Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1124

Penciled in a Ringmaster Composition Book

1934

 

White envelope has items 1124, 1257, and 3204.

 

 

 

FREEDOM

 

    

        “Ignorance is a middle ground between

         folly and wisdom — few attain it.”

 

                         Hobbes?

Freedom, as generally conceived, is a neutral zone between anti-social and pro-social relationships — between slavery, in some form, and service by exchange — between coercion and cooperation. It means no societal relationship and therefore no freedom at all, but merely an escape from the compulsions of men to the compulsions of nature in the raw. There is one and only one freedom from both. That is the freedom to give and to receive services by voluntary exchange — the democracy of free exchange — doing things together by consent of all and coercion of none. The opposite of raiding is trading, of slavery is exchange. The only positive freedom is in the democracy of exchange. All the lesser freedoms are included in this.

     There is no error, no evil, but compulsion, the abrogation or abeyance of the will. Its opposite is not mere truth as an entity or a static condition, but the exercise of the will in voluntary exchange. This gives civilized life freedom from the compulsions of Nature, and under the inspiration of Beauty transforms the environing world. Thus the divine in men — the creative — builds the kingdom of the divine for the nurture and service of the divinity of their nature.