Phalanxpursos wrote:I am Syncretist, so I believe in Religious Harmony and Greek Philosophy. Stoicism preaches that Liberty is a Natural Law (Themis), so the main issue with Stoicism is Law. So yes I am Stoic Syncretist, I believe in Freedom, Discipline and Religious Harmony. Humanitas (Humanism) is from the Roman Republic, the Roman Republic regarded Humanism as refinement of Civilization. The Romans used Humanitas for Expansionistic Purposes, Humanitas is what brought Civilization to early Europe. Because I am Syncretist, that's why I am alowed to believe in more than one religion, follow more than one culture and practice more than one philosophy.
If you believe in everything then everything is of relative value and conversely there are no moral absolutes so you believe in nothing. Yet you still have created a system from the nothing that needs defending against offence or criticism.
I can see why you would require law to explicitly tell people how to interact as you have no absolute base. You could justify any degradation or perversion with your system of thought and make criticism of it a crime. Speech crime has already made it onto the books in the UK.
I use other Philosophy and religions to inform but its not good to fudge the difference. Harmony is fine but balance is more in line with nature.
On Liberty I think Aristotle was closer to the truth where it comes to human nature. However virtue leads people to treat others with respect. I do not need an over paid lawyer telling me that and I should be free to offend not threatened with the courts for my speech.
The problem is your world view levels us all down to the slavish under the (benevolent ?? we hope) law.
I am free and the law can neither make me a true slave nor if I was a slave could the law make me truly free.
Freedom is my nature but still needs refining by attempting to live a life of virtue and although I do not always succeed I keep trying.
I have worked on estates where people lounge on well-fair as true slaves to their chaotic nature. No mater how much money you give them you will never free them from them-self.
To free them you would have to make them take responsibility for their own life sink or swim and you would have to provide moral example and correction.
Still the secular morals of tolerance can not provide this so they live on as slaves degraded in dignity by their own actions and attitude. Its a unpopular idea but some people are just bad people and make the lives of others worse by their behaviour and on some level it was often their choice. I went to the toughest school in my town and I can tell you that some of my class mates made the move to being bad people if only by one bad move after another. It was their choice and often the easy or entertaining one, still in a world of relative values who would chose the hard road?
Anyway liberalism in the modern sense is on the way out, it is a failed model and all states that are following it are on the way down as far as I can tell.
People are sick of it and economies are collapsing under the vested interests (Like the highly lucrative equality and human rights industry) and high state spending. They suffer from demographic collapse and weal-fair dependence. So we live and we wait for what comes next. I like many others am post liberal.