[HN Gopher] Freedom is not a goal, but a direction
___________________________________________________________________
Freedom is not a goal, but a direction
Author : mef51
Score : 279 points
Date : 2021-11-17 06:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (edwardsnowden.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (edwardsnowden.substack.com)
| arnoooooo wrote:
| I can understand how it could be considered that in a very non-
| free society, but no. Freedom exists only as an equilibrium
| between your freedom and that of others, between paralyzing order
| and utter chaos.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Yes, freedom is in equilibrium with collectivism in any
| functioning society.
|
| The mistake people make when acknowledging that a
| freedom/collectivism equilibrium exists is to assume that
| freedom/collectivism changes are also in some sort of balance.
|
| The reality is that collectivism is like the dark side of the
| Force. It's powerful. Seductive. Once you go down the path of
| embracing collectivism, it's extraordinarily difficult to turn
| back. Sounds dramatic, I know. But collective state action is a
| slippery slope. It's really easy to say, "everyone should do X"
| and in a democratic society, all you need is a slim majority to
| make X a law. But X isn't always enacted properly. The
| unforeseen consequences of X are often really unpleasant. But
| rolling back X is always harder than putting it in place.
|
| You have to remember that every time you hand over a problem X
| to people in government, X gives them more power. Power is
| almost never relinquished willingly by the powerful.
| mfcl wrote:
| I was thinking, I can currently go from NA to Europe today if I
| wanted to. But that level of technology and orchestration would
| not be possible in a lawless and barbaric society (at least I
| don't think so). This possibility offers me a lot of freedom
| (traveling around the world) and in exchange, I had to follow
| rules and work. I gave some freedom and got more in exchange.
| The same thing applies for many other things like
| communication, food, entertainment, etc.
|
| But in the end we all win, for each unit of freedom we give
| away (or invest), we get more back (ideally).
|
| So is equilibrium the right word? Or maybe we are talking about
| different things. I don't know, I'm not making a statement or
| counter-argument here, just thinking out loud.
|
| There are definitely attempts in the world to restrict freedom
| not in the word of efficiency, but control and power. The line
| between the two can be blurry.
| 988747 wrote:
| You make a mistake in equating "barbaric society" with
| freedom. Barbarians weren't free, maybe except their chief
| and elders. Common tribe members were all subordinated - the
| tribe would even put some mark on their body (tattoo,
| circumcision) to remind them that they are tribe's property.
| Democratic society is much more free than a barbaric one.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| What do you mean when you say free?
| 988747 wrote:
| Ability to make your own choices. The way I understand
| barbaric societies is that whatever your elders come up
| with you are obliged to follow their lead, if you object
| you will be banished or killed.
| [deleted]
| freeflight wrote:
| _> you are obliged to follow their lead, if you object
| you will be banished or killed_
|
| Not really that different to today, except that it's a
| circle of elders and their lead is codified in laws.
|
| But breaking these laws will still get you "banished" aka
| deported if you are not a citizen, and if you are citizen
| you will face consequences for your noncompliance, which
| in some places can still reach all the way up to the
| death sentence.
|
| So in a way it's still all just barbaric societies, but
| with extra steps.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > So in a way it's still all just barbaric societies, but
| with extra steps.
|
| You've got it. Proper civilization and a free society are
| still a long way off. Laws and democracy limit the
| variance (good and bad) but don't automatically create a
| better outcome. We still need people to make the right
| decisions. And these systems of law and democracy which
| serve mainly to promote _stability_ introduce their own
| problems by encouraging people to confuse "legal" or
| "popular" with "right", and "illegal" or "unpopular" with
| "wrong".
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| You can still do that in any society. Even though it's
| illegal, you can run a red light or cheat on your taxes.
| The notion that you somehow can't is just mauvaise foi.
| Of course you can. You're choosing not to.
|
| Seems like you are describing freedom from consequences,
| not the ability to make choices, because that's available
| now and to the barbarian. I'm not sure which society has
| no consequences.
| lvass wrote:
| >You can still do that in any society. Even though it's
| illegal, you can run a red light or cheat on your taxes
|
| By that logic, there is no such thing as restriction of
| freedom, as it assumes even someone's ability to jail you
| does not restrict your freedom in any way. People in jail
| are free as a corollary. How is this not absurd? It only
| makes sense if you hate freedom and want to argue against
| it to people low on rhetoric.
| ttfkam wrote:
| Apparently you haven't read anything by Jean-Paul Sartre.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| One can read and disagree (that's what makes reading
| philosophy hard; you want to argue, discuss, counter the
| narrative, take it into another direction, deny the
| assumption, put forward another hypothesis or
| explanation... but the book just sits there, static and
| smug, plowing ahead with whatever very specific point and
| perspective auther has already made up _their_ mind on :)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's the authors we disagree with we should read the most
| enthusiastically, because they may just provide an
| insight into what it is to have different opinions, and
| we may just be forced to admit they have a point.
|
| When we read authors too close to home that say things we
| already think are true and share our views, we'll let
| almost any nonsense argument slip by. That's a waste of
| time if I ever saw one.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > but the book just sits there, static and smug, plowing
| ahead with whatever very specific point and perspective
| auther has already made up their mind on
|
| Maybe it's you who has already made up their mind?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'm arguing against the particular definition of freedom
| given, not against freedom itself.
| lvass wrote:
| Freedom is indeed the ability to make your own choices,
| but you must not understand it in a strictly technical
| context, more like a social/legal one. It simply isn't
| viable to physically prevent every action society
| considers you not free to take, so the restriction of
| freedom comes in the form of later punishment, it doesn't
| magically stop being restriction of freedom just because
| technical possibility is still there.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Ok, let's agree that the proposition we are discussing is
| this:
|
| * Freedom is the limitation of choice.
|
| My counter-argument is this:
|
| Limitations on choice through potential consequences are
| ultimately self-imposed. To have any effect, they require
| me to refuse to consider the possibility of the
| alternative. To the extent they limit my action, it is
| through my choice, possibly implicit, to let them limit
| my actions. The option of making the choice never goes
| away no matter how grievous the potential consequence.
|
| Since this is in a discussion around a post by Snowden,
| we can take him as an example. He did something that,
| according to this theory of freedom, is impossible. He
| wasn't free to do it, his choice was limited by potential
| punishment. Yet he did, the possibility of making the
| supposedly impossible choice was still there.
|
| Consider a hypothetical man who has lived isolated
| indoors all life playing video games, never gone to
| school, never watched TV, nobody told him about any
| consequences. One day at the age of 25 he finally
| discovers a door to the outside and goes through and
| thinks "oh man, this is like GTA!" and goes around
| punching the elderly, stealing things, breaking all
| manner of laws as he has been taught is how you get
| points. Eventually the strange man is caught and sent to
| prison, but until that point, was he more free than we
| are? He was subject to the same laws and social
| consequences as we are, but they weren't able to limit
| his choices because of his ignorance. Clearly it can't be
| the laws themselves that limit choices if this is the
| case.
|
| It appears to me there is something strange about the
| given definition of freedom. It lends itself to producing
| paradoxes, where people who aren't free are capable of
| being simultaneously free, and the same sources of
| limitation successfully limit some people but not others
| based on what attitude they have toward them. This type
| of contradiction usually means a definition is
| incomplete.
| lvass wrote:
| >* Freedom is the limitation of choice
|
| Assuming you meant the literal opposite, I can agree
| there's a bit of nuance but it's true in the "spirit of
| the law" sense. I really don't understand why you're
| still trying to take it so literally.
|
| >This type of contradiction usually means a definition is
| incomplete
|
| Words aren't perfect nor immutable, no definition is
| complete, but it's relatively easy to see what it's
| trying to say. It does not follow an absolute implication
| that punishment is not a restriction of freedom. There
| are less ambiguous definitions but this one is acceptable
| and beautifully simple.
|
| If it were code it'd be a single-liner that works for
| 99.9% of users. But the "best" implementation works for
| 99.91%, is slow, 200 lines, no one understands and
| inexplicably broke for someone.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If we are to investigate whether freedom is desirable,
| don't we owe it to ourselves to find out what freedom is
| first, find out if we are free, if we even can be free?
| Otherwise we can debate in circles about different
| meanings of the word and ultimately get nowhere.
|
| I don't think the poetic appeal of the definition is
| useful if the definition itself lends itself to
| contradictions.
| darkerside wrote:
| I'm pretty sure everyone understands what you are saying,
| but I don't think you've demonstrated that you understand
| what you are arguing against. Just an observation.
| vageli wrote:
| And if you are arrested after making one of these illegal
| choices, are you still free?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If you plunge a sword into your chest, you also can't
| make choices later on. Does that mean it's impossible to
| choose to plunge a sword into your chest?
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| You are free to make a choice even when the end result is
| restricting future freedom (sword=death, illegal
| action=prison/death). So you can in any moment "be
| totally free" in virtually any society as long as
| concerns for freedom in future moments are irrelevant to
| you
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yes, this is indeed my point.
| vageli wrote:
| > So you can in any moment "be totally free" in virtually
| any society as long as concerns for freedom in future
| moments are irrelevant to you
|
| Okay so I am in prison. Am I still totally free in that
| moment?
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| Great point. Max available freedom has constraints based
| on your current situation. I'm not in prison but i don't
| have the freedom to walk on the moon
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I'm note sure "freedom" is the same thing as "possible".
| If it where, only physicists would concerns themselves
| with its definition.
|
| I think it more often means "permissible" or "practical".
| mistermann wrote:
| Did you not like the question so you avoided it by asking
| one of your own instead, or is something I'm not familiar
| with going on?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| An action has an undesirable consequence, does this mean
| it is impossible to perform?
|
| The question isn't whether we are free under all
| circumstances, but whether we are free now.
| mistermann wrote:
| I agree that lack of freedom always exists simultaneously
| at some level, but at the specific level posed in the
| question are you free?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lvass wrote:
| What did you smoke, my friend? I really like your search
| engine, don't destroy it's image for me. Freedom is not
| strictly equal to technical possibility, it's not even
| the same word.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Aww come on, I don't want you to agree with me, I want us
| to have an interesting discussion about what freedom is
| and ultimately why we want it. It's worth while, trust
| me.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I've proposed a definition here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29267283
|
| Would appreciate your thoughts
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Unsettled barbarians, e.g. hunter gatherers, are remarkably
| free and unhierarchical. It's only when you get to a stage
| of development where hoarding of wealth is actually
| possible that freedom is subordinated to rulers.
| golergka wrote:
| It certainly would be possible in anarcho-capitalist society.
| In fact, US in the 19th century was much closer to laissez-
| faire ideals than today and went through a surge of private
| road and water channel construction (I could also mention
| railroads here, but if I'm not mistaken, they relied on
| government intervention to get the land). I don't see any
| reason why it wouldn't work for air travel just as well.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > In fact, US in the 19th century was much closer to
| laissez-faire ideals than today and went through a surge of
| private road and water channel construction (I could also
| mention railroads here, but if I'm not mistaken, they
| relied on government intervention to get the land).
|
| A lot of canals and turnpikes were also built by the
| government--the Erie Canal and the National Road being
| preeminent examples. Contemporary railroads, such as the
| Baltimore & Ohio Railroad were usually private. Land grants
| for railroads were largely limited to the western railroads
| and for a surprisingly short period of time--only about
| 1850-1871 were major land grants being used for railroads.
|
| Overall, railroads got roughly the same amount of
| government support as did canals and roads, maybe even
| somewhat less. Although this should generally be understood
| as all infrastructure more or less requiring generous
| amounts of government support.
| not1ofU wrote:
| One thing that struck me after reading Nikola Tesla's
| Biography, was how much that guy traveled. He lived between
| 1865 - 1943.
| slx26 wrote:
| These are all very interesting thoughts, including the
| comment you are responding too. I just want to make the
| situation even more tricky and point out that freedom is not
| only about the amount of choices you have available, so
| giving something away to get more choices is not always
| positive. There's a bound on complexity, and it turns out
| that freedom requires "space" to decide, not only
| "availability" of choices. Rules and restrictions, even if
| implicit (unspoken rules, cultural expectations, etc.), do
| reduce our freedom by reducing our space to decide,
| pressuring us in some ways.
|
| EDIT: in any case, beyond a fairly low minimum, freedom is
| usually not so much about raw number of choices as it is
| about relative number of choices, comparing what options
| _others_ have access to and what options do _we_ have access
| to. So I think we should focus and work more towards
| "healthy freedom ranges" and freedom equality and coverage
| (not leaving some people out) than pretending that any single
| change increases or reduces our freedom in a dramatic fixed
| amount. To me, the freedom scale is clearly not linear. (Now
| I'm not even so sure "freedom" is the right word to focus on.
| It's more about "unobstructed human potential" than about
| "possibilities" to me.)
