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Time Travel is the Mine Field of Existential Freedom
NO FATE BUT WHAT YOU MAKE
These famous words from Terminator 2 ring in my ears tonight. Sarah Connor carved the words "No Fate" into a picnic table before deciding to destroy Skynet before its paradoxical growth to power can lead toward the nuclear annihilation of humanity and the subsequent enslavement of mankind. You see, the robots came from the future and the technology left in the past was the technology used to destroy them.
How do you fight against the future when you know what the future will be?
This is the metaphor for our existence. We aren't fighting against the future coming back to destroy us; we're fighting to exist in a world filled with infinite choices and no ultimate authority to make decisions for us. This is the sort of situation that Sartre describes as being your own God. This is not a point of arrogance or some sort of usurpation, this is a description of having to choose for yourself.
Freedom, then, is an awareness of this responsibility of being able to choose. "Freedom" is revered as a sort of holy thing here in the United States, but I fear that many people don't understand it. I see many bumper stickers tell me that "freedom isn't free," which is correct... but for the wrong reasons. Most people that have these stickers talk about the sacrifice of the military and the use of force abroad to support freedom. This is not why "freedom isn't free" - it isn't free because of the responsibility one has toward freedom.
I watched Manderlay last night. It is a film about a small community in the South that ignored the end of slavery and continued to have slaves grow cotton into the 1930s. Grace, the protagonist, arrived with her father into this community and decided to forcibly end slavery with her father's mobsters. She refused to allow the unjust share-cropping system to replace slavery which was effectively in place in other places in the South at this time in history. Instead, she gave the slaves the legal power over the plantation.
As the story progressed, the effort of changing the social dynamic of the plantation proved impossible. The oppressed kept their oppressed mentality, and the more power given them, the more confused and uncomfortable the situation became. Finally, in a terrible moment, everything collapsed. Grace was asked unanimously by the freed slaves to run the plantation again as their owner. She learned shortly after this request that the slaves had previously chosen to renunciate their freedom for the security of a simple, structured life. Please become our beneficent dictator.
By God. Horrifying. Choosing slavery. Grace wanted out of there immediately. She, who had "freed" the slaves was now imprisoned by the situation she created. Wilhelm, the old slave who advised her through this process kept saying "we're not ready."
We're not ready. Understand that this is the key to everything. We're not ready. Who is ready for freedom? Truly. Freedom isn't free. A large portion of the population votes for authoritarian leaders because authoritarian leaders provide security. And many use religion to provide security from the unknown. Thinking and change make people feel insecure.
Here's the problem: many people aren't up to their freedom. And too many others are more than willing to dictate what others should do with their freedom for them. This is a problem as old as time. The social contract theorists took this problem on. Hobbes noted the need for the consent of the public by suggesting a mandatory pledge of allegiance toward a unitary king. Locke took on these ideas, agreed that consent was needed, but liked the representative democratic approach. Machiavelli wrote two books about government. His book about democracy stated that democracy was the best form of government, but it required an engaged, informed citizenry to use their civic virtue to make it work. His other, and notably more famous book, talked about the inevitable need for a beneficent dictator in the absence of a working democracy. These philosophers following Hobbes realized that people needed to rise up to responsibly govern themselves, and all had their doubts that people could effectively do that.
Power is a strange thing. Those who are oppressed have power over those who oppress them. George Orwell realized this when he had to deal with a rampaging elephant while stationed in Burma under British rule. He knew that the elephant did not need to be shot, but did it anyway because he felt the pressure of expectation from the crowd of the Burmese. Power dynamics make the oppressed and the oppressors act their roles, it is a psychological reality. Milgram's shock experiment demonstrated that people were willing to shock someone to death if someone with authority told them to even if they didn't want to. The United States has power of China because they've lent too much money to us. Christian non-profit groups that help in Africa need poor orphans to help to stay in business. Power and powerlessness become an identity - a role to live up to. But so much of it is generated artificially.
There is no solution to those who want an authoritarian safety net. There is no solution to those who want to be an authoritarian safety net. These people exist and the rest of us have to learn how to exist with them.
Clearly, it would be better if we embraced the paradoxical truth of time travel stories: choice is the central and only value in life. The abdication of choice, and the willingness to accept that abdication from a position of power are two paths that lead down the same road of self-nullification. The truly most remarkable people in history are those who pushed the boundaries are forced people out of their comfort zones from whichever side of power they resided in. Thoreau's letter from prison, Gandhi's march to the ocean to make salt, Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on... poverty (yes, poverty... not what you were expecting), Cindy Sheehan's vigil to ask Bush what cause her son died for, Tank Man in Tienanmen Square... and on and on and on. People's boundaries must be pushed, and it will never be enough... but we must never replace injustice with injustice. Manderlay makes this very clear, but historically we need look no further than the fallout of the Belgians leaving Rwanda and the genocide of the Tutsis that followed.
