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The Discovery of Freedom Foundations of an Ethical and Incidentally Prosperous Society Sanjeev Sabhlok, Author of Breaking Free of Nehru

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The Discovery of Freedom Foundations of an Ethical and Incidentally Prosperous Society Sanjeev Sabhlok, Author of Breaking Free of Nehru The Discovery of Freedom Foundations of an ethical and incidentally prosperous society Sanjeev Sabhlok, author of Breaking Free of Nehru DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT Mosts artists don’t mind others observing from behind as they work on their paintings. Observers get to see how a blank canvas evolves into a beautiful work of art. Not so with writing. Writers, on the other hand, prefer to offer the finished product. I’m happy to let you in on this work as it evolves. I had aimed to finish it by end-2012 but from 2011 onwards other activities occupied my time. I don’t have any new timeline, now, to finish this work. I’ve had this manuscript for public comment since mid-2008. Please provide comments at [email protected]. Comments that end up influencing this book will be acknowledged. I seek comments on the content and accuracy of my references. I’ll try to address the typos in the very end. Will I publish this as a book through a publisher? Not sure, yet. Join the Facebook Group for this book to keep in touch with the progress of this manuscript © Sanjeev Sabhlok, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 All rights reserved. Version 0.298 dated 2 Dec 2012 – available on the internet at http://discovery.sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/. Version record: http://sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/book2/version.html (but the version record has not been updated for years) 1 Dedication This book is dedicated to: your success; your family’s success; your country’s success; and the success of everyone on Earth. Dedicated most importantly, to your freedom to think and to be. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS FRONTISPIECE: FREEDOM IS BOUNDED BY ACCOUNTABILITY.......................... 9 PREFACE.......................................................................................................... 10 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 21 PART 1 A THEORY OF FREEDOM ...................................................................... 26 CHAPTER 1 KNOW THYSELF ............................................................................ 27 1. Stardust................................................................................................................... 28 2. Our ‘racial’, tribal, and national identities................................................................ 33 2.1 ‘Race’ ................................................................................................................... 33 2.2 Languages, religions, and cultures ........................................................................... 35 2.3 Tribes and nations ................................................................................................. 35 3. Our brain is our behaviour ....................................................................................... 38 3.1 The lower brain: our body manager ......................................................................... 39 3.2 The middle brain: our motive force .......................................................................... 40 3.3 Our rational and aspirational higher brain ................................................................. 40 3.4 The mind and self .................................................................................................. 41 4. Which part of our brain predominates?.................................................................... 42 5. Human nature.......................................................................................................... 46 5.1 Individual and group nature .................................................................................... 46 5.2 Our needs, motivations, and intent .......................................................................... 47 5.3 Range of behaviour ................................................................................................ 50 5.4 Regularities........................................................................................................... 50 6. The initial condition: State of nature ....................................................................... 56 6.1 Deductions from human nature ............................................................................... 56 6.2 Evidence from primitive tribes and the breakdown of political order ............................. 59 7. Two approaches to political society ......................................................................... 59 3 7.1 Collectivism (including the religious state) .................................................................60 7.2 Individualism, or liberalism ......................................................................................61 8. Imagining the future ............................................................................................... 64 CHAPTER 2 THE MEANINGS OF FREEDOM ........................................................69 1. What the dictionary says ......................................................................................... 69 2. Further exploration of freedom ............................................................................... 72 2.1 Inner vs. outer freedom ..........................................................................................72 2.2 Negative and positive liberty ....................................................................................74 2.2.1 Negative liberty as the absence of unnecessary constraints ...................................74 2.2.1 Self-determination and self-realisation (positive liberty) ........................................75 3. A definition of freedom............................................................................................ 76 4. The challenge of ensuring a free society ................................................................. 80 CHAPTER 3 TWO MODERN THEORIES OF JUSTICE (FREEDOM) ........................82 1. Overview of the theories of freedom ....................................................................... 82 2. Two unsatisfactory theories of freedom and justice ................................................ 86 2.1 Rawls’s conception of ‘social’ justice..........................................................................87 2.2 Nozick’s extrapolations from self-ownership ...............................................................97 3. Where does this lead us?....................................................................................... 104 CHAPTER 4 A THEORY OF FREEDOM .............................................................105 Proposition 1. Life is the yardstick of ultimate value ................................................. 107 Conditions for taking human life................................................................................... 111 Proposition 2. We are born free, and must remain free ............................................. 113 Equal freedom ........................................................................................................... 115 Not free to injure ourselves ......................................................................................... 117 Proposition 3. Freedom comes with matching accountability .................................... 123 The loop of accountability ........................................................................................... 125 Accountability (attribution) as the basis of property rights............................................... 127 Accountability for one’s responsibilities ......................................................................... 129 4 The processes and principles of accountability................................................................131 Illustrations of accountability .......................................................................................138 Proposition 4. To defend our life and liberty we first need a collective fortress......... 140 Our primary obligation – towards group self-defence ......................................................141 Relations with other nations ........................................................................................141 Proposition 5. Within the fortress operates the modern (strategic) social contract... 142 Reasonable equal opportunity and the social minimum....................................................149 Related issues ........................................................................................................... 159 Utilitarianism, neo-classical economics, and liberty .........................................................159 The happy slave? .......................................................................................................161 The institutions (pillars) of freedom .......................................................................... 162 PART 2 THE ‘PERSONAL’ PILLARS OF FREEDOM ............................................ 166 CHAPTER 5 INDEPENDENT THINKING .......................................................... 167 1. The value of oppositional thinking ......................................................................... 169 1.1 Oppositional thinking in India – Charvaka, Buddha....................................................170 1.2 Oppositional (dialectical) thinking – Socrates............................................................177 1.3 Systematic doubt – Peter Abelard ...........................................................................178 1.4 Opposing authority – Reformation...........................................................................182
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