Self-love and life hacks are destroying everything around you

curated by Glen Brink, WorldprofitUniversity.com

Negative liberty

There are two types of liberty, according to philosopher Isaiah Berlin. Positive liberty involves citizens actively deciding who governs their society and how much power they should have.

Underpinning that premise, argued Berlin was that in order for people to be free, they had to be transformed. They had to become better, rational beings, and only the leaders knew how that could be created.

This lead to a terrible logic in all revolutions and was seen in the great purges of the Soviet Union, Pol Pot in Cambodia and the adductions and forced labor camps in North Korea. To free the people, they had to be forced into a new way of thinking.

Negative liberty on the other hand, is a society in which individuals are free to pursue what they want and nothing more. There should be government and laws to hold people in balance, but other than that people were free. It was a society with no ideals. It was a society in which people were free to indulge themselves.

This was a similar vision to what economists called Game Theory a mathematical model based around poker in which all players are trying to maximize their outcomes at the expense of everyone else. Berlin said this kind of society was the only safe alternative to the horrors of positive liberty.

Berlin’s work was circulated widely – Tony Blair was a life long fan of his work and regularly used Berlin’s ideas in his policies.

The application of negative liberty by many democracies in the West has seen the return of inequality and the collapse of social mobility. The consequence of this has been the silent return of class and privilege while we all focus on our downward facing dogs and how much we can bench.

I am just as much a part of this culture as you. I swear by the power of Bikram Yoga and have spent way too much on detoxes and ‘active wear’. But I have come to realize that by focusing on myself, I am neglecting others.

curated by Glen Brink, WorldprofitUniversity.com