Essences, Orcs and Civilization:

The Case for a Cheerful Libertarianism

A Keynote for the 2002 Libertarian Party National Convention

an article by David Brin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2002, by David Brin.
All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

Whoosh! All very interesting. But what does all that have to do with ideology or libertarianism?

My core point is that many people who see themselves as scientific, modern folks seem often to fall for assumptions and inner trips that hearken to a much older tradition, the romantic pattern of thinking that ruled the tribes and nations of nearly all our ancestors:

• An underlying belief in hierarchies in which an elect -- of mind, if not birth -- are fundamentally and qualitatively more savvy than the sheeplike masses.

• A belief in fundamental essences -- simplified, perfect models of human nature -- and that pragmatism is a betrayal of "principle." Being virtuously right amid failure is better than achieving a victory that's diluted by compromise.

• Contempt for those with differing opinions.

• A need to blame others for the world's imperfection.

• A penchant for emotional indignation.

This list of traits does not automatically indict anyone of being a romantic traitor to democracy or science or other enlightenment values! Indeed, we all dabble in such viewpoint sets, from time to time. (I admit indulging freely, in my role as a successful tale-spinner/writer.) Clearly we are all still Cro-Magnons at some level, drifting back and forth -- from older romantic ways of thinking (and their faux-rationalist cousins) over to egalitarian-scientific progressive-accountability ways of looking at the world.

Like the Queen in Through the Looking Glass, it is possible for each of us to believe six impossible -- or contradictory -- things before breakfast, without ever acknowledging that such liberation of the mind is terribly recent and precious, a luxury almost none of our ancestors could ever afford.

I suppose it is this lack of historical perspective that bugs me most about the ideological approach to politics. I have urgent needs for the present and dreams about tomorrow. I want those needs satisfied and those dreams fulfilled. Moreover, the last century has proved that ideologies just aren't especially helpful at achieving practical goals.

Despite a million utopian promises, each dogmatic prescription failed us, just as badly as all the kings and priests failed us in prior eras.

Moreover, recent advances in anthropology, neuroscience, and complexity theory converge toward one conclusion; even the most compelling ideological description can never encompass the range of emergent and often contradictory qualities contained in a single human being, let alone whole societies. As models, they are at best crude trend-indicators. At worst, they are hypnotic lies.

What do I need right now?

Because I'm a brash eccentric, I need a society that is open, tolerant and welcoming of eccentricity! One whose institutions are accountable enough to minimize the inevitable capricious power abuses that fester in every human culture. One where competition takes place under conditions that maximize fair comparison of quality (in goods, services, and ideas) while minimizing the destructive effects of our most loathsome human trait -- an ingenious talent for rationalizing, predation, cheating and oppression.

What do I want for tomorrow?

A world where coercion is minimized and individuals are free to achieve the maximum they can by making fair and open deals with each other, leveraging off others' talents, and benefiting from the mutual criticism that only true freedom engenders.

Now I concede -- heck, I avow! -- that these desiderata sound awfully libertarian. And yet, I part company with many of those waving the banner. Beyond the differences described above, there is a basic clash between the notions of evolution and revolution.

Revolution is far more gut-satisfying and yes, romantic. It also tends to be violent, disruptive and rather a bit rude. In order to justify revolution -- as opposed to gradual progress through amicable persuasion -- you almost have to assume the worst. And that's exactly what many of us do. Listen to some of today's true believers rail against society. You'd think we lived in a wretched Orwellian dictatorship filled with bovine Democrats, porcine Republicans, and sheeplike voters, all of them too stupid to perceive The Truth.

Alas, nothing causes these delightfully articulate firebrands to go tongue-locked more efficiently than asking the following question: "Can you name one human civilization, past or present, that was even half as close to what you desire as contemporary America is today?"

Like their spiritual cousins, radical feminists, these fellows enjoy the indignant rush of knowing they are right. And like radical feminists, they find it galling to be reminded how far freedom has already come.

