My original intention with this blog was to chronicle my own journey to discover liberty. Before I go into that story, I thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time writing about some key personality traits that I think can almost be considered prerequisites for a person who discovers liberty. Like most of what I'm going to be writing here, this is based purely on my own experiences. I'm considering both my own personal traits as well as those that I see in others with whom I've talked about political philosophy.
The first key trait is skepticism. I think this one is the most important because so much of the prevailing attitude toward government and political philosophy is predicated on everyone just blindly accepting what we're being told by the government and their lapdogs in the mainstream media. If you don't have a healthy amount of skepticism you'll never even question what you see, read, and hear. And if you don't question what you're being told, you'll never even take the first step toward discovering liberty.
My own journey really begins with skepticism. I'm generally a pretty logical person. I studied mechanical engineering in college and I've always been interested in science. As a result, I tend to view the world in a very logical and scientific way. I've never been very big on faith.
So, a few years back (in late 2008) I read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. I don't remember exactly how I came to find out about that book but it did have to do with work. As the company I work for creates software that enables global collaboration in product development, the book was relevant in terms of understanding the trends toward globalization. I liked the book and soon after reading it I decided to read another of Friedman's books: "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America". This book wasn't as focused on globalization per se, but rather more on the "green revolution". Friedman is pretty high on green technology both as a means of allowing the USA to reclaim its role as a global technology leader as well as being a great way to save the earth from the imminent destruction of Global Warming.
Now here's where my skepticism kicks in. Friedman (and many, many other people as well) has completely bought into the notion of human-caused global warming. (From here on, I'm just going to say global warming, but I'm really referring to human-caused global warming, I'm just taking a shortcut) This attitude is prevalent in the book. He presents his case for pursuing green technology at all costs based on the premise that global warming is real and that it's a dire threat to life as we know it.
I just couldn't take this line of reasoning. Now you're probably saying to yourself: "This guy calls himself a scientific person and he doesn't believe all the science of global warming? What a dope!" Well, my issue isn't so much with the details of the global warming science itself, but rather the fact that it is just presumed to be true. It seems that just because Al Gore said the science is settled (the debate is over), that means it actually is. I'm not an expert, but the last I checked there was still at least one scientist out there who was saying that the science is not settled. The debate is far from over, but many people just blindly accept the claims of the global warming alarmists as fact. They just cannot consider the alternative view that the world may not be warming nearly as much as we are being told, and any warming that may be occurring could be completely natural and not human-induced. My skepticism got aroused because it seems that some people are urging drastic measures to "do something about it" when we haven't really characterized what "it" is.
I don't want to turn this into a post about the validity of the global warming activists' claims - that'll be a topic for another post - but suffice it to say that my skepticism led me to seek out some other books on the topic of global warming. But in this case I wasn't looking for more of the same take on global warming, I was looking for the alternative viewpoint. I wanted to read some books from the guys that were contradicting the conventional wisdom. I wanted to learn more about why some scientists disagree with the alarmists' claims.
Since these books were most definitely not part of the mainstream ideology, I suddenly found myself seeing recommendations on Amazon for related books that were also not part of the mainstream. I read some more of these books and as one thing led to another I found myself reading about Austrian economics and libertarian political philosophy (two more topics that are definitely not in the mainstream).
In closing, I think it has been my skepticism that has led me to question the validity of the mainstream ideology in global warming, economics, and political philosophy as well, and to seek out alternative points of view. It is this general attitude that has helped to get me started on the path to discovering liberty. If I had just blindly accepted what I was being told I should believe, I wouldn't be where I am today.
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