Hedonism is NOT Liberty!
![pexels-photo-278303.jpeg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmeM3uhSd67X1DP78WSMGqmhrz2kXzQwqgjy4WHxGXdUZZ/pexels-photo-278303.jpeg)
The absolute biggest mistake Liberty minded people do is to equate Hedonism to Freedom. Hedonism is not Freedom, and pursuing it will never bring a libertarian world.
There are plenty of people who falsely believe that Freedom is Hedonism, especially leftists. First of all Freedom is relativistic, so if we want to talk about a libertarian world first we need to know what the concept of Freedom is.
What is Freedom?
Well traditionally it’s the non-aggression principle, which in the Anarcho-Capitalist culture, mostly applies to physical property. I would enhance that and say that it also applies to immaterial property and the entire society as a whole.
I think it’s not just simply the use of violence for defensive purposes only, whereas obviously the border between defense and offense has to be clearly lined out (Ex: Intellectual Property, enforced through coercion)
But that is not enough. It’s not just simply enough to avoid offensive violence, violence itself has to be gradually eliminated as well.
This means that in an Anarchist utopia, all forms of violence whether defensive or offensive has to be eliminated. A world in peace and harmony would be the endgame.
Now of course this can’t be 100% guaranteed, but the probability of violence could be gradually lowered down across the spectrum, until any violent act becomes totally unthinkable for anyone, it will require a lot of effort and understanding, but it would be gradual progress.
What is Hedonism?
So now we have to ask ourself, how does Hedonism help in achieving this goal? I mean we are talking about the immediate pursuit of happiness and the sinful short-term pleasures, often at the expense of longterm goals.
The pursuit of Liberty is a long journey, it won’t be achieved in our lifetime nor in our grandchildren’s lifetime. In fact with this pace it might take a million years.
The transition from a barbarian primitive society to an enlightened utopia would be like a single-cell organism transforming itself into an ape. It takes a lot of time.
So of course because we can’t have a libertarian utopia soon, people get depressed, so they turn to short term pleasures that just make them feel better.
Obviously smoking some weed and getting a hot girlfriend is so much pleasure and so much easier to obtain in the current paradigm than a libertarian utopia.
So people just go the easy way, they won’t devote their lives to the spread of Freedom, they will just selfishly turn towards their own personal short-term pleasures and ignore everything else.
The life inside the bubble seems liberating and joyful:
- Sex
- Drugs
- Romantic Relationships
- Alcohol / Tobacco
- Partying
- Exciting “adrenaline based” adventures
It seems like this is the Freedom that an individual would want, but unfortunately it’s not. And the bubble is shrinking.
Even if these pleasures are seemingly good, the bubble is shrinking as even these acts are being eradicated through the coercion that the tyrants are inflicting on society.
Escapism is cowardice
The “escapist” mentality is cowardly. You can’t escape tyranny. You either face it and do something about it, or you lose all your Freedoms eventually. The bubble will be popped by the tyrant.
I have already described how harsh life is for the average human on the planet now:
And it’s only getting worse, as the encroaching tyranny is attacking us from all directions. Sooner or later all activities will be banned.
For instance this is what is going on today:
The average person works 10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week and it’s taxed at 90% of his gross income. He comes home totally tired and he doesn’t have time to raise his kids. So their kids become empty vessels, just roaming around the world with no purpose once they grow up, and of course they are raised by the mandatory education system, since their parents have no time for that.
Many times the parents get divorced since a healthy family can’t stay together under such harsh conditions, especially if the male becomes alcoholic due to the emotional depression they experience at their job or from society at large. Women are also encouraged to divorce by subversive feminists.
So males often try to get away from their depression by drinking alcohol or smoking or doing prostitutes.
The kids are of course totally abused from birth by the education system, and they quickly realize that the fairytales that the teachers and their parents tell them about the “playful world” is just a fairytale. They quickly experience the harshness of life.
And the single mother isn’t that better off either. Raising a child with a drunk spouse is not fun, but raising them alone isn’t fun either I suppose.
In most cases the wife has to work since the welfare is only a bonus not a full time income, and that means raising and spending time with the kid, plus dealing with the stress in the workplace.
While the father has to pay child support and alimony or go to prison, in most cases without having visitor rights to the kids. It’s a total feminist cruelty what is being done to fathers.
