I distinctly remember my father telling me to watch TV once — or rather: strongly recommending me to sit down and watch it together with him (and whoever else in the family happened to be around).
It was a very special event: PBS was doing a series with Milton Friedman, called “Free to Choose“.
We were not especially patriotic Americans, but being anything else than entirely behind free market capitalism was pretty much out of the question. This series (here at socio.business.blog ) of meditations opened with (and continues to be about) a paradox: how do we balance freedom and regulation? (see “What is the Primary Goal of Social Business?“)
Milton Friedman (whether he realized it or not) stood in a long tradition of freedom-lovers — including not only Adam Smith, but also Immanuel Kant and Martin Luther. Yet Martin Luther also passionately argued for schools and libraries in order to promote literacy. Although Luther didn’t live long enough to witness the fruits of his “promo” work, today few people would say that acquiring literacy is a “natural” result of some kind of libertarian devotion to liberty, liberal ideals or perhaps even something anarchic.
Today, education is usually a compulsory matter. Many years ago, I wrote an article (I think also @ socio.biz ) in which I pointed out that schools are “establishment” institutions (I think this was even long before George Carlin’s popular bit about “obedient workers”). In any case, we are a far cry from free to choose the world we grow up in. In sharp contrast, we are far more fatalistically fixated by our fates.
In order to be truly free to choose to visit websites not approved by BIC browser technology, people need to have enough literacy skills to realize that exercising their freedom to NOT be watched over by a nanny-state or similar governmental regulation is still a matter of being educated enough to act in such an enlightened manner.
Self-education is as ridiculous a concept as is the idea that language might exist inside an individual. Languages exist between (and among) individuals. Freedom and regulation and literacy and many things more are all social constructs.
Well, at least in my humble opinion (which is fundamentally based in a “more or less” degree of humility 😉 ).
Socio Business blog 