In conversation with Michael Munger
You wake up groggy and confused. Your head hurts, your vision struggles with a strange, leaking glare, and your inner ear is doing something unpleasant, something nauseating that you can’t quite pin down. You lie there sore and muddled, feeling surer and surer that something is in fact moving. The floor underneath isn’t the still hard ground you fell asleep on last night. Yes, there it is, a gentle but nervy rocking back and forth, back and forth.
There is a smell too, salty and organic and wild. You sit taking it all in as best you can, and finally claw yourself to your feet. The floor and walls and low ceiling are made of a heavy, damp wood; and those beams of sunlight wrapping around the gaps in the construction now feel hot and high. Above there’s a squeak of animal life somewhere in the air, and then, sure enough, footsteps. There are people up there, quite a few it seems, and like it or not they are your only hope for finding some answers and for getting back to the safety of your house and bedroom.
The stairs upward creak and flex, but have that sure feeling of being well used. You push hard on the trapdoor, it flops up and open, landing with a heavy thud of wood on wood. There is an explosion of sunlight, you raise your hands and take a step or two protectively back down the stairs. There’s voices now, and slowly as your eyes adjust to the light you see people, all busy, all at work with a purpose, and all looking happy and content here on what is now obviously a large sailing ship.
Nervously you begin to walk around the deck, dodging the riggings, masts and flapping sails, and scurrying sailors. You stare hard at the friendlier looking people, hoping for some eye contact and recognition, and then hopefully an explanation. But everyone is preoccupied with work and hobbies and conversation; though they clearly notice you, and a few people even give you the odd questioning looks. No one seems at all concerned by a stranger walking around the deck.
You go searching for answers, tapping on shoulders, asking people where you are, how you got here, and who they are. They are a mixed bag: some are kind and understanding, others are angry to be approached and hassled, but all of them are genuinely perplexed by your questions. Some of the more compassionate people nod you in the direction of the ship’s bow, towards some more stairs and a higher deck.
Increasingly panicked by this situation, you rush over and climb to the top of the stairs. Before you is the navigation deck of the vessel: people are moving around with different metal instruments, measuring angles of the sun and the waves, others are talking weather patterns, and more still are fretting over the large maps and debating the benefits of potential routes. In the middle of the scene, unattached to this activity, but being consulted on every final decision, is a large, rotund man, with a cartoonish captain’s hat.
You walk over to him and immediately he looks back at you with knowing eyes. A rare look emerges in his face, one that seems already intimate and close. You begin throwing out those same worried questions of yours, and he quickly interrupts. He welcomes you aboard his ship, the S.S. Political Consent, and tells you that this is your new home. Sure he kidnapped you in your sleep last night while the ship was docked in port, but don’t worry, this is no slave ship, nor a tyranny of the powerful over the weak. This is a democracy! He is captain now, but only because he was voted in as such at the last election. There will be another election soon enough, at which point anyone else aboard might take his place, including you.
You are incredulous now at how cavalier this man and this crew are about your arrival on board. Feeling that the morality of what is happening to you is ridiculously being lost, you begin to yell your complaints. You didn’t ask for this, any of it. If this ship is so great, and everyone here is so happy and pleased with its existence, why weren’t you consulted? Why weren’t you given the choice of joining, why was it forced upon you?
Despite what he has done to you, the captain appears to be a fairly reasonable and patient man. He pulls up two chairs, sits down with you, and begins to go over the details of what makes this ship, this society, so important. It is not perfect, it never claims to be. But it does always try to improve itself, always accepting the criticism of anyone who has it, never silencing any of the crew, and endeavouring at all steps to discover new truths about the world and about human flourishing; and that is what makes this ship such a beautiful community. You may not like what you see, you may hate it, but you can change it; all you have to do is convince a majority of your fellow sailors to do so. And they are you fellows! Everyone might have different jobs and talents, but no one is more valued than any other. Everyone is equal and everyone is free!
You are furious! That might all be true you say, but you certainly didn’t have any freedom when it came to whether or not to join the ship in the first place. That was forced upon you! You ask the captain how – if he is such an advocate of freedom and individualism, as he claims – he can be so relaxed about you not having an original choice over whether to join his crew, or whether to decline.
He looks back at you now with the same knowing expression, then he turns to the ocean around you. In each direction there is nothing but horizon and blue waves. No land to be seen and no other ships. Confident that his gesture has had its intended effect, he slowly turns back to you and says in a firm and final tone, “You are free to leave anytime you like!”
* Inspired by David Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (1748)
Should it be said, that, by living under the dominion of a prince, which one might leave, every individual has given a tacit consent to his authority, and promised him obedience; it may be answered, that (1) such an implied consent can only have place, where a man imagines, that the matter depends on his choice. But (2) where he thinks (as all mankind do who are born under established governments) that by his birth he owes allegiance to a certain prince or certain form of government; it would be absurd to infer a consent or choice, which he expressly, in this case, renounces and disclaims
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? (1) We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.
*** The Popperian Podcast #26 – Michael Munger – ‘The Calculus of Consent’ The Popperian Podcast: The Popperian Podcast #26 – Michael Munger – ‘The Calculus of Consent’ (libsyn.com)