For a moment let's continue talking about literature... especially my own field of science fiction. I contend that most libertarian novels and stories are similar, at heart, to radical-feminist SF, sharing roots that run far deeper than their superficially disparate political prescriptions. Both perceive a desperate need to tear out a pervasively oppressive evil -- root and branch -- replacing it with something far more uncomplicated and, in the author's view, more inherently "natural."

It's all part of a grand tradition of polemical, rather than exploratory science fiction. Instead of suggesting realistic but tedious possibilities for gradual reform or evolution, both libertarian and feminist SF often focus on wish fantasies portraying one paramount dream -- simplification through revolution.

Take a glance at the most popular works in both sub-genres. Plot scenarios nearly always revolve around chopping away society's complex institutional structures, replacing them with a thumbnail prescription simple enough to fit on a few pages, to be imposed by a few super-competent protagonists -- heroes who can dispense with accountability because their inherent virtues make it unnecessary. Only instead of kindly matriarchs who take over after some devastating war or disease (a chief cliché in feminist novels), the hackneyed archetype in libertarian SF features rebellious space colonies cutting their ties to decadent Earth and proclaiming some trimmed-down utopia in orbit, setting themselves proudly aloof from the irredeemable masses festering below.

Of course, now that Earthers have been warned in advance by such novels, citizens will act to prevent rebellion by ungrateful astronauts. They'll accomplish this by the simple means of choosing adults to crew space stations, instead of boys obsessed with hotwiring mobile homes in space. And they will make colonists leave their children down here. Sorry guys.

Why do simplification-fantasies have such a powerful draw, no matter how repetitiously or even preposterously they are told?

Cheerful Libertarianism takes a diametrically opposite view -- that the natural human condition for thousands of years has been either gruesomely oppressive feudalism or Lord-of-the-Flies chaos. Only now, after a near-uniform litany of worldwide repression and woe, things seem to be changing at last, in important ways.

Our present levels of freedom, tolerance, wealth, individual eccentricity, and general rambunctiousness are unprecedented and growing at incredible rates. While millions do suffer needlessly, the percentage of children who lead safe and healthy lives, with countless opportunities to better themselves, has never been higher, even in poor countries. And while millions of our fellow citizens are sheeplike couch potatoes, at least an equal number are engaged in a myriad fantastic hobbies and pastimes, jumping out of airplanes with surfboards or deeply engaged in their communities, reading more books than any other generation and deeply thoughtful about the age they live in.

Instead of being fallen creatures, we seem to be rising toward incredible levels of self-actualization, individual achievement and liberty, at a rate that -- taken in perspective against six thousand grinding years -- seems very nearly vertical.

Moreover, the society that got us this far -- though fraught with troubles and occasional outrages -- is also demonstrably better than anything that came before. If progress can be maintained and grievous errors avoided, it may serve as an excellent platform for evolution toward better things.

Despite vast amounts of evidence supporting this view, it comes under attack whenever even the slightest note of optimism gets raised. One underlying reason -- I believe -- is the addiction-to-indignation referred to earlier. But another rationale is -- "If you're cheerful and optimistic, you won't fight very hard," a true-believer told me one day. "You see a better world coming, so why lift a hand to bring it about?"

I answer that my own optimism is rooted in an understanding of how bloody awful life was for our ancestors. I know how narrowly a renaissance balances on the edge of a knife, and how easily dominion by self-justified oppressive elites may someday return. I've dedicated my life to fighting, every day, against the possibility of that happening.

No, it's the pessimists and nihilists who find excuses for grumbling inaction. We optimists are a feisty lot. Just watch!

Here's a thought that might help freedom-loving men and women win office and gain influence over society's future course: Perhaps our fellow citizens aren't fools after all!

Isn't that the central basis for the libertarian creed? The notion that educated free adults can be trusted with matches... not to mention their bank accounts and votes? If the masses are intrinsically stupid -- sheep -- then the paternalists are right and no future society of maximized freedom will ever be possible.

The fundamental premise of libertarianism is an assumption that people are basically rational and wise. Yet this flies right in the face of the most common libertarian lament -- that those idiots out there keep electing statists and every resulting policy has been just plain awful.

One of these two deeply held beliefs is just gonna have to go!

