Mill's 'On Liberty' and why we like the Nanny State
The recent edition of the highly regarded academic magazine Philosophy Now is a must read. Not only does it include this fantastically well worded and interesting contribution on the question 'How are we Free,' it also has some excellent articles written on the 19th Century Philosopher John Stuart Mill. While not as perennially fashionable as Nietzsche or Rousseau, Mill has had a more of an effect on our modern society than both these two combined. His efforts to consider the vitally important question of how we should live amongst others feel as relevant today as they did back in 1859, when he published his famous work 'On Liberty.'
In this book Mill asks how the governing body of a civilization should infringe upon the freedoms of the individual and, after careful and beautifully thought out consideration, comes to a very simple conclusion:
'We should live in whatever manner we like, as long as we do not cause harm to others.'
Any other rules are entirely superfluous and are a step on the path to despotism, even if they are actions that cause harm to ourselves. This is the Harm Principle and is one that challenged the accepted morality of its time, and still challenges us today.
In this piece I am to consider how our modern world has applied this principle, whether we can ever act without causing harm to others and the extent to which having the freedom to do so really does lead to the happiness that Mill predicted.
Firstly we need to think about how Mill came to the conclusion he did in the first place.
As with every great theory, this begins with an idea of who we are as human beings - how our selves are created.
For Mill we are not the simple products of our environment, we are not simple receivers of influence like the students of Robson Cathartic in my book Substance Abuse. We take what is in the world and we mould it in our own image - from what we believe, what we think is beautiful and what we consider to be the right way to act. This is important of course, because it necessarily follows that to have liberty, we should have the capacity to act upon this external world as much as we possibly can, as opposed to if we are merely passive receivers, where such freedoms of choice would not be of such importance.
However, one matter to remember is that this does not encourage humans to just do whatever they like, but to flourish as individuals by living in the way they consider to be right, to achieve everything they can. If we have liberty we can have greater self-knowledge and are then able to act in the best for us, and so become as happy as possible. If we can in turn communicate our opinions with others on what is the best way to live, then our society can build from this and promote greater happiness for all.
To the opposite effect 'harm' is where an individual in prevented from being able to achieve this happiness. It is not as simple as causing pain or irritation, Mill knew that he could not be as specific as that, but it is the potential outcome of an action such as this. In principle shouting at a child who does not want to go to school is fine, but shouting a child for no reason - causing them to be shy and reclusive - is not.
What a world this could be, where we can all act in this fantastically tolerant manner? So since Mill what kind of a world has it become?
There can be no argument that in comparison to the world in which Mill resided, we live in a positive utopia of choice. Indeed the world he suggests as an ideal, seems incredibly similar to the dominant ideal of our new 'free' world, where an individual should be able to become anything they want and where it is a perceived moral wrong for any of us to stand in their way of this. However, if we think about this further, one wonders to what extent the ideal of 'liberty' really does apply in our new world order.
For instance, if I am lucky enough to have been well educated and have the world at my beckon call to do with whatever I choose, then decide to apply for a top job at a pharmaceutical company, am I not in some way depriving someone else of that opportunity? In the interview I must be better than other people, and in a sense 'harm' their chances my proving my own. And then if I get the job, how does my company stay being the success it has been, to afford to pay me these top wages? If there is a contract to supply drugs to a country in West Africa, will it just give them out for free, or will it look to make as much from the opportunity as possible, while still undercutting is competitors? If its sole motivation was not to cause harm to others, then maybe it would be the former, but I think we all know how the world we live in works.
It seems then, that in encouraging freedom of opportunity we are giving all of us the potential to succeed, but not considering the potential harm that could be caused from this. That is the balance that our world must seek and Mill's theory is a good reminder of how this should work. It might be said that any action we make will result in some kind of reaction elsewhere in the world, but this is no reason to say that there aren't ways that which we can limit the harm caused, something that our free market world does not follow as a tenet.
One thing Mill would certainly approve of is the freedom of speech which our world generally does support. He of course feels that communication of other ideas is vital to achieving the best form of society possible, even the opinions may be false or ridiculous it is better in the long run that these truths are worked out.
The consensus seems to be that while our world has given great encouragement to political discussion; it has not had the results that we might imagine. Indeed it seems that Mill's theory has been subverted, so that it is now okay for us to cause harm for us to other in pursuit of our own ends, but it is not okay that we may damage ourselves.
