A Law of Nature

Nobody asked but …

A voluntaryist may frequently talk about the laws of nature in an abstract way, urging that we consider natural law as good and artificial laws (legislation, governmental regulation, rules, authoritarianism, even in many cases traditions and religions) as bad.  The fact is that natural laws are only inevitable, having good or bad outcomes according to how they are tested.  And another fact is that artificial constraints can be constructive if undertaken voluntarily (although I would not hold my breathe waiting for the next positive and voluntary legislation, government regulation, school rule, or authoritarian edict).  That leaves religion and tradition and I will talk more about these in the future.  Right now I am focusing on the natural constraints in our lives, such as birth, death, and gravity; actually just gravity to make our discussion of natural law more concrete.  Our children often check the law of gravity as they do not take for granted that which we have come to take for granted.  I remember as a child being totally confused by bridges with superstructures — I thought it was magic to span a wide river (the Tennessee at Chattanooga) but sheer folly to pile all that superstructure up above the roadway.  I remember thinking that if birds and bugs can fly that there should surely be a means by which I could fly.  I collected many bumps, bruises, and a few scars in testing my half baked theories.  Over the years, I finally came to regard the laws of nature as immutable but useful to the man who undertook voluntarily to understand them.  There are many amusement parks where I put my learning to good use.  There were a few garage roofs and mattresses that I gamboled upon.  Today, as a much older voluntaryist, in the laundry room, I learned more about gravity as my newly dried socks fell on the floor and a shirt slipped off of a hanger.  I was inconvenienced in a minor way, but I was thrilled that nature’s law of gravity is still holding after 7 decades.  Conduct an experiment or two yourself, today, and rejoice.

Kilgore