Sunday, 17 April 2011

A Rectification of Names - On Truth and Freedom of Speech

"We live in strange times." I hear this phrase often today. Given the nature of this apparent strangeness, it is perhaps necessary to clarify one's position - a kind of rectification of names, if you will. Simply put, I am a culture critic. I describe what I see in the social, political, and cultural milieu, and try to provide my readers with some perspective, an alternative to the commonly accepted view. I go behind the official version of the Curriculum to expose the framework informing it, although it is not always welcome.

I don't condone revolutionary activity. I fail to understand violence directed against the State; it is a pointless exercise that cannot possibly result in a positive outcome. It can only encourage and justify further countermeasures - acts of violence, belligerence, and repression - on the part of the State and its machinery. Honestly, was there any less hierarchical control of citizens after the revolutions in Russia, France or America than there was before? Such actions apparently only succeed in replacing one power hierarchy with another, perhaps more restrictive one.

Why feel compelled to take any action at all? Empires are already in the process of crumbling and civilization itself is collapsing of its own weight and inertia. Collectively, we have done so much irrevocable damage to the biosphere and its sensitive ecosystems, to flora and fauna alike, that our systems cannot function for much longer. We have rendered such irreparable damage to diverse species, including Homo sapiens, and most specifically to its indigenous populations, that such constant battering can only result, finally, in collapse.

So, there is no reason to fight against the hegemony; it can only provokes a response, and provide the State with more strength and greater legitimacy in the long run. As LaoTzu said, the best course of action is through non-action (wei wu wei) - to sit out the competition, let the disease run its course, and watch the spectacle unfold. Just be sure to find a safe place from which to enjoy the view. Because when things get rough, it could become dicey or dangerous. And while I am partial to the anarchist's point of view, I am cynical about his prospects. The anarchy that will likely emerge post-collapse will not be the peaceful, kinship-based egalitarian anarchy of pre-civilized clan and tribe; but more on the order of Hobbes' war of all against all.

But when the State - particularly an elected, purportedly democratic one - begins to treat any and every exercise in free speech or truth-seeking as a revolutionary act, as an act of espionage, it overplays its hand, undermining its own credibility, its own legitimacy, and betrays the underlying deceptions and deceptiveness of its core motives.

So, given my position, how would I judge the actions of Julian Assange and Wikileaks' role in the recent spate of finger-pointing we find animating divergent voices of this Administration and the body politic? Is he really a revolutionary, or, more boldly, a terrorist or anarchist, as some have suggested? After all, most of these labels flow from the mouths of those who are paid to know better. But are they not merely political deflections, all of them, calling names and creating straw men or red herrings wherever they can be useful in diverting attention from the truth? Truth. Now that's an interesting concept.

As I recall, our word for "truth" has a unique etymological history. It derives, in a circuitous fashion, from the Greek word Lethe- the river of forgetfulness, one of the five rivers of the underworld. The term "lethe" in classical Greek mythology literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness," or "concealment." The Greek word for "truth" on the other hand, from whence we derive our own concept, is aletheia (ἀλήθεια), meaning un-forgetfulness, un-concealment, or disclosedness. The event of truth would be taking something that was previously concealed or hidden and letting it shine-forth. What the Wikileaks people seem to be about is precisely this activity, aletheia... the disclosure or unconcealment of that which was previously hidden or concealed. They are, in brief, truth-seekers, in the sense we derive from its classical Greek origins.

The truth, as far as I can see it is as follows: Mr. Assange (while not technically a US citizen) is exercising a purported right among all apparently democratic regimes - the right to freedom of speech (unconcealment or disclosedness) as articulated in our own Bill of Rights. Second, he neither solicits nor pays for the information he receives. It is provided to his organization freely by whistleblowers that believe their employers are engaged in wrongdoing or otherwise committing ethical infractions that the whistler feels compelled to rectify. They too are truth-seekers, engaged in acts of unconcealment, of disclosedness (aletheia). And, if I remember correctly, there was a time, not too long ago in this great country, when we were teaching our college graduates, particularly in the engineering curriculum where I worked, to understand their broader obligations to society, over and above obligations to some corporate owner or even government agency if it were engaged in wrong doing, and to report those abuses so as to get the conditions rectified.

But this begs a larger question: why is Julian Assange receiving so much material, and why now? The American people have never been big on rebellion or revolution (well except for that one-time thing with the British); and we have not even been very good on protesting (ok, maybe on Vietnam and briefly on civil rights). But there are historical and philosophical reasons for this. Slick marketing and even slicker politicians have convinced We The People that something called freedom exists in this country. And because we can drive our own cars from one state to another here with no constraints, because our passports are almost universally accepted around the world, the majority has believed that this freedom is something real. But this is not what constitutes freedom; the American people have been sold a bill of goods, not a Bill of Rights... and all the bills are finally coming due (pun intended).

So there is a growing sense among the body politic here that they have been paying for all of these charades and excesses long enough, and now they are going to exact payment from the real culprits. They are going after all the avarice, the greed, the pretension and self serving lies of the political class and corporate elites who run this country, and who have run it into the ground lording it over those have-nots who have nothing or very little left to lose. The middle class in particular, the workers of America, have awoken from The Dream and recognized that they have been living a nightmare, and they want it to stop. So they have taken matters into their own hands, and one by one they are sharing the dirty laundry of this country - its political, military and economic bullies - for the entire world to see.

Of course, those who are running the show, the elites and overlords whose unmentionables are being exposed, have a significant interest in withholding such information, so they will do whatever it takes to make it stop and silence the leakers. They tell us about "clear and present dangers;" they will talk about protecting State secrets, safeguarding our process, and ensuring the safety of American lives on the battlefield and abroad. So they call this information-release espionage, treason, even terrorism. And they are seeking to punish the whistleblowers severely; they will try to close down Assange's shop anyway they can, resorting to whatever methods are at hand, applying pressure, economically, politically and militarily upon its own constituencies, its colleagues, and its allies internationally; they will try to tuck Julian Assange away for good in some dark off-shore prison, if they only could.

As I said, it is in the nature of the State to fight any apparent rebellion or protest with increasing oppression, repression and aggression. Ironically, such increased repression will only exacerbate the State's own headlong rush off the cliff. Nietzsche was not wrong my friends when he wrote:

State, where the slow suicide of all is called 'life'... Only where the State ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous; there begins the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune. Where the State ends - look there, my brothers!




After a ten-year career in academia, Dr. Krolick spent the next twenty years in the executive ranks of several of America's largest international firms. Sandy has spent many years traveling around the world, including parts of Asia, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe. Retiring from business at fifty, he recently returned to the USA with his wife Anna, after teaching for several years in the central Siberian Steppe, at the foot of the Altai mountains in Barnaul, Russia. His latest book, The Recovery of Ecstasy: Notebooks from Siberia, is available at http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365/?tag=widgetsamazon-20 or visit him @ http://www.kulturcritic.com.

0 comments:

Post a Comment