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It's a non-static, non-homogenous, equilibrium. It changes
| with technology, environment, and culture.
|
| As surveillance gets easier, we need to choose having crime
| for the sake of privacy. As the manufacture of dangerous
| materials and weapons gets easier, we need to choose between
| living in a more dangerous world, or slowing human progress.
|
| Not every culture has the same risk tolerance. Not every time
| period has the same risks.
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| You can have both surveillance and crime, they are not
| mutually exclusive.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| That would be one of the equilibriums I'm attempting to
| reference.
| testing192847 wrote:
| yes
| testing192847 wrote:
| yes yes
| woile wrote:
| I'd argue that hunter gatherers had all of the units of
| freedoms, and when full centralization happened (monarchies)
| we lost all those units. Democracy gave you back some units
| by decentralizing power (not fully).
|
| I'm not saying decentralizing more is gonna give you more
| freedom, more like a different take. I think your point is
| still valid, there has to be an equilibrium and I just don't
| know where it lays.
| ewzimm wrote:
| I think you would enjoy the recently published book, "The
| Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. A
| point made early in the book is that Native American
| criticisms of European society, particularly its lack of
| freedom and mutual aid, led to the development of defensive
| European theories of civilizational development that
| proposed that the loss of freedom was the inevitable result
| of the movement from hunter-gatherer societies toward
| agriculture and monarchies. Democratic revolutions around
| the world have changed cultural attitudes about freedom to
| be much more like Native American ideas, but many people
| still operate in the framework of civilizational
| development that had more to do with justifying power than
| accurately modeling historical events.
|
| The idea that we would have to revert to independent bands
| of hunter-gatherers to achieve freedom acts as a mental
| block. This is not to say that this movement away from
| freedom is completely ahistorical but that cultural
| attitudes about power have been much more dynamic,
| flexible, and even seasonal than the kind of linear
| movement toward inevitable constraints that might fit into
| the theory. By examining the many different types of
| arrengements people have instituted, we might learn new
| ways of organizing ourselves. There are plenty of
| opportunities to do so in the world today.
| tremon wrote:
| What does "Native American" mean in your post? Are you
| referring to early interactions between the colonizers
| and the inhabitants of North America, or present-day
| Native Americans that have lived in Europe?
| ewzimm wrote:
| I'm referring to a series of cultural criticisms that
| began around the 16th century and have continued into the
| present day. Some were by people who only encountered
| Europeans in America. Others traveled to Europe to debate
| and discuss policy and culture with people there as well.
| One individual that the book focuses on is Kandiaronk, a
| 17th century Wendat intellectual who debated the French
| governor in Montreal and whose arguments were popularized
| by the French soldier Lahonton.
| bko wrote:
| > Freedom exists only as an equilibrium between your freedom
| and that of others, between paralyzing order and utter chaos
|
| What does this mean? As in your freedom to swing your fists
| ends at the tip of my nose? Or something else?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's a common refrain here to setup a weird dichotomy between
| freedom and some other X. It's a thought anti pattern - a
| rootless piece of social knowledge that people were told at
| some point that never went examined. There are so many cases
| of freedom AND X, that it's easy to disprove.
| csee wrote:
| Some freedoms are trade-offs with other people's freedoms, e.g.
| freedom of movement vs freedom to not get covid. That's where
| your perspective fits. But other freedoms are more win-win or
| win-neutral situations and don't require trade-offs. But I
| agree that the ratio between the former and the latter tends to
| increase as society becomes more developed and free.
|
| There's also an important difference between negative and
| positive rights/freedoms.
|
| I notice that this discussion nests inside moral philosophy. We
| need to grapple with the tools and constructs in that
| discipline when thinking about freedom.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > But I agree that the ratio between the former and the
| latter tends to increase as society becomes more developed
| and free.
|
| I think it's more to do with how interconnected we all are
| now. A few centuries ago the ripple effects of your decision
| might impact a hundred people. Now it might reach thousands.
| Or more.
| testing192847 wrote:
| yeah
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Freedom exists only as an equilibrium between your freedom
| and that of others
|
| What are you talking about? Snowden is talking about the
| Freedom of the mind.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I am glad that they posted this with the subtitle instead of the
| original title "Cultural Revolutions" which was posted a couple
| of days ago and sadly got no traction.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29247018
|
| The way Edward Snowden weaves Ai Wei-Wei's account of his journey
| through the Cultural Revolution (1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows -
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246165/1000-years-o...)
| and his own is great:
|
| From the time I began studying China's quest to intermediate the
| information space of its domestic internet, as part of my
| classified work at the NSA, I'd experience an unpleasant spinal
| tingle whenever I came across a new report indicating that the
| United States government, was, piece by piece, building out a
| similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar
| the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation,
| sedition, and subjective "social harms." I don't want to be
| misunderstood as saying "East" and "West" were, or are, the same;
| rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline,
| and a toxic obsession with "national security"--a euphemism for
| state supremacy--are drawing the US and China to meet in the
| middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is
| perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority,
| and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they've
| begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of
| gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual
| and national political differences until little distance remains.
| pron wrote:
| > Under the influence of politically correct extremism,
| individual thought and expression are too often curbed
|
| Uh-huh. I can only assume this refers to the so-called "cancel-
| culture" which probably doesn't exist (I am not claiming that
| there aren't "cancellation" incidents, but for this to exist as a
| "culture" or a trend, it needs to be shown that fewer people
| today can express and publicly disseminate fewer opinions than in
| the past; this is probably the very opposite of reality).
|
| Freedom is almost self-contradictory. A person living alone in
| the world can be free, but two cannot. Either they have the
| freedom to curtail the other's freedom, or they do not. Either
| way, someone here is not fully free. So whenever people speak of
| more freedom, the question is, more freedom for whom and at the
| expense of whom. Like anything political, freedom is a resource
| that needs to be allocated among people, and there are valid
| debates over how. But within reasonable circumstances, there is
| no one direction toward freedom, but many directions, each giving
| more freedom to some and less to others.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > A person living alone in the world can be free, but two
| cannot.
|
| This seems to say that the opposite of freedom is impact. That
| is, freedom is lost when one person impacts another. I feel
| restraint is a more effective antonym.
| memelordxx wrote:
| > A person living alone in the world can be free, but two
| cannot. Either they have the freedom to curtail the other's
| freedom, or they do not.
|
| I mean, even a person living alone in the world would lack the
| "freedom to curtail another's freedom" in that sense.
| Furthermore, he would still be bound to the laws of physics,
| for example, and would never achieve your definition of
| freedom. I think the freedom the author is discussing is
| something deeper than "capability to do x", more like the
| specific liberty of being heterogenous to the culture you live
| in (hence his lionizing of tolerance).
|
| I think you're absolutely right that there is a scarcity of
| this freedom that is precipitated by a scarcity of resources,
| as in your example. I think history has proven that it's not a
| zero-sum game, however, and that certain cultures have managed
| to produce a higher degree of this "freedom" than others. A
| culture that values and protects open scientific inquiry, for
| example, would perhaps discover advancements that reduced the
| aforementioned scarcity of resources which should have the
| effect of increasing the freedom that was previously
| diminished.
|
| Perhaps why freedom should not be regarded as a goal is
| because, as you have pointed out, it cannot be absolutely
| attained, neither by an individual or much less a plurality of
| them. To instead orient a culture in the _direction_ of
| increased freedom seems more achievable and fruitful.
| gz5 wrote:
| +1
|
| "with freedom comes responsibility" (Eleanor Roosevelt's
| context was different, but the phrase is important)
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| That assumes that second person necessarily takes away
| something from the first person by the nature of her existence.
| In reality, this is not the case. Two persons can cooperate and
| kill a mammoth together, so both now have more spare time - a
| measure of freedom. A tribe can capture more territory - a
| measure of freedom.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > So whenever people speak of more freedom, the question is,
| more freedom for whom and at the expense of whom.
|
| This only applies at the very boundary of freedom. I would
| argue we are not frequently at that boundary - often freedom is
| curtailed for reasons other than preserving the freedom of
| others.
|
| A silly example: Suppose the government outlawed wearing red
| shirts. Regaining that freedom would not impede the freedom of
| others in any way.
|
| A real life example: It is illegal for me to buy raw milk from
| my local farmer. Allowing two consenting adults to make a
| transaction would not affect anyone else's freedom.
|
| You can view laws on a spectrum from "strictly exists to
| protect other's freedoms" on the left to "strictly exists to
| curtail individual freedom" on the right. I would argue that
| making raw milk illegal is a law on the far right side of that
| spectrum. It is up for debate where current political issues
| fall on that spectrum. Gun control advocates say that the
| existence of easy access to guns restricts their freedoms, and
| so put gun control laws on the left side of the spectrum. Gun
| rights advocates disagree, and put gun control on the right
| side of the spectrum.
|
| Regardless, nobody would argue that all current laws are at the
| far left. If we wanted to maximize freedom as a society, we
| have some easy gains before we have to start worrying balancing
| the conflicting freedoms of others. The problem is that most
| people don't want to maximize freedom - they want just enough
| freedom to do what they want to do, but enough regulation to
| stop others from doing things they don't like.
| hairofadog wrote:
| To nitpick your framing a little bit, while it may illegal to
| _sell_ raw milk, I doubt it 's illegal to _buy_ it, which is
| a distinction that has to do with scale (one could sell raw
| milk at scale, but not consume it at scale).
|
| I haven't researched raw milk and I have no idea how
| dangerous or safe it may be, but the motivation is to prevent
| sale of [dangerous thing] to people who may not be aware of
| the dangers of [dangerous thing]. To use another silly
| example, let's say there's an entrepreneur who sells a toxic
| mixture of chemicals as a "health drink"; you could argue
| about whether that should be legal or illegal, but I don't
| think anyone would say it's a no-brainer that a law
| prohibiting the sale of that health drink exists on the
| right, strictly-exists-to-curtail-individual-freedom side of
| of your spectrum.
|
| To your point, I can think of a few laws that do belong on
| the right, _" I just don't like it so it should be banned"_
| side of that spectrum, and things that come primarily to mind
| are puritanical laws banning transactional sex, consumption
| of certain media, prohibition of selling alcohol on Sundays
| (which is a religious, not health, concern), decency laws;
| things like that. I don't think FDA regulations belong in
| this category.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > but I don't think anyone would say it's a no-brainer that
| a law prohibiting the sale of that health drink exists on
| the right, strictly-exists-to-curtail-individual-freedom
| side of of your spectrum.
|
| If I understand your double negative correctly, then I am
| nobody. A law like that does strictly restrict freedom - it
| makes it illegal to do something which does does not itself
| restrict other's freedoms. It trades freedom for safety,
| instead of balancing the freedoms of different individuals.
|
| Whether such a law is good or bad is besides the point -
| such a law would strictly reduce freedom.
| dghughes wrote:
| I think many people use the word freedom when they mean safety.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I like this point. To others, the statement is not a definition
| of freedom, but a guide on how to make decisions. If you think of
| freedom as a point, that needs to be achieved, defended, or
| maintained, you'll act in opposition to other forces, and choose
| angles to defend around the past basis. If instead, freedom is a
| vector, your goal is positive, to expand it, to open new
| freedoms, and to ensure that as society moves forward freedom
| continues to grow and be maintained with it.
| 0134340 wrote:
| That statement's pretty vague without defining "freedom". And
| if you go on that journey, you'll find out it'll be a long one
| that never ends. For instance, for whom do you define freedom?
| Freedom to do what? Freedom from what?
|
| >society moves forward freedom continues to grow
|
| That's a big claim to say we have more freedoms now. We're
| encumbered by far more laws now than almost any time in history
| and watched by more authorities than anyone in history who have
| access to far more systems to know who you are, when you are,
| etc. Those same authorities also have more power than ever to
| execute those powers for "justice" and more power than ever to
| catch you. But hey, at least you have material freedoms, now
| you can choose Coke or Pepsi and forget about the other
| freedoms closing in around you.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Excellent article. For years I've suspected that when American
| 'leaders' look at the kind of power the Chinese government (or
| the Saudi government) has over its people, their main emotion is
| not revulsion but rather envy, and this seems rather bipartisan
| in nature, and is a sentiment found not just in the political
| sphere but also the corporate sphere.
|
| It's the complete intertwinement of the corporate and political
| spheres that leads to totalitarian regimes who view their own
| people as the greatest threat to their continued grasp on power
| and so institute highly repressive mass surveillance system, mass
| incarceration of dissidents and so on.
|
| However, there's another aspect to this, in which 'freedom' is
| not just legal in nature, but economic and physical as well. What
| does it mean to be 'free' in a company town where the only
| employers are Amazon and Walmart? What does it mean to be 'free'
| when energy sources you need for survival are controlled by
| someone else? The Chinese model seems to be 'we will ensure you
| have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your
| total loyalty to the state is required'.
|
| The American model I'm afraid is becoming 'we will ensure you
| have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your
| total loyalty to your corporate employer is required.'
| yosito wrote:
| > The Chinese model seems to be 'we will ensure you have access
| to food and water and energy and in exchange your total loyalty
| to the state is required'
|
| Judging based on the most recent incidence of mass starvation,
| which model do you think worked better?