While almost none of us will disagree that living by the mantra of 'not harming others' is still the correct way to live - no matter how many inherent problems and complexities lie within this - there seems to be a profound rethink on the extent to which we have the liberty to act when harm is being caused to us.
Under the current government we live in something often described as a 'nanny state,' in which not a day goes past when we don't hear or read of a new report, or new government initiative to try and improve ourselves as individuals by restricting what we can and cannot do.
We must drink less
We must eat less salt
We must exercise more
We must not smoke
They may not be directly prohibiting these actions, but by implying that we shouldn't do them they are supporting a world where we do not act in this manner. One only needs to take the evidence of smoking, a practice that still has very disputed effects on the health of others, that is almost at the point of social pariahdom such is the level of disgust vented on it by the ruling bodies, to the point where the user is now not allowed on a train platform or a bus shelter whilst practicing his habit. The harm it causes to others is deemed as the basis for this, but simple justification can also come from the harm it does to ourselves.
It works in the same way as 'weapons of mass destruction' did in Iraq - we are almost certain that it harms others, but what the hell, you will all be better off not smoking anyway
If we take the example of food consumption, there have been moves to ban certain foods or drinks from our shelves altogether such is the potential hazards that irresponsible use can cause to our health, and again even if this not directly stated, advertising campaigns are being constantly used to put pressure on us socially. One only has to view the reaction of my work colleagues if I walk into the office with a McDonalds breakfast, no matter if I happen to have a run a marathon the day before or not.
The question is, why do our governing bodies feel the need to do this, and why are we so easily led into accepting what they say? Should we not go back to Mill and be picketing the House of Commons to demand our individual freedoms, and that we should not be subject to legislative or social pressures to something that is our own choice?
To me there is a surprising answer to this. I don't think we should do this because as much as we hate to say it, we actually want to be told what to do. Let me explain why.
In this secular world we have an unparalleled capacity to think in an autonomous way about the world:
Is there a God?
What do I want to be?
How do I want to look?
What person am I?
Whilst we are no longer shackled by a sense of innate self or morality we can literally do and be whatever we choose. What an opportunity! How fortunate we are! But how - how shit scared we are by the possibilities.
When we think about this we realize that we need boundaries. We need a ruling body to tell us what is bad and what we shouldn't do, not necessarily so that we obey it, but so that we can react to what it is telling us to do. We may complain and constantly look to break away from the oppressive rules, but secretly we like the structure of it all. It makes us feel relaxed. It makes us not have to shoulder the responsibility. Our actions are reactions, rather than our own individual choices.
The freedom we have attained in our new world seems to has gone against Mill's idea that if we all talk amongst each other about how we should live our lives, we will become these fantastic, sophisticated human beings. For me, most of the people I know don't have a clue who they are or what they want to be and so try and not do anything about it all. While we want to have the capacity to live as we choose, we do not actually want to do it - to freely create ourselves - because we don't know what the answer to that is. We think about it and we bottle up, developing a sense of not-being and trying to find distractions from considering ourselves as anything at all. This why computer games and TV exist - they take us away from ourselves - and if anything the ability to be able to do this defines our modern world more than anything else.
To this effect then, our selves are not our own creations, but reactions to something else - to the world around us - and in this respect our actions are the same - reactions to a set of rules that already exist. Perhaps we can all actually fly, but do not have the want to do it in this world.
So what has happened to Mill's dream of liberty for the world? Well, for one we have become masters at placing rules onto other people. Freedom of choice has given us full capacity to view our own opinions as omniscient and others subordinate to these.
'I can't believe you're eating that for breakfast,' my colleagues will tell me, self-satisfied in their socially oppressed view of the world and why should they listen to me if I protest? They feel happy, because they are restricted the way they view the word and are acting in a 'right' way rather than a 'wrong' one, so why should they change this?
However, when it comes to having the full freedom to make a decision they have problems. There are no simple answers. To have a goal or an answer we need to have something to react against, rather than the liberty to act in the way we feel best. We don't know what best is.
Mill is mistaken in his view of humanity - having an innate feeling about the 'best' way to act is not something that we like - it is too much for our minds to take on and it causes us to be unhappy rather than the opposite. We need rules that are more comprehensive than merely harming or not harming, to give us something to react against, to justify our action by the way they affect others and to encourage us to break the rules. The freedom we must have is the freedom to react, and this means that applying rules on a people is not morally wrong. Contrary to Mill's thoughts, this does not necessarily make us unhappy.
