Mill is a Dead White Male With Something to Say

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Mill's emphasis in On Liberty was on the freedom to cultivate individuality, which he believed would spur progress; the 'harm principle' was actually a fairly minor part of his thesis, a way of acknowledging that we live in a society of mixed interests and clashing outlooks and not on a desert island. Mill was a sophisticated thinker, seeking to generate an understanding of individuality that did not ignore other people and the context in which we progress our individual selves: his was a true understanding of individual liberty, as opposed to today's cries of 'individual rights' which are frequently about erecting a legal forcefield around individuals to protect them from the alleged harm and poisons of their unthinking fellow men.