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'm not sure if that is relevant to this particular issue,
| but the history is fascinating. Not everyone gets excited
| about fertilizer chemistry but when Nixon went to China and
| opened up trade, the very first major industrial projects
| were the construction of massive ammonia fertilizer plants
| across China, built with American technology (*well German
| technology from the 1900's more accurately, just updated).
| This ended the famine cycle in China [1]:
|
| > The removal of the limits to agricultural growth and
| China's industrialization came in the immediate aftermath of
| US President Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China. The first
| commercial deal signed immediately after the visit was
| China's order for thirteen of the world's largest synthetic
| ammonia complexes for producing nitrogen-based chemical
| fertilizer. China purchased additional plants in the 1970s,
| developed its own capacity to build chemical fertilizer
| plants in the 1980s, became more or less self-sufficient in
| the 1990s, and began exporting chemical fertilizer by the
| turn of the new millennium.
|
| [1] https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/9279-modern-china-s-
| agricu...
|
| Now is a rigidly authoritarian state necessary for this kind
| of technological development? Err... no.
| zepto wrote:
| It's not really 'the American model' - it's the model America
| was founded to try to avoid. The trend you identify seems to be
| in _all_ political systems.
|
| The fact that america as a political ideal is not immune to the
| trend does seem to be a failure.
| tomerv wrote:
| In what way is this "the model America was founded to try to
| avoid"?
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| It can be argued that the separation of powers and systems
| of checks and balances defined in the US Constitution help
| to ensure that no single person or group holds too much
| power over the American people:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers_under_th
| e...
| sangnoir wrote:
| > American people
|
| It's public knowledge that there always was been an
| asterisk on "people" from the very beginning, and who it
| encompasses is always shifting. A lot of dismay comes
| from people learning that the government (any arm) of the
| day doesn't include them in this group[1].
|
| 1. "He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting."
| zepto wrote:
| This has been true of all governments of all kinds
| thoughout all of time.
|
| Once again, it's something America can only be criticized
| for _because the goal is for it to be something
| different_.
|
| It's fair to criticize America for not living up to its
| ideals.
|
| It's intellectually dishonest to imply that the ideals
| don't exist.
| tomerv wrote:
| Isn't that only about separating government powers? As in
| separating Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches.
| I just don't see the connection to non-government
| economical powers. Seems like a stretch.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Isn't that only about separating government powers?
|
| Yes.
|
| However, non-government economical powers are subject to
| laws created by the government.
|
| Anti-trust laws and anti-monopoly laws in particular were
| created to address problems where non-government
| economical powers become too powerful. These laws fall
| under the Commerce Clause
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause) of the US
| Constitution.
|
| The law doesn't guarantee that people will be prosperous
| or happy, only that they will be free from an overly
| tyrannical government.
|
| If a US citizen feels that a non-government economical
| power is too powerful, they should work with their
| elected representatives to make laws to restrain those
| overly powerful non-government economical powers.
| dumb1224 wrote:
| I thought the discussion will be around the culture revolution,
| not so much as 'freedom' but I guess there are intricate links.
| Quite unlike many other 90s kids growing up in China, I read a
| lot of the old books and journals from that era inherited from my
| grandfather. Novels, novelette, magazines what not. Not to
| nitpick but I think a rightist (Ai Qing) in chinese political
| spectrum is actually left-wing (in the sense of aligning with the
| west, pursuing free individuality and less compliant with
| conservative values etc). I was in Tate London where Ai's
| exhibition was on and there was actually pretty cool footages
| accompanying the sunflower seeds.
|
| Regarding Edward's article and his connection to Ai's book, I
| think I could understand it from memory of reading culture
| revolution books. They are all about human nature and individual
| struggles, very little is about actually political stances. It
| often portraits intellectuals against village fools (mob riding
| the revolution waves to obtain power over everyone), their
| realisation of life and coming of age (since protagonists are
| often from privileged background and aristocrat families who have
| leftist values, or rather, called rightists in China). The value
| clash between total opposite sides, tribal, village, modern,
| metropolitan, aspiration, destination, mundane, soul crashing...
| It resonates with ordinary people because it's picturing societal
| and individual psychologies. This is my naive take.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both
| governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive
| surveillance and speech restrictions they've begun to mutually
| embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over
| time will compress every aspect of individual and national
| political differences until little distance remains._
|
| This is why both parties are so bizarrely hostile to Section 230.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Excellent article, and beautifully written. Thanks for sharing.
| chasd00 wrote:
| freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose - Janis
| Joplin
|
| i didn't read the article because i'm free to not have to ;) I
| know it's shallow but, to me, freedom is a road trip. Being able
| to drive across the country without having to get permits or
| passports or anything, just being able to move about is freedom
| to me.
| rob_c wrote:
| Not sure I agree with the title. Freedom should be a right that
| isn't to be taken from you, not a journey or a goal. Shame the
| rest of the article reads like a love letter to Ai (not a
| complaining about the artist I like his work).
|
| But given the article's author, whenever he speaks or writes I'm
| expecting more somehow...
| bena wrote:
| I believe I've gotten downvoted here for voicing a similar
| thought.
|
| Some things can't be "solved", you constantly have to do the
| work. Democracy, relationships, tolerance, etc and I guess
| freedom, but that's similar to democracy.
|
| There's no end goal to them. You can lose them if you don't work
| at preserving them.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| agreed. "The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary
| pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions."
|
| its a fight against entropy, same as road repairs.
|
| its not that I don't want big sweeping reforms, but I believe
| in gradient descent. all good progress is good progress. like
| the UK restricting conversion therapy. I want it gone, but this
| is still an improvement.
| samuelizdat wrote:
| Freedom is the degree to which you are able to navigate the power
| process. The power process is the ability to identify and change
| something within a system. For example, if there is a vending
| machine with coke and you want pepsi. Is there a process that you
| can use to make that happen? If there is, then you have freedom.
| This of course extends to bigger things than soda. "Sovereign is
| he who makes the exception"
| csee wrote:
| This covers positive freedoms, but what about negative
| freedoms? Contrast these two people:
|
| - The first person lives in a prosperous and authoritarian
| state. They have high positive freedoms (access to resources,
| healthcare, etc, thanks to the bounties of their society) but
| low negative freedoms (no freedom of speech/thought, low
| freedom of movement, surveillance, etc).
|
| - The second person is a survivalist nomad. They have access to
| very little resources, but otherwise have no external authority
| that is constraining them in a negative sense.
|
| So I think there's orthogonal variables here, and each of them
| could rightly be considered to be "freedom" as it's often
| defined by different people.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| To what extent are those positive freedoms associated with
| the government vs the free market?
| csee wrote:
| My opinion is that most wealth is attributable to the
| market, but the government is necessary to the extent that
| it sets and enforces the rules, resolves disputes, and
| provides defence. The government does help build wealth
| more directly (e.g funding science research) but it is not
| the primary driver of it.
| pharke wrote:
| And if there is no system?
| slx26 wrote:
| Interesting, but it should probaby be divided by the desire /
| expectations to navigate the power process too. Otherwise, it
| gets too far away from the common usage of the word.
| hirundo wrote:
| I think that's a reasonable definition of freedom ... and not
| at all what Snowden is talking about. That underscores why it's
| so hard to discuss. The word itself is a Rorschach test.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I dunno, you're talking about what you can and cannot draw into
| your sphere of influence. You have, in your analogy, the option
| to refuse anyway. Probably cheaper to not use a vending machine
| anyway.
| anticodon wrote:
| > For example, if there is a vending machine with coke and you
| want pepsi.
|
| Sometimes, I think that western people are so constrained by
| some limits in their heads. Like "freedom" is a freedom to
| choose Pepsi or Cola. I want neither. Or I want tea. Or the
| drink that is traditional for my culture.
|
| But most of the time I communicate with americans, for example,
| I becoming convinced that freedom for them is more like:
| "Everybody drinks Cola and can freely visit Disneyland".
|
| They're so immersed in their heads with the notion that they're
| in some kind God-chosen people, that they refuse the right of
| any nation to live by their own rules.
|
| It's hard to convey this thought to me, especially in English.
| It would be too hard for americans to get it (if someone thinks
| our american junk food, junk Cola and junk democracy isn't
| good, they must be madmen and/or China/Russia/Iran spies!).
|
| One tiny example of this. Several years ago while I was still
| reading reddit, in /r/Cambodia there was a post from american
| that said something like:
|
| "I came to Cambodia several days ago and I'm impressed that you
| have neutral attitude to gays. But I don't understand why you
| don't promote LGBT everywhere. You should have LGBT parades and
| LGBT signs everywhere!"
|
| I don't remember exact words, nor am I willing to find this
| exact post on the overloaded site of reddit. It was a shock to
| me that he arrived just a few days ago and already suggests
| that people that belong to a culture that is several times
| older than his, that they should live by his own weird rules.
|
| And it's only one tiny example. Everyone should have McDonalds,
| even on Mt. Everest. Everyone must drink Coca Cola even in the
| remote Chinese village. Everyone must have not have their own
| opinion, but conform to the opinion of the "God-chosen nation".
| ewzimm wrote:
| These Americans you've encountered seem especially sensitive
| to marketing. I haven't encountered anyone in the USA who
| wasn't skeptical of these kinds of promotions of consumer
| culture. My own definition of freedom would be the
| traditional Buddhist idea: freedom from greed, freedom of
| hatred, and freedom from delusion. All other freedoms are
| only valuable if they assist in those primary freedoms.
|
| The things you mention people valuing are very
| counterproductive, and I think that most people in the USA
| have become aware of that, even if we live in a culture
| that's full of advertising. I think that in every country,
| there's an accepted level of surface-level deception that's
| tolerated publicly but privately criticized. Of course, these
| days people often publish their private criticisms, so the
| lines between public and private behavior are blurring.
| glitchc wrote:
| This equates power to freedom, where the degree of freedom
| correlates to the degree of power, and only the truly powerful
| are free. If that is your thesis, then you are in agreement
| with Snowden.
| 0134340 wrote:
| More power draws more responsibility so not necessarily. Yes,
| you have more freedoms as in choosing what to buy but
| material freedoms are only one branch in the many freedoms
| one can have. So I can agree with OP in that ability of one
| to manipulate power for freedom is a good definition of one's
| true potential for it. One can also give away certain powers
| or responsibilities for more freedom.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > A close review of Snowden's official employment records and
| submissions reveals a pattern of intentional lying. He claimed to
| have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in fact
| he washed out because of shin splints. He claimed to have
| obtained a high school degree equivalent when in fact he never
| did. He claimed to have worked for the CIA as a "senior advisor,"
| which was a gross exaggeration of his entry-level duties as a
| computer technician. He also doctored his performance evaluations
| and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his resume and
| stealing the answers to an employment test. In May 2013, Snowden
| informed his supervisor that he would be out of the office to
| receive treatment for worsening epilepsy. In reality, he was on
| his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets.
| cochne wrote:
| What does any of that matter?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why should I care what a serial exaggerator and liar computer
| technician thinks?
| cochne wrote:
| In this case he is not making factual claims. It is purely
| a philosophical discussion. You can agree or disagree with
| the content itself. But I don't think a person being a liar
| or not should necessarily stop you from interacting with
| their content. If you found out Plato or Aristotle often
| lied in their daily life would that stop you from reading
| their works?
|
| That would be strange to me.
| tomp wrote:
| Same for _equality_ and _meritocracy_.
| ttfkam wrote:
| It continues to amaze me that folks on the US Right are in
| perpetual outrage about cancel culture when Right-wingers are
| basically never "cancelled." Merely temporarily inconvenienced.
|
| Books are being banned in schools across the country. Janet
| Jackson lost her career because of a Super Bowl performance.
| Kaepernick took a knee and had elected leaders screaming for him
| to be fired and threatening any NFL owners who even thought about
| hiring him as a quarterback again. Muhammad Ali lost the best
| years of his boxing career due to his political and religious
| beliefs.
|
| That's what being canceled looks like.
|
| Gina Carano was "cancelled" until she got her next gig within a
| month. Dave Chapelle was "cancelled" over transphobic comments
| only until he made yet another Netflix standup.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Chapelle is a "Right Winger?" Is he a "White Supremacist" too,
| yet? "Clayton Bigsby" was a dog whistle!
