It might be interesting to discuss the ideas from this book if anyone is interested. The book is online here:
http://shipiloff.com/How%20I%20Found%20Freedom%20In%20An%20Unfree%20Worl...
Harry Browne was a libertarian with many ideas that were not mainstream. This is just one of his many books that might be fun to discuss with the Turdites.
Harry Browne wrote my own intuition, sparkling clear, on his pages. Expect major life-changes (glad ones) if you find he's written yours, too.
Become ourselves as we choose to be? What audacious freedom!
"Become the change you'd like to see in the world", Gandi. Viva La SLA!
Railroadbuff,
Feel free to share what impacts this book has had on your life, I'd like to hear more.
P.S.
My gramps and Uncle were engineers for the SantaFe railroad. Have you been working on the railroad all the livelong day? 
Lottiedah,
I was brought up always think of others not yourself, make other people happy, don't be selfish. I was given the steel and lumber to build all the traps that Harry Browne writes about. Built 'em well, lived what I was taught, and still it didn't feel right. If I live for others, aren't they supposed to live for me?
I read _How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World,_ those ideas I knew but dared not value...what would people think?
One night found myself at some social event, clusters of people gossiping about the failings of others, and I heard myself say, "My mind's not here, and I don't think my body should be here, either." And I left...just walked out. Cool night air outside, quiet and dark and I was alive again, felt like escape from prison.
Since then I stopped accepting invitations to weddings, funerals, can't remember the last time I went to a party, haven't owned a necktie in decades. Like cutting a hundred anchor-lines. Thank you, Harry Browne!
My friends now, the conversations are not unlike what goes on in this forum. We talk about what matters to us, we learn from each other and take the best of it to practice ourselves. I'll never get back the time I wasted, years ago, dragging myself where I never wanted to go, but I had to do it. Somebody said that when we get sick enough, tired enough, mad enough or bored enough...then we'll change. It was the bored-enough that did it for me.
Never worked on the railroad, Lottiedah, just love big iron and old steam engines.
Thank you, RRbuff for the reply.
Similar happenings going on inside of me for the past 1.5 years. Seems to have kicked into high gear the past 6 months, however. Perhaps because I'm meeting more people who are going through some stage of the same process and those interactions seem to work as a catalyst. ((??))
It is strange and beautiful at the same time, I've described it as feeling as if I am in a chrysalis and when I emerge I will be unrecognizable because my form will have changed so much. Already I am seeing this. This is not due to this book, but it was very encouraging to read of someone else's experience. Sometimes intuition leads you to a place and you look around and there is no one there, you're alone. I'm finding, that aloneness is okay, but for a while it was alarming. I appreciate Harry Browne's courage to blaze a trail and then talk about it. No one's path is exactly the same as another's, though sometimes you meet people who dynamically encourage the process in others.
RRbuff, do you find you are still in process? How did this effect your family life (marriage, children)? Did you have to change your job or location to accommodate your new life? If you'd like to talk about it... please do. If you feel this forum isn't the place, perhaps we can speak privately sometime.
Lottie,
We can't apply the principles that Harry puts forth without seeing massive change in our life...it's the difference between living in a cage and walking away from it. It isn't just one step, leaving prison, you say it's a process, and it is; it's a journey, and once free there's no charm left in cage-living.
It's scary sometimes, but worth every decision, every choice along the way.
Big changes: marriage, children, job, location, and look at all of those choices discussed on the forums here! Waking up means being different from what we were. One can't take much of a journey, not into unexplored country, when one stays behind one's own bars.
Too much to say in a post, but look at what others are doing on these electric pages...you don't have to read Harry's book to make the same discoveries and act on your own sense of right.
Your words speak for my own discoveries as well, RRbuff. A caged bird may sing, but it is nothing like what she sounds like bonding with the river in nothing but her sandals! haha
No, really. This is a profound place of discovery about life, I think. It does seem that the cages of all kinds sing the song of the sirens luring us into trance-like mind. Then we give up our freedom so easily. It seems second nature. Especially when we are young, it seemly is so natural to 'imitate' what the grown-ups are doing. Then 10-20 years later we say, 'how the hell did I wind up in this life?'
