71–74 of 74 posts
No, surveillance is not a threat to democracy, people not caring about democracy is what threatens democracy. Democracy has never been a right, it's always been a privilege that people demanded, and guess what, when people stop demanding it, power will naturally collude.
No, surveillance is not a threat to democracy, people not caring about democracy is what threatens democracy. Democracy has never been a right, it's always been a privilege that people demanded, and guess what, when people stop demanding it, power will naturally collude.
You can't have a democracy without citizens who are able to think freely. You can't think freely when you are aware that an invisible entity is constantly watching every phone call you make and every web page you surf to. Knowing you're under surveillance changes your behavior. It's a recipe for insanity, not democracy.
"Inverted totalitarianism is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
What we need is this:
The Theory of Communicative Action has three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic premises of modern philosophy and social theory; (2) to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the lifeworld and systems paradigms; and, finally, (3) to sketch out, against this background, a critical theory of modernity which analyzes and accounts for its pathologies in a way that suggests a redirection rather than an abandonment of the project of enlightenment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't have a democracy without citizens who are able to think freely. You can't think freely when you are aware that an invisible entity is constantly watching every phone call you make and every web page you surf to. Knowing you're under surveillance changes your behavior. It's a recipe for insanity, not democracy.
What we have is this: "Inverted totalitarianism is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is "faith", if not considering something to be self evident? Something being self-evident just means that you don't care to provide any justification for it. I see no difference between it and faith. Gods are considered axiomatic by the religious just as the basic set of rights are considered axiomatic by American government literature. Self evidence does not imply "correct". Far from it. This has never before a…
Looks like I am on the edge of being hellbanned, as a full hour later I am still unable to directly respond to your comment... Just as well, I suppose. To be explicit, I am an atheist. More to the point, I am an anti-theist atheist. I think poorly of those who believe in gods. There are very few things I think more idiotic in this world than the belief in gods of any sort. This said I understand the terminology "self…