Imagine you’re walking down the street. A man stands on the corner, screaming into a megaphone, passing out pamphlets. You’re not sure what he’s saying. Something about ‘workers of the world”, and “the 99%”. Discarded pamphlets litter the sidewalk. You pass by without a second glance.
The man on the corner put all his efforts into trying to talk to groups, to collectives. Maybe some who are already receptive to his ideas, or share his worldview, might stop and listen. But you, on the street, couldn’t care less. The man didn’t want to focus on the individuals walking down the street, but huge groups.
The man’s messaging problem wasn’t unique to anti-globalist protestors and wannabe socialists. Libertarians and classical liberals often make the same mistake. We need to focus more on individuals, and not broadly defined groups. Too often, the ideas of liberty are spread through measures too broad and unfocused to sway more than a handful, as though we’re shouting to a disinterested crowd on a street corner.
The Problem with Group Messaging
The problem with speaking to people as groups is that the individual tends to get lost in the process. Nobody reacts to an idea the same as somebody else. People tend to react to ideas based on their priors, and their past. For everyone reached by the man screaming in the street, another fifty ignore it entirely.
Calls to liberty sounded out to groups and collectives ignore reality. People don’t act collectively. Thought and action are only possible through the individual. Ludwig von Mises put the idea more succinctly in Human Action, saying “Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts”.
The solution to this problem can be found in the writings of another Austrian economist. F.A. Hayek once wrote in “Scientism and the Study of Society” that “every important advance in economic theory during the last hundred years was a further step in the consistent application of subjectivism.”
Focus on the Individual
Both individualism and subjectivism come together to form a new strategy for propagating liberty. Liberty needs to get a little more personal. Everyone looks at the world in a different way. Everyone has unique life experiences, thoughts, and ideas.
The best designed messages try to appeal to the most common ideas and worldviews, trying to reach as many minds as possible by painting with a broad brush. This is not enough.
The spread of ideas can only come through the minds of individuals. Society can only change and improve as individuals do. Leonard Read writes in Talking to Myself that “I prefer to live in an improving society, but this is impossible unless there are improving individuals”.
There is an intrinsic dignity in every human person, and in their thoughts and ideas. Those who wish to spread a message of liberty need to understand that many are not being reached.
A Personal Appeal
To be sure, the liberty movement has made much progress over the years. As recently as 2013, up to 22% of Americans either lean libertarian, or are consistent libertarians, according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted that year.
But this is not enough. Proselytizing freedom requires an individual and a personal appeal. It necessitates an understanding of another person’s thoughts, wants, and life experience.
It’s next to impossible for a think tank or a news website to make such a highly personal appeal. That has to fall to individuals. A personal appeal can only be made by those who understand the person they’re appealing to.
In the modern liberty movement, dozens of think tanks, staffed by an army of policy wonks and communications specialists, pop out cutting edge research and easy-to-read publications. It’s remarkably easy for libertarians to read these, plop them up on social media, and be done with it.
The converted see these pieces, nod in assent, and move on. The rest ignore it, and forget about it within the hour. Ideas aren’t spreading, but the liberty faithful are sated.
There is no master strategy. There’s no grand plan. Liberty can only grow when its proponents take the time to listen, and to understand the vast diversity in individual philosophies, worldviews, thoughts, feelings, and life experiences.
It doesn’t take a dozen think tanks, multiplied among every interest group and policy area, to make the case for liberty. It requires millions of individual minds, across a plethora of personal relationships and networks. It takes time, and it takes effort.
A philosophy of liberty can only make so much progress through impersonal means. To take it to the next level, libertarians and classical liberals need to make liberty a little more personal.
