Libertarianism: Can You Own Another’s Individual Rights? Game of Thrones
Is it possible to own another human’s individual rights? In the show ‘Game of Thrones’, armies of men were created to sacrifice their lives to their owners. How would you feel if your liberty and individual rights were taken away? What if you weren’t given the option in the first place?
“Individualism vs. Collectivism” (video): Professor Aeon Skoble explains that if we care about the well-being of communities, we must respect the rights of individuals.
Liberty 101 (program): Join professors Peter Jaworski, Chris Koopman, and Diana Thomas to explore the fundamental principles that are necessary for creating free and prosperous societies.
>> If you woke up and found yourself magically transported into the world of Game of Thrones. Where’s the very last place you’d want to wind up, The Iron Islands, King’s Landing, stuck underneath Hodor?
>> Hodor. If you place no value in your sense of self, then your answer is probably the Unsullied army.
The Unsullied are slave soldiers, Eunuchs from the age of five who fight and die for whatever master that owns them. They’re permitted no personality, no values beyond obedience and physical prowess. They’re trained not to have individual beliefs, hopes, dreams, or ambitions. Now this sort of collectivist hive mind is the very opposite of individualism.
Collectivism, the belief that the individual should be subservient to the group means your values and beliefs are irrelevant. And your needs are at best secondary to the needs of the group, individualism tells us that the rules we set up and the laws we are to follow. They shouldn’t address or conceive of us as members of a collective or a community.
We shouldn’t be hauled before a court for the crimes of our mother or our father. We shouldn’t be punished for the actions of other people, even if they are our close friends. Or members of the community that matters deeply and profoundly to us. Now Libertarians are concerned not just with liberty, but specifically with individual liberty, with the unique pursuits and actions of individual people.
Individual liberty captures the thought that every person is to be treated with dignity. That nobody is inherently more valuable than anybody else, that dignity is upheld when people are left free to choose in their own lives. This is what makes individual liberty important, everyone is to be treated as free and equal.
Regardless of their class, race, nationality or their religion, just being you is enough.
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