Fear of Individual Liberty is The Fear of Life Itself

By Chris Rossini

​Human life is personal, very personal.

No two completely identical things exist in the universe. This doesn't just apply to grains of sand, but also to each and every human being as well. We're each a one-of-a-kind, never to be copied, never to be reproduced, individual.

We each occupy our own specific place in the universe, and it cannot be occupied by anyone else. We are each born at different times and in different locations. We are each raised under different conditions, by different people, and in different environments.

We all individually think....alone, with our own minds.

We all make our own choices, which manifest into consequences that we individually experience.

No one else can possibly experience what we each individually experience. Others may be able to relate. They may be able imagine themselves in our shoes. But they wear their own shoes and can never actually wear ours. 

We all purposefully act, every second of the day, to achieve ends that we've individually chosen. We decide what is important to us in every moment.

What is important to us, may be abhorrent to others. They decide what is important to themselves.

We all experience different events, in our own unique ways. Others may be a part of, or participate in the same event, but we each interpret the meaning of the event to ourselves. We each respond to events based on our own knowledge, prior experiences, adopted beliefs and state of mind.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote: "The environment determines the situation but not the response."

We each choose our own responses.

These responses can never be predicted ahead of time, with precision; not even by our own selves! We can hope to respond to an event in a certain way, should it occur, but we don't know for sure what we will choose until that moment arrives.

Uncertainty and unpredictability are unavoidable fixtures of human life. Because of this we are all perpetually ignorant, no matter how smart our Moms said we are.

Mises pointed out: “There is for man no such thing as omniscience.”

Since we are all perpetually ignorant, it means we can never get rid of risk. 

We must each decide what we believe to be risky. The determination of risk is extremely personal.

What seems risky to you may not seem risky to me. 

What seems risky to you today, may not seem risky to you tomorrow. 

What an 80 year old believes to be risky, may not be risky to a 20 year old. What a Californian believes to be risky, may not be risky to a Floridian.

Risk is a personal assessment. It cannot be determined by anyone else for you. Other people can certainly make suggestions. They can try to persuade you, and provide you with information that they deem to be important.

But you are the King or Queen that decides whether or not to believe them. 

You make the call.

​Yay? or Nay?

Whatever you decide will come with the attendant consequences.  There's no going back and blaming someone else that may have duped you. For it is you who decided to believe them. You own the consequence of your decision.

It should be obvious by now that human life is extreme, unequivocal, and complete diversity.

Individual Liberty is our nature and there's no escaping it, no matter how hard anyone tries to do so. As such, it does no good to fear Individual Liberty.

If you're going to choose to fear something, you're better off fearing tyranny instead.

For tyranny is the real danger to every individual, including the tyrants themselves.

Tyranny seeks to abolish and destroy the diversity of life. It is the seeking of turning the different into the identical; in trying to make the heterogeneous into the homogeneous; in trying to make uniformity where it does not, and cannot, ever exist.

Tyranny is the attempt in creating unified thought ... or unified opinion.

Tyranny is the attempt to create a single interpretation to an event.

Tyranny is the attempt to create a single risk assessment that applies to every unique individual.

Tyranny is the attempt to impose one-size-fits-all by force.

The key word here is "attempt." Tyranny can never actually succeed in achieving any of these ends. It can only be attempted. That's as far as it can go, and needless to say, tyranny has been repeatedly attempted. 

These attempts have created every mass horror story throughout human history. 

1 million dead here....10 million dead there...All the mass horror stories carry the same theme: The desire to create uniformity where it can never exist. It can be attempted through war against another nation, or even war against one's own nation.

The Communists of the 1900's were driven by the philosophy of creating uniformity in their own nations (followed by the rest of the world, of course). The result was hundreds of millions of their own people dead.

So while Individual Liberty means Life...Tyranny means certain death.

Life is hard....Individual Liberty is hard...

Why make it exponentially harder by embracing tyranny? 

Why attempt the impossible? 

Is the possible not enough?

Why continually attempt to create uniformity in world of diverse and unique individuals?

Tyranny cannot bring certainty to the uncertainty that we all must deal with. It cannot bring safety to an existence filled with risk.

Uniformity cannot exist...To desire uniformity is to desire the complete destruction of humanity.

So if we have no choice but to be free and sovereign individuals (and we don't) then we best take the bull by the horns and live like it.

For to fear Individual Liberty is to fear Life itself.