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Regarding LGBT issues, Chapelle's ideology harmonizes well
| with the right.
| h2odragon wrote:
| And people called RMS a pedophile too; but it wasn't true
| either.
| 0134340 wrote:
| It used to be called boycotting but it, as a thought-stopping
| cliche, couldn't be assigned to only one party and wouldn't be
| as catchy so they had to make one up. Same with "political
| correctness" or "sjw". In the US if you said the wrong things,
| historically, that weren't politically correct, you'd be
| ostracized or if you were of the wrong class, race or religion,
| the social warriors at the time would want justice and seek to
| persecute you as you upset the order of what they saw as just.
| This has been going on all throughout history but if you assign
| them, these actions that you don't like and of a group you
| don't like, a new name and equate it with a certain political
| group, you can more effectively distinguish and dehumanize the
| other group as an out-group.
|
| Personally, Horseshoe Theory makes sense. The extremes of both,
| as Snowden was implying with China and the US, are more like
| each other than not. Should any get their way and you're in the
| out-group, you're on a scale of fucked. Even the "peaceful"
| religions or ideologies are guilty of persecuting those in the
| outgroup in sometimes very heinous ways. Incidentally, it's
| strange, but not surprising, that he didn't mention Russia, his
| own host, where censorship is even worse than the US.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| "cancellation" is just social ostracisation. Both sides do it,
| it's a pretty universal human behaviour.
| missinfo wrote:
| "We tried to ruin you but we failed so we didn't really try to
| ruin you"
| jtbayly wrote:
| So... is Snowden on the right or left? Think carefully before
| you answer.
|
| If he's on the left, why are you responding negatively to his
| concern for cancel culture by attacking the right? If he's on
| the right, then perhaps there is more cancelling on the right
| than you want to admit?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > So... is Snowden on the right or left?
|
| Why is it so important that he identified by one of those?
| debacle wrote:
| It isn't to you or me, but some people only have two boxes
| to put people in.
| jtbayly wrote:
| It's only important in the context of somebody responding
| to his writing by claiming the right have no right to be
| concerned about cancel culture.
| sharemywin wrote:
| After reading that I think he just said buy bitcoin.
| foxhop wrote:
| Freedom is a tricky word for people to grok.
|
| This is because people look at it from the FREEDOM TO perspective
| rather than the more valid FREEDOM FROM perspective.
| yosito wrote:
| The phrase that stands out to me in this is "the riot of human
| diversity". It's a great phrase. Probably worthy of a book or
| even a manifesto.
|
| I'm a multicultural person. Dual US/EU citizen. I've spent years
| living in each of the US, South America, the Caribbean and
| Europe.
|
| Since the mid-2010s, I've been acutely aware of different
| societal pressures to conform, and I've been "cancelled" by
| various groups of aquaintences over having opinions or failing to
| have opinions that the group demanded. Thankfully, I've got a few
| loyal friends, and a strong sense of self that have allowed me to
| recover and thrive.
|
| Through it all, one thing I've learned very well is that people
| in the world have very diverse views and opinions. It's a
| beautiful thing, and I will never make someone my enemy over
| their views. I have one moral standard to which I hold myself and
| others: do no harm. Beyond that, there is room for tolerance and
| disagreement.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| disagree with this and the language of "riot" of diversity is
| very telling.
|
| It's a sort of purely individual definition of freedom in which
| a free society is one of permanent dissent. Dissent not as a
| tool to come to consensus but as a way of life and it is
| fundamentally anti-governmental, it sounds nice but does not
| work. If everyone assumed this position, the end result is
| permanent dysfunction.
|
| I can't remember who said it might have been Zizek but he
| proposed that the proper understanding of democratic freedom is
| something akin to: "Say your opinion, say it freely, come to a
| consensus, but then shut up and obey.". That is to say, in any
| group that wants to function, diversity or dissent is not a
| permanent state of affairs, at some point when one needs to act
| options need to be closed off. Abstract freedom is always
| embedded within social order. You can only freely walk the
| street because you rely on the fact that everyone else conforms
| to the rules of traffic.
|
| "Do no harm" sounds nice but it's not sufficient, it may even
| be wrong because harm cannot be entirely avoided. You cannot
| navigate the world and act in the world as a group without
| actively making concrete choices, sometimes to the detriment of
| individuals. People like Snowden or Ai Weiwei celebrate
| resistance because permanent resistance _is their job_.
| Rebelling is their profession. It 's very sympathetic on the
| surface but it does not address how people ought to organize
| society.
| lodi wrote:
| > I have one moral standard to which I hold myself and others:
| do no harm.
|
| Right, but who determines what's "harmful"? Is it more harmful
| to punish a child or to not punish him? Is a cartoon of Jesus
| harmful? Muhammad? Are "micro-agressions" actually traumatic?
|
| Furthermore, what does it mean to "do" something? Is "meat-
| eating" a default state, or are you actively "doing" harm every
| day you continue to not be a vegan? Are you "doing" harm if you
| purchase some sneakers without knowing whether they were
| produced in a polluting or exploitative manner?
|
| ---
|
| I'm personally not a moral relativist; I think there are better
| and worse answers to most of the issues above. But I've just
| found that short commandments like "do no evil" or "do unto
| others as you would have them do unto you" don't really offer
| any real guidance when tested against challenging real-world
| ethical problems.
| yosito wrote:
| > Right, but who determines what's "harmful"?
|
| Well, it's certainly not determined by some objective
| standard, or a god. Every culture, and even every individual
| has different moral views. When I say "do no harm" that's a
| relative statement, relative to the context and parties
| involved. What's morally apporiate changes depending on the
| moral contract between parties. I can call my drinking buddy
| a "fucking idiot" for making a mistake, and there's no harm
| done. But if I call my grandmother a "fucking idiot", it
| would harm her a great deal. What's harmful in one context
| may be fine in another. Morality is like an instinct that
| humans have evolved to allow us to detect when something may
| be considered harmful to ourselves, our partners, our
| community and our planet. It's not always an infallible
| sense, but it's often pretty good and useful to pay attention
| to.
|
| Back to your question: who determines what's harmful? Our
| innate sense of morality has evolved to show us what's
| harmful and what's not. The more each of us focuses on
| listening to and improving our own sense of morality and
| harm, the better we'll be at making decisions that avoid harm
| as a society and as a species. Ultimately, I'm a humanist,
| and one of my favorite quotes about morality is GK
| Chesterton's response when asked to write an article
| answering the question, "What's wrong with the world?". His
| response, "Dear sir, I am."
|
| One reason I don't concern myself too much with the morality
| of others, is that the only person's morality I am
| responsible for determining is my own.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Indeed, it seems the first struggle should be to develop
| the ability to do the things we think are correct before
| even considering that the most correct thing is.
|
| If you sit around developing elaborate ethical systems as
| to how to act in every situation, but fail to _live_ that
| system, then it 's ultimately a pointless waste of time.
| It's better to a decent guy all the time than a
| hypothetical saint acting like a practical asshole.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Our innate sense of morality has evolved to show us
| what's harmful and what's not.
|
| Who is this "our" and "us" you're referring to if everyone
| has a different sense of morally? Are you talking about the
| evolution of a "culture" or of "every individual." If these
| are all different, why would their "evolutions" have the
| same goal?
|
| This all seems very empty. What's the difference between
| what you've said here and "all people have different moral
| frameworks, and they all follow those" (which I don't think
| is possible to dispute)?
| yosito wrote:
| Our/us refers to humanity. I'm a humanist. Though I
| suppose other species also have evolved a moral sense.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Richard Dawkins once used the word " _humane_ -ist" (and
| _humane_ -ism) to be considerate of other species. Though
| I like the idea, the word feels a bit "stretched"; I
| don't know why. (Maybe it's the humanist in me that's
| speaking :-))
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Never change! Diverse thought is much more important than
| "diversity" itself. These days it seems there is tolerance for
| the superficial diversity, but no tolerance for diverse
| thought. If you have a controversial thought you will be
| persecuted by the group until you conform. Also it seems if you
| are part of a certain diversity sometimes you are pressured to
| have a certain thought even harder than another person.
|
| Try to have a debate with them first, if you are met with
| hostility they aren't your friends, they don't know how to
| convey their supposed thoughts or even control their emotions.
| Politely tell them to fuck off and find a better group of more
| accepting people.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Great comment, and tolerance and disagreement is to be
| encouraged.
|
| Where I find a lot of serious conflict and resentment is when
| it comes to expanding on 'do no harm'. For example, I'm in
| favor of democratizing corporations, on the German model
| perhaps, and I view investment capitalism as a decrepit dead-
| end system, and the financialization of the economy as an
| unmitigated disaster.
|
| Now, a lot of people I've talked to view these views as
| 'harmful' indeed. Investment capitalism, they believe, is the
| greatest engine of economic and social development in human
| history and any attempt to role it back would destroy the
| economy and bring mass ruin, poverty, desperation, North Korean
| dystopia etc.
|
| I usually respond by saying, well, the employees of a
| corporation should have just as much power over major corporate
| decisions as the shareholders in the corporation, and capital
| flows should not be entirely controlled by a few billionaires
| and their pet political puppets. If the general public believes
| capital should go to say, renewable energy corporations rather
| than fossil fuel corporations, there should be a democratic
| process, well, why not?
|
| So, we then need people to explicitly describe their own
| personal views on what 'do no harm' means before we can have a
| discussion in which participants do not view each other as
| threats to their own survival...
| nybble41 wrote:
| > For example, I'm in favor of democratizing corporations, on
| the German model perhaps, and I view investment capitalism as
| a decrepit dead-end system, and the financialization of the
| economy as an unmitigated disaster.
|
| I disagree with you on every single point, but I would still
| support your right to believe these things and not consider
| it "harm".
|
| Where we might run into problems lies in how you decide to go
| about implementing your proposed solution. To me the standard
| political approach of imposing rules backed up by fines,
| prison sentences, and capital punishment (beyond the usual
| proportional, reciprocal responses to others' actions) _is_
| harm in and of itself regardless of the intended outcome or
| "democratic process" and this point is non-negotiable. But if
| you want to collect together a group of like-minded
| individuals and create a society to your liking through
| entirely voluntary arrangements, be my guest.
| jjulius wrote:
| >I have one moral standard to which I hold myself and others:
| do no harm.
|
| How do you define "harm"? What if one's view(s) prompt them to
| vote in favor of things (or support policies - take your pick)
| that bring harm to others?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Maybe exercise some humility instead of jumping to the
| conclusion that you are right and they are wrong? I'd take
| the opportunity to seek to understand how someone living in
| the same world as you, with access to the same facts, and the
| same mental faculties, how such a person has come to a
| different conclusion about what does harm.
| [deleted]
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > and I've been "cancelled" by various groups of aquaintences
| over having opinions or failing to have opinions that the group
| demanded.
|
| Lost a job? Lost housing? Lost income? Were you "cancelled" or
| did various groups of acquaintances simply decide they didn't
| enjoy your company and that feeling led to a gradual (or maybe
| not so gradual) falling away of contact and interaction?
|
| I'm not for one moment suggesting that you should have
| different opinions. But in general people have both:
| 1. opinions 2. preferences on how and when opinions are
| expressed 3. preferences for the company of people who
| don't violate (2)
|
| If you and your various (past) groups of acquaintances really
| didn't agree on (1), then it's maybe entirely natural that over
| time, you'd no longer be a part of those groups. And if you
| disagreed about (2), then it's more than just natural, it's
| inevitable.
|
| I have friends with whom I do not agree on a number of things,
| but they tend to be things that we don't need to talk about
| much, if ever. If either of us ever pushed their point in these
| domains, I suspect we would fairly quickly cease to be friends.
|
| I have some other friends (and even a few family members) where
| we don't agree, but we do agree about _how_ to disagree, how to
| debate, how to argue, what kinds of evidential levels for our
| opinions are required if we are going to disagree, and how we
| will end discussion. In these cases, (1) is not shared but (2)
| is, and so these are people whose company I can still actively
| enjoy.
|
| I don't want to hang out much with people who see the world
| very differently from me, and more importantly, people whose
| timing and methods of expressing their opinions are quite
| different than what I find appropriate. If I'm not friends with
| these people, I haven't "cancelled" them, we've just followed
| an entirely natural path towards finding groups of people we
| can enjoy being with.
| Kye wrote:
| Some people's idea of free speech is really about their
| freedom to punch down, and they suddenly become very anti-
| free speech when criticized. Then they double down, and
| people set boundaries, and they complain about those
| boundaries...
