Faced With Authoritarianism? Think Liberty

By Chris Rossini

​There are always authoritarians mixed throughout the human population. These are people who have chosen to believe they should be the boss of, not only themselves, but everyone else as well. The most notorious authoritarians have always been tied to government in some way, since government is force. 

But authoritarianism is not exclusive to government. People in any field or occupation can have the same lust to dominate as any politician can. But again, because of the nature of government being force, authoritarians are usually drawn to it like a magnet.

These misguided individuals are difficult because they never want to leave anyone else alone. In their minds, they can't leave others alone. They're supposed to tell everyone else what to do.

This can be quite daunting at times, especially when authoritarians have a lot of believers that want to be told what to do. This reinforcing relationship of the blind leading the blind will then drag society as a whole into a downward spiral.

Fortunately, there are always limits, and it's important to keep in mind some key thoughts, especially when the downward spiral escalates:
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• Authoritarians cannot create energy or matter or life.
• They cannot create the truth or natural law.
• They cannot be omnipotent or omniscient. They cannot be everywhere at all times, and know everything that can be known.
• They cannot turn all individual human beings into being the same exact thing. They can't even turn 2 individuals into being the same thing. In fact, they can't even make 1 individual remain the same. We're all constantly changing. The infant you was different than the teenager you, which was different than the adult you.
• Everyone is born at a different time and place. Everyone occupies a different and unique position in the universe. Everyone is raised under different conditions, in a different environment, and surrounded by different people.
• We have different cultures and traditions.
• We have different beliefs about God.
• Authoritarians cannot think for anyone else. They only think for themselves.
• They cannot interpret the non-stop occurrence of events for everyone. They only interpret events with their own thinking about them. They can certainly share their interpretations with others, but they can't make others believe those interpretations or agree with them.
• Authoritarains can't believe anything for anyone else. They only have their own beliefs. They can change those beliefs, just as everyone else can change their beliefs and convictions.
• They cannot value for anyone else. They value everything by themselves.
• They cannot choose for anyone else. Everyone chooses on their own.
• Authoritarians cannot know what knowledge everyone possesses. Knowledge is always decentralized. It cannot be centralized because their are no limits to knowledge. Like interpretations, knowledge can be shared. But also like interpretations, knowledge does not have to be believed by anyone else, other than by their own voluntary choice.
• Authoritarians can't have all the data, because there are no limits to data. No matter how much data has been collected, far more will forever remain uncollected.
• They cannot know the future no matter how much data they have. Data is always an incomplete look at the past. The future can certainly be guessed and projected by anyone, but it is always a matter of probabilities, and can never be known with certainty and with pinpoint precision.
• Authoritarians cannot know the unknown. Whatever is known will forever be dwarfed by what is yet to be known.
• They cannot "order" the universe, or human life, or the world, because these are not made and ordered by man. They cannot be re-made or re-ordered by man either.

Now, as liberating as the above is, does this mean authoritarians are a non-issue? No it does not! Authoritarians are actors in this world, just like everyone else. As such, they choose their values and beliefs and then act on them. Those actions create consequences and results.

Those consequences, because they come from misguided beliefs and actions, produce bad results for everyone else. Much of human history, and especially the 1900's has been dominated heavily by authoritarian ideas. Hundreds of millions have perished as a consequence of those misguided ideas and subsequent actions.

Those ideas, in case you haven't noticed, are still believed and embraced by many individuals today. They want to believe that authoritarian ideas can produce different results.

They can't.

So, authoritarians are a serious issue, always.

The antidote to a bad idea is a good idea: individual liberty.

When the ideas of individual liberty dominate, the authoritarians have to take a back seat, and society goes into an upward spiral. 

Authoritarian ideas are never gone. They are always a choice for people to accept and embrace. So the best that can happen (in any time period) is that authoritarianism is kept at bay. And the only way for it to be kept at bay is for enough individuals to accept and embrace the glorious ideas of liberty.