Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Classical Liberalism and Perspective

The term perspective refers to our view of the world.

Our planet is crowded with some six billion people running around seeing everything from their individual perspective. Not only do people see things from different angles. People have these little grabby hands that reach out from their cores, and bony little feet that they use to scuttle about. That means that people not only see things from different perspectives, there is a limited area where people are able to act.

Perspective is not simply an optical illusion. It is a fundamental part of the world where we live.

As mentioned in a previous post. Perspective is the process of projecting an n-dimensional space onto a (n-1)-dimensional surface. Perspective is ruled by the equation 1/n.

The things near each individual loom large and people have the equipment to act on such things.

Having spent late nights at the Marriott Library reading every book I could find on perspective, I came to an appreciation of classical liberalism.

I decided that the best way to organize society is to arrange things is so that all of the individuals have a sphere of influence where they are able to act.

Perspective was extremely important in the development of the classical liberal tradition that values property rights and the ability of the people to engage in free trade.

In my mind, the two keys to classical liberalism are the study of logic and the study of perspective. Both of these items were central to the curriculum in the classical education and art, and are no longer taught today.

The term "perspective" lingers around as a buzz word with the implication that there elite ruling class has a higher perspective than the little people. I think that people desiring to live in freedom would do well to teach their children the real hardcore mathematics of perspective.

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