Freedom versus Group Discipline
Ethical questions gravitate toward the
interfaces between individual freedoms and group discipline. Humans are caught in a tense dialectic between self-interest and
group interest. Individual interests are often best served by advancing the
interests of a group, since many if not most human activities require more than
individual effort. Individuals are usually locked into large
quasi-cooperative networks leaving some choices about who does what to whom, but
most arrangements that support human infrastructures are not voluntary or even
optional.
We have recognized a tense dialectic at work in our minds. The
thesis is personal freedom and antithesis is bondage and
oppression, acting as competing teams in constant play. Since we often work in
the interfaces between being isolated creatures with selfish interests and
participation in group activities, there are always tensions that need
resolution. Often, we exaggerate the importance and the autonomy of individual
experience and individual action, but we seldom act alone.
Each person is an
agent of a common understanding both innate and learned. We depend on each other
to provide rules of conduct, information, context and meaning. The assumption of
those that champion individual freedom is that their society must be secular,
rational, democratic and humanitarian. Mostly, we are free to conform to the
norms and expectations of the local group and suffer when others find fault with
our actions.
A human tendency is to treat only a few other humans well, members
of your immediate select group, and to be suspicious of and hostile towards
everyone else. Humans can learn to override this tendency and succeed to varying
degrees at opening their minds to other sentient beings but this is a difficult
task. We can equate freedom with human rights , government
policy, elections, law courts and the right to legal representation. But,
a free society is not without rules, obligations, duties and limitations on
personal freedom. We have accepted that establishing and protecting human rights
relies on defending one’s autonomy against the oppression of family, religion,
employers, state, and other groups. Rules imposed from the top-down, by a moral
or political authority are not human rights. Freedom means that individuals make
choices and decide their fate, not the government or any organization. Elite
groups continue to seek control over others, however. Civil
societies moderate and conceal the influence of elite groups but do not remove
power brokering. In democratic public forums, hotly
contested ethical issues get stalled because agreement among diverse vested
interests is impossible.
Naom Chomsky is one of the smart and nice citizens of the world, willing to
sacrifice his personal comfort and venture forth consistently over many years to
confront contentious issues with reasonable, well-informed arguments, a desire
for individual freedom and a belief in the perfectibility of humans. His premise
is that the individual human can perfect himself or herself and live a moral and
free life with little or no interference from other people, especially those who
work for governments, religious organizations and large corporations. While this
premise should appeal to most smart people, the problem is that humans have
innate tendencies that cannot be changed by individual effort and humans do not
act alone. Humans are obligatory social animals with the delusion of
independence.
We know that the root human struggle between self-interest and
the interest of groups is ubiquitous, pervasive and is not going away. We know
that a small number of humans will be alpha animals and lead a much larger
number of humans who are followers and will not have the inclination or the
ability to think for themselves.