We need to ask more of everyone, and it may never be enough.
These famous words from Terminator 2 ring in my ears tonight. Sarah Connor carved the words "No Fate" into a picnic table before deciding to destroy Skynet before its paradoxical growth to power can lead toward the nuclear annihilation of humanity and the subsequent enslavement of mankind. You see, the robots came from the future and the technology left in the past was the technology used to destroy them.
How do you fight against the future when you know what the future will be?
This is the metaphor for our existence. We aren't fighting against the future coming back to destroy us; we're fighting to exist in a world filled with infinite choices and no ultimate authority to make decisions for us. This is the sort of situation that Sartre describes as being your own God. This is not a point of arrogance or some sort of usurpation, this is a description of having to choose for yourself.
Freedom, then, is an awareness of this responsibility of being able to choose. "Freedom" is revered as a sort of holy thing here in the United States, but I fear that many people don't understand it. I see many bumper stickers tell me that "freedom isn't free," which is correct... but for the wrong reasons. Most people that have these stickers talk about the sacrifice of the military and the use of force abroad to support freedom. This is not why "freedom isn't free" - it isn't free because of the responsibility one has toward freedom.
I watched Manderlay last night. It is a film about a small community in the South that ignored the end of slavery and continued to have slaves grow cotton into the 1930s. Grace, the protagonist, arrived with her father into this community and decided to forcibly end slavery with her father's mobsters. She refused to allow the unjust share-cropping system to replace slavery which was effectively in place in other places in the South at this time in history. Instead, she gave the slaves the legal power over the plantation.
As the story progressed, the effort of changing the social dynamic of the plantation proved impossible. The oppressed kept their oppressed mentality, and the more power given them, the more confused and uncomfortable the situation became. Finally, in a terrible moment, everything collapsed. Grace was asked unanimously by the freed slaves to run the plantation again as their owner. She learned shortly after this request that the slaves had previously chosen to renunciate their freedom for the security of a simple, structured life. Please become our beneficent dictator.
By God. Horrifying. Choosing slavery. Grace wanted out of there immediately. She, who had "freed" the slaves was now imprisoned by the situation she created. Wilhelm, the old slave who advised her through this process kept saying "we're not ready."
We're not ready. Understand that this is the key to everything. We're not ready. Who is ready for freedom? Truly. Freedom isn't free. A large portion of the population votes for authoritarian leaders because authoritarian leaders provide security. And many use religion to provide security from the unknown. Thinking and change make people feel insecure.
Here's the problem: many people aren't up to their freedom. And too many others are more than willing to dictate what others should do with their freedom for them. This is a problem as old as time. The social contract theorists took this problem on. Hobbes noted the need for the consent of the public by suggesting a mandatory pledge of allegiance toward a unitary king. Locke took on these ideas, agreed that consent was needed, but liked the representative democratic approach. Machiavelli wrote two books about government. His book about democracy stated that democracy was the best form of government, but it required an engaged, informed citizenry to use their civic virtue to make it work. His other, and notably more famous book, talked about the inevitable need for a beneficent dictator in the absence of a working democracy. These philosophers following Hobbes realized that people needed to rise up to responsibly govern themselves, and all had their doubts that people could effectively do that.
Power is a strange thing. Those who are oppressed have power over those who oppress them. George Orwell realized this when he had to deal with a rampaging elephant while stationed in Burma under British rule. He knew that the elephant did not need to be shot, but did it anyway because he felt the pressure of expectation from the crowd of the Burmese. Power dynamics make the oppressed and the oppressors act their roles, it is a psychological reality. Milgram's shock experiment demonstrated that people were willing to shock someone to death if someone with authority told them to even if they didn't want to. The United States has power of China because they've lent too much money to us. Christian non-profit groups that help in Africa need poor orphans to help to stay in business. Power and powerlessness become an identity - a role to live up to. But so much of it is generated artificially.
There is no solution to those who want an authoritarian safety net. There is no solution to those who want to be an authoritarian safety net. These people exist and the rest of us have to learn how to exist with them.
Clearly, it would be better if we embraced the paradoxical truth of time travel stories: choice is the central and only value in life. The abdication of choice, and the willingness to accept that abdication from a position of power are two paths that lead down the same road of self-nullification. The truly most remarkable people in history are those who pushed the boundaries are forced people out of their comfort zones from whichever side of power they resided in. Thoreau's letter from prison, Gandhi's march to the ocean to make salt, Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on... poverty (yes, poverty... not what you were expecting), Cindy Sheehan's vigil to ask Bush what cause her son died for, Tank Man in Tienanmen Square... and on and on and on. People's boundaries must be pushed, and it will never be enough... but we must never replace injustice with injustice. Manderlay makes this very clear, but historically we need look no further than the fallout of the Belgians leaving Rwanda and the genocide of the Tutsis that followed.
We need to ask more of everyone, and it may never be enough.
posted by Will at 10:29 PM
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