|
| Much of the noise about cancel culture looks a lot like
| DARVO.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| There was a great line in last Sunday's Curb Your
| Enthusiasm where Larry David (half) jokes about free
| speech, saying something like "I don't know about free
| speech. Well, _I_ should have it. The constitution should
| have said free speech for Larry David, everyone else, check
| with him first. "
|
| Larry is effectively holding up a mirror to the type of
| people you describe, and yeah what you say is true about
| people who complain about cancel culture, too. I try to
| engage anyone worried about losing a job due to something
| like that. I'll ask, why don't you organize with your co-
| workers and collectively bargain for labor protections, or
| consider voting in politicians who are for stronger labor
| laws, and all of a sudden they remember that their
| corporatist leanings are stronger than any feelings they
| may have about the "cancel culture" boogeyman.
|
| It's plain to see that too much of the discourse about free
| speech or cancel culture doesn't come from a place of good
| faith...
| nybble41 wrote:
| > I'll ask, why don't you organize with your co-workers
| and collectively bargain for labor protections, or
| consider voting in politicians who are for stronger labor
| laws, and all of a sudden they remember that their
| corporatist leanings are stronger than any feelings they
| may have about the "cancel culture" boogeyman.
|
| It is possible to disagree with your proposed solutions
| _as well as_ cancel culture. The problem with cancel
| culture is not in the fact that people are free to
| (dis)associate with others as they choose, so your
| suggestions to _force_ association do nothing to fix the
| core issue. You may be allowed to keep your job, under
| duress, but you 've still been "cancelled". The problem
| is that some people resort to disassociation rather than
| practicing tolerance; this is a subtle social problem and
| requires a more nuanced solution.
| [deleted]
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have to confess that I don't understand your comment in
| any way.
|
| If labor laws or a labor contract prevent you from losing
| your job for tweeting "COVID19 is no worse than having
| your left foot amputated", then when you do in fact tweet
| this, and do not lose your job, surely you have neither
| lost your job, nor been "cancelled".
|
| Maybe I just don't understand what you mean.
| nybble41 wrote:
| Being "cancelled" is about people's attitude toward you,
| not whether you remain employed. People will still know
| what you said, and still not want anything to do with
| you; that's what I mean when I say you're still
| "cancelled". They may behave immaculately professional
| toward you (because they're required to) but it won't be
| a pleasant place to work, to say the least, and you
| probably won't choose to remain long unless you're
| unusually stubborn.
|
| In any case--I don't care for cancel culture myself, but
| I wouldn't risk the far more fundamental freedom of
| association over it. Social ostracism ("cancelling") is
| sometimes necessary, but only as a last resort. People
| need to be shown that there are better ways to resolve
| disagreements and react to objectionable behavior, past
| or present, which don't involve rejecting the entire
| person and all the _good_ things that they 've done.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Wait, you're now using "cancelled" for "people know what
| you said and don't want anything to do with you", and
| suggesting that this is a problem?
|
| The alternative appears to be "people know what you said,
| but ignore it." Is that somehow supposed to be better in
| some way than "people actually have opinions about good
| and bad, and act on them" ?
|
| This just reminds me of what was supposed to be a funny
| (if sad) joke by Asheigh Brilliant:
| please don't judge me by what I do, or say, or who I
| really am.
|
| > People need to be shown that there are better ways to
| resolve disagreements and react to objectionable
| behavior, past or present, which don't involve rejecting
| the entire person and all the good things that they've
| done.
|
| Implicit in this is the claim that people don't already
| do this. Implicit in this is the idea that people cannot
| possibly be already performing this calculus and saying
| "well, yep, even though Tonya from accounting has done a
| lot of great things here and has been great to work with,
| her attitudes and language about <X> overrides all that,
| and we need to make that clear".
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Wait, you're now using "cancelled" for "people know
| what you said and don't want anything to do with you",
| and suggesting that this is a problem?
|
| Yes, it's a problem when it's to the point of completely
| disassociating from you given the opportunity to do so,
| and the comment was made outside of work, in a completely
| different forum, and not to them or about them. They're
| not willing to engage with you and try to change your
| mind, or even just to continue working with you (without
| being forced). They're jumping straight to outright
| ostracism, or as close to it as they can manage. And
| anyone who doesn't do the same is next in line--guilt by
| association is a big part of cancel culture. Often it's
| not about what _you_ did but rather about your failure to
| publicly condemn and "cancel" someone else for what
| _they_ did (or perhaps only have been accused of doing).
|
| I'm not saying they should just ignore whatever specific
| thing it was that gave offense, though sometimes that is
| the right approach in a professional context. Choosing to
| working together while ignoring irreconcilable
| differences is sub-optimal but better than not
| associating at all. That, however, is something that
| people should choose for themselves, not something they
| should be forced into.
|
| > Implicit in this is the claim that people don't already
| do this.
|
| I'm sure some people do, and if they don't feel that they
| can continue to associate with someone based on what
| they've personally done then I support their choice. In
| the vast majority of cases, however, a more measured
| response is warranted which doesn't involve burning all
| bridges and driving the offending party into the outer
| fringes of society where they are likely to encounter
| others who were similarly exiled and become ever more
| entrenched in their positions.
| yosito wrote:
| > I don't want to hang out much with people who see the world
| very differently from me
|
| That sounds like a perfect way to become a closed-minded
| bigot, using the original definition of the word.
|
| I have friends and family that see the world quite
| differently than me. And I still take time to visit them,
| listen to them, and care for them.
|
| When I was cancelled, I was actively attacked, sometimes
| literally having my life threatened, lost some jobs and
| memberships in different organizations. Mostly for failing to
| be offended by things the group told me I was required to be
| offended by.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > That sounds like a perfect way to become a closed-minded
| bigot, using the original definition of the word.
|
| What I choose to read or watch is really completely
| orthogonal with who I choose to spend time with. I enjoy
| spending a significant amount of time investigating
| contrary points of view, and find it very valuable.
|
| That does not mean I wish to spend the time I spend with
| others hanging out with people who actively hold contrary
| positions _particularly if we do not agree on the terms of
| discussion_. I can be respectful of those people [0], and
| listen to them, without making the choice to spend
| (optional) time with them.
|
| If your cancelling really involved those things, then I am
| sorry that you had to experience this, and am glad that
| you've found some peace in the aftermath. An awful lot of
| what is called "cancelling" at the present time does not
| amount to the things you've described.
|
| [0] EDIT: actually, this is dishonest. If someone does not
| agree with the same terms of discussion, I find it very
| hard to actually respect them, even if I can "be
| respectful" in person.
| jaywalk wrote:
| If you can't even respect someone who sees the world
| differently, how can you do any real "investigation" of
| actual contrary views? It's sad to me that you don't even
| see a problem with this, because this is exactly why
| things are they way they are today.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I didn't say I could not respect someone who sees the
| world differently. I said I could not respect someone who
| doesn't agree to the same terms of discussion.
|
| Let's take a recent article linked on HN, on astral codex
| by Scott Alexander regarding Ivermectin. If I was to
| engage in a discussion with someone about Ivermectin, I
| would more or less insist that we both read this article
| as a starting point, since it already gathers, critiques
| and synthesizes almost every study that has been done. If
| someone wishes to defend the use of Ivermectin in
| connection with COVID19, then I'd have to insist that
| they answer the evidence presented in that article that
| strongly suggests that there is no reason to use it in
| parts of the world that do not have significant levels of
| parasitic worm infestation.
|
| Now, perhaps they have some similar "reference" article
| that they'd insist we also read, and also had some
| similar basic evidence that they feel I should respond
| to. That's fine.
|
| But we have to agree that our discussion is going to be
| evidence based, and that when I bring up evidence that
| contradicts their stated claims, they need to respond to
| the evidence by doing more than saying "I don't believe
| that'. Same in reverse, obviously.
|
| If they can't do that, then sure, I can't respect them.
| If they can do that, then regardless of where we end up,
| I'm going to have respect for their position, even if I
| don't agree with it.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > do no harm. Beyond that, there is room for tolerance and
| disagreement.
|
| This is just a nice-sounding platitude. What is or isn't
| harmful is not written in stone. On the contrary, is a hugely
| polarizing topic that informs the legal system. People get to
| live or die because of views and opinions.
| yosito wrote:
| > People get to live or die because of views and opinions.
|
| I disagree that my (largely uninformed) opinions really carry
| that much weight. If I were a doctor and patients were asking
| my medical opinion, then it would be extremely immoral to
| give them a harmful opinion. My opinioms about which
| politician said something racist or taboo are likely
| inconsequential. And of course if I did find that my opinion
| were having harmful consequences, I would change it, because
| I'm a moral person.
| fdagobrrrrr wrote:
| Shut up and wear your mask slave!
|
| Take this vax!
|
| Wear are your papers!?
|
| Have you gotten your booster shot yet? Why not? No more buying
| groceries until you take your third booster shot and attest you
| will bend to our will SLAVE!
| b1gb4dc0v1d wrote:
| Gotta love all these comments about censorship but not a peep
| that FB/Twitter were running a _huge_ censorship campaign against
| Trump last year - like covering up the fact that Biden 's son was
| fucking underage girls on camera and was under multiple federal
| investigations for corruption.
|
| Also, funny the same people here talking about freedom are the
| very first people to declare you must be wearing a mask and be
| vax'd with boosters and a return to lockdowns.
|
| You are all posers.
| b1gb4dc0v1d wrote:
| l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l
|
| You can't handle the truth? That forced
| masking/vaxxing/passports are not only anti-freedom but violent
| terrorist activity? Or the truth that the president in chief is
| a FUCKING PEDOPHILE!
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| bruh, you're embarrassing yourself.
| [deleted]
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Freedom is the default for existence.
|
| The only way to not have freedom is for others to remove it from
| you by force or threat of it. The threat of it is what causes us
| to self limit our own freedoms. (sometimes for a greater good,
| sometimes not)
| secondaryacct wrote:
| That means nothing: I want to be free to copulate with any mate
| - what should you do when I approach yours? Well, this is this
| balance and how to reach it that is the difficulty: what you
| say has no substance and everyone agrees.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| So you choose not to under threat of consequences. Or take
| the risk.
| elliekelly wrote:
| "Freedom" can be given up by choice, too. Often because the
| trade-off is better for both. Marriage, for example.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Yep, I said the same thing with "limit our own freedom".
| sdave wrote:
| Freedom is a .... consequence , of ....
| [deleted]
| milky2028 wrote:
| Is it just me or is this nonsensical trash that seems to say
| absolutely nothing?
| milky2028 wrote:
| Like, I'm a Snowden guy. I rep this dude but this article is
| garbage.
| testing192847 wrote:
| agreed
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'd argue that before freedom can be a goal or a direction it's
| necessarily an identity first. When we think of freedom as an
| external thing, it's a reaction that defines itself as
| inferiorized to the thing one is becoming free _from_.
|
| I like Snowden's thinking and think he's one of the greatest
| exemplars of courage alive today, and not to use his personal
| email newsletter as a foil, but I think he missed some key depth.
|
| The crux I think of the culture war is whether the ideal of
| freedom originates from identity - or is the effect of
| experience. This crux is related to the tension between
| individual and collective good, but not defined by it. I think
| the line is deeper.
|
| The peculiar aspect of viewing freedom as an identity is it
| necessitates - if not a belief in the divine, at least a
| presumption of it. If you believe freedom is an effect of
| circumstances, it relates you to the material world as being
| subject of it. If you see freedom as a state of existence or an
| axiom of being, it has to originate from somewhere, which implies
| it was made or granted - and not by humanity.
|
| This is why the culture war isn't intellectual or about ideas or
| a specific "religion," but it is the exact same kind of religious
| conflict we've recorded for milennia, because it's over beliefs
| about identity. "Attacks" or subjugation of freedom isn't an
| attack on an ideal, they become an attack on "free people."
|
| However, the complement or opposition to this free identity is
| the one where people identify as un-free, or as subjects to
| forces - unfortunately for us all, those forces are of the
| freedom-identified. Unlike freedom, this view doesn't come from
| divine presumption, but material physical expereince, either of
| real direct oppression and abuse, or via the logic of ideas in
| language. Their belief comes from things that mostly happened to
| them. It's a founding axiom of their identity, where your first
| words are for things that reflect your identity as a subject,
| slave, or oppressed. This identity requires an earthly oppressor,
| independent of whether it is real or mostly symbolic. For all my
| criticisms of it, it's a consequence of lived experience and not
| faith in some divine force.
|
| Anyway, into heady territory here, but on this freedom/culture
| issue I think we've tried everything else. If we're doing pithy
| aphorisms, I'd say instead that identities are irreconcilable. We
| can co-exist, but we cannot fully know or understand each other,
| even if the greatest thing in life is the little bits we do get
| to know and understand about others.
