Personal sovereignty is the basic prerequisite of freedom. In order to achieve full political freedom, a sufficient number of the people must be sovereign. There must be at least a critical number of sovereign individuals who are intellectually independent and fully capable of managing their own affairs without the aid of a welfare state. While we campaign for our freedom we must ensure that we are ‘freedom ready’ by developing our personal sovereignty.
What is Personal Sovereignty?
Sovereign means highest power, or authority. Personal sovereignty means being your own highest authority. To be personally sovereign means that you have taken ownership of your life and assumed full responsibility for your life experience. It is the recognition that while many people can advise you in what to do and how to live, you are the ONE who makes the final decision. To be sovereign means to take the helm of your life, to step up and take command, to be comfortable with being in charge. You don’t have to know everything, but you do have to take responsibility for what you do claim to know, and to be able to explain and justify your convictions, your motivation and your purpose. Becoming sovereign is hard work, but the rewards are enormous. They include achieving full self-esteem, living life to the full, and reaping maximum meaning, satisfaction and reward from your life. The only way to live your human life to anything approaching its full potential is to become personally sovereign. It is the proper expression of adulthood.
In the current sociopolitical context it represents the achievement of knowledge independent from the mainstream cultural download of what everyone else ‘believes’ to be true. Personal sovereignty is necessarily a solo mission, you have to do it alone. You have to be the one. You have to be the ‘all-seeing’ I; you have to be the ruler of your life. You have to know when and where to draw the line, and be prepared to do so. Personal sovereignty demands that you be switched on, and operating at a much higher degree of consciousness awareness than most people currently do.
Personal sovereignty means you have decided to assume control of your destiny, to the extent that one can. You have risen to claim your right to live for your own sake, and by implication you reject any claim that you are intrinsically a part of a group, or that you have any obligation to any particular group. To claim sovereignty, and at the same time consider one’s self duty-bound to the group, or society, is a contradiction. To claim personal sovereignty you must let go of the idea that you are your brothers keeper, and become your own keeper, first and foremost. As a sovereign being, you help others as you can, and when you can, and if you choose to. You must reject the responsibility of care for others as a moral duty. You must grasp the crucial distinction that helping others, and being compassionate are voluntary acts that are consciously chosen and performed by choice, NOT because you are morally bound.
If we could see what freedom looks like (in principle), we would see a number of sovereign individuals going about their lives competently and independently, without interference from the state, or any ‘others’. There would be no restrictions, license requirements, limitations, or legislative hurdles of any kind, but by the same token there would be no state safety net, no ‘help’ that is paid for by expropriating the resources of anyone else. Those sovereign individuals would be capable, functional units, confidently acting on their knowledge. Since freedom is the political condition in which we are left alone to act on our own judgment, to be freedom-ready we must necessarily be capable of acting entirely on our own judgment. This means knowing how to live in the very broadest sense, and the foundational requirement is intellectual independence. In other words, the sovereign individual must have an accurate world view, must know what is going on in the world. The sovereign individual must have knowledge, not beliefs; knowledge that is understood, and can be explained to others. This means you must be conscious of your reason-based epistemological method and consistent in using it as the sole sanction of your convictions.
I have the right to exist for my own sake
The basic presupposition behind personal sovereignty is self-ownership. This means fully grasping that your life is yours. You own your body, your mind, and the product of your thinking and your effort. You do not owe any ‘others’ your allegiance, or any kind of duty to comply with values other than your own. This does not preclude offering your allegiance voluntarily to those who share your values, it means you are not duty bound to any group who rejects your values. Say to yourself “I have the right to live for my own sake” and recognise that this means you get to choose the values you live by, rather than living by the values imposed on you by the group. To take ownership of your life you must take ownership of your values. The root of personal sovereignty is choosing your own values and being loyal to them. This is the challenge, and the hard work, but its also the reward at the same time. This is the meaning of the saying, “you get out of life what you put in”. Effort must be exerted, but the rewards are life itself, and the feelings of self-worth, self-esteem and happiness that result from that effort.
Personal sovereignty requires enormous growth in your knowledge and understanding. It’s like rising to a whole new level of conscious awareness through deliberately questioning and challenging the beliefs that you have been born into. Its a big ask, but some of the fundamental presuppositions you have lived with all your life, particularly those pertaining to morality, must be challenged. Without doing this, without bring particular fundamental ideas into full conscious evaluation, the achievement of personal sovereignty is impossible. Without performing this step you cannot increase your conscious awareness of the key issues and ideas involved.
