Darryl:
>One of the prominent themes of 1984 is that the people are unable to
>recognize reality. So I always get testy when people compare our
>global civilization with the tyranny of 1984, since it seems to me a
>symptom of what the book was warning about. If we can't tell whether
>we are living in tyranny or not we've already lost.
I can understand that point of view, but I think that the problem with it
is a misunderstanding of the premise of 1984. One of the themes is that
people are unable to think about reality -- not recognize it, as much as
think, question, and debate about it. It isn't so much the inability to
recognize it as the problem from which that symptom stems. The inability to
perceive in _1984_ stems from an inability to think, and to present
alternative arguments about the nature of reality that are, yes,
accountable to reality but may or may not contradict the *consensus*
reality. More on this in a moment.
>So I get worried when people think we are tyrannized, since it shows
>that they are unable to distinguish between freedom and slavery. And
>we know where that leads...
Understandably. But it is equally problematic when one simply creates an
either-or definition of the state of things and demands we unequivocally
declare that reality is one or the other, when it may be something far more
complex altogether. For example, in _1984_ when O'Brien is holding up a
certain number of fingers -- what if O'Brien was also, peripherally,
holding up other fingers? My point is that some questions, such as "are we
free or slaves?" are not simply answerable as yes or no. To some degree we
are free, to some degree we are unfree. The two are not mutually exclusive,
if you have a sufficiently sophisticated sense of the way the world is
organized. In fact, the two have been integrated into the same role in some
ways.
That's why I see _1984_ as fundamentally relatable to the way our culture
has turned out. Sure, we have relative luxury and wealth compared to the
people in _1984_ -- but in the end, I would argue that the tightly
controlled distribution of wealth (in this case by a decentralized
"government" (business)) still is used to keep workers in the optimum
position of subservience and non-perception. I think the role of media and
(to a lesser degree, and in a different way that Orwell argued) language
are quite relatable to the way we think in our culture; not only the
interchangeable binaries, but in so many other ways. More about this below.
>Now, about Korea. Of course these are not really cultural differences.
Good, I'm glad you clarified that. Your statement about the "wonderful
diversity" worried me, even though I thought it was a jab at relativism
rather than at non-North-American cultures in general.
>The point I'm trying to make is that the rule of law/constitutional
>government, capitalism/decentralized economics, and
>democracy/government accountability are NOT just cultural artifacts
>that we can pick and choose from like dress or cuisine or whether we
>watch baseball or football. These are the essentials of freedom. If
>you can think of a better way to organize ourselves, I'd like to hear
>it.
Actually, this may surprise you but I think that some of what you say there
is solidly grounded. As I said, I am a fan of the words C. Douglas Lummis
used to argue that all cultures could become more democratic versions of
themselves. I agree that democracy/government accountability, law and
constitutions, and some kind of economics system are all integral to not
only freedom but flourishing civilizations. I'm a little (okay a lot)
skeptical about the economics system that you personally favour, and not in
a way that brands me anything except skeptical, as it stands. I don't think
that the only alternate model is necessarily pure socialism and
centralization, though I am probably more of a fan of socialism than you in
terms of some of its applications like what we have in Canada. As for
possible alternate systems, I'm thinking hard about it these days, believe
me. Maybe you will hear about it sometime soon, but I'd like to really get
some more research and formulation in. :)
> The reason that I'm wedded to these principles is that every free
>country has them, and every unfree country lacks them. These are
>empirical rules, not theoretical rules.
They're not rules at all, Darryl, only observations. If you would like, I
could sketch out a dystopia that includes all three of these principles in
some form, and in which a large hunk of the population was essentially
seemingly satisfied with the status quo. Hm. Actually, I think examples
abound in mainstream novels and film, really.
Also, the way you define free and unfree bears a strong assumption in it:
that anyone IS actually "free," rather than existing at some relative
degree of unfreedom. I would suggest that nobody is "free", though some are
relatively more free than others. Is this unreasonable, and if so why?
Isn't this is "theoretical" rule because your definition of "free" is
theoretical?
I'll try anticipate your answer, perhaps foolishly, and say that you
probably would argue it's unreasonable in comparison to declare people with
as much _relative freedom_ as us to be "unfree". And I would reply that
it's also unreasonable (a) to expect freedom to exist as a simple,
unproblematic binary toggle-switch (especially after "having lived through
the 20th century," as you put it), and (b) to say that outside of your
subjective relative scale, and despite our relative luxury, it is
manifestly unreaosnable to declare "free" people who live with the amount
of non-relative unfreedom that we live with. If you think of all the
necessities that are accrued by each person when they are born -- a certain
minimum of hours of work guaranteed for each year of life, a certain
standard of living generally related to parental living standards, let
alone the specifics of race and location on the planet that determine many
of the aforementioned aspects -- it is obvious that we also live in a
state of some absolute (as in, non-relative) unfreedom.
What's the use of that latter observation? It is the in to questioning how
the system can be made better -- by increasing relative freedom becoming a
goal of critique. Good enough is not good enough, and good enough is
certainly not perfect. But declaring free seems tantamount to declaring
perfect and not worth refinement or needing improvement. And I would argue
that our system is needing refinement and improvement, and that this is
thus obfuscated by the kinds of assumptions you make in defining "free" and
"unfree".
>It may seem as if there are
>better ways to do things, and I'm sure there are. But what are those
>ways? And how can we determine this without throwing out what we know
>works in favor of something else?
I dunno, ask me in a few years. I think that care and caution are
important, too, Darryl. But as I say, declaring that we are "free" seems to
be a subtle way to shortcircuit all critique and discussion on the topic of
improvement. I think there are always better ways to do things. They're
just hard to figure out and think about. I certainly doubt that declaring
our "freedom" unequivocally-yet-ambiguously and without an apparent sense
of the problems involved in such a statement will do much in the way of
encouraging critical thought towards any refinement or change. I think that
your answer to Kat's question, which I was trying to get toward
articulating when she beat me to it, will bear heavily on this set of
definitions of "free" and the attendant "laws" you're trying to derive
pseudoscientifically.
>After living through the 20th century, I would hope that we can finally
>put the idea of Utopia behind us.
There is an excellent book I read last year which argued that Utopian
thinking in the West is on the wane, but warns against such a trend. I
would recommend it as a good alternate perspective on utopia and utopian
thought. Your reading of the meaning and purpose of utopia is highly
literal and this text might help reveal some other interesting ways of
looking at the issue, and problematizing your literalist-only reading.
Check it out: Jacoby, Russell. _The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in
an Age of Apathy._ New York: Basic, 1999.
Riffing off Jacoby somewhat, with some of my own thoughts mixed in, I'd say
that Utopian thought can serve many ends, not the least of which is to
vocalize dissatisfaction with the status quo, calls for reform or change,
an essaying of ideals and values, and so on. Remember, utopos is a pun on
the good-place ("eutopos") and no-place ("utopos"): so in utopian thought,
people can express their sense of what makes a place "good", ie. what
comprises a good society, and what are the values shared in that society,
and so on, and they can talk about it in terms of other imaginary places
(including the future, which is obviously on one level an imaginary
elsewhere popular in industrialized cultures).
So I think you're absolutely wrong in saying we need to discard utopia. We
need it as much now as we ever have, perhaps more because it seems North
America is swerving toward a more supposedly pragmatist and
socially-conservative (and thus anti-difference/plurality) public/political
atmosphere.
There's more in my head but that's probably enough for now. I'm enjoying
this. :)
Gord