In the long term, maybe humans will become sophisticated enough to appreciate unfettered choice, but until then we secretly want to be told how to live and to be able to think of ourselves as 'better' than others as a result. I don't think that Mill has been proved right as yet, but can only hope that one day he will. At least that's my best view of the world.
In this book Mill asks how the governing body of a civilization should infringe upon the freedoms of the individual and, after careful and beautifully thought out consideration, comes to a very simple conclusion:
'We should live in whatever manner we like, as long as we do not cause harm to others.'
Any other rules are entirely superfluous and are a step on the path to despotism, even if they are actions that cause harm to ourselves. This is the Harm Principle and is one that challenged the accepted morality of its time, and still challenges us today.
In this piece I am to consider how our modern world has applied this principle, whether we can ever act without causing harm to others and the extent to which having the freedom to do so really does lead to the happiness that Mill predicted.
Firstly we need to think about how Mill came to the conclusion he did in the first place.
As with every great theory, this begins with an idea of who we are as human beings - how our selves are created.
For Mill we are not the simple products of our environment, we are not simple receivers of influence like the students of Robson Cathartic in my book Substance Abuse. We take what is in the world and we mould it in our own image - from what we believe, what we think is beautiful and what we consider to be the right way to act. This is important of course, because it necessarily follows that to have liberty, we should have the capacity to act upon this external world as much as we possibly can, as opposed to if we are merely passive receivers, where such freedoms of choice would not be of such importance.
However, one matter to remember is that this does not encourage humans to just do whatever they like, but to flourish as individuals by living in the way they consider to be right, to achieve everything they can. If we have liberty we can have greater self-knowledge and are then able to act in the best for us, and so become as happy as possible. If we can in turn communicate our opinions with others on what is the best way to live, then our society can build from this and promote greater happiness for all.
To the opposite effect 'harm' is where an individual in prevented from being able to achieve this happiness. It is not as simple as causing pain or irritation, Mill knew that he could not be as specific as that, but it is the potential outcome of an action such as this. In principle shouting at a child who does not want to go to school is fine, but shouting a child for no reason - causing them to be shy and reclusive - is not.
What a world this could be, where we can all act in this fantastically tolerant manner? So since Mill what kind of a world has it become?
There can be no argument that in comparison to the world in which Mill resided, we live in a positive utopia of choice. Indeed the world he suggests as an ideal, seems incredibly similar to the dominant ideal of our new 'free' world, where an individual should be able to become anything they want and where it is a perceived moral wrong for any of us to stand in their way of this. However, if we think about this further, one wonders to what extent the ideal of 'liberty' really does apply in our new world order.
For instance, if I am lucky enough to have been well educated and have the world at my beckon call to do with whatever I choose, then decide to apply for a top job at a pharmaceutical company, am I not in some way depriving someone else of that opportunity? In the interview I must be better than other people, and in a sense 'harm' their chances my proving my own. And then if I get the job, how does my company stay being the success it has been, to afford to pay me these top wages? If there is a contract to supply drugs to a country in West Africa, will it just give them out for free, or will it look to make as much from the opportunity as possible, while still undercutting is competitors? If its sole motivation was not to cause harm to others, then maybe it would be the former, but I think we all know how the world we live in works.
It seems then, that in encouraging freedom of opportunity we are giving all of us the potential to succeed, but not considering the potential harm that could be caused from this. That is the balance that our world must seek and Mill's theory is a good reminder of how this should work. It might be said that any action we make will result in some kind of reaction elsewhere in the world, but this is no reason to say that there aren't ways that which we can limit the harm caused, something that our free market world does not follow as a tenet.
One thing Mill would certainly approve of is the freedom of speech which our world generally does support. He of course feels that communication of other ideas is vital to achieving the best form of society possible, even the opinions may be false or ridiculous it is better in the long run that these truths are worked out.
The consensus seems to be that while our world has given great encouragement to political discussion; it has not had the results that we might imagine. Indeed it seems that Mill's theory has been subverted, so that it is now okay for us to cause harm for us to other in pursuit of our own ends, but it is not okay that we may damage ourselves.
While almost none of us will disagree that living by the mantra of 'not harming others' is still the correct way to live - no matter how many inherent problems and complexities lie within this - there seems to be a profound rethink on the extent to which we have the liberty to act when harm is being caused to us.
Under the current government we live in something often described as a 'nanny state,' in which not a day goes past when we don't hear or read of a new report, or new government initiative to try and improve ourselves as individuals by restricting what we can and cannot do.
