Reply To: Fundamental Principles to be documented within our constitution

[Anonymous]

#1401

Banjo, regarding the video content, that’s an excellent idea. Myself, though, I think I should remain anonymous for my job. I think it’s a good project, but will be a lot of work. (My wife used to do makeup videos and she always complained about how many hours it took to edit).

I enjoyed reading your response, and afterliberalism’s. There’s too much to write here in one post, so I’m keeping this as short as I can. I reckon this’ll be great stuff for chatting about in person though. I don’t want you to think that the constitution is good for nothing but the bin. My questions were made in the hope that either I’ll learn something from you; or you’ll learn something from me. In the end, we’re seeking to increase knowledge. More importantly, we’ve all got the same goals, and we should avoid letting differing ideologies divide us. Perhaps I’m a bit of a hypocrite, given my initial email response was rather ideology-based, but now I’m saying ‘let’s not talk about ideology!’

Since you haven’t objected to removing strong ideological notions from the constitution, I’ll assume this discussion is, as AL noted, purely academic. Also, to address your concern about people being expected to hold certain views (such as pre-modernism): of course I would not condone that; in fact I encourage contrary views. My thoughts are just me fumbling in the dark trying to make sense of things, and I always look for enlightening from others. But there must be certain views that we can all agree on 100%, otherwise what’s the point of the brotherhood? Finding out what those views are is the hard part, but I think we’re on the right track by avoiding too much ideology.

I herewith present my thoughts for critique:

I agree that the Enlightenment was superficially a product of Christianity, but there’s more to it than that (which I’m not going into right now). But I disagree that the Enlightenment and Christianity have much in relation to each other. The invention of the printing press advanced the Enlightenment, and also greatly assisted the Protestants against the Catholics. It’s all a tangled mess and I don’t understand it. It seems the many scientific advancements during the Enlightenment led people to view the natural world in purely scientific terms. This led some to try to explain more abstract concepts (e.g. economics, morality and epistemology) in scientific terms also, viz Enlightenment philosophy. How successful the philosophers were depends on the parameters you apply. Again, not going into this right now, but consider that today’s social engineering is a product of the belief that human nature can be explained in scientific terms, and that scientific solutions can solve our woes.

What do you mean by Modernism, exactly? I’m also not sure how AL defines it. It seems you’re linking (equating?) modernism, liberty and technological advance (i.e. affordable bread). I’m no expert, but I do not equate modernism with technological advance. There were technological advances before modernism, and the idea that Christianity and science are at odds is completely false (another issue where I won’t go into detail here). Nor do I equate modernism with Enlightenment philosophy, although Kant is considered by some to be the father of Modernism. Modernism, as I understand it, was a cultural idea, and was more so a product of scientific advancement rather than vice versa. Here’s my high-level take on modernism and postmodernism:
– Traditionalism: a particular set of rules (Catholic tradition, J S Bach (considered a ‘mathematical’ composer), Boticelli)
– Modernism: “those old rules suck, let’s invent new rules” (French Revolution, Jazz, Picasso’s cubism).
– Postmodernism: there are no rules (sexual liberation, John Cage’s 4’33” (please have a listen to this delightful piece), and that stupid cactus sculpture in Perth’ CBD)

With each stage, objectivity is replaced with increasing subjectivity. In hindsight, we can now see why it is so troublesome to distinguish modernism from postmodernism, as one will inevitably lead to the other.

Instead of using the words ‘sexual liberation’ in my above example, I could have written ‘Anarchy’, as this would be a better fit with the timeline of Catholic to French Revolution to Anarchy. But complete sexual liberation is a subset of ‘perfect freedom’, and perfect freedom is Anarchy. Freedom, in the political sense (as distinct from the true sense), only works when people have inbuilt self-discipline. When self-discipline disappears – as we see today – government steps in to fill the vacuum and thus becomes a tyranny. So we find it necessary to qualify ‘perfect freedom’ so as to avoid tyranny. Therefore in the end, everyone is subservient to something. If men insist on perfect freedom they will end up with a tyranny. But if men will serve self-discipline, they will enjoy greater – though not perfect – liberty. Everyone has a master: the only thing you may choose is to what that master will be. That, in my opinion, is the sole ‘human right’ that truly exists; which is also the right to walk up to the gallows with your head held high. Whatever your ideas about reality, these will guide your decisions, and thus you are subservient to your own conception about reality. If we as a brotherhood adopt an ideology, we become subservient to it, and that ideology thence joins a hierarchy of authorities that guide our individual lives.

Perfect freedom creates a typical postmodern paradox. Postmodernism says ‘nothing is true’, thereby contradicting itself by making a truth-statement. Similarly, perfect freedom means that all individuals are free to do what they want, including limiting the freedom of others, thereby denying the principle of perfect freedom. The typical response is “we want perfect freedom so long as it doesn’t infringe on the freedoms of others”. Yet by making even one exception to the ideal, it ceases to be perfect freedom, and thenceforward becomes a qualified freedom, set arbitrarily on the basis of power. What do I mean by this? You can only expect to have this kind of qualified liberty for so long as you have the power to enforce it. If we live in a democratic society, it’s only because the majority agree to it. Yet if someone comes along with their ‘personal sovereignty’ (e.g. Muslims) and they also have a lot of power (population), what do we do if they choose to exercise that power in curtailing our personal sovereignty (jihad)? You can bitch and complain about ‘rights’, but it’s meaningless when the other party has all the power and you have no means of enforcing those rights. So what do we do to prevent this from happening? We make sure that we are the ones with all the power to enforce our ideas. This necessarily limits the personal sovereignty of others. Therefore, personal sovereignty cannot be a value of ours. Even the Enlightenment freedoms require violence to function (this actually agrees with Christianity: the threat of eternal ‘violence’), because when people who violently oppose freedom come to our country, violence can be our only response.

And where, then, does liberty end? Should it have a limit? Consider the Invasion Day issue you brought up. Wouldn’t changing ‘Australia Day’ to ‘Invasion Day’ be a form of liberty for the Aboriginals? And if you vote ‘No’, is this not a form of dictatorship (tyranny of the majority) against gays? If we don’t agree with these liberal policies, why have we chosen to draw the line thusly; and what right to we have to impose this line upon society as a whole? Once again, it’s got nothing to do with rights: it’s all about power.

It seems we’re getting stuck on the nature of rights ‘in reality’ vis a vis ‘in law’. That is why I ask if it is really true that ‘all men are created equal’. Is it true because a piece of paper says so; or would it be true even if that piece of paper didn’t exist? If you go with the latter option, I would then ask you why you think this is so (not to be a, but I think you’d need to answer using evolutionary concepts…).