Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: freedom

  • Think Of Covid As Secondhand Smoke — Are You The Burning Cigarette?

    Think Of Covid As Secondhand Smoke — Are You The Burning Cigarette?

    covid as secondhand smoke
    Photo by Pascal Meier on Unsplash

    In June my girlfriend and I took a much needed vacation to New Smyrna Beach, FL. It was our first vacation and first real, prolonged exposure to strangers and crowds in public since the onset of Covid-19 in February 2020.

    We had a fantastic week except for one unfortunate episode. It is metaphorical to the Covid response exhibited by some people who act as if their personal liberties are license to infringe on the liberties or lives of others.

    Vacation Days

    Our days in FL comprised waking early, just after sunrise, to grab coffee and a quick breakfast in the hotel.

    We then walked to the beach less than a half mile from our room, where we spent the first cooler hours of the morning lying in the sun with our feet in surf. 

    My girlfriend and I suffered a bout of Covid in April, despite taking every precaution. We felt lucky to have come through our encounter relatively easily. Others have not fared nearly as well.

    After spending a couple of hours in the sun, we walked to a small, friendly open-air bar/restaurant right on the beach. Frequented by locals, the place has the easy-going charm and unpretentious real-world vibe we both love. A regular beach dive. 

    Wooden picnic tables spread around a sand floor covered by pavilion type tents make up the outdoor “dining room”. On some mornings we happily occupied bar stools at the well-worn bar, enjoying the best Painkillers in town along with our BLTs and French toast. 

    On our third morning, we got there a bit late, and the bar stools were all taken. No worries. We meandered to a picnic table along one edge, propped up our beach chairs and prepared to enjoy a cold drink, a delicious breakfast, and beautiful scenery made comfortable by an offshore breeze.

    Freedom, a Bulldog, and a Cigarette

    Four people sat at the table beside us on this morning, along with an English bulldog, like the UGA mascot. It nosed around the ankles of the people seated at the adjacent table, its obnoxiously loud owner oblivious to it. The dog kept nuzzling and licking their legs while the uncomfortable diners tried to push his ugly head away.

    The dog’s owner was a loud-mouthed lady with maroon hair, a leathery, scowling face, and sinewy, sun-baked limbs peaking from her cut-off denim shorts and her Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. She ignored her annoying dog while loudly pontificating about the weather, the town, her love life, and her impatience with the service.

    My girlfriend and I rolled our eyes at one another, focused on the good, and put her, the dog, and her noisy play-by-play out of our heads. 

    After waiting a few minutes, our drinks and food arrived. We shared a quick “Grace” over the meal, sipped at our drinks, and began to salt and pepper our eggs and grits.

    What’s Burning?

    It was then that we smelled the smoke.

    The dog-owner had lit up, and the breeze was wafting the second-hand smoke directly into our faces, our food, and beyond. It incensed me.

    My impulse was to jerk the cigarette from between her fingers and put it out on the table in front of her and her friends. But I restrained myself.

    Still, I was livid. My girlfriend was equally distressed. She suffers from migraines and we are careful to avoid her most egregious triggers. Cigarette smoke being one of the worst.

    I spoke a little too loudly, “Can you fucking believe the nerve of some people?”

    “Greg!” my girlfriend shot back at me, careful to avoid an eruption or confrontation.

    I demurred, swiveling my head to scan for our server. Catching his eye, I motioned him over and asked about the smoking policy. He said in Florida they allow smoking outdoors at restaurants.

    “Even when outdoors is the dining area?” I asked. He sympathized but said he really could do nothing.

    I was trying to be just loud enough to catch the inconsiderate smoker’s attention. No dice. She held her cigarette at arm’s length. Directly towards our table!

    “Can we move?” I asked the server, motioning with my head to a table further away but in the sun with less shade from the covering tent. 

    “Of course you can move,” he said.

    My girlfriend and I got up, moved our gear, moved our plates, and finally retrieved our drinks. 