Yet, the mother isn’t that well of either, since the stress of raising kids and the stress at the workplace is still real.
So in a dysfunctional family like this, which is pretty much most families these days (luckily not my parents since I was born almost 4 decades ago, but nowadays this is becoming the norm).
Then of course as the kid grows up in such a toxic environment he or she will become one of the following stereotypes:
- Leftist video game nerd (introverted, anti-social, nerdy, depression, bipolar disorder, other mental illness, suicidal tendency, etc..)
- Party freak ( very sexually active, slutty women & scumbag men, risk of teen pregnancy, histronic personality disorder, narcissism)
- Gangster ( drug addict / dealer, sociopath, violent thug, violent criminal)
So these are basically the 3 roles that the current Hedonistic society produces. Is this Freedom? Is this Liberty?
I don’t think so. As Aristotle said:
![320px-Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmcm3pi9XU6DufZzFwfXW7DgYAd457jVExKzYrMHPZ5PXW/320px-Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg)
So I get that people are trying to search for little bits of Freedom and happiness in this rotten world, but in doing so they are letting tyranny encroach over them even more.
If they are apathetic and obsessed withing their bubble world, then they let the tyranny grow, and eventually it will come after their bubble world as well.
Freedom is rapidly diminishing throughout the world, as Government control over every aspect of human life is increasing:
They are now coming after the Internet, the Internet which was sacred and virgin for the past 20 years. The Government control over it is massively increasing, especially in the EU, with this new GDPR bullshit, which doesn’t protect privacy, but it definitely increases Government control over the Internet.
They now want to ban VPN and introduce Smart ID based internet logins, effectively eliminating anonymity entirely. Smart electronics everywhere, effectively spy devices, used as the eyes of Big Brother to spy on everyone.
It’s not just that it’s covert or overt spying, but they are now legitimizing it, up to the point that Facebook is now using this information for policing:
- http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/facebook-manipulated-users-moods-in-secret-experiment-9571004.html
- https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3738170/facebooks-plans-to-watch-you-through-your-smartphone-camera-as-you-scroll-through-social-network-revealed
- https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7gpwmw/facebooks_new_suicide_detection_ai_could_put
So now even trivial things like posting a sentence on the internet is being policed and analyzed.
So if you post some crazy things because you are drunk or or just as a joke, you can get SWATTED!
Even the most trivial day-to-day events are now becoming regulated by the Government.
So even if you are a Hedonist pouring your depression into cat videos on Youtube or playing stupid video games on Facebook, even that will become policed.
There is no way to escape tyranny, it is coming from every direction, and Hedonism is just a cowardly response to it.
Path to Liberty
The true path to Liberty comes from discipline. Not discipline from the Government, which is always immoral and coercive, but discipline from within, by embracing virtuous values that help people guide towards a libertarian future.
It is the discipline required to put that bottle of whiskey down and throw the pack of cigarette into the trash can.
If people could do that, then everything else would follow. If people can sacrifice their short term pleasures for long term liberty, then the end reward would be much more fulfilling.
Not to mention that almost all Hedonistic endeavours end up in causing tragedy and chaos in society. For instance all these hazardous substances increase healthcare costs, which in turn result in more taxation and coercion imposed by the Government.
Drunk driving is a lethal risk not just to the perpetrator but to everyone else, and it also invokes more Government intervention.
And so do every other “pleasures”. If people could regulate themselves to live a decent life, there would be no need for a Government.
The Government is simply just an intervention force directly invoked by the side-effects of Hedonism, and it’s also vice-versa, they feed on eachother.
If people would stop doing bad things, not just to themselves but to others, then we will have Liberty.
As I said in the beginning, the libertarian utopia is complete when all forms of violence are eradicated, and that means that people have to take responsibility first for their actions.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
What, no toll for walking across the shaky board?
I am not sure what exatly is this image supposed to depict?
What I find odd is how the people who scream the loudest about freedom always think everyone needs to live an ascetic lifestyle; as though if you get laid or have a beer you're doing freedom wrong.
It's also weird how you dislike Christians so much but advocate their values so strongly.
I didn't said that, what I am saying is that you can only reap after you sow.
First people should fix their economic situation, and then start spending that money on worldly pleasures.
