (conscience) as part of something greater than unique individuals. Today’s task is to show that self-control is the most effective binding element of society. Briefly put, external control is resented and resisted while internal control is obeyed. We do the things that we permit and require ourselves to do, and we do so without being commanded and forced by others.
It is fundamental to Ernstraud Philosophy that individuals begin personal awareness as silos. We come into spaces adjacent to other silos, but not in full consciousness or appreciation of them. For humans, it takes years to develop meaningful relationships with other humans and to use these relationships as guiding principles. We discover ourselves before gradually relating the self to the other.
Society is the aggregate of the relationships among its members, the human population. The concept might even be extended to other animate creatures as we consider how different species impact each other. Many humans take healing benefits from companion dogs while eating pigs. The larger picture of society supports studying all the relationships.
Examination quickly shows extremes in human relationships. One social unit may depend on eating meat, while another forbids the practice. One group might require aborting a second pregnancy (population reduction as once done in China), while another forbids aborting an ectopic pregnancy (one in which the fetus cannot survive). We must acknowledge that human societies and human individuals are characterized by dramatic opposites and all degrees between.
The examples serve to illustrate diversity. There is no singular formula for these relationships that fits every location. Every social structure is unique, corresponding to today’s opening assertion that every individual’s self-direction is unique. This article emphasizes the importance of the relationships necessary to constitute a coherent whole.
The picture quickly becomes too complicated for simple minds, which respond to difference by outlawing it. There is a powerful false sense of security in requiring by force that everything be uniform. Attempts to implement any system of this type have thoroughly established that it is the worst of all tried resolutions.
If we move forward by rejecting both the laws that require, and the laws that forbid, abortion, we are left in the complex middle ground of discerning and evaluating. Contemporary thought takes this approach on all issues so far conceived: there is no prospect of peace at either extreme, and establishment of social order lies in fitting disparate parts together on middle ground. When this mindset prevails, freedom becomes an option. This article opened with the observation that humans resist being forced and thrive doing what they understand.
The body of the article shows, by illustrative examples, the undeniable complexity that is recognized by every mature worldview: living together, surviving, is relating to others who are different. Denying difference is denying survival.
Article #419 posited that self-awareness, recognizing reality, begins within. Here Article #420 places this concept of the self in the center of an environment consisting of relationships. Further articles are needed to define and identify positive qualities of successful relationships.
Discussion: Numerous studies show that children need structure. They crave and respond to clear directions with predictable results. Does this establish a need for dictatorship among adults because it promises security? On the other hand, George Washington is credited for knowing that people need to be led, not driven. Describe how the principle differs from autocracy.
18 July 2024