|
| I'd say that recognizing freedom as those parts of others we
| existentially cannot understand and treating it as unexplored
| opportunity for growth goes a long way to reconciling the
| interests of those who identify as free, and those who do not.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a
| toxic obsession with "national security" -- a euphemism for state
| supremacy -- are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle:
| a common extreme._
|
| Amen brother.
|
| I realized that National Security is all about US Gov security &
| US Gov partner's security & major campaign donor security and
| that's about it.
| ttfkam wrote:
| You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your
| humanity.
|
| Want to know how to fight back against authoritarianism? Look to
| the folks who've been fighting against racism for (literally)
| hundreds of years.
|
| Racism in the US is just fascism that hasn't hit white people
| yet.
| 0134340 wrote:
| Of course, HN readers are equating you with Hitler now after
| what you said and I'm not surprised. But just so you don't
| trigger them next time, a better phrase that you may agree with
| and that won't be so triggering might be 'you deserve as much
| tolerance as you give others'.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Racism has deep roots in humanity, and likely other apes and
| beyond. Its roots are in an evolutionary-beneficial distrust of
| others that is now maladaptive.
|
| Which groups fighting racism are you referring to specifically?
| bluetomcat wrote:
| > Racism in the US is just fascism that hasn't hit white people
| yet.
|
| It's rooted in classism and in a special breed of expressively-
| aggressive individualism. Self-identification and self-
| expression is paramount. You are forced to identify as a member
| of many different groups and outwardly express your thoughts
| and opinions.
| ttfkam wrote:
| There are Democrats elected to office that are publicly anti-
| abortion, pro-coal, etc.
|
| Can you name any GOP who are pro-choice, anti-coal, etc. I
| mean, they're getting called out for saying the election was
| fair and that 1/6 was an insurrection rather than tourists.
|
| There is definitely tribalism on all sides, but there is a
| marked cultish aspect to one faction, cult of personality
| batteries included.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Not too long ago there were hardly any Democrats that were
| pro-abortion either, or even pro gay marriage.
|
| Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are pro-abortion
| Republicans.
|
| There's a lot to unpack in the rest of your comment I'm not
| going to get into as it's ironically pretty tribalistic.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| That's a pretty interesting and thought provoking point. Well
| said!
| ttfkam wrote:
| Lol! "Flagged"
|
| Not because it was off topic since I was responding to a
| point Snowden made.
|
| Not because it was threatening anyone or even name-calling.
|
| Not because it was inciting violence.
|
| On a site that touts championing free speech as a paramount
| ideal, a topic about freedom of thought, and an open disdain
| for "groupthink", my comment was flagged.
|
| I swear, this orange site has absolutely no sense of irony.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Your comment broke several of the site guidelines, so it
| was correctly flagged by users.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| I'm not sure where you got "a site that touts $foo, $bar,
| $baz" etc. None of those things are "touted" by HN. People
| make up such generalizations, of course, but they seem
| mostly to be a product of the passions of the perceiver.
| Those with opposite passions arrive at just the opposite
| generalizations.
| bobornotbob wrote:
| "You don't extend tolerance to those who <insert your
| definition here>" is the argument that was made by every
| authoritarian regime in the world.
| ttfkam wrote:
| "You do not extend tolerance to those who are kicking the
| crap out of you because they are Black" is the argument that
| was made by every authoritarian regime in the world.
|
| See how dumb that sounds? There are absolutely instances
| where intolerance to some behavior is acceptable. The
| question only becomes, "Are they denying another's humanity
| or not?"
|
| Not denying another's humanity and right to simply exist?
| Then it's not authoritarian. You should tolerate them. Easy
| peasy.
|
| Claiming simply being homosexual should be a crime or that
| police should have the right to kill people who aren't posing
| an immediate threat? That's authoritarianism. You should not
| tolerate them. Easy peasy.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| >You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your
| humanity.
|
| Straight outta Mein Kampf
| axhl wrote:
| Not quite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| the_drunkard wrote:
| I actually think about this paradox relative to the uptick
| in crime in major cities.
|
| Take SF for example where crime has seemingly spiked and
| there's no willingness to enforce the law /prosecute
| offenders.
|
| On one hand, a version of Hammurabi's Code ( _to cut off
| the hand of thieves) is probably inappropriate. On the
| other, we 've created an environment where there's no
| repercussion for breaking the law.
|
| Personally, I find myself favoring Hammurabi's approach.
|
| _I don't believe his code specifically addressed petty
| theft; allow me to paint with broad strokes.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| The premise for Hitler's hatred of the Jews was that they
| view non Jews as cattle who exist solely to serve the Jews,
| and were subverting German culture to achieve this end.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Posting a wiki article is not an argument
| nautilius wrote:
| Well yes, it directly corrects the wrong attribution made
| above.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| How
| nautilius wrote:
| Try reading it, maybe you can connect the dots!
| ttfkam wrote:
| Update: I misspoke. Hitler absolutely accused Jews of
| treating Christian Germans of being lesser than themselves
| while arguing that Germans like himself were superior to
| everyone and everyone else was subhuman.
|
| -------
|
| Have you actually read Mein Kampf?
|
| Hitler never claimed the Jews were denying his humanity nor
| had German Jews ever denied the humanity of Christian Jews.
|
| Hitler on the other hand did indeed deny the humanity of
| German Jews. Perhaps you heard about how that turned out.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Have YOU ever read Mein Kampf? The central thesis is that
| Jews view non Jews as sub human servants.
| ttfkam wrote:
| "All who are not of a good race are chaff."
|
| That was his central thesis. The demonization of Jews was
| a supporting premise because all effective authoritarians
| need someone to blame for why they're not on top.
| the_drunkard wrote:
| I think you just stumbled over your own logic.
|
| Hitler used the same line of thinking you just
| regurgitated.
|
| He branded a group of people as denying German humanity
| (evil usupers looking to cause harm from within) and used
| that as justification for the Holocaust.
|
| I think you need a time out.
| ttfkam wrote:
| "All who are not of a good race are chaff."
|
| Let's all be honest, Hitler was all over the place in
| Mein Kampf.
| the_drunkard wrote:
| > You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your
| humanity.
|
| Probably a bad ethos to harbour, one that I imagine quickly
| rationalizes violent behavior.
|
| And I think we're all fortunate that in the US there is no
| prevailing force denying any specific race of their humanity.
| Is there scar tissue from the past? Certainly.
|
| As Snowden states "freedom is a direction" and we've certainly
| moved in the right direction over the past 30 years.
|
| > Racism in the US is just fascism that hasn't hit white people
| yet.
|
| Odd foreshadowing, but let's hope that true fascism never
| metastasizes in the US.
|
| I am curious as to who you believe is currently denying your
| /others humanity in the US?
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| Sure, there's lots of people on the far right saying things
| like "Muslims are terrorists who are trying to invade us" or
| "globalism is a plot by the international jewry to do so-and-
| so".
| ttfkam wrote:
| Imagine you were a Black woman born in late 1865. You were
| among the first never to have known slavery. You witnessed
| the first Black folks elected to Congress and even considered
| it normal.
|
| Then Reconstruction ends with a whimper. Burning crosses are
| showing up everywhere. Thousands flee north as a reign of
| terror grows. Your voting rights are curtailed then
| eliminated. When Black folks are elected, they are driven out
| of office by gunfire, and the federal government does
| nothing. You were never eligible for the same jobs as white
| folks, but now you can't even drink from the same fountains.
|
| Would you say that woman lives in a democracy/democratic
| republic or a fascist hellscape?
|
| Then some legislation is passed. The folks wrongly accused
| remain in jail, the dead remain dead, and the ones who killed
| them are never brought to justice. The change is considered
| an injustice by many, who leave their political party in
| droves and welcomed by the other party in a "Southern
| Strategy."
|
| Things seems to quiet down a little though representation in
| media either wholely excludes her descendants or
| disproportionately shows them on shows like "Cops". The
| history of that legislation is watered down and most of the
| details of what happened before are not taught in schools.
| Some public schools even have teachers arguing the
| authoritarianism was justifiable. See: Lost Cause.
|
| Then a man with her skin color is elected president. Those
| same people who claimed that the presidency must hold certain
| moral and capability requirements are confronted with a man
| with all required qualifications and then some.
|
| After his largely scandal-free tenure, those same folks, many
| of whom were alive and among those forced by the National
| Guard to treat people with his skin color as a human being,
| gave up all pretense to morality and competence in the
| presidency to elect a man who had neither.
|
| And then we he lost re-election, they attempted to storm the
| Capital and kill those that would replace him. This was not
| quiet either. Folks brought lumber and BUILT a gallows where
| they chanted for the Vice President to be hung for his lack
| of loyalty to the outgoing president.
|
| Did I mention the man with a knee on his neck for the better
| part of ten minutes, whose murderers would have gotten away
| with it had it not been for uncut civilian video footage of
| the event from multiple angles?
|
| Or the woman shot in her bed with no one held to account for
| her death?
|
| Or the literally dozens of instances off the top of my head
| where a police officer kills or maims someone ON VIDEO with
| only a slap on the wrist if that?
|
| How about elected officials publicly stating that
| homosexuality or being trans should be a capital crime?
|
| Or legislation popping up around the country that bodily
| autonomy is a fundamental right in law unless you are female
| between approximately the ages of 12 and 50.
|
| I'll restate: racism and sexism and homophobia are all
| examples of fascism that haven't hit wealthy white men yet.
|
| And unfortunately poor white men and white women in general
| have failed to recognize the difference between power and
| proximity to power. To everyone's detriment.
| the_drunkard wrote:
| That's a lot of text, but I fail to see your point. Is
| there one?
|
| In keeping with the spirit of the author; freedom is not a
| goal, but a direction. And broadly speaking, we're moving
| in the right direction.
|
| Unfortunately, you sound like you've become somewhat of a
| zealot. A byproduct of being spoon fed rage via the nightly
| media /twitter cycle.
|
| Statistically there's one specific group of peoples that
| drive a disproportionate amount of violent crime.
| Specifically murder, rape, robbery, and assault.
|
| Raw data is here: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-
| the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
|
| I think stepping back and realizing how far we've come, not
| only as a country but also globally is worth recognizing.
| Harboring venom from past wrongs won't do you any good; if
| anything it appears to be obfuscating the present.
| ttfkam wrote:
| We literally have folks in office that called a violent
| insurrection during a peaceful transition of power
| following a democratic election "just tourists".
|
| And that's not counting the elected officials who
| actively abetted the insurrection.
|
| And most members of their party are pissed at the few who
| are willing to call it what it was: a violent
| insurrection attempting to overthrow the democratically-
| elected government.
|
| I think you overestimate "how far we've come."
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| > I'll restate: racism and sexism and homophobia are all
| examples of fascism that haven't hit wealthy white men yet.
|
| lolwut
|
| You can't call something you think is bad, and just make
| the conclusion its the same thing as something else you
| think is bad. And just make it self evident.
| ttfkam wrote:
| I guess we've found the person who considers it debatable
| whether people of color or homosexuals should be treated
| as human beings.
|
| Please note I never said that wealthy white men should be
| considered lesser. Simply that policies put in place by
| wealthy white men have clearly caused harm throughout US
| history.
|
| People of color never signed off on redlining.
|
| There has not been legislation giving non-white male
| folks more rights than anyone else, but there have been
| many many laws seeking to limit their rights relative to
| others.
|
| Loss of privileges other do not have is not the same as
| oppression. (Though it often feels that way to the
| privileged.)
| ttfkam wrote:
| For reference, I was born less than ten years after my
| parents' marriage was made legal across the US.
|
| I am not yet 50 years old.
|
| Ruby Bridges only recently became eligible for Social
| Security. Many of the people who fought to keep her out of
| the classroom are still alive today. They are elected
| officials. They taught in the schools. They raised their
| kids.
|
| Now ask yourself if a law passed today would change your
| mind on an issue that's important to you.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| "You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your
| humanity."
|
| And this is how fascism starts
| ttfkam wrote:
| Would Jim Crow have been avoided by Black folks tolerating
| white folks more?
|
| Was the Trail of Tears due to insufficient tolerance by the
| Cherokee and Seminole?
|
| Or should the intolerance of those who denied their humanity
| have been resisted and not tolerated?
|
| There is no "both sides" here. At no time have white folks in
| the US been into camps or slaughtered with sanction of the
| state by people of color.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| no, it isn't. Banning parties that openly call for genocide
| (for example) is not fascism, it's having anti-genocide
| principles.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Saving the Germans from genocide and exploitation by the
| Jews is exactly the justification Hitler used
| beaconstudios wrote:
| except that Jewish Germans weren't calling for the
| genocide of Christian Germans. The premise was a lie,
| constructed to scapegoat the Jewish population for the
| Germans losing the Great War [1].