Thanks again for sharing. You said it all so well.
I read through chapter 18 and most of chapter 19. The author is trying very hard to justify his selfishness, I guess if that's your world-view, you've found a common ally.
The author speaks only of love as if it's a feeling and how fulfilling it will be to break off that relationship when you no longer "feel" love toward the other person. Love is an action. It is the act of putting others needs before your own.
The purpose of marriage is not to satisfy your sexual desires or want of a maid, it is to provide a safe and secure environment from which to raise children. Making a marriage work, for even the most compatible couples, takes hard work and sacrifice on the part of both people. It's selfless-ness that makes it work, and that achievement is worth more than all the PM's in the world.
Rather than going into a long treatise documenting how every point of this is rather twisted, I'll leave it at this: If you'd like to spend your life lonely and alone, leaving a long train of relational disasters in your wake, then, by all means, live this out. I'm sure it will seem wonderful in the short-term (fulfilling selfish desires is always gratifying at first), but it will not end well for anyone involved.
It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world, the selfish wise and the selfish unwise.
Yes, all people are selfish, it is the human condition. Embracing selfishness, however, is not going to lead to fulfillment. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
"Selfish," I think, is "acting in our own long-term best interests."
It's selfish to be kind to others, to share the best we know with those who care, sometimes it's selfish to give our lives to save another's.
There's a different writer, Ayn Rand, who helps us live beyond the negative "selfish" label, usually stuck on us by folks who prefer we live our lives by their rules.
In my life, Pourty, I have found cage-living the loneliest of experiences. When one shares a house or relatives with another, it does not mean there is fellowship. The idea that it does mean so is an illusion that is perpetuated by the ideas you put forth in your comment. I've heard this my whole life from the very people who were miserable in there choices and made everyone else miserable to be around them too. For instance, when Granddad passed beyond the veil, Grandma had the bragging rights that 'they'd been married for 60 years'. He separated from her ten years earlier, but we won't talk about that. In the 33 years that I had known them they were the living dead. Grandma always publically gave herself strokes (pats on the back) for her long-suffering.
If your arrangement is working out for you, Pourty, kudos.
P.S.
In the same book that you have quoted from, there is a writer who also puts forth the notion that it is better not to marry. He recommended marriage for those who lack self-control. This would be an arrangement to accommodate self-gratification (selfishness).
The purpose of marriage is not to satisfy your sexual desires or want of a maid, it is to provide a safe and secure environment from which to raise children. Making a marriage work, for even the most compatible couples, takes hard work and sacrifice on the part of both people. It's selfless-ness that makes it work, and that achievement is worth more than all the PM's in the world.
Couples without children have a pointless marriage?
There is no such thing as selfless-ness. The reason you are with someone is that you are happier with them, than without. That is what YOU want. If your marriage is "hard work" and "sacrifice" then it's in trouble, or you are miserable and simply obligated to continue it.
It does seem that the cages of all kinds sing the song of the sirens luring us into trance-like mind. Then we give up our freedom so easily.
We choose our cages, thoughtless or deliberate, because they meet our needs: http://www.gastongazette.com/articles/bank-58397-richard-hailed.html
Profound.
In my experience, Pourty, I have found cage-living the loneliest of experiences. When one shares a house or relatives with another, it does not mean there is fellowship. The idea that it does mean so is an illusion that is perpetuated by the ideas you put forth in your comment. I've heard this my whole life from the very people who were miserable in there choices and made everyone else miserable to be around them too. For instance, when Granddad passed beyond the veil, Grandma had the bragging rights that 'they'd been married for 60 years'. He separated from her ten years earlier, but we won't talk about that. In the 33 years that I had known them they were the living dead. Grandma always publically gave herself strokes (pats on the back) for her long-suffering.
If your arrangement is working out for you, Pourty, kudos.
P.S.
In the same book that you have quoted from, there is a writer who also puts forth the notion that it is better not to marry. He recommended marriage for those who lack self-control. This would be an arrangement to accommodate self-gratification (selfishness).