    The thoughtless smokestack never even looked up. She just kept up her steady banter of noisy banality, self-content in her own boorish world. 

    Once away from her, we were fine. We proceeded to enjoy our breakfast. I didn’t assault anyone and avoided jail in Florida.

    secondhand smoke
    Photo by Chris Mai on Unsplash

    What’s Wrong With This Picture?

    Who was wrong in this scenario?

    Did the woman have the right, the liberty, to smoke?

    I concede that, of course, she did. It was both her personal and legal right. The same right she had to bring her dog to this restaurant, which permitted both smoking and dogs.

    I’m a libertarian at heart. Hell, she could have shot up pure cocaine and heroin speedballs in the privacy of her own sad little bulldog world. That’s her business.

    But when she used her liberty to encroach on mine, she crossed a line. An invisible one, no less real for being so. She could have been considerate to me, my girlfriend and the other patrons and moved to an area where the breeze would blow her secondhand smoke away from, rather than onto us. We had the right to enjoy our breakfast free from her secondhand smoke. 

    The Covid Situation Is Exactly The Same

    Substitute Covid for smoke, and the woman’s secondhand smoke is a great visual of an airborne pathogen. The smoke, its density and intensity representative of a “viral load”.

    Are you free to not wear a mask? Of course.

    Are you free not to wear one around me when you’ve also rejected a vaccine? Hell no!

    Where Liberty Ends and Responsibility Begins

    Liberty exists right up to the point when the only possible negative effect or consequence of your actions affects you and you alone. As soon as your “free action” affects someone else, or has the potential to affect them negatively, liberty shifts gears into responsibility. That seems to be an easy and a reasonable test to conduct to determine the limits of your personal liberty as a member of society. Your lame-ass claim of freedom ends at the extent of the consequences your actions can cause to yourself alone. 

    You aren’t free to drive drunk, or point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger, or let your GD cigarette smoke pour across my face and food… or infect me with the Covid you’re carrying (possibly without even knowing it.). Because those actions have potential consequences for others. 

    Who does that?

    Who thinks they have the right to do these things?

    Only the terminally selfish. 

    The Takeaway—Are You The Burning Cigarette?

    This story serves as a metaphor if only because the cigarette smoke, like Covid-19, is an airborne pathogen. The Delta variant is more contagious than any known version so far. If you have it, there’s a high likelihood you’re spreading it. 

    Would you want that done to you? 

    Or are you one of these idiots who thinks it’s “fearful” to avoid a sickness which is completely, totally, well,… 99% avoidable; if you’ll give up your pathetic, ignorant selfishness and think for one minute about someone besides yourself.

    And if you ever smoke next to me, exercising your freedom, then I’m certain you’ll have no problem with however I choose to exercise my freedom to put out your cigarette, right?

  • How, Not What, Do You Think?

    With Seven Practice Questions
    How do you know what you know? Did you discover it by thinking, or were you simply told?

    As I work my way through the excellent essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, I am experiencing anew a particular delight , common in my grade school years, of registering how the critical, skeptical, rational mind approaches a question. I am thrilled (which is exactly the correct word) to observe and follow Berlin thinking his way through complex questions about the nature of liberty, more than I am by any conclusions drawn. 

    I distinctly remember this feeling when very young; when I was first learning how to think, and not merely what to think. So much of my formal education, even at the college level, consisted in being told what, and not how, to think. (But that’s another topic).

    It is a rare treat to discover a writer or speaker with the mental and psychological discipline to use his mind when approaching a question, and not be used by it. One who employs his mental faculties to see a problem the way one utilizes a magnifying glass, or a microscope, or an MRI machine. Neither the glass, the scope, nor the imaging machine impose preference upon the subject matter. They simply observe it, (but at increasingly higher resolution, depth, and granularity of detail). 

