avevale_intelligencer: (Default)
avevale_intelligencer ([personal profile] avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-10-19 04:08 pm

Builds in weekly parts into a complete pile of gibberish, part 3

[livejournal.com profile] earth_wizard's third principle of conservatism states that "the preference for liberty over equality is the most difficult part of the definition of conservative for most people to understand, particularly since liberty and equality are almost used as synonyms in our times. Put simply, all societies face a fundamental choice between emphasizing freedom or emphasizing equality."

I commented a little on this in my response in the earlier thread. Basically, I don't see liberty and equality as either synonymous or antonymous (or even hieronymous). Rather, I see them on different axes of what I shall probably conceive as a three-dimensional continuum of politics. I once tried to work out 3D continua for space, time, mass, energy, life and mind as part of the thinking around a song I once wrote. I got as far as time and part of mass and then broke down, partly because I was trying to make the continua mutually interdependent. Such are the things my mind does to me when I'm trying to vegetate peacefully. Woe et cetera.

Anyway...liberty occupies one end of one axis, and on the other I place security. I think this is a reasonable opposition: at one end you have a "society" where anyone can do what they like and therefore nobody is safe: on the other you have the ant-world of T H White where "everything not compulsory is forbidden" and vice versa, but where as long as the laws are adhered to nobody has anything to fear. Absolute chaos versus absolute order. Clearly the ideal is somewhere between the two extremes, and here I think conservatives occupy a sizeable spread, because there are some who incline more towards liberty and others who incline more towards law. (Also there are some things which some people think should be freer and some that some people think should be less free. Nothing is as simple as I am making it sound.)

So, on to equality, and here I am talking about equal status under the law, not any other kind. I will cover the other kind when I come to talk about exceptionalism. What would be the opposite pole of that axis? Well, presumably a society in which nobody was equal to anyone else, a hierarchy in which each level consisted of one person. So, absolute equality versus absolute hierarchy. Here I think I am well towards the equality end, if not actually at it. I certainly don't believe that being part of the government should confer any extra status on anyone, and here I differ from just about every society that to my knowledge there's ever been, including the allegedly "socialist" societies of Russia and China. We like to set our leaders above us, and exalt the person as well as the office, and the leaders themselves aren't going to be modest about it, especially when it means they can vote themselves salary increases.

I think conservatives are more prone to this hierarchical thinking than liberals, though, so yes, they do on the whole value liberty more than equality. But it isn't because they're mutually exclusive. On the contrary, I think that if everyone were equal under the law it might well lead to an increase in liberty.

So, still liberal so far, and halfway through. Go me.

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 04:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm, absolute hierarchy. As I recall 'Doc' Smith had an example of a world like that, where everyone had a 7 (or so) letter 'name' which described exactly their position in the hierarchy and so no one was exactly equal to any other. I'm sure I've seen something similar in another fictional universe but I don't remember where.

I think that if everyone were equal under the law it might well lead to an increase in liberty

I agree with that, and I like and agree with your two-axis system (I'm very interested to see what other axes you put on it, I suspect that the other points may give indicate least one more).

As far as I can tell you didn't say, though, where you are on the liberty-security (or chaos-order) axis except that you prefer somewhere not at the extremes. I suspect that this may be one place we differ, although agreeing about disliking the extreme points.

I'm interested in your analyses of the other points. Looking at the original comment I found that I disagreed with at least half of his "conservative principles", thus making me a "commie pinko liberal" according to some conservatives (yes, I've actually been called that on at least two political forums)...

[identity profile] earth-wizard.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)

:) Just to make it clear,the "conservative principles" are not mine, since I'm an out and out radical social democrat, and a party of one in most things ... :-)

They are just the principles espoused by Hayek, Burke, and many other conservative and neo-conservative thinkers and politicians.
Edited 2008-10-19 17:00 (UTC)

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 06:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry, I used 'his' as a shorthand for "the principles which he stated pertain to conservatives", I was aware that you are not one of them. Nor, it appears from those principles, am I (in some ways I conform to the "economic" and "libertarian" conservative categories (between which I see no conflict) but on the other hand I have several disagreements with a number of people and ideas in both; like you I tend to be a "party of one").

[identity profile] redaxe.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 05:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I would say the opposite of equality, as you define it, is a rigid caste system, such as is found in India. When vertical mobility is impossible, people cannot be said to be equal. (Technically, of course, even in a caste system, there's both the possibility of downward mobility, and a very tiny amount of upward mobility for exceptional individuals or their children. But for the most part, the system is rigid and unequal.)

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 05:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Even within a caste system there is still some mobility within the caste. Humans, like many other animals, seem to automatically generate some kind of hierarchy whenever there are more than a couple together, even if it isn't a fixed one (there may be several together, used for different purposes or in different places; the hierarchy for breeding rights may not be the same as for giving orders when working, and both may be different from that in a social context).

