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Psychology is an interesting field of science that potentially can explain how people behave, why they behave that certain way and what triggered their action. In essence, psychology tries to map out the mental mechanisms of a human being’s brain, and thereby increasing our collective knowledge of who we are and what we could expect of ourselves as well as other people.
In this sense, psychology offers a framework for studying man that is not present in other social sciences, even though the basic assumption in economics covers the aggregate of these mechanisms in a formal and simplified way. Psychology should be interesting to us, since it strives to understand and explain why certain people develop a passion for justice whereas others have “no problem” with working as concentration camp guards. The mechanisms of the human psyche is the direct cause of such personalities and convictions, not genetics.
Whether psychology can explain and make us understand how and why people adopt certain political views we will find out. It is however likely that there are mechanisms in our minds that trigger certain beliefs and thus that these beliefs are products of something. My personal passion for justice, as a basis for my conviction that liberty and nothing but liberty is the natural right of all men and women, has to come from somewhere. To some extent it is a conscious choice, but it is presumably to a greater degree a product of my mind valuing logic over emotion and a certain sense of justice over other kinds of justice.
If psychology has the potential of explaining why people take on certain ideas and develop convictions and beliefs, it also has a potential of explaining how people in great numbers tend to adopt a single, aggregate view that does not necessarily fit with the principles held and championed by the individual.
In a new article published today on LewRockwell.com I discuss such a phenomenon: pro-war libertarians advocating a continued war on Iraq and even wars on other countries. As libertarians, they should have a distinctly individualist view of man as well as the world, yet pro-war libertarians tend to argue “we” have a responsibility to protect “our values” and “our way of life”.
Who are the people included in this “we”? Obviously, the pro-war libertarian includes him- or herself, but only in an indirect sense. When demanding that “we” do something about the threat to “our culture” by the peoples of the Middle East, they are not the ones signing up for service in the US army or navy. Rather, they invest their precious time to argue the importance of other people sacrificing their lives for the common good – a view naturally scarce among libertarians.
The fact that many of these pro-war libertarians are non-Americans yet call for the United States government to carry out their deeds, is interesting in many ways. These individuals adopt a rights-based-sounding argument, yet who are really rights-bearers and who are simply subjected to the rights of peoples, nations, or other aggregates?
The view expressed, and the arguments put forth, are in essence individualist reasoning applied on states, nations, and cultures. The “we” used in the arguments is but a trick to include the listener in the victim of the presumed conflict, and thus make him or her more prone to “understand” why it is important to “fight back”. In reality, this “we” means “I” but in the sense only a statesman uses it: meaning “I, the nation” in a very Louis XVI sense.
What is under attack, and thus needs to be protected by waging wars, is the concept of “our nation” or “our culture” – and this ultimately includes you and I, and makes us responsible for whatever is going on in the world. This point of view implicitly, but necessarily, subjects the individual to the collective and even makes the individual essentially worthless: the collective needs and values must be protected and fought for.
This is where psychology could really make a difference through finding the mechanisms in our brains causing some people, who are (or, at least, were) fully convinced libertarian individualists, to adopt a very opposite viewpoint yet keeping the principles intact through ignoring the inherent contradictions in the arguments put forth. Many pro-war libertarians have not changed their principles or convictions, but the fact that they identify a threat they find personally terrifying has made them adopt a contradicting set of arguments, which they incorporate in their libertarian set of values.
The pro-war libertarian, at least the ones who are symptoms of this phenomenon, embed their new nation- or culture-based convictions in a hard-core libertarian lingo so as to make them appear as true libertarian arguments. Whether this is a mechanism of the brain to protect itself and the person from identifying the conflicting views adopted, or whether it is a means for justifying a change of heart is yet to find out.
Read the article Blinded by Hatred? On So-Called Pro-War Libertarians. Comments on this blog post as well as the article are appreciated. Submit them on this blog or e-mail the author.
You seem to be arguing for a “purity” of viewpoint: once a believer in individual rights, always a believer in individual rights.
But the real world demands some compromise. We will always have to compromise to the “collective”.