My advice? Distrust the one that feels too good to be true -- contempt. It's a delusional addictive drug, fellas and gals. Let it go.

Consider instead the possibility that your fellow citizens have been doing pretty damned well with the crude tools at hand. Rising up out of the Cro-Magnon ooze, then shrugging off the tyranny of chiefs and kings and priests and magicians and clerks and robbers of all kinds, they have somehow managed to build the first civilization that raised millions of... libertarians!

You, yourself, are proof that there's something right about society. No?

So grit your teeth and then chew on this: Your fellow citizens have been doing the best they can.

Maybe the bulky government they've repeatedly voted for isn't intrinsically vile, but instead an awkward, intermediate necessity -- one that's come a long the way from feudalism toward the world of open opportunity that we hope our brainy, hyper-educated grandchildren will take for granted. From the old implicit social contract toward one that each sovereign individual is fully capable -- and empowered -- to negotiate afresh for herself or himself.

Instead of railing how stupid our fellow citizens have been, Cheerful Libertarianism congratulates them on how far they managed to come using such gross and inefficient tools! During a century when communists and fascists and religious fanatics waved vicious-hypnotic ideological romanticisms around, Americans chose instead to follow Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Hey, they were statists, but we got the roads and dams and universities, managed to end Jim Crow and got cleaner air... all without crushing entrepeneurialism to death.

That's worth some grudging respect. No others who wielded that kind of state power ever showed such restraint, or came close to striking a balance -- striving pragmatically to get both the left and right hand to do their stuff, without falling (entirely) for the old traps of blanket confiscature, cronyism or state micromanagement. No other statists achieved so much while leaving so many entrepreneurs running around loose to do their own thing. Compared to other statists... well... they sure stunk less.

Admitting this might give you some badly needed credibility.

"Only now" (libertarians should cleverly add!) "it's time to outgrow those complicated and coercive, bureaucracy-heavy tools!"

For example, instead of railing against public education in principle, how about using the following argument:

"Universal education in state schools helped uplift prior generations out of illiterate class systems -- we admit it!

"Only now our higher standards and needs and wants have far outstripped the ability of those old-fashioned public schools to deliver. Yes, we have these higher standards because public education helped get us this high. We admit the irony! Nevertheless, it's obvious that the old model of public education is now dragging at the ankles of our rising ambitions. It won't get us any higher! Lack of choice is preventing further progress by stifling educational innovations that might arise out of competition.

"As a general principle, we argue that -- with rising sophistication -- people can move on to simpler and more mature synergies that make progressively less use of coercive state power, leveraging against individual effort more and more as time goes on.

"And yes, this will benefit the poor as well. We are absolutely counting on that.

"Give us a chance to try some experiments and prove it!"

People might actually vote for such a message. A message that congratulates them for their past success with crude tools, while insisting that the future should be different. A message filled with ideas that are pragmatic, incremental, even accepting of compromise, yet always applying pressure in the direction of less coercion, less bureaucracy and more reliance on the creativity of autonomous human beings.

One thing is certain -- the present default stance of contemptuously railing at voters isn't working. They do not -- and won't ever -- cast ballots for candidates who call them fools, repeating the standard, self-righteous rant. A product that consumers have repeatedly rejected in the open market of politics.

A rant yammering that this gentle, prosperous, tolerant, improving civilization is actually a cesspit of brutality and despair. Oh please.

Yes, the rant feels good. But really, isn't it time to choose between the indignant drug-high ofold-fashioned romanticism and the can-do spirit of getting things done?

I want to see freedom-loving candidates actually gain some power. If that means recruiting and nominating moderate libertarians, who will engage in practical politics, rather than purists who crash virtuously with 2% of the vote, fine!

Call me a heretic if you like. Deny me the capital "L" (I don't deserve it, anyway). Still, here's an idea, on the table, where it's going to stay, continuing to irk the ideologues and virtue-junkies.

Let's replace the failed harangue with a message offering our fellow citizens both our congratulations for all they have accomplished and a wave of fresh ideas. Ideas offering hope that we can rise even faster toward a future of freedom and opportunity for all.