The writer you speak of is the Apostle Paul. He was not suggesting marriage as a form of self-gratification, he was suggesting it as a way to avoid sinning against God due to the natural human sexual drive. His point about it being better not to marry was NOT in order to gratify your selfish desires outside of marriage, it was in order to devote yourself wholly and selflessly to the work of God. He also wrote that "[love] is not self-seeking" (1 Corinthians, 13:5). The antithesis of what Harry Browne is asserting.
Respectfully, I think you are taking Paul's writings out of context in order to fit your argument. The author of this philosophy you are defending is suggesting to go ahead and have sex with whomever you wish if that's your desire. Paul was rather defending marriage as the only way to have sexual intercourse without sinning against God. He was in no way suggesting that you should not marry and just go ahead and sleep with whomever outside the bounds of marriage. Reading 1 Corinthians chapter 7 will give you the true context.
I do not make the argument that all marriages which last are happy ones. I am making the argument that it is the best hope for such a happy life for most people, but hard work and sacrifice are necessary to nurture such a relationship. Selfishness will not result in happiness over the long term.
There is very little worth having in life that one does not have to work hard for.
"Selfish," I think, is "acting in our own long-term best interests."
It's selfish to be kind to others, to share the best we know with those who care, sometimes it's selfish to give our lives to save another's.
There's a different writer, Ayn Rand, who helps us live beyond the negative "selfish" label, usually stuck on us by folks who prefer we live our lives by their rules.
While I completely agree with Ayn Rand's industrial and economic views, her social views are warped, in my opinion, as are those of Harry Browne.
Redefining the term selfishness is not an honest way to have a discussion. From Random House Dictionary:
Pourty wrote: "He was not suggesting marriage as a form of self-gratification, he was suggesting it as a way to avoid sinning against God due to the natural human sexual drive. His point about it being better not to marry was NOT in order to gratify your selfish desires outside of marriage, it was in order to devote yourself wholly and selflessly to the work of God. "
Yes, Pourty, Paul was recommending that being single was the ideal state so that one could spend their energies in service to God, but I have disagree with you about the suggestion not being about self-gratification. In this letter to the Corinthian church he was saying this is the best way for them to fulfill this desire. This is a game of semantics. I might add, that Paul suggested that women cover their heads; an example that there are several strong suggestions that Paul makes in his writings that pertain to the culture to whom he was writing. This thread isn't about theology, so we'll need to start another thread if this is an important discussion for you.
We are all selfish. Even doing the work of God is selfish especially since it is done for the hope of a reward in Christian circles. We are all the same.
P.S.:
"Doing the work of God", doesn't mean the same thing to all people. For some, "doing the work of God" means finding peace or becoming love.
This thread is about finding freedom. Would you in your religious freedom take the liberty to dictate to others how to live their lives?
[/quote]
Redefining the term selfishness is not an honest way to have a discussion. From Random House Dictionary:
[/quote]
Any friend of Ayn's is a friend of mine. She may have said that defining terms is important when we talk; if we have different dictionaries, odds are misunderstanding's not far behind.
What's your term, Pourty, for "acting in our own long-term best interests, living to our own highest sense of right?" I use "selfish," but if that word has unhappy connotations for you, I'm glad to accept another which has the meaning, and maybe we'll find thjat we (and Harry Browne) are not so far apart.
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"The unfree person can never fully repress his urge for freedom—whether he considers his jailer to be his family, his job, society, or the government. And so, from time to time, halfhearted attempts are made to break free from the restrictions.
But unfortunately, those attempts usually depend upon the individual's ability to change the minds of other people—and so optimism ultimately turns into frustration and despair.
Hoping to be free, many people engage in continual social combat—joining movements, urging political action, writing letters to editors and Congressmen, trying to educate people. They hope that someday it will all prove to have been worthwhile.
But as the years go by they see little overall change. Small victories are won; defeats set them back. The world seems to continue on its path to wherever it's going. Until they die, the hopeful remain just as enslaved as they've always been."~Harry Browne, 'How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World
This book seems to open up at chapter 18. Please scroll chapter 1.