Sprocket 9: The Politics in Freedom
It is clear enough that four to thousand years ago freedom and liberty have been one of the those words. One preaches or shouts freedom that hat it s it. Every chain is meant to open, every problem dissolve, every hate becomes love, in a single glorious personal and political alchemy. Or perhaps to it more soberly, freedom is one of those rivets which link society with individual. Under the name then of freedom, in its name or thought power very individual is at once free to make choices whatever choices then choose, but also to as apart of those choice effect the government they want. We tend then to see freedom as a single axis of liberty: Consumer freedom and political freedom run together. One ought to become the other,. Reform a society like Iraq give it a political system that is ‘free’ and everything ought to be OK, all other freedoms will follow. Or else we look as China with its consumer freedom and quietly assume political freedom must follow. Freedom becomes then as assertion of, for want of a better word, the entire western Brands As we live in a free society we are not meant to be a pick and mixed ideal. Yu choose freedom, we say, and hat means you choose the lot.
To his degree of course or notion of freedom is clearly the successor to grand ideas of western supremacy and the imperialism they spoke. Back in the day we assumed that we had simply a right to define what other peoples should be, and to do it by political or military oppression. We forced the tribes of wherever to enter our world, and No was no an answer we accepted. Now with freedom we expect pretty much the same, countries the take the capitalist penny are expected to reform. This exaction or blind faith in our political right, is of course beautifully miss placed.. It is not true, even in our own history. We have not necessarily been free, indeed the time of greatest industrial expansion were not times freedom, neither political nor actually economic. Industrial growth, and protectionism go hand in hand, and political oppression that protect and yet keeps its hands of the actual producing process is often the best way to rapidly industrialized (Germany in the nineteenth century, and China now. Freedom of speech is therefore never caught in the same truth as economic freedom or freedom of capital. The unified idea is simply wrong. But is the rather the case, is that we have under the rubric of Freedom four rather different axis, or gear, all bound up in the one single sprocket
On the level of politic the key idea behind our current use of freedom, is a faith in the power of a multi-party system to contain conflicts. We assume then the hates and fears of a thousand years are caught n the prism of the vote, and the mechanics of the manifesto. All you needs s democracy. That is all you needs is a system I which the hatreds are caught by a ballet box, and voting system. Ur hope no doubt here, is that this process itself, once formed as its own dynamic. The effect of this freedom in the west has been to utilize tribal politics to destroy debate. The large political parties then present themselves as the only possible tribes. One votes for them out of a loyalty or more often a distain of the other lot (or a system of fair turns), and both really for their long term commitments to policy. The tribes then become closer together, or start to say the say thing,; reducing the entire system to pastiche or personality.
That is he effect of this freedom for the was, ha been to reduce the power of ideas to change the world, and that threat of freedom, that it is always revolutionary. Our political freedom catches up all threads within a neutralizing game of tribal politics. Hence one might say as a system of government the system very clearly leaves quite a lot to be desired. What is good at is not governing, so much as rendering the hatreds that can infuse government rather ritualized and restricted, while also preventing new hatreds, new doctrines of real change fro having any real power. It goes without saying that we really do not perceive this in this way, We in the west rather see the entire issue of democratic government rather more nobly, as the best of possible systems, the system that is you impose everything becomes alright. We insist then that other must follow it, and stuff (or ignore the consequence). Consequences that appear to create in other lands political elites who are rather cut of from their peoples (and very happy to do our will, if money is in the offing).
There Israel faith in the magic of the system to gradually leach away conflict here. We take then the most recalcigent of problems where elections were clearly rigged or unfair, or simply corrupt ( Kenya, Zimbabwe) and assume hat if we can define a single political axis then everything will be ok. Or perhaps better we really of a adequately complex system to internalized strife. We set up old enemies within the same axis of government, and make them fight it out in a battle of wills that is now semi political or has a political element. Perhaps here we hope that the mechanics o f the system will mean old rivals become friends (or realize that if they cooperate they can become a new political elites) or else at least we buy time from the endless reporting of outrages, and gives us the right to claim we have done something.... What though all too often happens ,as in Bosnia is that the entire conflicts is placed in the deep freeze. Which I fine(and better hand was certainly) but is no solution.
Democratic freedom becomes then the liquid oxygen of the political world. We go in, as freeze a conflict, We render it temporary in absence and convert it into a baroque (and very internationalised) political system, where it ceases to be violent, even though government is not really possible. And yet there is in this move a cost. So great is our faith in this ability to make the world free, that we have no alternative, no other plan. Here the sad paradigm is clearly Afghanistan Ur standard political moves have here been frustrated by a government that only has the power to be corrupt, and does not reach beyond that corruption into the actual day to day lives of a people . the result is then that an election is in fact impossible, The one solution that cannot democratically be allowed is a Kazai government, giving that he is only in power because actually he cheated. And yet, because he was president before, and because we have no other solution other than a democracy that simply has no worked, we have no ability to say actually no – do the election again, ad with another candidate. We simply allow a supposed form to stand. In he name then of freedom in its constitution or democratic guise, we allow a corruption and non-government to triumph. The problem of Afghanistan is not that the war in unwinable, but rather that our accustomed system of imposing a political system has, for whatever reason failed., and we no other option, nowhere else to go in the light of failure.
