Don't Organize into Groups

Freedom is a network. It follows from this that anyone interested in being free should pay careful attention to their network. We need to know who our friends and relatives are, and the best way to find out about that is by being our friendly old selves. The more healthy our network, the freer we can be, and the healthier everything becomes.

Another important, but less obvious, conclusion we can draw is that we should not organize into groups. We should tend our network, and leave it at that. The reason for this is that groups are hierarchical structures, easily targeted by those who might want to limit our freedoms. They also require a great deal of conformity, which goes contrary to the idea of freedom.

One of the great strengths of a network is that every node has its own qualities. There is no conformity and hence no simple template to use in order to identify nodes of a special kind. We are all different as individuals. This is the strength of the network.

I'm personally equipped with a quirky sense of humour and a rebellious contrarian view of the world. That's part of my uniqueness. It's my strength precisely because it's unusual and a little eccentric. For me to give up on this in order to conform to a group would reduce my personal sense of liberty while doing nothing to increase the strength of my network. It would likewise be a mistake to encourage people to do exactly as I'm doing. My style is personal to me. It should only be emulated by those who like to do so, and there's no point in me promoting this in any way. Far better is a situation where people are triggered into doing their own little thing to enhance their own autonomy and uniqueness.

Rather than organizing into groups, we should encourage everyone to be as true to themselves as possible, and the best way to do this is to lead by example. It's not our job to give everyone a template to fill in. It's our job to live our lives in liberty, and when this is picked up by others, freedom spreads through the network. If every liberty loving person manages to help two people in their network find liberty in their own lives, and each of these people manage to help two more, the network effect kicks in with autonomy and liberty popping up all over the place. The idea of liberty will spread without us ever organizing into any formal group.

The wonderful thing about this is that we don't have to sacrifice anything in order to spread liberty. The network does the job for us while we live our lives as freely as we possibly can.

Café de Flore

By Arnaud 25 - Own work, Public Domain, Link