I drive down an open highway, and declare that I am exercising my individual rights to move about the countryside, but I am heavily constrained by the rules of the road.
The Iraq war might not be a good example, but we do have to be prepared to fight for our way of life, even if that includes deposing dictators who would arm and sustain international terrorists.
Great post, Per. Although I don’t really use the natural rights-arguments any longer (which you seem to be doing here, vaguely), I agree with your conclusions. It seems to me like many “libertarians” (the bomb right, in my vocabulary) are willing to trade security for freedom – and we all know where that ends. It’s a sad story. Too bad it’s true.
RightSaidFred: Yes, if a principle is true in one circumstance, it’s true in all circumstances, such as individual rights. The “I drive down an open highway” analogy is a bad one insofar as it doesn’t prove your point. What you describe as “compromise” is mutual cooperation. Traveling on roads and highways–such as they are, monopolized by government–people understand that in order to reach their desired destination it is in their own best interest to respect the like right of others. It is, in fact, an example of mutual respect for individual rights in action.
In any war–be it in Iraq or any other–one group of individuals–that being those in control of the state–decide on behalf of everyone when it is appropriate to go to war to “fight for our way of life,” and they commit the resources of others to that enterprise regardless of whether anyone else deems it necessary or not. (The loot, of course, winds up in the coffers of the Halliburtons, Boeings, and other “defense” contractors, and the rest of us are poorer for it, and no more safe than before the war.) This is an example of a violation of individual rights in action.
Responding to rightsaidfred:
I think you are both right and wrong in saying that we “will always have to compromise to the ‘collective'”. You are right in the sense that every individual interacting with other individuals will have to find ways of doing so in a manner that potential trading partners and others find attractive, or at least “not offensive.”
But what we are saying here is simply that each individual choosing to interact with other people is automatically acting in a social context. This social context, which essentially is an aggregate of the individuals’ likes and dislikes, acts in a way that is “limiting” on the individual through making sure it is clear that some actions are costly whereas other actions are profitable. Insulting people, for instance, limits your future chances of making friends or trade with the people you insult as well as people who are offended by or disapprove of your insults.
Such a compromise is not, however, a compromise “to the collective.” Rather, it is compromise, choosing certain actions above others, made to maximize one’s chances of achieving whatever goals one might have. Such compromise is not for or to the collective, they are self-enforced and self-chosen restrictions in nothing but self-interest. Yes, such restrictions may mean you do not act in every way possible – but certainly no one ever acts in every way possible. And choosing what is best for you based on your own judgment is certainly not a limit of freedom.
You are wrong in the sense that one has to compromise with one’s principles. As is the case with the “restrictions” discussed above, individualist principles are very much compatible with social contexts and interaction. There is no need whatsoever to compromise with one’s rights just to have the possibility of interacting in “a collective”.
I personally believe principles are important, not only in their power to motivate, inspire and guide people in acting and interacting with others. Principles are also important because they are fundamental building blocks in what makes up the individual’s morality and philosophical convictions. Principles cannot be compromised – if they are, then they aren’t principles.
True principles don’t consist of taking sides in conflict, but essentially means making judgments and finding a consistent, non-contradictory guiding moral principle in one’s life. A principle cannot be compromised without losing the whole point of having one. Also, a principle cannot be to take a stand against something – principles don’t contradict each other. All principles, if they are true, go together. Part of the reason they do, is that they are non-contradictory – and that every individual may find his or her own guiding principles.
Contradictions occur only when principles are false, such as when being against rather than being for something, or when some individual claims to have a superior principle that all other individuals must adopt (read: collectivism).
The reason principles are non-contradictory is that they are based on the individual’s fundamental values and moral convictions. And fundamental values cannot be structured in a hierarchy where some can and should be compromised or stricken for the good of a contradictory and “better” value. If values seem to be contradictory something is wrong. If you find yourself in such a situation you should check your premises.
Responding to frimarknadsanarkist:
That’s right, one cannot trade “a little” freedom for security. As I mention in my response to rightsaidfred, moral values and convictions cannot be traded, measured, or compared.