|
| Banning people from calling for genocide doesn't apply to
| governments committing genocide to back up a lie. That's
| a pretty obvious distinction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
| defaultprimate wrote:
| You made my argument for me. When those in power use the
| justification above and the justification is not based on
| reality, it has disastrous consequences.
|
| It's not a valid justification, and authoritarians don't
| care about objective reality or rationality.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| when authoritarians get into power they can do whatever
| the hell they want. That's why the point is to stop that
| happening in the first place. Hitler turned himself into
| a dictator pretty much immediately after (possibly
| staging) the Reichstag fire and declaring a state of
| emergency.
|
| The whole point is to stop people like him getting in in
| the first place, and you don't do that by making calls to
| genocide viable.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Hitler was elected based on the premise that he would
| save the German people from destruction, the exact
| justification you excuse, not simply because he hated
| Jews.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| and making it illegal for parties to call for genocide
| would've helped his campaign, how? It doesn't necessarily
| harm his campaign as he could/did just dogwhistle
| instead, but it certainly wouldn't help it.
|
| FWIW Hitler wasn't the example I was thinking of when
| using that example. He didn't AFAIK explicitly call for
| genocide but he did dehumanise Jewish people with
| propaganda.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Uh it would have been a good legal basis to seize
| property from and criminalize the Jews since it was "easy
| to prove" that's what they were doing.
|
| You know... Exactly what actually happened.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| > making it illegal for parties to call for genocide
| would've helped his campaign, how?
|
| I don't know if you're arguing in bad faith or just not
| responding to what I'm writing, but this is pretty
| clearly a waste of time.
| tremon wrote:
| I would argue that fascism already started with those who
| would deny others humanity, regardless of whether they're
| shown tolerance.
| ukj wrote:
| "Freedom" is a symbol. Like all symbols and all symbolism it
| means nothing to Bob and everything to Bill. It means one things
| to Sarah and another to Sally.
|
| One person's freedom is another's tyranny and vice versa.
|
| It's all a treacherous language game.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Freedom means different things to different people, but it's
| not because it's all a treacherous language game. It's because
| the concept is complex. The forces that underlie freedom like
| choice and power are not just treacherous language games. They
| also mean different things to different people, but they're
| very real at a base level.
|
| If it were all a treacherous language game, then playing would
| be futile. There would be nothing to talk about.
|
| To the contrary, Snowden is talking about Freedom from the
| context of a society that was a humanitarian, economic, and
| cultural disaster - Mao's China. Those failures were far from a
| language game.
| debacle wrote:
| No one is ever truly free. Maybe great, great ascetics who are so
| detached from the world that their freedom has become a prison of
| their own.
|
| When I was young, I felt every bite at my freedom deeply. Having
| a job, a schedule, responsibilities. Each one was deleterious to
| my freedom in a way that, as a young man, I was unequipped to
| handle.
|
| I've learned at some point in the last few years that we trade in
| our freedoms every day of our lives. If you have a driver's
| license or pasteurized milk in your refrigerator, you have traded
| in some way in your freedom.
|
| What I see today is a contingent of people who don't value their
| freedom at all. They have no spiritual relationship with their
| existence as an individual - their identity is predicated on
| their characteristics and not their innate uniqueness.
|
| Down that road is every manner of tyranny.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Freedom is context-dependent. Living in a civilised society
| gives you different kinds of freedoms (and obligations)
| compared to living in some form of a hunter-gatherer society.
| Like, freedom to pick the desired room temperature from your AC
| remote, rather than freedom to roam around and hunt whatever
| animals you choose.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > No one is ever truly free
|
| Freedom exists in the mind. Even the most oppressed enslaved
| people can still be free in their own head.
|
| On the other hand, I use some proprietary non-free software, so
| I've traded my freedom to use certain technology, but other
| than that, I consider myself as always being free no matter
| what the circumstances. All the old sages have said something
| similar: 'You are enslaved the moment you think you are'
| long_time_gone wrote:
| I love your comment. I have a small question with this part:
|
| > What I see today is a contingent of people who don't value
| their freedom at all. They have no spiritual relationship with
| their existence as an individual - their identity is predicated
| on their characteristics and not their innate uniqueness.
|
| Is it possible there is some "hierarchy of needs" for freedom
| and that "characteristic freedom" must be achieved before
| "uniqueness freedom" can be achieved? Said another way, maybe
| these people actually can't feel innately free until they feel
| their characteristics are accepted as part of free society.
| debacle wrote:
| The answer is anxiety. Even before COVID, there was a great +
| growing anxiety about the world. It was palpable.
|
| I think that our anxiety is normal, it is biological, and it
| is inevitable. We are not that much more evolved than we were
| 20,000 years ago, but the things we worried about then are
| almost trivial now, and the ways in which we managed those
| anxieties are ineffective against the anxieties of the day.
| You can't run away from global warming, the surveillance
| state, or our increasingly rewarding but terrifying
| relationship with our world.
|
| We need a new spirituality to combat this anxiety - it wont
| go away on its own. We need mnemonics that placate the
| animalistic parts of our brain that are appropriate for our
| times, and we need to be able to identify when our anxieties
| are being preyed on by others.
| evancoop wrote:
| Perhaps there is some definition of freedom in mathematical terms
| in which the total scope of decision-making autonomy is maximized
| over all citizens? The barbarian example would yield a low tally,
| as the leaders of a hoard are "free," but their subordinates have
| little decision-making capacity. In terms of the limitations of
| personal freedoms, the boundary might lie where the diminishment
| of others' freedoms exceeds the diminishment of one's own if
| restrained. (E.g. killing someone eliminates all of their future
| decisions, but preventing a murder eliminates only one decision
| for the potential murderer?)
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Looking from a dialectic perspective, the higher in the social
| hierarchy you are, the more freedom you have in some of your
| decisions and less in others. Decisions like where to live,
| what to wear, who to befriend etc., become more free and at the
| same time less yours. Taking it to the extreme, is a leader of
| an authoritarian state free to stop oppressing their people and
| install democracy? Is a leader of a democratic state free to
| start oppressing their people and install authoritarianism?
|
| Perhaps the grand theorem of freedom would state that freedom
| in the Universe is constant.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It somewhat boils down to violence, doesn't it?
|
| 1) Your degree of freedom is strictly a relationship between
| you and those who are able to legitimately use violence against
| you. Legitimate here meaning you have no means of recourse
| besides violence of your own.
|
| 2) How free you are is then expressed as a graph of all
| possible actions you may take which are not prohibited by the
| threat of legitimate violence (often expressed as "law").
|
| 3) Then a "free and equal society" is one the total size of the
| graph is optimized for. This mandates laws which delegitimize
| violence except where strictly necessary to enforce said
| delegitimization.
|
| 4) The only addition that is typically made in large, agrarian
| societies is the legitimization of the private ownership and
| transfer of property. Thus we have "free, equal and orderly"
| societies.
|
| These lead us to the usual functions of the military (to
| protect from external violence), the police (to protect from
| domestic violence), and the courts (to resolve disputes,
| usually over property, which would otherwise turn violent).
| From there, _any_ encroachment of the state (such as mandating
| participation in various insurance schemes) into the graph of
| its citizens would be strictly perceived as a curtailing of
| freedom.
|
| It's important to note that these terms necessarily exclude
| material circumstance from their definition. They also define
| violence in the strict sense of physical force. You are not
| less free because you may be sick or poor, since these are not
| interactions with people who may use legitimate violence.
| handrous wrote:
| > 1) Your degree of freedom is strictly a relationship
| between you and those who are able to legitimately use
| violence against you. Legitimate here meaning you have no
| means of recourse besides violence of your own.
|
| I strongly disagree with this. "Strictly?" Oh my, no. There's
| so much more that goes into one's _practical_ ability to
| exercise freedom. It 's why a rich person--even _if_ they
| were treated identically by the state--is far freer than a
| poor person. It 's why removing _hypothetical_ but mostly
| useless freedoms (say, the "freedom" to choose my health
| insurer) can in some cases truly _increase_ how free I
| actually am (no longer have to spend all that time screwing
| around with health insurers; no longer as dependent on
| employment for healthcare, et c).
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Well, then we clearly just disagree on what the definition
| of "freedom" is. Mine is aligned basically with the idea as
| it was first laid down during the French revolution. From
| the Declaration of the Rights of Man:
|
| > _Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which
| injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural
| rights of each man has no limits except those which assure
| to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the
| same rights_
|
| One of us should in good faith acquiesce from the term, to
| avoid overloading it, no? I propose that the existing
| definition remain, and the _practical ability_ to do stuff
| be given a new one, say "capability". In other words, the
| incapable are just as free as the capable.
| handrous wrote:
| If your definition calls the pauper in a society with no
| rules whatsoever freer than the billionaire in a society
| with exactly one government-enforced rule, which
| prohibits unsolicited sales calls after 6:00 PM on
| Sundays, then it's a broken definition.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Whether it's broken or not is up to you, but that's what
| freedom means. All I'm suggesting is that people
| acknowledge that they are indeed attempting curtail our
| freedoms (ie. enslave us) even to a minutely limited
| degree, in order to accomplish their vision of good.
|
| This moves the conversation forward, because the next
| question is how do we know your vision of good is the
| right one, worthy of the requisite sacrifice of our
| liberty? Is it really worthwhile to enslave the competent
| and the fortunate in order to maintain the incapable and
| unfortunate?
| handrous wrote:
| > Whether it's broken or not is up to you, but that's
| what freedom means.
|
| You are not the arbiter of this, however much you insist
| on it, and all four relevant definitions in Webster's
| 1913--a great source if you're looking for conservative
| and time-tested definitions of US English usage--disagree
| with you, if we're really going to quibble over that.
| "Liberty" is, as in your quoted translation from the
| French, much closer, but you are _still_ insisting on a
| much narrower interpretation than is common. You 're also
| reading your source as an _exclusive_ definition, when it
| doesn 't, _per se_ , claim anything of the sort. You're
| using it in a jargony sense from a particular political
| philosophy--the promoters of which find their job much
| easier when they get to define words in particular, not-
| quite-normal ways, then use those convenient definitions
| as a sandy foundation for various shaky logical towers--
| which _does not_ mean the general definition must conform
| to yours.
|
| > This moves the conversation forward, because the next
| question is how do we know your vision of good is the
| right one, worthy of the requisite sacrifice to our
| liberty? Is it really worthwhile to enslave the competent
| and the fortunate in order to maintain the incapable and
| unfortunate?
|
| It's tough and messy and absolutely ends up being largely
| arbitrary, because moral and political philosophy aren't
| math and never will be. We don't "know". We can't. Trying
| to "know" will quickly send you into "not even wrong"
| territory.
|
| > (ie. enslave us)
|
| > Is it really worthwhile to enslave the competent and
| the fortunate in order to maintain the incapable and
| unfortunate?
|
| LOL, OK. I've glanced at your post history. This ain't
| going anywhere productive. Hope you find your way out of
| this some day. Doesn't look like any previous posters
| have done any good no matter how gentle (or harsh)
| they've been, so I'll leave off there.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > It's tough and messy and absolutely ends up being
| largely arbitrary
|
| This is precisely why no one has the right to force their
| vision of the good on others. Doing so is
| indistinguishable from tyranny.
|
| If you can tell my why people are owed the cooperation of
| others I'm glad to change my mind. But kindly don't
| patronize me.
| nybble41 wrote:
| This is a good definition. It is very close to my own, though
| I would quibble about endorsing the propaganda term
| "legitimate". Certainly those who practice such violence want
| it treated as legitimate, and your phrase "no means of
| recourse besides violence of your own" gets to the core of
| the issue: that others allow them to get away with calling it
| legitimate, without offering resistance. However, these
| factors are not sufficient to _justify_ violence when it is
| neither defensive nor proportional and reciprocal.
|
| Also, you relegate "private ownership and transfer of
| property" to a minor and seemingly optional footnote while
| this is a necessary aspect of the definition of "violence".
| (Is theft not violence? If your answer is "no", how about
| starving someone by stealing all their food, or the land and
| capital equipment they need to grow it? Or the barter goods
| or money they needed to purchase it? Etc., etc.)
|
| The problems with "the usual functions" (and the key
| difference between minarchists and anarchists such as myself)
| are: (a) These things can be, and have been at various times,
| provided privately without initiating violence, so it is not
| necessary to curtail freedom for them. (b) It's not enough to
| say "a military is necessary to reduce violence, and this
| falls under the heading of 'military', and thus is allowed".