The second main element of freedom we have, alluded to above, is of that famed freedom to say what we will. It is of course an good old cliché that we can say what we will, but unless we are rich it will not change anything. And yet o this cliché has been added a new game or sequence of power, the game of poor names controversy.
He game of controversy is the clear bastard child of freedom., and 24 hour news. This is news where costs demand that moos the new is actually recycled and old hat. On does not actually have new stories all the time, but rather endlessly twists the old. In such a game of cheap broadcasting the viewer or listeners opinion is clearly good (chap) copy. Free speech then becomes defined or starts to matter, is that speech is controversial enough to give the media organization copy. I becomes a pitch of program or perhaps merely worlds to fill this hurl of cheap broadcasting ahead.
The freedom o speech becomes then the freedom to say things others need to react to, or feel they need to reach; or else t is t be caught up in a sequence of reaction, and to feel in the face other idiocy one need to speak. His system as the dual advantage for the broadcaster, not only is it cheap, and yet it also makes the broadcaster look as if it ‘listening’ to its users, or at least allowing them to air there prejudices in public. It therefore take upon the mantle of freedom, it defines the axis within which free speech might be endlessly burbled, and yet really mean almost nothing.
However wealth and its influence create a second complexity in this game if you are wealthy individual you can buy the right to invisibility (through the law) and the power that invisibility gives to be caught up with everything. r again by the same logic one ca also buy the right to influence (it all else fails one can own a newspaper), and to a real power for ones voice. Freedom to speak then becomes almost a commodity the rich can by themselves within or without, buy law or media influence. If our are then wealthy enough, you can buy enough to the media to arrange those public debates in the 4 hour media world. Murdoch is able therefore to make Browns political humanity a thing to laugh at or ridicule, simply by having enough stations to do it. The power of the rich becomes then the power to speak and to be silent.
New of course here there is a caveat This power is never absolute., of course it is not. it is delimited by a system that might restrict this right to buy in out. It might ignore it. Well on an abstract level it always can ignore it. And yet the logic of this system makes this right rather tricky to insist upon in a world of super injunctions, one can certainly close down certain stories; likewise if one is rich enough to own the media outlets (or know those who do), on can always have some place for ones own voice and can then always shout louder than others can. The freedom to resist the rich is then over rated. In effect we just do not do it….
The fourth alluded above is of course the freedoms one has in relation of ones body. One can eat or mate wit ho or what one likes, and no one has the power to make it otherwise. or at least they would not, if eating and mating were really like that. That is I that model of choosing between two options in a sensible manner was actually own minds work. Trouble is of course that it is not. We are rather really quit permeable ad open to endless echoing suggestions and powers in our thought. We are therefore open to ideas that are insinuated into us be advertising. Or worse than that bodies given their freedom become open to endless addict and the problems of being caught up with substance they crave (but ought not to have)body freedom then becomes a public health nightmare. It thereby opens up another debate about how bodies should be regulated, and politicized given that we expect them to be cured. . the problem is then that bodies are not at the best when free, as there is no simple way to tell when good becomes bad, and become addition (and there are industries designed to make is wavy line even more imperceptible)
To set a body free comes right up against a deep deep paradox, he problem of how one understands the fact that actually bodies do not really o sensible or rational freedom. Or better setting desire free is to create a tricky creature, one that cannot be simply trusted. Bodies therefore jump their freedom, They need regulating. The trouble is, if individual are not doing so, then who ill or can?
Likewise, although less problematically there is a clear cost to sexual freedom We do not quite simply choose of proclivities, so much as inhabit a series of sexual world. We therefore take up what is already in the world and build it into only personal fantasy life. F hen this life allows anything or everything as a possibility, and refuses in the name of freedom to give guide lines, then problem are likely. Who we allow in can rather easily become problematic. Individuals can insinuate themselves consciously or not consciously into our minds. They can make themselves more significant that they ought to be ,a n we worry about the fact. The problem pf paedophilia then encodes a far wider anxiety about who you should mate with, when and why, is a society hat claims there are no rules (and yet will at times really condemn certain actions).
Freedom is of ours as a sprocket an ideal, it is non of these and yet all of them. Te role of his ideal is not to revolutionize the world, so much as to create a rather complex shifting series of internality, powers, and proclivities in which on locates ones position in the world and how those responses are to be codified. Freedom is then how one translate the problems of bodies into the problem of politics or free speech. It forms a universal schemata, that once creates difference (body freedom are different from the rest etc), and yet then demands or asserts that these difference ought to be somehow linked under a single banner, and so part of the same problem. But then freedom creates in the name of this blind-alley of a move, a number of intractable problems, as bodies become politics problems (which have no clear solution (abortion or birth control), or politics that is mired in controversy. The role then of freedom is perhaps not to allow one to do what one chooses, so much as to create the illusion of unity in society, a unity which in the absence of God or tribal cohesion we need so badly need , even it does render our personal life problematic, our actual freedom sterile, ad our debates fruitless!