    Too often, presuppositional prejudices in the mind are a blinding filter, canceling some of the information needed for the fullest view. When the search for evidence supporting a pet theory or ideological point of view usurps the place of pure truth as the ultimate pursuit of inquiry, the resulting conclusions are always suspect. Berlin’s treatment of the subject of Liberty doesn’t fall prey to petty bias. It is an exemplary reminder of how bifurcated issues should be approached by the intellectually honest.

    Here is a particularly thought-provoking quote from the essay: 

    ”[From the standpoint of Liberty,] ‘Pagan self-assertion’ is as worthy as ‘Christian self-denial’ All errors which [a man] is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”

    Some statements are worth reading at least twice. (The bracketed words are mine, for context). Go ahead. I’ll wait.

    Can you deduce what Berlin is asserting? He is not saying that Paganism is as worthy as Christianity. He is making no comparative argument about their respective virtues at all. He is referencing the respective practitioners solely in terms of their equal use of liberty in choosing to act for themselves without outside interference or coercion. Their respective liberty to choose their own path is equal. He is making no claims regarding the comparative value of what they choose.

    For many readers, seeing the terms ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ in such proximal juxtaposition, will cloud the mind with prejudice so that the the point being addressed is missed entirely. And for some readers, the juxtaposition may reveal a different type of prejudice. That only those practicing socially, culturally, religiously approved liberties, should be allowed to do so; while those believing or acting contrary to the mainstream view must have their choices curtailed by restrictive laws to protect them from harming themselves, or polluting the mainstream.

    What do you think about the following questions? Remember – What you think is determined by How you think – so try to imagine your mind as a magnifying glass looking at each question afresh just to see all that is there to be discovered.

    1. Is it better to A) erect a barricade of laws – out of benevolence – to prevent a man from committing errors that my harm himself, thus prohibiting him the liberty to do so, or B) allow the man liberty to commit errors and suffer the natural consequences? 
    2. Which is the greater evil to the man in question? 
    3. What are the ramifications of either course? 
      1. What if the potential self-harm has the possibility of becoming public harm?
      2. Is this the most clearly revealed dividing line between private and public acts?
    4. How far-reaching might the ripples of consequence extend for either choice? 
    5. How large – or how intrusive – a barricade of restriction might be needed if A is selected?

    These questions and their answers are central to freedom. They form the heart, not only of Libertarian political philosophy, but circulate throughout both Conservative and Liberal ideologies. We all seem to share the idea that there is something wrong with allowing another to determine what is good for us, and then by force of law to constrain us to their, and not our own, ”choice”. Such an enforced ”choice” is no choice at all, in any normal sense of the word. Stop to think how many laws and policies have just this element of intrusive interference as their foundation. 

    These are things to think about, Dear Reader. These ideas make up the substance of the great questions of morality; and as politics is merely a branch, or social outworking of moral philosophy, we owe it to ourselves to get it right. And to do so, we will need to stop listening so intently to those voices on either side telling us what to think, rediscover the inward joys of how to think, and then get busy with it.

  • Heteronomy or Autonomy, You Choose

    If you are regularly (perhaps even daily), buffeted by contrary winds, whether they be social, cultural, religious, or political, can you say of yourself that you are free? If your emotional state is impacted every time you turn on the News, every time you read an article, every time you see a Twitter or Facebook post, are you not voluntarily giving power, real power to forces outside yourself?

    These voices aren’t making me happy! Can’t they just leave me alone?

    Each of us faces opposition to our preferences. When the opposition is internal, we recognize the working of reason putting up a bulwark or providing reinforcements so that we don’t succumb to baser desires. But when the opposition to personal preference is external, and beyond direct control, how then do we deal?

    Friend, exactly what is happening when you get upset over opinions that are different than yours? Why does a different viewpoint elicit irrational behavior? Are we not each entitled to our own opinions. To what degree does a complete stranger’s beliefs have an existential impact on you? What is the cause so dear, that results in you slinging zingers at the opposition? Do you suppose that deriding or defeating political opponents will create lasting happiness within you?

    This you???

