GREEN RED In The Fountainhead, there is a scene in which Howard Roark is accosted by Ellsworth Toohey, who, after dancing around the issue, gets to the heart of the matter and asks, "What do you think of me?", to which Roark replies, "but I don't think of you". Not only can't you be free and spend all of your time complaining about oppression, but you can't be free and then proceed to spend all of your time thinking about not being free. Any man who proceeds to base his life around his oppressors does not want to be free. For the free man, the universe simply IS. He sees no point in complaining about the world, because what he cannot change is not actually REAL. In order for something to be real it must be observable, and though while people may idealize being a detached observer, observation ALWAYS involves manipulation and experiment. What is 'good'? Well, we know that 'goodness' is a quality that something has, but if I may echo Robert M. Pirsig here, what is 'Quality'? Well, embedded in the statement "X is good" is the statement "X IS". So if we want (and why wouldn't you want to?), we can say that GOOD things are the things that ARE and that BAD things are the things that AREN'T. If bad things aren't, then they don't exist, since we have deemed existence good. For the free man, the universe simply is GOOD, because he believes that he himself is good, and he is so innocently and wholly egocentric that he believes he IS the universe - which he is! So this is the reason why I am moving off the two dimensional Nolan Chart into the three dimensional space of political apathy, morphing from Anarcho-Capitalist into Apolitical. Here's some music for the road: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM-c_lwbpM8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM-c_lwbpM8[/ame]
Good luck living in a vacuum. I wish you well. Meantime, the rest of us will keep fighting to restore Liberty.
I see where he is coming from though Trinnity - I would argue one must be completely comfortable and honest with oneself before they can truly help others.
The free man realizes that he cannot change the behavior of others, especially not that of his oppressors, so he can only concern himself with his own behavior.
You make too much of the scene as portrayed by calling Toohey an oppressor. Roark's mental attitude towards Toohey is proper since Toohey on his own represents no actual threat to him. Therefore, it would be correct to identify Toohey, not as his oppressor but as his adversary.
"Not only can't you be free and spend all of your time complaining about oppression, but you can't be free and then proceed to spend all of your time thinking about not being free. Any man who proceeds to base his life around his oppressors does not want to be free." What if one chooses to use one's freedom do do exactly that, think about not being free. Almost masochistically. Playing power politics simply for the kick, rather than the idea of becoming free?
If we are all free, then even the man who spends his life mulling over his oppressor is free. I agree with that statement, we are all free.
Yup, congrats, we are all free. I can slit my wrists right now if I want, I can resist arrest, I can declare I am married to my brother, I can do whatever I want to do until someone stops me. I could make the same arguments about rights. We all assume that the discussion of rights is somehow fundamentally real, but of course it's all nonsense. I only have the right to do whatever I want, nothing else is granted to me without coersion or force. Now, let's be practical. Resisting splitting hairs over terminology, obviously the concept of liberty is about the ability to make as many unhindered choices as is reasonable within our society without being prosecuted and prohibited. Of course you knew that, you're just trying to sound clever
Does the OP imagine that the presence of an oppressor cannot abrogate one's freedom? To be free is to be free from other men. If other men (an oppressor) prevents you from acting as you can and should, you are not free. The task at hand is to recover your freedom by defeating/neutralizing your enemy. The 'Fountainhead' example you raise in your OP does not address this at all.