The fundamental idea that you have the right to live for your own sake, is the basic presupposition of the morality of egoism. This is exactly opposite to the fundamental idea you have been raised with in the morality of altruism—that you have no right to live for your own sake because you are your brothers keeper. Altruism implicitly says you are part of the whole, the group, or society, and therefore you should serve others (the group) as a moral duty. Egoism, on the other hand, holds that you are an individual, that you are not intrinsically part of any group, and, accordingly, your primary duty of care is to yourself. Egoism holds that you are free to help others who share your values whenever you wish to, and are able to. It also leaves you able to walk away from those who reject your values, and do your own thing else where. And this, of course, is freedom—the ability to walk away from, and reject, that which we judge to be what we don’t want.
This fully conscious choice between altruism and egoism is the crux of the issue and it represents a MASSIVE stumbling block for almost everyone. Such is the power of our social conditioning that we find it incredibly challenging to let go of an idea that we have been raised with all of our lives, and we fear the rejection of the group who hold this idea. The truth is, that freedom is selfish in the noblest sense, and bondage is indiscriminate self-less duty to the group. Even though overt slavery ended about 170 years ago, we are still very much stuck with the moral idea that justifies and supports it!
The political condition of freedom makes a meritocracy possible. This is because it makes it possible for people to vote with their feet and reject evil. Its because when we are free, we can cast our vote on what is acceptable or not, what is good or not, what we wish to see more of, as opposed to that which we wish to bring and end to. And we can cast this vote with our actions, by either supporting or rejecting the values expressed by others. Freedom enables the only proper kind of voting, and personal sovereignty is what gives us the ability, the confidence, the knowledge, the power, to vote.
The Morality of Freedom
For full political freedom to happen, in order for it to become possible that we can enjoy the ability to act on our own judgment, unmolested by governments, the essential prerequisite is that we embrace the morality of egoism, and reject our social conditioning into altruism. This currently seems to be a fantastically unlikely thing to happen, because altruism is so totally programmed into people’s minds, and very few show any inclination to question it!
Brothers Keeper
Altruism is commonly misunderstood to mean being kind and nice to people. It is incorrectly associated with being helpful, generous, thoughtful, benevolent, considerate, compassionate. In a nutshell, it is wrongly believed to mean being a decent human being. This is NOT what altruism is. Altruism is the moral theory that regards the proper beneficiary of moral action as non-self, others, the group. This effectively means that altruism makes ‘giving up your stuff’ to others, compulsory! This is the whole point of a moral code. Its the RIGHT thing to do. So to NOT do it, is WRONG. Its crucial to understand that being nice to people (kindness, generosity, thoughtfulness, compassion, etc) is destroyed by making it an obligation. And the point that few seem to grasp is that when it is the crux of a moral code, it IS effectively, compulsory. It becomes the GOOD, and to NOT do it becomes the evil. This is where we are today with our culture saturated by the idea of altruism, combined with an ignorance of what altruism actually is! Conditions are almost perfect for tyranny at the hands of the state—the representative of ‘others’ demanding our sacrifices.
Altruism denies us the ability to vote for our own values, because it demands that we be indiscriminate in our support of others, without giving us the choice of which others. Altruism robs us of our ability to reject the evil and to choose only the good, according to our judgment. Yet for the best human society to emerge it must be the case that people can reject, or ostracize, any individuals who are arse holes, who disrupt, who undermine, who cause problems. It has to be OK to reject the idiots, the parasites, the psychopaths, the nut jobs. Altruism says “NO, you must not do this”. Egoism says, “but its in my best interest to live in a society without these evil doers”. Altruism says, “So what, you must embrace and love and look after these rejects, these rotten apples”. Altruism denies us our ability to break away from the group, having made our own judgments about what is good and what is bad for us, and exclude that which we reject, and embrace that which we value and support.
And, of course, the propaganda of centuries (and longer) has denigrated egoism and selfishness as ‘evil’. Can people possibly overcome their social conditioning to up-end the cultural current of low level propaganda that has taught us that altruism is good, and selfishness is evil? Lets examine what it really means to be selfish.
Selfishness is good
To be selfish means to be concerned with one’s own interests, which, if you think about it, is a life supporting imperative. But the issue of concern for one’s self interest is coloured by whether or not that concern extends properly over the long term, and covers the very broadest view of self-interest, or, whether it is short term, and therefore not taking into account the full context of one’s life. If we make a point to consider that we are responsible for our own life experience, and for making it the very best it can be; if we consider that we are the first cause in how our life turns out, as a result of all the decisions and choices we make; and if we grasp that its up to us to become the very best version of ourselves possible, then it becomes obvious that we must be concerned for our own lives, our own self interest.
Its selfish to breathe, to brush one’s teeth in the morning, and attend to one’s personal hygiene. Its selfish to conduct ourselves rationally, politely, and in a way that gets the best out of everyone we interact with. It is selfish to develop friendships, and be on good terms with all men. It’s selfish to acquire knowledge, to choose the best partner you can find, to create a business and produce wealth. It’s selfish to want to learn and grow, to see the bigger picture, to want to contribute, to want to live in a better world. It’s selfish to be personally sovereign. It’s selfish to want to be free!
