Review by Diamond-Michael Scott
“Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it.” — Harry Browne
I consider myself a self-styled Black Libertarian, Taoist. Freedom is one of my three core values along with Connection and Personal Expansion.
For many years, my life was spent in a self-imposed jail. In the words of my friend, Mike Dunafon , Mayor of Glendale, Colorado, I was caught up in a trap of collective thinking. That is until I came to the realization one day that “if I can be my own jailer, I can also serve as my own bailiff.”
Realizing that I was as free as I wanted to be, I decided to pursue life on my own terms as opposed to waiting on the world or some government entity to grant it to me.
Today, I live minimalistically, free of annoying encumbrances like a car payment, mobile phone service, unfulfilling W-2 job, home mortgage, and debt producing credit cards.
I haven’t voted in years largely because the quality of my life generally speaking is not predicated on who is in office. I believe in free speech, individual rights, and justice for all.
My life is all about pursuing a lifestyle that allows me to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, irrespective of what other people think.
A huge influence on my uniquely crafted set of views is a book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty, written by the late author, politician, and investment advisor Harry Browne.
Browne served as the Libertarian Party’s Presidential candidate in the 1996 and 2000 U.S. presidential elections. He authored 12 books that have sold millions of copies over the years.
Browne’s core belief is that happiness is the highest goal one can achieve in life. Personal freedom, he says, is foundational to this quest, even if others choose to remain unfree.
Moreover, he espouses the view that to try to change the world, political systems, society, your boss or your life/marriage partner is a lesson in futility, wasting valuable time and resources.
Asserts Browne in his book, those who recognize their own unique talents and powers and use them to be free see little need to change the world.
In How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World he notes:
“All you have to do is openly, honestly advertise who you are and what you want. Then, what amounts to essentially market forces will be able to gravitate you towards people and situations that already are what you want them to be and do not require any compulsion or forced change.”
He continues:
“If you’re not free now, it might be because you’ve been preoccupied with people or institutions that have restrained your freedom. I don’t expect you to stop worrying about them, merely because I suggest that you do. I do hope to show you, though, that those people and institutions are relatively powerless to stop you – once you decide how you will achieve your freedom.”
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World could be best described as informative not instructive. Full of pithy wisdom, Brown never explicitly sets out to tell you what to do and how to do it knowing that freedom is viewed differently by everyone. “Think for yourself and control what you can versus can’t control,” I could hear him saying
I find Browne’s views very much in alignment with the times that we are in. Take for example the authoritarian restrictions that were imposed in many states amid the Covid epidemic. In his book he opines:
“Do the politicians want to impose new restrictions? Let them. I’ll find ways of avoiding them easily enough. I couldn’t stop the restrictions anyway — and I have no urge to waste my precious time trying. I have no temptation to vote, to campaign, to try to stop a candidate who promises new follies. If he’s elected, he’ll probably do just what his opponent would have done — which means whatever he has to do to consolidate his power.”
Browne also has a great chapter on marriage, wisdom I wish I’d availed myself to prior to a couple of failed attempts. In both cases I tried to acquiesce to what my partners wanted me to be for the sake of the marriage versus who I really was.
Says Browne:
“You’re in the Identity Trap when you let others determine what’s right or wrong for you — when you live by unquestioned rules that define how you should act and think.”
I’ve also confronted over the course of my life the question of “what my freedom looks like for me as a black man.” While there are those who would argue that race makes little or no difference, I beg to differ given the continued proliferation of incidents like this in America.
While being black in America can be extraordinarily traumatizing at times, I constantly remind myself of the importance of not falling victim to it. And while I am supportive of the spirit and intent of racial justice groups, I chose to follow this admonition offered by Browne:
“It’s not likely that you’ll ever gain your freedom by joining, marching, picketing, or complaining — because all those methods rely upon changing the attitudes of others. What I have in mind concerns the use of methods over which you have complete control.”
He continues:
“An individual doesn’t need to live in a free society in order to free himself — and when he tries to change the world, he’s in for a lot more trouble than he may have bargained for.”
What Browne is saying here is that when we honor our own internal choice around freedom, there is little need to change the world or even others through petty infighting around issues like Liberal versus Conservative; Trump versus Biden; Racist America versus Post Racial America; Cops are Bad, Cops are Good; Masks versus No Masks
In the end, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World is about applied libertarian principles that we can radically apply to our lives and in our dealings with others to live a freer existence.
Here’s a final excerpt from Browne’s book to close:
“If you’re not free now, it might be because you’ve been preoccupied with people or institutions that have restrained your freedom. I don’t expect you to stop worrying about them, merely because I suggest that you do. I do hope to show you, though, that those people and institutions are relatively powerless to stop you – once you decide how you will achieve your freedom.”
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Diamond-Michael Scott is an independent journalist and global book ambassador for “Great Books, Great Minds” a global community fostering a more free and expansive world, one book at a time. He can be reached at greatbooksgreatminds@protnmail.com
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