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Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

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Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#81

Post by bluetomcat »

ttfkam wrote: post #41

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.

> 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.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#82

Post by pharke »

samuelizdat wrote: post #4

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"

And if there is no system?

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#84

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

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.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#85

Post by BobbyJo »

Ialdaboth wrote: post #59
BobbyJo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

You can have both surveillance and crime, they are not mutually exclusive.

That would be one of the equilibriums I'm attempting to reference.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#86

Post by ewzimm »

woile wrote: post #44
mfcl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#87

Post by gz5 »

pron wrote: post #79

> 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…

+1

"with freedom comes responsibility" (Eleanor Roosevelt's context was different, but the phrase is important)

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#90

Post by the_drunkard »

axhl wrote: post #66
defaultprimate wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your humanity. Straight outta Mein Kampf

Not quite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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.

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