Leonard Read, Session 2: Self-Mastery, Not Reforming Others
“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
Leonard Read noted that people often focus on societal changes while overlooking their personal development.
You may recall from Session 1 that both Read and Emerson believed “thoughts rule the world.” No facts challenging strongly held personal beliefs will change the heart and mind of a person ruled by their passions. That is why Read believed in inner work to upgrade our consciousness.
The societal divide over the Israel/Hamas war is an example. Douglas Murray recently wrote, “If you had told me 25 years ago, when I first visited Princeton, that students at the university in the 2020s would be found chanting ‘Glory to our martyrs,’ even in my most pessimistic moments I would have accused you of being an alarmist.”
Murray may or may not have been influenced by Leonard Read when he observed:
It seems to be in the nature of many who support the Jewish state to imagine that if we refine our arguments, find a better way of explaining the history, or counter each piece of misinformation, we will be able to change hearts and minds.
But at some stage you have to admit that this tactic has largely failed. We may have the facts on our side, but the facts have become meaningless to so many.
Another great societal divide is over what social justice means. Read wants us to understand the inherent conflict between social justice and genuine freedom. As an individual grows in consciousness, it becomes clear that embracing a freedom philosophy “suffices to render justice to each individual.”
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill presents his famous Harm Principle: “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
Read wrote that his own “definition of freedom, if practiced, would assure universal justice: No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. This is to say that no one would inhibit any individual in any way whatsoever except to curb his destructive actions: fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation, and the like.”
Read wrote Who’s Listening over 50 years ago, and like Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (see our Mindset Shifts U archives), Read was remarkably prescient:
In the practice of so-called social justice, the individual is ignored, absolutely! Instead, the population and the economy are dealt with in enormous lumps: individuals are vaguely classified into the haves and the have-nots, treated as voting blocs of farmers, wage earners, old folks, oppressed minorities, disaster victims, slum dwellers,” etc.