Selfishness is not barging into queues, taking the largest portion of food, or reserving the best spot by the pool. This is an extremely blinkered and short term view of self interest. One that fails to take into account the cost of one’s standing in the eyes of others. Theses kinds of behaviours are NOT in anyone’s real self interest if full context is taken into account.
Our false understanding of the concept of self-interest is brought about by our failure to take into account FULL CONTEXT. Specifically, the full context of our lives as a whole, when we consider what is, and isn’t, in our self interest. This error in thinking gives rise to the failure to understand what self-interest really is. By erroneously embracing altruism and rejecting selfishness, we are contradicting ourselves in our calls and aspirations for freedom. Such is the power of our conditioning that no one wants to take a stand for selfishness. Everyone wants to hide behind a contradiction, and be “altruistic freedom fighters”. This will go nowhere. And ‘the powers that shouldn’t be’ are laughing their evil laugh as they enjoy the bind they have created for humanity, locking people into self-perpetuating bondage to the group.
The collectivist system they are creating has the foundations laid, and they remain secure. For as long as we fail to reject altruism, and fail to embrace egoism, freedom cannot come to pass. If we are serious about wanting freedom, first we must overturn the false idea at the core of our enslavement. Namely, that altruism is good and desirable, that altruism is the proper code of morality. The truth is that altruism is NOT good. Altruism is NOT the proper moral code for people to embrace. Altruism should rightly be rejected. Egoism must be properly understood and embraced.
The truth is, that personal sovereignty rests on the idea of self-ownership and taking full responsibility for one’s own life. This is the practice of being concerned for one’s own self interest. To achieve full conscious sovereignty, consistently and without contradiction its necessary to embrace the fact that you have the right to live for your own sake. This means understanding what it means to be selfish and then, not only being selfish in the noblest sense of the word, but openly, and bravely saying so! If you claim to stand for freedom, and don’t want to be seen as a ‘walking contradiction’, you have to understand and embrace egoism!
Choose the Epistemology of Reason
So far, I have discussed the first part of the journey into fully conscious personal sovereignty, but there is more. I have already mentioned that to be sovereign you need to be intellectually independent. Now lets unpack what this means. It means you need to embrace and consistently practice the epistemological method that deals with facts, evidence, proof and logic. And you need to identify the fundamentals on which the concepts of truth and therefore knowledge both rest, and on which the method to know anything rests. In other words, consistent non-contradictory personal sovereignty requires the fully conscious rejection of mysticism in all its forms, and the fully conscious acknowledgement that reality is independent of human consciousness and is a fixed firm and predictable absolute.
I have written extensively on this subject. So I direct you to my podcast which covers the epistemology of reason in detail. Episode 165.
The Means to Personal Sovereignty
The only way to achieve full personal sovereignty, with consistency and without self contradiction, is to dig down and question your fundamental premises, the fundamental ideas that inform your thinking. This means the individual must consciously choose the epistemology of reason, and consciously reject the epistemology of faith/emotion—which means any form of mysticism. Remember mysticism is the practice of accepting ideas without evidence, proof or logic. Then identify your morality. Question the altruism that you have been conditioned into thinking is good and normal. Reject it, and embrace the selfishness of freedom, underpinned by a proper understanding of the concept that considers self interest in its broadest sense over the long term.
All of this is a tall order. Note that understanding must be achieved. It is not good enough to say that you reject altruism and embrace egoism, you must understand the two codes of morality, you must know the difference, and you must grasp the reasons that you reject one and embrace the other.
It was Ayn rand who pointed out that the freedom born with the creation of the United States of America did not last because the moral code of altruism was never questioned by the founding fathers or those who followed, and rejected, as it should have been. The United States has descended into the statist society that it has, as a result of the people’s inability to reject the moral code of slavery.
Please comment below, even if you disagree. Join the conversation for freedom.
Resources:
- What are Rights? Where do they come from? And why do we need them?
- Freedom: the essential condition for human flourishment
- How can I be certain, of anything?
- Ep 132 Reason versus mysticism – an essential insight for truth seekers
- Ep 136 The crisis in thinking behind our loss of freedom
- Ep 138 Why some people will never wake up
- Ep 143 Three Reasons why freedom has no chance – for the next few decades
- Ep 147 Foundations of Truth – Premises on which the concept must necessarily stand
- Ep 152 – Warning All Truth Seekers – Don’t Make These Two Mistakes!
This is a really interesting article. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on personal sovereignty!
Thanks for your comment and appreciation.