Basic concept of freedom
Nanook (italics) is talking to Ben (& ), Father Vincent (+), and George (%). From Escape to Insanity ch. 34.

+” Let me summarize what we have learned.

The key focus for humanity’s future is throwing off the oppression of authoritarianism and seeking significance for the individual. The KEY focus is INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM. This principle is the CORNERSTONE for the new twenty first century society. Remember this word – FREEDOM.”

&”And the milestone of the twenty first century is also important. Key indicators about the health of our planet tell us that if we don’t correct things soon, there will be a huge price to pay. So, let me kick this off by quoting a very highly respected man: Albert Einstein. This is from the book Out of My Later Years.”

Einstein

“In these ten years, confidence in the stability, yes, even the very basis for existence, of human society has largely vanished. The pseudo-success of political adventurers has dazzled the rest of the world; it becomes apparent everywhere that this generation lacks the strength and force which enabled previous generations to win, in painful struggle and at great sacrifice, the political and individual FREEDOM of man.”

“Hmmm… Einstein said that? Freedom was the key focus of that statement.”

Freedom as performance gained through education

&”Bingo! But we need to see freedom in a broad way. Freedom does not mean just being able to do what YOU want. Freedom for the individual means freedom for ALL members of society. It means the ‘freedom’ to reach human achievement and fulfillment. But to get this, every person needs to be given substantial support to climb to a level of PERFORMANCE which fits the current technical state of the society. This is primarily a statement about EDUCATION. Notice though, I’m not saying society has to guarantee that level of performance. Self motivation has to play a key role. But the opportunity for education must be there.”

Basic concept of fairness

+”So, how can we build on this?”

%”OK. I’ll tell you where I’d start. Forget any notion that people are equal. They aren’t. So, let’s take that head on. What the founding father’s were trying to address was the INEQUITY between the nobility and the peasants that characterized the ancient world. So far, the U.S., and the rest of the world, have done a pretty bad job of achieving that goal. And as time goes on, we are just recreating royalty all over again. I don’t know if I dare bring up the word FAIRNESS. But this is actually the goal that is underneath all the talk of equality. But without an open discussion in society to understand what that means, we’re just out of the pan and into the fire. Basically, I would define FAIRNESS as an attempt to match a person’s abilities to social needs without special privileges. It comes down to finding a BALANCE between FREEDOM for the individual and EFFICIENCY for the society.”

&”I agree with that. To help us understand it, let me just list a few elements for each of those words.

Fairness as access to education

FAIRNESS requires that the path that a person chooses to follow to gain their education must NOT be LIMITED by birth right. That’s the old authoritarian model. Society has to move away from that.

Fairness as performance achieved in a free but transparent market

FAIRNESS requires that the path that a person chooses to follow as a career must NOT be LIMITED by their formative social environment. Career opportunities must be reasonably equal. And by reasonable, I’m now relying on George’s other word: efficiency. I’ll come back to that. Once a person achieves a suitable level of performance, then FAIRNESS requires that the person be allowed to express that performance without authoritarian prejudice. That is, the governing structure should not be able to ARBITRARILY set rules that give some social roles advantages over others. To guide this, I would call on the principle of a FREE MARKET. But that market must also be TRANSPARENT. I’ll come back to that as well.

Fairness as performance with protection measured against quality of life

And if a person is diligent at making a contribution to society based on the existing social contract, then that person should be given protections against both environmental and social disasters. To guide this, I would call on the principle of QUALITY of LIFE interpreted as a balance between the individual and society.”

Assumption of diversity ( lack of equality )

+”So, I’m assuming that there’s no assumption of equality in any of these points, correct?”

&”That’s right. Exactly the opposite. The whole approach society now takes assuming people are equal to begin with and then keeping them homogenized, has to be thrown out. This includes education, social security, employment security, medicine, business structures, politics etcetera.

Focus on the Quality of life

Goal of Freedom

We have been talking about freedom and fairness. But these are not the ultimate goals. They are just methods to get to the ultimate goal. The actual ultimate goal is HAPPINESS.”

“Ah HA! The old Declaration of Independence again – life, liberty and the pursuit of HAPPINESS.”

&”Bingo! Which, by the way, were supposed to be God given rights, remember. Which He doesn’t enforce . . . . forget it. Rat hole. What each of us wants is a life that has certain attributes that make it enjoyable. These will be different for each person. So, let’s look at some of those attributes.

Individual Wealth

If you ask people what are the main factors for a good life, the most common factor will be MONEY. But when you analyze that, you see Single Sentence Logic at work. What good is money? You can’t eat it. It doesn’t make good clothing. It’s not efficient to burn to keep warm.”

“Obviously. Money is only good for what it will buy.”

