Hiding in plain sight
- The key to unlock global peace hides in plain sight within a phrase that all reasonable people already accept: ‘live and let live’.
- The phrase has two imperatives. The first is: ‘live’. Live your life! We are so fortunate to be alive for this brief time - make the most of it! Enjoy it! It is yours to live! Is there anyone else better placed to decide how you live it?
- In order for each of us to be free to live, we must let others live.
- This second imperative, ‘let live’, means allowing other people to live as they choose by setting a boundary around the behaviour that is conducive with peaceful coexistence and fair and agreeable to all reasonable people.
- We call this legal boundary the Legal Principle, the essence of which is: ‘don’t aggress!’
The safe container that makes peace possible
- Protected by this legal boundary, all are free to adopt the virtues that turn a free society into a peaceful one. Virtue cannot be forced.
- Without freedom, defined as the absense of aggressing, there can be no peace. Peace on earth is made possible, but not guaranteed, by freedom.
- What a peaceful society requires in addition to freedom is some form of moral decency. We voluntary adopt the Aspirational Values to meet this need.
- Freedom and peace are natural - it takes effort to aggress.
- Both freedom and peace exist naturally - they are our universal inheritance. It takes effort in the form of aggressing to override these invaluable gifts.
- We could phrase the opposite of the Live and Let Live Philosophy as ‘be right and fight’, where, instead of letting others live freely and peacefully, we fight for the power to coercively impose our preferred version of morality on others. Instead of having the law grounded in the ancient principle of the Golden Rule, the law is currently based on the capricious whim of those that achieve power; an endless and unjust struggle we call ‘lawfare’. The 3L Movement changes this.
You are free
- 3L is not a dictation for how to live your life. You are free to choose so long as you don’t impede others’ freedom. Instead, the 3L Movement is a blueprint for a better world; a path to peace.