    Does everything in your external world, things over which you have no control, have to be perfected aligned with your preferences in order for you to experience internal peace? Do you feel it your duty to verbally hack away at every perceived threat to your personal perspective? That does not make you smarter. It reveals your ignorance. It reveals the contradictions in the things you claim to believe.

    If your state of mind as an individual human is impacted over and over again by the willful statements and actions of politicians, celebrities, the group to which you claim membership, or social media strangers (regardless of whether their names are on your ”friends” or ”followers” lists), then you are living under the domination of a form of heteronomy.

    Who has you surrounded? Who is controlling you? Who gets to determine the “real” you?

    Your mental and emotional states are shaped, dominated, and ruled by outside factors that are non-responsive to your own will. And you may well be deceiving yourself that you are autonomous, self-directed, free, and impacted in life only by the things you will and choose. In Reality, you are just a bi-pedal version of Pavlov’s dog, and just about as free.

    As they say, “If the collar fits…”

    You have allowed yourself to be classically conditioned to respond to all sorts of stimuli that you have No. Power. To. Change. Instead, those external things are changing you.

    For me, not a single thing either Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Kim Kardashian or Matt Gaetz or Bob Weir or Mitch McConnell or Major League Baseball says or does today will add or detract from my actual life. My hunch is that is equally true for you, Dear Reader, if you would allow yourself to take off your ”Angry glasses” or your ”Victim glasses” or your ”Righteous glasses” and just look with your own eyes and reason, at the measurable impact on your life these people (you either feel so allied with or so opposed to) actually have on your day.

    You can reclaim your autonomy. You can.

  • Form Follows Function

    Form follows Function in Nature…almost as if it were designed that way, right?

    ”Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

    It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”

    The above quote is from Louis Sullivan, an American architect of the late 19th-century, best known for his protegé, Frank Lloyd Wright, and for developing the shape of the tall steel skyscraper in 19th-century Chicago.

    His quote above, taken from an article about the artistic design of tall office buildings, has been condensed to one perhaps more familiar to most readers which is:

    Form follows function

    How something looks, its form, should reflect what it does, its function. 

    I really like the 21st-century rise of ”Lifestyle Design”. Tim Ferris, author of books including The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and Tribe of Mentors, would be one of the leading proponents of this school.

    I find that most of the people I’ve met don’t think much about designing their lives. Their lives are designed to serve a function created by someone else.

    Perhaps this is inherent in what Thoreau meant when he said,

    The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…

    Does the form of your life follow a function you chose? Or did someone else choose it for you?

    If you’re living a life that looks the way it does out of necessity to fulfill a function that is more useful for someone else than it is for you, stop and think what you can do to re-design it so that it functions first for you. 

    If there is anything essential and exceptional about American Freedom, it’s to be found in the answer to that question.

  • Truth is Reality

    Get ready Dorothy, this ain’t gonna look like Kansas anymore…

    ”You will know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.” ~ John 8:32

    I’ve been thinking about this verse a lot. My life was turned around nearly 35 years ago when I bumped into the Truth. I found out that Truth is a Person. I had erroneously thought that truth was an accumulation of facts and knowledge, but it is so much more than that.

    The NT was written in Greek. In this language, the word truth is the same as the word reality. I am fascinated by this. I try to think of truth and reality and the person Jesus as equivalents. 

    The verse above indicates that knowing truth can set one free. 

    But just what can it set you free from?

    Only from a lie, right?

    The interesting thing about being enslaved by a lie is this. If it is clever enough, subtle enough, and deeply imbedded enough, you won’t even know you’re enslaved by it. That was me. Think of Keanu Reeves character Neo in the Matrix before Lawrence’s Fishburne’s Morpheus gives him that red pill and he takes it.

    The verse implies that a person desires to be freed from enslaving lies. It implies an implicit value of truth over lies. It implies that truth should be loved, and sought, and applied, specifically for its power to make one free.

    I am not afraid of truth. Even the most uncomfortable ones. Like Neo, I’d rather eat gruel in reality, than eat steak in an illusory fantasy of my own creation.