We must drink less
We must eat less salt
We must exercise more
We must not smoke
They may not be directly prohibiting these actions, but by implying that we shouldn't do them they are supporting a world where we do not act in this manner. One only needs to take the evidence of smoking, a practice that still has very disputed effects on the health of others, that is almost at the point of social pariahdom such is the level of disgust vented on it by the ruling bodies, to the point where the user is now not allowed on a train platform or a bus shelter whilst practicing his habit. The harm it causes to others is deemed as the basis for this, but simple justification can also come from the harm it does to ourselves.
It works in the same way as 'weapons of mass destruction' did in Iraq - we are almost certain that it harms others, but what the hell, you will all be better off not smoking anyway
If we take the example of food consumption, there have been moves to ban certain foods or drinks from our shelves altogether such is the potential hazards that irresponsible use can cause to our health, and again even if this not directly stated, advertising campaigns are being constantly used to put pressure on us socially. One only has to view the reaction of my work colleagues if I walk into the office with a McDonalds breakfast, no matter if I happen to have a run a marathon the day before or not.
The question is, why do our governing bodies feel the need to do this, and why are we so easily led into accepting what they say? Should we not go back to Mill and be picketing the House of Commons to demand our individual freedoms, and that we should not be subject to legislative or social pressures to something that is our own choice?
To me there is a surprising answer to this. I don't think we should do this because as much as we hate to say it, we actually want to be told what to do. Let me explain why.
In this secular world we have an unparalleled capacity to think in an autonomous way about the world:
Is there a God?
What do I want to be?
How do I want to look?
What person am I?
Whilst we are no longer shackled by a sense of innate self or morality we can literally do and be whatever we choose. What an opportunity! How fortunate we are! But how - how shit scared we are by the possibilities.
When we think about this we realize that we need boundaries. We need a ruling body to tell us what is bad and what we shouldn't do, not necessarily so that we obey it, but so that we can react to what it is telling us to do. We may complain and constantly look to break away from the oppressive rules, but secretly we like the structure of it all. It makes us feel relaxed. It makes us not have to shoulder the responsibility. Our actions are reactions, rather than our own individual choices.
The freedom we have attained in our new world seems to has gone against Mill's idea that if we all talk amongst each other about how we should live our lives, we will become these fantastic, sophisticated human beings. For me, most of the people I know don't have a clue who they are or what they want to be and so try and not do anything about it all. While we want to have the capacity to live as we choose, we do not actually want to do it - to freely create ourselves - because we don't know what the answer to that is. We think about it and we bottle up, developing a sense of not-being and trying to find distractions from considering ourselves as anything at all. This why computer games and TV exist - they take us away from ourselves - and if anything the ability to be able to do this defines our modern world more than anything else.
To this effect then, our selves are not our own creations, but reactions to something else - to the world around us - and in this respect our actions are the same - reactions to a set of rules that already exist. Perhaps we can all actually fly, but do not have the want to do it in this world.
So what has happened to Mill's dream of liberty for the world? Well, for one we have become masters at placing rules onto other people. Freedom of choice has given us full capacity to view our own opinions as omniscient and others subordinate to these.
'I can't believe you're eating that for breakfast,' my colleagues will tell me, self-satisfied in their socially oppressed view of the world and why should they listen to me if I protest? They feel happy, because they are restricted the way they view the word and are acting in a 'right' way rather than a 'wrong' one, so why should they change this?
However, when it comes to having the full freedom to make a decision they have problems. There are no simple answers. To have a goal or an answer we need to have something to react against, rather than the liberty to act in the way we feel best. We don't know what best is.
Mill is mistaken in his view of humanity - having an innate feeling about the 'best' way to act is not something that we like - it is too much for our minds to take on and it causes us to be unhappy rather than the opposite. We need rules that are more comprehensive than merely harming or not harming, to give us something to react against, to justify our action by the way they affect others and to encourage us to break the rules. The freedom we must have is the freedom to react, and this means that applying rules on a people is not morally wrong. Contrary to Mill's thoughts, this does not necessarily make us unhappy.
In the long term, maybe humans will become sophisticated enough to appreciate unfettered choice, but until then we secretly want to be told how to live and to be able to think of ourselves as 'better' than others as a result. I don't think that Mill has been proved right as yet, but can only hope that one day he will. At least that's my best view of the world.
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