&”And that opens up the whole issue of how people decide WHAT they will buy. And that’s what drives our greed for money into the ground. Study after study has shown that money, ALONE, can’t buy happiness. People who win lotteries tend to keep the personalities they had before they won. If they were miserable before, they stay miserable afterwards, just with bigger problems. If they were poor money managers before, they are poor money managers afterwards. If they were happy before, they are happy afterwards. And it’s easy to find rich people who are unhappy and poor people who are happy. So, money isn’t the answer.

Quality of Life

What we need to focus on is what we call QUALITY OF LIFE. Let’s start with the dictionary.”

“Quality of Life: personal satisfaction with the conditions under which you live.”

“Personal satisfaction! You can always count on the dictionary to run you in circles.”

&”This is actually not an easy subject to pin down. First, we have to determine who is asking the question. The Quality of Life for an individual is very different from that of a society.

Quality of life – for individuals

So, let’s start with the individual. The World Health Organization took a shot at this. They created a list of six categories:

1. Physical; 2. Psychological; 3. Level of independence; 4. Social relationships; 5. Environment; and 6. Spirituality/religion/personal beliefs. Another group called the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions broke it into 14 categories: 1.Economic resources, 2. Knowledge, 3. education and training, 4. Families and households, 5. Health and health care, 6. Employment and working conditions, 7. Community life and social participation, 8. Transport, 9. Local environment and amenities, 10. Public safety and crime, 11. Culture, 12. identity, 13. political resources and 14. human rights.

Measuring the quality of life

Most academic approaches take each of these and break them up into a very long list of questions. They then ask people each question and give the question a score. Then they add up the scores. What amazes me is how these academics ever got their degrees. If a person scores high in every category like wealth, availability of food, clothes, shelter etc, but is bed ridden, then their quality of life can still be very low. To deal with a large set of measurements like this and combine them, we have to multiply them together so that a poor score for any single critical item can sink the whole ship.”

%”Let me jump in here. The last thing Ben said is actually pretty profound because it addresses how our society and government think. It’s Single Sentence Logic again. They believe as long as a government delivers a large number of things, that’s good enough. This is compartmentalized thinking. What’s actually needed is SYSTEM thinking. To be, quote, ‘good enough’, a government has to provide EVERY needed service WELL. For example, a great city that loses its sanitation system, just one item, has killed its Quality of Life.”

“Hmmm… So, all the academic studies that are trying to refine lists like these are going to miss the point if they don’t understand the need for a system approach?”

&”Right. And attempts to implement those studies will keep failing and no one will understand why. All of the elements of government have to be forced to work together as a team, as a system. And they should be rewarded both by individual contribution and by system performance.

Quality of life – for societies – the Jacksonville Index

The Quality of Life for societies is similar, but group things in a different way. Here is a list from the city of Jacksonville Florida: 1. Achieving Educational Excellence, 2. Growing a Vibrant Economy, 3. Preserving the Natural Environment, 4. Promoting Social Wellbeing and Harmony, 5. Enjoying Arts, Culture, and Recreation, 6. Sustaining a Healthy Community, 7. Maintaining Responsive Government, 8. Moving Around Efficiently, 9. Keeping the Community Safe.”

“OK. Makes sense. These are all good things.”

&”Sure. But for the Quality of Life to be good, using a system approach, they have to get good scores in ALL of these boxes. I’m glad to see someone down in Jacksonville is working on these issues. But, they have one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. So, their quality of life is seriously damaged. Put New York City in that boat as well. Sure, world class art galleries, best performing arts, great baseball team, fantastic food. But you take your life in your hands if you walk down the wrong street. And with the concentration of wealth in the banks and investment firms living right next to people in the streets, the city is a tragedy.

Here’s another list published by The Economist Magazine. It is geared for nations: 1. Material wellbeing, 2. Health, 3. Political stability and security, 4. Family life, 5. Community life, 6. Climate and geography, 7. Job security, 8. Political freedom, 9. Gender equality.”

Need for optimization to survive

“OK. We have the lists. Now what?”

&”Well, let’s say we have SOME lists. Even with all these factors, we haven’t covered the waterfront yet. If we stopped with just these, then we’ve fallen into the non-system thinking trap that society generally does fall into.”

“But, if we tried to list out all the relevant factors, there would be hundreds! Maybe even thousands.”

&”Yeah? So? What’s the value to society for getting the right answer?”

“Hmmm… “

&”That’s the point I’m driving at. There are hundreds of organizations like the City of Jacksonville that have smart people who realize that something like a Quality of Life study is needed to understand what’s happening in their environment. But our society is still living in the dark ages. They are still looking at the world as if it’s a backwoods pioneering operation with everyone in their own cabin. Why does every city in the U.S. have to figure this out from scratch on their own? Isn’t there a role for the Federal government to organize an effort like this, put the needed money into it, DO IT ONCE and DO IT RIGHT?”

“But, that’s got to be a big job.”

&”Duh! I’m talking to an idiot. So, you’re saying it’s more efficient and has a lower impact on the whole country for all the little guys with their little budgets to do half assed jobs one at a time?”