Otherwise we end up with teens living in their parent's basements with no job or future prospects, only thinking about sex and partying.
This is exactly what is happening now, the endless hedonism is destroying society.
Teens aren't staying in their parents homes because of hedonism, they're staying because there aren't enough jobs available for them.
Do you hear the judgement in your writing btw? Everything you post is judging people for not living up to what you think they should do...
But why aren't there jobs out there? It's this leftist mentality that creates overarching government regulation, then when the jobs go away, people double down on the insanity.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy. If people are not eager to work, then there won't be any jobs for them.
I am judging people for their immoral activities and the shadow they cast on the world by engaging and spreading those activities.
You know in the west taxes are way above 80% of people's income and poverty didn't got solved after all the leftist entitlement programs.
In the ancient world taxes were well below 10% in total, and even a slave had a better life quality than your average worker now, relative to their time and society of course.
People could do more than they realize, but it takes a certain mentality to do it.
Hedonism is not it.
Yep, this sounds so much easier than life today :![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://i.imgur.com/PGdTZQQ.jpg)
Augustus was one of the better emperors, most emperors were savage tyrants.
I am not defending what happened there in the early republic, I am just putting things in context, relative to that time period where cannibalism was the norm amongst the barbarians, it was extraordianry for Rome to establish a semi-civilized society.
There are still witch-hunts and child-sacrifices in Africa today.
So how does that compare to this?
The point is you're trying to claim you're a slave when there is literally 0 chance of anyone throwing you into a pit of eels to be eaten alive because you broke a cup.
There's a famous essay by the father of modern anarcho-capitalism Murray Rothbard on the connection between Libertarianism and Libertinism
https://mises.org/library/libertarianism-and-libertinism
I see how much effort you have put into this post. I like to remind you that you missed YouTube as the modern age babysitter for those families chasing the cost of living.
I was surprised to know that freedom means the 6 points you have listed. I never thought of any of that as freedom.
I agree with you that path to liberty is as you mentioned tough and takes discipline. But discipline is very hard if you did not learn it at a young age.
As additional idea is to plant in our children one thing and one thing only since we don’t have time to raise them. That thing is not to follow any one, friend, teacher, manager, leader prophet, religion, God without thinking and being convinced of what they are doing is absolutely the best thing to do at the time. This will take care of governments because children of today are the government of tomorrow.
No I dont consider those freedoms either, I said that they appear to be freedoms as in short term pleasures that the hedonists thing it's freedom. Most libertarians (especially leftists) fail to realize the difference between immediate personal liberty and liberty in society as a whole.
As the guy pointed out above, libertinism is not libertarian, it's Marxist.
Just because women can now vote, and cheat their husbands (as they are encouraged by feminist magazines), that doesn't mean that we have more freedom in society as a whole.
In fact it means less freedom because the Government will have to intervene at some point to stop the madness.
Feminists are encouraging women to do all sorts of stupid things and then when they get in trouble they will turn to the Government for help.
It's madness.
Yes, it does, and also where do you even get this shit? What magazine encourages cheating?
(Open relationships are not cheating if that's what you're thinking of.)
I have seen women magazines literally praising cheating women and almost encouraging them to do so:
Infowars... Pass. How about a link to one of these actual articles you've seen rather than a guy who shouts about gay frogs and globalists while working with Trump and Putin?
Hahaha do you know that the gay frog stuff is actually true:
You know they have some sensationalist material and the way they present some stories is pretty unbearable sometimes, I don't like the loud yelling of Alex either if you are referring to that, but that doesn't mean that you should dismiss everything.
Alternative media might not be always correct (there are tons of crappy conspiracy theories being spread around), but at least they cover the news.
Most media outlets don't even touch these subjects.
Turning male frogs into females is not turning frogs gay, nor is it a government conspiracy... it's because of an herbicide the FREE MARKET decided was a good option.
So no, what he claims is not at all true. It's that whole "seed of truth" used to create a giant lie thing.
The subjects made up to use as propaganda against other beliefs? I should hope not, as that's blatant manipulative fearmongering.
So no examples of feminists advocating cheating then?
Amazing post. Could not agree more with your sentiments here. Well done in putting this together, looking forward to reading your article about the life of an average man, now. Great work.
Thanks.
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