The Individual and Collective Way Towards Solutions

The Individual and Collective Strategies Towards Freedom

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.” -Jung

Agorism: Our Strategy

Agorism is a simple philosophy of using effective non-political strategies to create the change you wish to see in the world. Rather than voting in a ballot, it is voting with your money, talents, business, creativity, etc., using your economic energy wisely to build what you want, rather than unthinkingly feeding the conventional institutions which condone violence and have been well-demonstrated to be incompetent for the emerging complexity of humanity. The evolution of governance in the name of not only liberty, but prosperity will be not through the means of the rigged political process, but through innovative humans creating something better that can out-compete it’s performance. Gandhi once said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”

While being a simple philosophy, with variables growing ever more complex it is necessary to dig deeper into the philosophy and practice to stay consistent. Being consistent is not only essential for any success, but also for staying aligned in our principles and values of individual freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” This is true as ever in this age, and also more possible than ever at this time.

When it comes to creating freedom in this world, I would like to consider the individual and the collective path towards freedom. Though these are opposites, they are inevitably correlated. By digging deep into this idea, we can understand more not only about our goal of creating a new paradigm, but also about the strategies of getting there.

Individual and Collective Freedom

Individual freedom and economic liberty are the foundation of the structures we are building for the new paradigm. In the market of decentralized voluntary governance, there will be a variety of many different kinds of governances. It is important to note that individual liberty in the market of governance means an individual will have the right to choose the kind of startup society they want to live in; this is the core of individual liberty. In essence, even if an individual chooses to live in a startup society that applies Socialist policies that seem contradictory to individual liberty, the fundamental idea is that the individual has the overall freedom to choose to reside in that area, and at any time leave that governance for another as he sees fit. With this framework of voluntary agreement, one could imagine many varieties of principles in the market of governance without treading on an individual’s rights, so long as the non-aggression principle is upheld. This would result in a slow process of evolving modern policies through the economic feedback system of profit and loss in the market of governance. This method of building our ideas will prove to be far more effective than merely arguing about them.

It is clear that decentralization of power and individual freedom are crucial for better structures. Not only because most of us are honest individualists that intend to live out our personal lives as free as possible, but also because many realize individual freedom is the engine of moral progress for the entire collective of our species. Individual freedom is a vital part of evolution not only for our physical structures, but our psychological development as well. In the mental age of information, the health of the psyche is more important than ever. We know individual freedom is important for growing economic liberty, but it is also critical for growth on a higher level of our being.

There is a saying: you cannot love others adequately, until you love yourself properly. Many people do not love themselves but live in passive fear daily, which leaves very little room for them to consider their own lives, let alone the broader concerns of humanity. This is relevant to the movement towards freedom: let us not forget the State encourages this fear, for the diminishing of individuality is very beneficial for their main strategy of control: molding the collective human perception. Regardless of how cliché it seems, it is true that love is the weapon of the future. For those who dominate humanity do not understand or use this mighty force, but actually work hard to keep the masses from discovering it within themselves. To love yourself is not easy; you need strength, humility, and freedom to develop who you are. Freedom goes deep within us; the more you trace down the root of the war on freedom, the more you find a war on human consciousness. Freedom and awareness are almost synonymous.

Individuals that are truly free, especially internally, tend to encourage peaceful cooperation because they have worked hard to understand the value of that freedom and are willing to take responsibility for it. Those that are on auto-pilot tend to support the conventional reality, no matter how violent or terrible, simply because it is much easier. Violent institutions influence masses of minds to be limited by this fearful, ignorant, and docile behavior, for the mass perception of reality is their greatest pillar of control. However, with the internet alone we are moving into a time where they no longer can monopolize on this influence. Individuals, by mere words and acts alone, can create ripples of truth which echo around the world in seconds. This is a constant threat to institutions operating on deeply-instilled illusions.

The interesting duality here is that freeing yourself as an individual first and foremost is the most humanitarian thing you can do to free others. The world desperately needs people with the capacity to think for themselves, which is a capacity that can never stop growing. To paraphrase Camus, become so free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. A single open-mind, let alone a group of them, is a threat to oppressors. Individual integrity is something that can be extremely contagious. Self-aware people are the greatest threats to oppressors everywhere, for they have the intelligence and nerve to challenge authority in ways that is out of their scope of reasoning. By prohibiting the evolution of humanity’s awareness, they are actually prohibiting their OWN evolution and so those who can rise above this line will have a great advantage. High degrees of innovation, wisdom, love, and conscious awareness will out-compete the quagmires of humanity. In this sense, we are all entrepreneurs who must bring our greatest selves forth to not only liberate ourselves, but our fellow species as well. Those who do this will not only free others by merely existing, but also will understand more effective ways of helping their fellow humanity.

Freeing your mind is power, and it is not without hard work. The most noble thing you can do is take responsibility for your life (including your own suffering), rather than casting it into the cesspool of collective negativity which no one wants to claim their rightful share of. Inevitably, this cesspool of collective unconscious baggage manifests as ignorance, passive acceptance of evil, fear, violence, war, slavery, etc on an individual and collective level.

We must realize it is not the State that perpetuates itself, for the State is not a living being or God; it is a group of people that have managed to manipulate the strong force of humanity for its own benefit, for a long time. It is not the threat of violence that perpetuates the State, as much as the installation of ignorance and mental weakness. It is not the elitists that keep this injustice at bay, but the everyday actions of ordinary people supporting the conventional reality.

Observing this chain of energy helps us to understand the realistic validity of agorism as an effective method for change. This highlights how an individual is so powerful, as well as why our goal is to spread freedom not only in the form of economic reform, but inner emancipation from the mental shackles of generations worth of propaganda. In this age of information, we are going to see lots of weird psychological phenomena because more than ever, this is a mental age. We must realize the value of our psychic health in all endeavors and especially in massive, archaic goals such as a paradigm shift into a better structure.

Conclusion

The more you are truly free in your life, the more you will free yourself internally from subconscious sabotage, which is a threat to all of us. The more you make the unconscious conscious, the more you are satisfied with the person you are, the more joy and purpose you are going to feel, the more you understand the value of freedom, and so the more you are going to naturally seek to treat your fellow Beings with respect. True freedom inspires one to try to reduce the suffering in this world, or at least not add more suffering to it.

When it comes down to it, only you can free yourself. This brings me to the other duality within the path towards freedom- the inner and outer work of agorism, which I will elaborate on in the next article.

“What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.” -Gandhi

Thanks for listening, as always.
Peace!