Authoritarianism vs liberty... which is better and in which contexts? Genuinely asking for opinions, not trying to own anyone.

@BRUUH Secular humanism generally wouldn't be authoritarian because there's no central dogma. Like secularism just means separation of church and state, it doesn't mean abolishing all religions, that's atheism. There's secularist Christians who think the church doesn't belong in religion for instance and there's Quakers who are non theistic while still not technically secular could be considered as such. Granted, they are few and far between but they're out there.

Kind of the same with Wiccan, wiccan isn't even a sole term for any one thing but rather different branches of pagan religions and it makes no sense being authoritarian when you're the only wiccan who was that lol. I don't see that as authoritarianism.

I think that individuals of such philosophies can be authoritarian or have that personality style but I don't think that on a larger scale it's not possible, the community is so divided in that there wouldn't be a unified force for authoritarianism. Like what rules would wiccans have that would possibly make sense in this type of society?


Because I think there's a difference in what I deem immoral vs. immorality by itself, I don't have a word for the second but I think they're different perhaps. The first one is subjective based on my own life experiences, cognitive biases and limited awareness, the second is more like common sense maybe.

For instance for the first one, let's say I think gay people are immoral because of the bible. Let's say I make this case and then use cognitive bias to paint all gay people as bad due to me looking up certain things about groups of people maybe right winged media who constantly writes about gay people being predators and falsifying studies that are non existent or distorted to their own views.

It's not true but whether it's true or not, I can take this story and spin it any way I want.

Now let's say I was a dictator and authoritarian and I'm trying to do right by my society, I haven't met a gay person in my life (I have but let's say I haven't for illustrative purposes,) and I therefore make up laws against gay people due to what I hear from right winged media about gay people.

I fear for the safety of my people and therefore set out to make laws to punish a minority of people.

And thus why the state can be bad because if we were an authoritarian society we would be bound by whatever the ruler or rulers deem as immoral whether it makes sense or not.

Authoritarianism is more bound to culture, religion, background, experiences, biases of the person whoever is leading. There are no checks and balances in an authoritarian society, it doesn't exist.

@BRUUH In short what I'm trying to say is that authoritarianism benefits only one group but it will convince you that it's in your best interests for all but often times this is only propaganda. The authoritarian has only one end goal, themselves and their worldview. That can be dangerous in a diverse world where not everyone is going to agree with you all of the time. Look what happened with Hitler or any of the other dictators, their victims if they had another chance at life somehow, would probably like to speak for themselves surely.

@BRUUH Oh sorry last comment, what I mean is there is subjective morality vs. objective morality. A lot of people debate those things as if they're separate but I believe there is a mix of the two. There's subjective morality based on what you know from your own experiences but what could be true for you, might not be for another person hence why it's always open to bias. It's not that it's not true exactly but there's so many circumstance that it could be true for others.

Everyone has subjective morality, me including. There's probably things I think that you think are wrong and there's things that you think that I think are wrong. But there's objective morality too, like in evolution, if we didn't work together we'd all die. So there's a base instinct and a will to survive there hence why we have laws.

I asked chat gpt for a much bigger explanation and I think it's close to what I'm getting at: