The Apple From Eden - A Philosophy

Earlier this evening I received a call from a marketing research firm hired by an agency of the State of California, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission ("MTC"), to conduct a survey. The MTC is "the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area," see http://www.mtc.ca.gov/about_mtc/about.htm

I was happy to take the call and answer the questions, and to learn that the government cared enough about public opinion to spend the money to conduct a survey. However, I thought that many of the questions were worded in a way to elicit responses that favored big government and socialism rather than individual freedoms and capitalism, which prompted me to comment beyond simply indicating where on the continuum between 1 and 5 was my preference for a certain policy.

At one point, I was mildly frustrated by the questions and I shared my philosophy with the questioner. It is based on the story of Adam and Eve and the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

In my version of the Garden of Eden that God created, there was this apple hanging from the Tree of Knowledge. After God created Adam and Eve, they were told not eat that apple from that tree. It was not that there were no other apples in the garden, there were, and they could pluck and eat those but just not that one apple on that one particular tree. There were no other laws in the Garden of Eden except that one, and Adam and Eve broke that one law.

God could have prevented Adam and Eve from eating that apple if that were the intended outcome but it was not. Instead, God intended Adam and Eve to have free will and free choice. Whether their choice is turning out to be the right or the wrong one is a separate matter to be addressed at a later time, and whether that apple was even ripe to eat is another.

In this case, the MTC should be more like God, limiting its laws and giving its people the freedom and the choice that both natural law and the United States constitution provide.