Been almost a week. I have something to do every day of the week, but recently I took three days out of that schedule to visit my brother in Michigan. He married for the second time, so it seemed like a good enough reason to me to go.

During the trip I read Mill's On Liberty a little more in depth, jotting comments in the margins. I know, only geeks do that sort of shit, but I know I've read it and listened to it, and still little of it sticks. This was prompted in part by my audiobook listening habits, or recent lack of. I spend a lot of time commuting now, and I decided to listen to books that I'd already been through once, rather than listen to music. Among them were End of Faith, Hitchens' book, and On Liberty. While listening to that last work is when I decided to get out the hard copy I have and get down to business with it. Expounding here on the notes I keep will be part of that.

Right off the bat I will start with a contradiction. It seems to me a contradiction anyway. To illustrate, here is the object as stated in the essay...

...the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Good words, in my opinion. Immediately following he specifies that children cannot be considered in the above assertion, because they fall under the protection of others. He expands this principle to societies as well...

For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.

Backwards is a matter of opinion, but we will leave that for now. The point here is that interfering with the liberty of others is wrong, unless of course we are talking about children, or races that are in their nonage. This didn't sit well with me, and very near the end of chapter four is where he reverses himself completely.

It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it.

There is also the fact that 'civilized' is a matter of opinion. Anyway, moving on...

He talks a lot about the role society plays when it comes to individual liberties. I agree with most everything he says in this work, but there are exceptions. He discusses the validity of limits society places on individuals, and the rationale, as he sees it, for them. At one point he suggests that society would do well to concentrate on people before they come of age.

Society has had absolute power over them during all the early portion of their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in life. The existing generation is master both of the training and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the consequences.

This sounds to me a little like the concept of indoctrinating children before they can think for themselves. I have a bigger problem with the passage however. Mill suggests this responsibility be delegated to society. In my opinion, this responsibility is, and always has been, firmly placed with the parents. Then there is this; "...it is perfectly well able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself." Exactly who decides what is better? Is this even possible? I have held the opinion for a while now that before we can be 'better' as a society of people some fundamental things need to change. For thousands of years individuals have been occupying themselves with concerns that do nothing to further ourselves in this respect. Until we lose the capacity for seeing our differences as a detriment to society, and acting on these notions with violence, we will continue our stagnation.

So, a few hours spent on this is enough for now. I will try to continue, but I can see this will take a lot of my time. We will see......