“Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar, extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot end these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the really dangerous disorder.” (G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and other Evils, 1922)
I was an anarchist specifically because I believed freedom solved problems. Without freedom social and personal issues would not be synthesized fluidly into the most streamlined evolution of personal and social ethos. It is an incredibly appealing idea as one has not to work towards virtues but work to remove the word virtue from the lexicon and allow the fittest to survive.
What happens as this has happened is not actually the social flourishing I had believed in but rather the society has become as “uncommonly progressive” as swine.
Freedom it seems is not simply the ability to say yes to what one wishes; freedom is the ability to say no to what one desires. Without the ability to say no one is simply an addict, and what society seems to desire is only the freedom to be addicted to what one wishes. What this produces is what we have seen; society mixes as fluidly as oil in water. The reason for this is as one focuses exclusively upon the sole desire of one’s own heart, one becomes sociopathic and loses the ability to empathize with those who are only really standing in the way of one attaining one’s heart’s sole desire. This makes each individual quite grumpy and less likely to empathize with those utter bastards who hate us because they are only jealous of our happiness; the happiness we are denied because of them! We desire then only a theory of happiness and we are consumed by hate for those we presume to be a roadblock to the synthesis of this obvious reality which fails to be realized.
I offer you an example from yesterday’s paper, or the internet facsimile thereof. A young woman was not allowed to have the pictures she submitted to the yearbook printed in said yearbook as they were deemed too racy by its editors. Have her First Amendment Rights been violated?
No, she simply has her trotters on the sideboard! One argument put forth from her mother is that the girl aspires to be a model and this is no different than students posing with their guitars. I would agree with her assuming that the student was in a skinhead band and had a swastika prominently placed upon his pointy Charvel. There are degrees of what must be deemed acceptable. Not every model aspires to model for Maxim, read trash, some, though decided many too few, wish to maintain their dignity as they pursue their chosen profession.
The insistence that the student’s depiction of what constitutes modeling has to be accurate further degrades the profession in the social mind for all models. If the skinhead guitarist told you what he was doing was simply being a musician one would be remiss to simply accept that at face value.
We have a duty to protect what is decent for those who will have to live with the reality of a degraded definition of what is real. My daughter deserves to be respected; my nieces deserve to be respected, welcome to the world baby Greeley! If I fail to allow them to grow up in a world in which this can be attained then I am to be judged for their misery.
The only logical outcome of doing away with the pursuit of virtue would be greater virtue. The reality of doing away with the pursuit of virtue is misery. Misery is the logical outcome of anarchy. Misery is the logical outcome of addictions. Whether one is addicted to a superficial acceptance which leads to the degradation of our God given dignity or addicted to the idea of a Utopia which raises one’s pet addiction to the state of normalcy, but which is simply everyone else’s dystopia, freedom is not about our own selfish pursuits.
Carnivorous animals are not murderers. They have no ethos to uphold; they act instinctively. We cannot use our instinctive nature as a defense in a court of law. We have something more; thus the court of law, thus the court house, thus the uniforms and robes, thus also the metal detectors. These result as a byproduct of our faculty to use our freedom.
“1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.
1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."[28]
1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.
1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.
1736 Every act directly willed is imputable to its author:
Thus the Lord asked Eve after the sin in the garden: "What is this that you have done?"[29] He asked Cain the same question.[30] The prophet Nathan questioned David in the same way after he committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and had him murdered.[31]
An action can be indirectly voluntary when it results from negligence regarding something one should have known or done: for example, an accident arising from ignorance of traffic laws.
1737 An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent; for instance, a mother's exhaustion from tending her sick child. A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed either as an end or as a means of an action, e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger. For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it, as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver.
1738 Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings. Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order.[32]” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3 Article 3 Section I, Freedom and Responsibility)
It is so important to the very fabric of society to be aware of what freedom is and what it is not. We have not the right to our perversion of reality we have not even the right to remain silent in these matters. We are obliged by our freedom to serve everyone in society and not some chosen few, meaning primarily ourselves. This is the responsibility of that freedom.
“One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers' mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then, touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot. The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom, where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't --- that one should not let loose either the supernatural or the natural.”(Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Eugenics and other Evils, 1922)
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