Freedom? They hate it.

I was pondering this point: Just why is it that most people hate, really hate, the concept of freedom? It’s an issue that cuts to the very heart and underpinnings of economics, and, I suspect, politics as well.

And on this point, we can’t say that economists dropped the ball, but we can say they’ve been playing in the wrong ball park.
Economists are aware, of course, that people are better off when they can freely choose how to spend their time, where they want to live, what to produce, what not to produce, what to buy, what to sell, how much to spend, and how much, by contrast, to save.

Which is all well and good, and has given us the valuable underpinnings of analyzing market activity and the economic “utility” (also, incidentally, called “welfare”) of trade.

In reality, though, people aren’t inclined to act as free individuals. The longing for the authority of a group is far more fundamental than the longing for liberty. People, in general, don’t want freedom, they want authority. Authority holds the promise of security, of “belonging,” of societal credibility, of being one of the tended herd.
You’ve got a “place” with an authoritarian system, you can sit on its lap, eat from its plate, and know that you’re part of the group.
Little wonder that George Orwell cooked up the term Groupthink to describe the mental processes of the willingly enslaved.

Freedom, by contrast, offers the stark angst of having to make choices and live with the consequences. Philosophers will recognize this as Existential Despair–the emotional pain of being condemned to freedom. Maybe they’ll cook up the term Freethink and see where it leads.

Freethink would certainly have to confront the ultimate tyranny–the tyranny of the clock, of mortality itself. But when it comes right down to it, only a slim minority of people actually use their brief morality on this green earth to any advantage. How else can we explain television? America is a nation of dehumanized robots, who toil in cubicles eight hours a day, only to watch television for another four. And in England, a recent study revealed that 21 percent of people there watch more than 36 hours of television a week, which exceeds the average English work week.

“I didn’t know he was dead. I thought he was British.”

And the living death of television is a self-perpetuating situation. Television is the ultimate siren call of authority. It defines the world’s problems and tells us the solutions. The solutions are always authoritarian in nature. TV is the virtual world for cowards and dullards.

As for the real world, well, there are still a few inhabitants left, and they attract the collective ire and jealousy of the unfree. A willing slave doesn’t hate his master nearly as much as he hates the sight of freemen beyond the spiritual barbed wire. Much of human struggle, and of economic failure, is rooted in this fact.