p33 The One Gotcha

Sharing and Positive Liberty

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 20, 14 Mulk, 164 BE

I use videos to keep my thoughts turned to where they can do the most good, that is, the urgent question of whether we are responding to Global Warming, and if not, why not?

 Toward that end I got out an eleven-year-old VHS video tape from the Dundas Library called "Turning Down the Heat; The New Energy Revolution." It is narrated by David Suzuki and was produced by Canada's National Film Board; it has the usual upbeat, optimistic tone, assuming that innovations like electric cars and wind turbines will catch on soon. It sounded sparkling new, most of it, very innovative and doable. So much can easily be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and as they point out, much work is underway. But three quarters of the way through I realized with a chill the reason that a 1997 film about alternative energy can seem so fresh and undated after over a decade was because virtually nothing has been done in the interval to implement these ideas. In fact, as with the electric car, what little progress was underway back then has been either reversed or nullified. It is all documented in the film, "Who Killed the Electric Car," available in most libraries.

 The most interesting and promising energy technology of all is, they explain, geothermal heating for buildings. All you have to do is drill down into the earth and shoot down water-exchange pipes to heat your home or office. Unlimited warmth is under our feet. With this method you get all the free, greenhouse-gas-free energy that you could ask for. But, as they explain, there is one gotcha.

 You have to share.

 You have to enter into contracts with your neighbors above and below to freely allow the heat to rise up from floor to ceiling. You might say, "Well, that does not seem so hard. Just sign a contract." No way. Sharing and sharing alike goes against the very heart of our system. Then in a very impressive shot, they just take an airplane over a city as they explain, and I am paraphrasing freely,

 "Our whole capitalist system is designed to avoid sharing. Independence is our ideal; dependence on one another is anathema. That is why each of these buildings is freestanding, completely exposed to the elements, and churning away at the fossil fuels. Anything but connect together and share not only the heat but public spaces and facilities. It does not matter how efficient this would be, we love our freedom and independence more than anything."

 If they had just said that with nothing going on on the screen it would not be as persuasive as zooming over a typical city with its high buildings standing apart from one another and reaching crazily into the sky, instead of doing the common-sensical thing, hugging each other and the free energy to be derived from the ground. I think the cityscape was Vancouver, but it could have been any city in the world. Their point makes you see how powerful and universal is our drive for total independence from one another, or to speak more exactly, our drive to deny the interdependence that is inherent both to our bodies and our souls.

 I think the distinction, popularized by Isaiah Berlin, between positive and negative freedom explains our puzzling, suicidal drive to stand apart, even unto death. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains it in this way,

 "Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting -- or the fact of acting -- in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities." (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)

 Now Baha'u'llah defined liberty differently, according not to the divide between individuals and collectivities, but to the distinction between animals and humans. If I understand the Kitab-i-Aqdas (not to mention the Lawh-i-Aqdas) correctly, animal liberty is negative, and human liberty is positive. That is, the animal level is wholly subject to the arbitrary law of nature, whereas the human level, being endowed with the capacity to comprehend the abstract laws of nature, can wield power over natural law. As a result, it is a willed, planned kind of liberty. According to this, only the human being can achieve what Kant called autonomy, whereas an animal by its very nature can only aspire to heteronomy, or negative freedom.

 The reason our cities are so stubbornly dedicated to an architecture of freestanding folly, exposed surface area and all-around wasted energy is that we only understand negative freedom, the kind of freedom that allows the individual to do what he or she wants as long as no harm is done to others. As Baha'u'llah says, this is the freedom of brute beasts that indulge their appetites without considering anything beyond sensual pleasure and avoidance of pain. Beasts evolve physically, not mentally, and do not hold to principles, ideals or theories.

 The reason we are suspicious of positive freedom, the kind that is compatible with sharing, is that we deny even the possibility of positive, human freedom. We see each other as animals, and deny whatever goes beyond the vision of the materialist. We equate positive liberty with totalitarianism. We assume no matter what, that the state will by its very nature, by our very nature, arrogate to itself the job of enforcing obligatory positive freedom, whether we want it or not. The Stanford article continues,

 "As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals."

 This is important to remember, for here the Baha'i principles vary from their usually liberal stance. Shoghi Effendi's famous maxim that the Baha'i Faith is orthodox in morals but liberal in principle is not without its escape clauses. We do not stand for negative freedom, but for positive autonomy. Nor is this autonomy defined or derived exclusively in terms of the state; it comes primarily from the individual's search for truth, and this individual advancement is, or should be, supported by religious and other major social institutions. Consultation harmonious combines spiritual initiative with planning based on social conscience.

 Positive freedom is enshrined and embodied in the Baha'i principles. From them we learn that each and all have a positive duty to develop themselves to the fullest degree possible. Where there are systemic obstacles, the principle of promotion of education kicks in. All have a positive right and duty to investigate truth for themselves, and where some fail or do not have the means, all must see to it that such injustices are permanently removed. Our plans and built space should aim at making each person an independent seeker, empowered, enfranchised, happy. This has nothing to do with totalitarianism and everything to do with sharing. It is our only escape from runaway global climate anarchy.