I would say that a rigid caste system is one form of inequality, but not the only one. A total inequality wouldn't necessarily say that one couldn't marry below one's station, for instance, or determine the status of children by the position of their parents, it could for instance be a meritocracy where one's position was determined only by the calculated value to society of that individual, and for genetic reasons it might even be required that a person breed at least a certain distance above or below them (since no one would be exactly equal to anyone else they obviously couldn't breed with an equal). 'Doc' Smith had something like that in his posthumous Family d'Alembert series, the royalty were required to marry commoners to avoid inbreeding.
howeird: (slarty animated)

[personal profile] howeird 2008-10-19 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Where everyone is at liberty to do whatever they want, factors like wealth and good looks and charm make some people "more equal than others". Those without wealth and good looks and charm can only gain equality by force of numbers, which has the effect of taking away some of the liberty of the rich and powerful to do whatever they want.

There's a direct relationship between the two, but it's more like the moon's relationship with the Earth - equality has som effect on liberty, like the tides, but liberty is like the earth's gravity, keeping the moon in orbit.

[identity profile] catsittingstill.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 07:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Anyway...liberty occupies one end of one axis, and on the other I place security

I would disagree with you on this. For example, imagine a cliff. It looks interestingly bumpy and hollowy, it's probably climbable. But if you fall off, you die on the jagged rocks below.

Now suppose you have a climbing harness and a rope and a safe belay from the top. You have more security. Do you feel more, or less, free to climb the cliff?

Being safer would make me more free. So I don't see these two as opposites.

If predators were constrained from attacking me, that would make me more free to go where I want, at the hour I want, dressed the way I want and in the company, or lack, that I want. Being safer would make me more free.

In my previous experience, the people who see freedom and security as opposites are the people who don't fear being hurt by other people's freedom. In other words, the predators.

Now, I don't picture you as a predator, so maybe I need to rethink that. But I believe my illustrations that safety can make you more free still stand.

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
"In my previous experience, the people who see freedom and security as opposites are the people who don't fear being hurt by other people's freedom. In other words, the predators."

I don't understand that. This may reflect our different experiences, or it may be that I am not understanding your context, but in my view the predators see freedom as the same as their security. Benjamin Franklin seened to see them as, if not opposites, at least opposed: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Or do you mean that your security can be bought only at the expense of other people's freedom? In which case it seems to me that you are agreeing with the premise, because they have exactly the same call on your freedom (their security from you taking action against others can only be bought at the cost of limiting your freedom, thus in the extreme leading to a deadlock where everyone is secure but non-free).

Or it may be that you have discovered yet another axis, with liberty-coercion on one and security-insecurity on another, but with complex interactions which have a complex relationship with the variables on the other axes.

(Incidentally, having a rope and harness doesn't make me noticably more willing to climb cliffs, I'm an acrophobe. Getting me more than about 5 feet off the ground in a non-enclosed space is difficult, I've been known to panic simply walking near a 6 inch curb...)

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2008-10-19 11:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't think these examples quite work.

In the first, you're "free" to climb the cliff however much equipment you have. If you feel safer you may feel more able to allow *yourself* to climb the cliff, but society exerts no pressure on you one way or the other. Of course, it might, in the form of a sign forbidding anyone to climb without adequate equipment...in which case anyone who wanted to climb it bareback, as it were, would feel their freedom infringed upon to ensure their safety. (The sign also infringes *your* freedom to climb without equipment, but since you wouldn't anyway, you don't notice.)

In the second example, your safety is bought at the cost of the predators' freedom, and a good thing too. The net freedom in the system has to go down so that your safety can go up. Again, you *feel* freer, but society in this case is not making you any more free than you were before; rather it's making the predators less free to ensure your safety. (Also, it's making *you* less free to be a predator, but since you wouldn't anyway, you don't notice.)

I am very much afraid of being hurt by other people's freedom. This is why libertarianism and anarchism bother me so much, and why I see no paradox, though I'm sure one was intended, in Leslie Fish's immortal line

"And then they hollered for the law...as liberals always do."

But I am able, probably thanks to years of white male privilege, to step back and see myself as being on that axis, and know that when I feel freer because I'm safer (as I said in my post about feeling free not to have to carry a gun) it's not that my freedom is increased, it's that the freedom of others is diminished.

Does that make sense?
Edited 2008-10-19 23:28 (UTC)
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)

[personal profile] gingicat 2008-10-21 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Well put.

[identity profile] soren-nyrond.livejournal.com 2008-10-20 08:15 am (UTC)(link)
Harking back to my earlier rant, a conservative (IMHO, and having met and talked with a libertarian conservative) sees freedom as His/her persoanl freedom to run his/her life as s/he wants, without interference.
And equality just stands for a right to recognise that some people are born A Little Bit Better, and some aren't. And the ones who are, will sort out their internal equalities for themselves, thank you, and everyone else can be equal as Getting On and Doing the Work.

And when I'm rich and can order people round, do you think I'm not going to follow a like regime ?

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2008-10-23 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)
equality just stands for a right to recognise that some people are born A Little Bit Better, and some aren't

And war is peace, and freedom is slavery.

And I know you wouldn't, because I know you.
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (just me - geeky - dictionary)

[personal profile] gingicat 2008-10-21 08:54 pm (UTC)(link)
I like the idea of a multi-axis system.