| To justify it on the basis of minimizing overall violence
| this military must never employ more violence than necessary,
| or more than it demonstrably curtails elsewhere, including in
| its funding process or in enforcing any rules it imposes. The
| same goes for the police and the courts. The courts have the
| easiest path; they're not that far removed from private
| arbitration. The military is the hardest to justify,
| particularly a standing army in a country like the U.S. with
| only two neighbors sharing land borders or even on the same
| continent--both of whom are considered allies.
| kag0 wrote:
| That's an interesting way to look at it, but I take an issue
| here
|
| > How free you are is then expressed as a graph of all
| possible actions you may take which are not prohibited by the
| threat of legitimate violence
|
| It's a good point to think in terms of possible actions you
| may take. But violence isn't the only thing that can prune
| that graph.
|
| Say I come across an orchard surrounded by an [unclimbable]
| fence. I want to eat some fruit in the orchard, but cannot
| because of the fence. There is no violence I face that
| prevents my action, and no violence I can level to take the
| action. Yet my action is prohibited by another, and thus my
| freedom limited.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| That's exactly my point though. The only pruning of the
| graph which counts against your freedom is that which is
| done with the threat of legitimate violence. You are still
| free in spite of the fact that you cannot access said
| orchard. It's simply beyond your capabilities, much like
| you are still free despite lacking wings to fly over the
| barrier.
|
| Who erected the barrier is not relevant here. What if the
| barrier was a circumstance of nature? An orchard on a
| plateau surrounded by unclimbable cliffs?
| mcguire wrote:
| " _The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it
| mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no
| food, what 's that? The freedom to starve?_" -- Angela Y.
| Davis
| thegrimmest wrote:
| _" We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom,
| are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all
| others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die
| on our feet than live on our knees."_
|
| - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
| kag0 wrote:
| I would say that the only pruning of the graph which
| matters is that which is done by your fellows.
|
| An orchard atop a cliff presents an equal challenge to
| all. Some might have the ability and desire to scale it,
| some not.
|
| What is the difference between a fence around an orchard
| and a threat of insurmountable violence if you enter the
| orchard? Either way it is someone else restricting your
| freedom, while they retain that same freedom for
| themselves.
| mcguire wrote:
| This is, to my mind, a very libertarian stance, and I think
| it demonstrates the fundamental sketchiness of
| libertarianism.
|
| The three major questions are, what do you mean by "violence"
| (which you have answered), and what do you mean by
| "legitimate", and what do you mean by "freedom"?
|
| What if, say, your employer in cooperation with others were
| to blackball you so that the only employment you could get
| were as an unskilled laborer? That clearly wouldn't be
| violence. Would it restrict your freedom? Apparently not?
|
| How about if a group of people arrange to ensure that you can
| only live in a certain area, purely by economic means? No
| violence, right? Legitimate? Are you less free? No?
|
| Suppose you live in a society that makes collective decisions
| by voting. But, you are not allowed to participate in those
| votes, by virtue of material circumstance, say. Still no
| violence. Still no less free, right?
|
| What about violence? Can I burn down your house if you don't
| do what I want? If I make sure no one is injured? Material
| circumstances are excluded, right?
|
| Now, what makes violence legitimate versus illegitimate? If a
| group of people kill one of your neighbors for violating some
| extra-legal rule, that would clearly be a crime, right? But
| what if the people doing it cannot be identified? Or, if
| identified, arrested, and prosecuted, they are found to be
| not guilty. Repeatedly. Clearly, you would feel some pressure
| to follow said rule although that would not be a restriction
| on your freedom, right?
|
| Is chattel slavery an imposition on the freedom of the slave,
| if physical violence is not used?
|
| I suggest that your definition of "freedom" is very far off
| from the normal, colloquial definition ("the power or right
| to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or
| restraint" according to the Goog')---there are plenty of
| restraints on your power to act and speak that do not involve
| violence. (Thinking? We're working on that.)
|
| You mention insurance schemes, which is always a fun topic
| because I'm old and can remember when requiring liability
| insurance for drivers was controversial. Is it legitimate for
| anyone, especially the state, to force you to be financially
| responsible for your actions? Would that be a restriction on
| your freedom? Absolutely! Would it be a legitimate (oooh,
| there's that word) restriction?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Many of your examples are variants on the same point: the
| cooperation of others. I contend that no you are not owed
| the cooperation of your employer, or other members of
| society, for _absolutely anything_. Interactions between
| free people should be strictly voluntary and consensual.
| This means if your employer wishes to cease employing you,
| he should be able to do so at his leisure. If he 's
| breached a contract, you can sue for damages.
|
| So yes, if your entire town decides to blackball you, that
| is an _exercise of their freedom_. If people decide not to
| sell you their property, that is likewise their _choice_.
| You are just as free as you have always been, no one is
| using force against you. They are simply refusing to
| cooperate with you.
|
| In what world does forcing a person to employ another not
| an impingement of their freedom? Anyone who can use the
| threat of violence to compel participation is a master, and
| free people have no masters.
|
| > _Suppose you live in a society that makes collective
| decisions by voting_
|
| As long as these decisions cannot be enforced with
| _physical violence_ then you are no less free by being
| excluded. Say I run a supper club which votes on where to
| eat next, are you less free by not being invited?
|
| > _If a group of people kill one of your neighbors for
| violating some extra-legal rule..._
|
| This entire paragraph describes corruption, which is
| inevitable, and does impact your freedom. No human process
| is immune.
|
| > _Is chattel slavery an imposition on the freedom of the
| slave, if physical violence is not used?_
|
| Chattel slavery is _defined by_ the use of violence to
| confine the slave _literally in chains_. If the slave can
| _just leave_ he 's not very enslaved is he?
|
| > _there are plenty of restraints on your power to act and
| speak that do not involve violence_
|
| Most of these take the form of the threat of withholding
| cooperation. This is a perfectly legitimate threat to make
| in a free society, and one I contend has no bearing on your
| liberty. Living in a free society is merely agreeing to
| _coexist_ peacefully, not that everyone must cooperate, or
| be the same team, or be immune from the consequences of
| failure. In fact, my reading of the article is that it
| means exactly the opposite - that people are free to
| cooperate or not as they see fit.
| mcguire wrote:
| Actually, all of my examples are (variants in some cases)
| of the means used to restrict the freedom of groups of
| people in the recent history of the United States. Not to
| "cooperate, or be the same team, or be immune from the
| consequences of failure" but to actually restrict that
| group's ability to act or speak.
|
| I notice that you ignored the common definition of
| freedom I quoted. I find _your_ definition of
| freedom...less than useful. It ignores any other sources
| of power than "the state" (I wonder how you would deal
| with the absence of a state.) It leads to irrational
| consequences; an individual can be perfectly free and yet
| unable to do anything except starve.
|
| I do have a couple of questions about your response,
| though.
|
| " _> If a group of people kill one of your neighbors for
| violating some extra-legal rule..._
|
| " _This entire paragraph describes corruption, which is
| inevitable, and does impact your freedom. No human
| process is immune._ "
|
| Corruption, in this case, does not imply any violence at
| all---a jury is free to return a verdict of not guilty
| for any reason, no? How can that possibly impact your
| freedom?
|
| " _Chattel slavery is defined by the use of violence to
| confine the slave literally in chains. If the slave can
| just leave he 's not very enslaved is he?_"
|
| (It's not really defined by violence, but I'll leave that
| up to you.) My plantation is located in the middle of the
| desert. You are free to leave at any time. You won't,
| because you would die, but you are free to do so. So
| you're really free, right?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| We could examine this by comparing 'anti-freedom' systems like
| chattel slavery (Old US South Cotton Plantations) vs. wage
| slavery (Appalachian Coal Company Towns).
|
| In the former, refusal to work for the masters led to beatings,
| torture, mutilitaion and death. In the later, refusal to work
| for the bosses led to homelessness and hunger and death.
|
| Now, one could argue that the coal company town was 'more free'
| than the cotton plantation, I suppose.
|
| Ultimately freedom requires the dismantling and weakening of
| hierarchical social power structures. Let's say the people in
| that coal company town were the ones who elected their bosses,
| rather than some remote collection of wealthy shareholders.
|
| Wouldn't that be even more free? Democratization of
| corporations seems like going in the direction of freedom.
| Germany is ahead in this, as corporate boards in Germany
| include employee representatives, not just shareholder
| representatives.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Now, one could argue that the coal company town was 'more
| free' than the cotton plantation, I suppose._
|
| Yes! Crucially because its residents were _free to leave_.
| Doing something unpleasant or dangerous due to economic
| necessity is _vastly different_ than doing it in chains.
|
| You're assuming the Appalachian coal company residents had
| _no other options_ when clearly they did, as evidenced by the
| patterns of migration to and _from_ these towns. Working in a
| coal mine was just their preferred choice, given the
| alternatives available. Many of these men took pride in their
| work.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I agree, but also that they'd be more free if all the coal
| workers in a given corporation had the same number of
| representative voting seats on the corporate board as the
| shareholders did.
|
| Freedom is a direction, it's a good quote.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| there is sort-of, it's called utilitarianism. However, maths
| isn't a magical cure-all - the ethical dilemma is just shifted
| onto how you quantise your ethical problems.
| [deleted]
| wtmt wrote:
| > building out a similar technological and political
| infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering
| terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective "social
| harms."
|
| FWIW, this seems to be a common thread in many countries apart
| from China and the US. "Sedition", for example, has become the
| stick to use for any kind of dissent uttered in India over the
| last few years (a lot more so compared to before).
|
| > rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline,
| and a toxic obsession with "national security"--a euphemism for
| state supremacy--are drawing the US and China to meet in the
| middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is
| perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority,
| and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they've
| begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of
| gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual
| and national political differences until little distance remains.
|
| Again, please add India to this list. It would take a lot to
| detail out how things are in the country. So let me share one
| recent set of incidents in a major city (where Google has its
| largest offices). Police, without the backing of any law or
| specific authorization, were stopping people on the streets and
| asking them to unlock their phones and show their WhatsApp chats
| so that the police could read and see if the person was involved
| in transacting ganja (marijuana/weed).
|
| But such things go on without the courts batting an eye or
| punishing the abuse of power with serious consequences.
|
| I've kinda lost faith in democracies and the claims of checks and
| balances with the executive, legislature and judiciary. Power
| corrupts all of them equally, and they all side with each other
| rather than with the people who they took an oath to serve.
| bogle wrote:
| I'd suggest that rather than losing faith in democracy you
| could look to the spectrum of democracies and see where India's
| is failing. In the UK we have to turn to the courts to restrain
| the horrors that our government commit, more and more of late.
|
| "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in
| this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is
| perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is
| the worst form of Government except all those other forms that
| have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad
| feeling in our country that the people should rule,
| continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all
| constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the
| actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their
| masters." - Winston Churchill, 1947
|
| [https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
| hansard/commons/1947/nov/...]
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Oh, let's start with a shorter snippet. Something banal and
| absurd, easy to relate to, that shows where these 'sedition'
| things tend to go:
|
| If you cheer on the Pakistani cricket team, that's sedition.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/28/sport/india-arrest-kashmiri-m...
|
| 'On Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh Police tweeted that five people
| had been arrested in incidents throughout the state after
| "anti-national elements used disrespectful words against the
| Indian cricket team and made anti-India comments which
| disrupted peace."'
| user3939382 wrote:
| I spent a lot of time reading political philosophy books from
| smart people with big reputations and the definition and dynamics
| of liberty was definitely an overriding theme. My takeaway many
| years later is that it's a very complex topic and many people,
| all with contradictory positions, have a lot of confidence in
| their take on it. I trump them all by having no confidence in my
| take!
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yeah I m in the same boat. I come from France, an old, maybe
| aging, proud of itself democracy and... when I discovered
| Singapore then Hong Kong, two semi-dictatorships in different
| ways, omg: I had never seen people so free in ways we cant be
| free in France.
|
| So now that Im a permanent resident in Hong Kong, joking with
| everyone next step is Chinese citizenship, I'm a bit at a loss
| when it comes to freedom. Not corruption, efficiency,
| representativity, predictable justice or even fairness, where
| clearly I cant argue against France and for China/HK. But just
| freedom itself, I feel it goes so much beyond the ability to
| vote and complain publicly. I cant define it just like you, but
| when I look around me in the middle of a street in Hong Kong,
| even now, I feel so much freer that in Paris... it's weird.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| are you sure you're not mixing up freedom and stability?
| Individual freedom is not something China is known for.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Are there any projects to actually try to evolve the web to avoid
| censorship / intermediation?
|
| It seems to me we are good at identifying the negative trend but
| aren't actually acting on them. Or am I just missing the obvious?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://prism-break.org
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