By Thorsten Polleit
In this article, I will be discussing the fact that ideas are something profoundly important for us; that it is ideas that guide our actions. I intend to provide a rigorous explanation for this proposition—and argue that free speech is at the heart of our freedom and liberty.
To set the ball rolling, let me say that everyone’s actions depend on ideas, ideas that we literally carry in our minds. This statement immediately raises some questions. Let us begin with the most obvious: What exactly is meant by the word “ideas”?
By “ideas” I mean thoughts, theories, concepts that tell us how things in our world are connected. Here are some examples: “If I hurry with my work, I’ll finish earlier.” Or: “If we have a free market economy, material prosperity will rise for all.” Or: “Socialism leads to a fairer, more peaceful world.”
Ideas are something intellectual. You cannot touch, see, smell, or feel them. But they are real, are literally in our minds. Ludwig von Mises wrote on this:
“(I)deas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things. They are generated by some unknown process going on in a human being’s body and can be perceived only by the same kind of process going on in the body of their author … . … About its birth we know only that it was engendered by an individual. We cannot trace its history further back. The emergence of an idea is an innovation, a new fact added to the world. It is, because of the deficiency of our knowledge, for human minds the origin of something new that did not exist before.”
Next, the question arises: Where do our ideas come from? Most of our ideas have been adopted from others—from parents, siblings, school, university, the workplace, or their sports clubs. Most of us are simply recipients of pre-existing ideas. Very few of us are creators of new ideas. Those who create new ideas are rare. These are the individuals often referred to as geniuses.
Of course, sometimes ideas come to us that we think are new. However, more often than not, they are ideas that have already been known, but which we were previously unaware of. How do we even know that it is ideas that guide our actions (as I have claimed)?
To provide an answer, let us think whether it could be otherwise—that is, whether our actions are not determined by ideas (something intellectual within us), but by non-intellectual factors such as physical, chemical, or physiological factors inside or outside of us.
If you hold this view (that is, claiming that our actions are determined by non-intellectual, tangible factors inside or outside of us), then you would have to prove it. In fact, you would have to show that factor X causes a specific action Y from you (or others)—not just once, but in a regular sequence, always and everywhere.
However, such proof has not been presented to date, and it will not be possible to prove it in the future. Why not?
The reason is that humans are capable of learning. This means that we can change our ideas and knowledge over time. We can, for example, learn from mistakes. We can also learn new things that we did not know before. Just think of mankind’s technological progress.
The statement that humans are capable of learning might seem plausible to us, as most of us have presumably experienced that both we and others are capable of learning. However, this is not a proof.
In fact, the truth value of the sentence “Man is capable of learning” does not come from experience. Rather, it is an a priori, a statement whose truth value is independent of experience. What does a priori mean?
An a priori statement is one that is true independently of experience and claims universal validity. One cannot deny it without already assuming its truth. Denying an a priori statement leads to a logical contradiction—and thus to a false statement.
The statement “Man is capable of learning” cannot be denied without contradiction. This is easy to see.
Anyone who says “Man is not capable of learning” assumes that what they are saying is unknown to the person it is directed at, but that it can be learned by them. Otherwise, they would not be saying it. The speaker thus assumes that their listener can learn what is said (otherwise, they would not say it)—and thereby commits a performative contradiction, making a false statement.
And anyone who denies that humans are capable of learning and says, “Man can learn not to learn,” is making an open contradiction, thus also saying something false.
That said, the statement “Man is capable of learning” is true. And this, in turn, means that humans can change their knowledge and ideas (which determines their actions) over time.
As a result, we, you and I, cannot yet know today what we will know in the future, and so we cannot yet know how we will act in the future. After all, as already pointed out, it is knowledge that determines our actions, both today and tomorrow.
I hope I have successfully explained, without causing any logical contradiction, the special importance that ideas have for our actions: It is ideas that determine our actions.
Now, I come to the second part of my thoughts.
Experience unambiguously shows us, and unfortunately so, that there are always people among us who do not view their fellow humans as equal, free, self-determined individuals. I am talking about persons who want to dominate, control, and exploit their fellow human beings.
And these persons are fully aware that they can most easily implement their desires for suppression, control, and exploitation by determining the ideas that people accept as good and right, internalize, and follow.
For then, they steer and direct people’s behavior, turning them into puppets, slaves of the ideas of which they convince them. And if they succeed, people no longer even rebel or resist. They literally don’t know any better. (For example, they might believe: “Socialism creates a fairer and more peaceful world,” thus accepting an idea that, when examined with economic reasoning, can be shown to be false.)
Is there a way to free oneself from intellectual enslavement or avoid falling into it in the first place? Yes, there is: “Free Speech,” or, to use a philosophical term: Enlightenment.
Specifically, the Enlightenment as formulated by the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his 1784 essay “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Kant explains to us what enlightenment is: thinking for oneself, using one’s own reason, not allowing others to lock you in an intellectual prison, overcoming cowardice and laziness, and thinking independently. Kant expressed it as follows:
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without direction from another. Self-imposed immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s understanding without direction from another, when the cause of this immaturity lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of resolve and courage to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is therefore the motto of enlightenment.”
Although not everyone can enlighten themselves, Kant believes, enlightenment can succeed when freedom exists for everyone to speak freely in public, and for everyone to listen freely. In Kant’s words:
“For this enlightenment, nothing is required but freedom; and the most harmless form of freedom, namely: the freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.”
Freedom of speech means the possibility to put ideas to the test, to assess them, and find out whether they are good or bad, right or wrong.
This is why those who wish to dominate their fellow humans do not want free speech; in fact, they wish to destroy the free market for ideas. However, they typically don’t directly forbid free speech but restrict it through pseudo-moral taboos or legal prohibitions—and effectively shut it down. For either there is free speech or there is not. There is no middle ground.
It is no secret that those who wish to control and dictate the ideas in the minds of their fellow humans are primarily politicians, bureaucrats, and other beneficiaries of the state (as we know it today).
They have no interest in people coming to the idea that the state, as we know it today, is ethically unacceptable and economically unnecessary; that taxes are unjust; that the state’s monopoly on fiat money causes immense harm to the great majority of the population—and much more.
Such ideas are deliberately withheld from the people, and they are actively discredited by an intellectual elite and media figures paid by the state.
However, when freedom of speech wins the day, it is highly likely that lies and deceit will be exposed, that falsehoods will give way to truth—and that, ultimately, better ideas will prevail over false ones, that the magic spell will be broken.
And so, I come to the conclusion, tying everything together and connecting it with current events in the world.
The importance of ideas for our actions cannot be overstated. That is why the state (as we know it today) and its representatives try to influence the ideas in the minds of the people to their advantage.
Ludwig von Mises put it succinctly: “Everything that happens in the social world in our time is the result of ideas. Good things and bad things. What is needed is to fight bad ideas.”
The extent to which the state’s manipulation of ideas has now grown can be seen in what is now being revealed in the United States:
Past U.S. governments have engaged in an unfathomable scale of media manipulation, buying off journalists, scientists, and businesspeople to manipulate public opinion, suppress other ideas, discredit them, and do everything in their power to implement their neo-socialist Great Reset agenda—not only in the US but worldwide. The full scope of deception, fraud, and lies is not yet known, and the consequences likely exceed the imagination of many.
What we can already say is this: Our freedom stands or falls with free speech. Without it, tyranny is nearly certain. And recent experience shows how accurate the a priori reasoning presented in this video is. However, with freedom of speech, the likelihood is very high that things will be set right, that people will return to a peaceful and productive coexistence, both nationally and internationally.
