Freedom

Freedom, good COSCers, is our topic this month.

This was once the first line of a short story I wrote: "Freedom and loneliness are an amalgam that hardens with age." As a story opener, some found it too heavy-handedly authorial. Never mind, I liked it. I wrote it about an imagined version of my of guitar teacher, a man who clung to the freedom to be the musician he was at heart, but who paid a heavy price.

While travelling alone in Bolivia, I was continually confronted with this "amalgam". Freedom and its price in loneliness. And I often thought about the idea of freedom. Does there come a point at which the notional freedom of travelling becomes in itself a prison? Gross freedom of movement becoming ultimately more imprisoning than the more subtle freedoms offered by staying put? After all, if all I desire is the security and comfort of family and home, to travel is no freedom at all, but exile.

It seemed to me sometimes that freedom was nothing but the feeling of freedom, of wind-in-my-face and salt-lakes at dusk, of maps with no itineraries and nobody to ever call me back from any wild road I chose. Once that feeling gives way to a sense of desolation, what freedom is there left to speak of, however unencumbered one may be? And if I feel free at home, in the midst of friends and work and belongings then surely that is no less freedom?

More philosophically, there is negative freedom - freedom from - and positive freedom: freedom to. The latter is the killer. We can be free of oppression, free of sickness, poverty, encumbrance and responsibility, and yet lack freedom for the lack of imagination or courage to know what to do with it. Here we touch on existentialism and its notions of freedom of choice and "bad faith". We'd rather not be free, and rail against our restrictions, than leap into the unknown and confront our incapacity to know what freedom is for. Confront in fact our responsibility for choosing what we make of our lives. You can be absolutely free, and then realise that the only choice that makes sense is to burden yourself with commitment again.

And yet, the sweetness of freedom tasted! At least for me, the moments in which I have had that taste, in which I have drunk those winds of freedom, are some of the sweetest in my memory. But maybe that's not true for everyone? I'd like to hear.

Why does the amalgam of freedom and loneliness harden with age? Because freedom's sweetness comes from its possibilities, and age prunes possibilities. Freedom without possibilities is anomie, the desolation of meaningless consumer "choices" pursued for the lack of anything else, or, at the other end of the scale, the "freedom" of the bum. Seen this way, freedom can never be an end in itself, but only an enabling condition, a fertile space in which something good can take shape...

We can talk about free will of course - if someone feels that poor donkey hasn't been thrashed within an inch of its life. We can talk about political freedom, though it's a topic of less than burning interest to us citizens of this complacent democracy. Are we free? I mean, in this country, this time, this system of life? I suggest we're a lot less free than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, if freedom is the feeling of wind in your hair, sunset over hills you may climb tomorrow if you feel brave... And a lot more free if freedom is the range of possibilities open to a human to express him or herself. Define your terms.

Rules of engagement? To be consistent with the topic, I suppose I should say there'll be none. But I would like to encourage a truer freedom than no rules would actually likely allow - since being free would in this case no doubt mean being free to do what we always do. So I'm invoking our friend Bohm again. I'll try to remember to bring a symbol of freedom to be talked to, or held in the hand as a talking stick.

Greg's Topic 19-Jan-2011 - Implications of WikiLeaks publications

This month I’d like to discuss the issues arising from the recent WikiLeaks publications.

I’ve identified three topics:

1. Freedom of Information

It has been said that information wants to be free. For information to become ‘free’, it only takes one person who:

· Has access to particular information.

· Has the desire and means to publish it.

· Is willing to suffer any potential consequences of doing so (or don’t think they’ll be caught).

Even if these conditions aren’t met, there’s always the potential of illegal access.

So, should governments have the right or duty to keep information secret:

· What type of information?

· In what circumstances?

· What conditions should be applied?

A related question is the extent governments will be able to keep secrets, even if they want to (so is this a mute point).

2. Cyber Conflict

The reaction to WikiLeaks’ publications has been described variously as the first cyber, information or internet war.

Firstly, a number of on-line (mainly financial) organisations have bowed to pressure from the US government in an attempt to weaken and isolate WikiLeaks (PayPal, US Banks, etc.). Then the reaction of the Anonymous group of on-line activists who coordinated a series of web attacks against these organisations. Anonymous’ members span many countries, and probably don’t recognise any particular set of laws, but instead presumably operate within their own individual ethical and moral framework. Also, at this point the group appears to be comprised of a loosely bound set of individuals cooperating towards a common goal, without a formal command structure.

Although the consequences of the recent attacks seems to be fairly limited, the question remains when and in what form these attacks may take in the future; will they become more organised, frequent and difficult to contain; and can governments can learn how to police and/or reduce their impact?

3. Law

Governments seem to be getting increasingly frustrated with their inability to control information and/or prosecute those who they think have contravened their laws or national interest (particularly the US in this case, but I don’t see any reason why it will be limited to them). For example, prosecutors in the US and elsewhere apparently have not been able to identify any law that WikiLeaks has broken, especially when it’s registered and operates in other countries. And new laws that have been proposed almost certainly contravene the US constitution and will therefore be thrown out. Unsuprisingly, WikiLeaks chose to move its operations to Iceland, a country with the some of the strongest protections of the rights of journalists and media organisations.

The main problem for governments here is one of jurisdiction – legal systems evolved in an environment where borders were well defined and could be protected, whereas such borders, at least in terms of information flow, are breaking down rapidly and are virtually meaningless in some contexts.

I realise this has been a growing issue for a long time, perhaps proportional to the rise of global communications, but maybe recent events are bringing it to a head. In some ways it could bring into question the ability of individual countries to govern themselves effectively. The question is how this situation will play out? What are the implications to world governance?

Stephen's topic

Sorry to still be emailing this to you - at this late stage and all - but I failed in my weekend's campaign to post my topic to the blog. The blogger blog is a shitty thing that has been designed by sadists, but hopefully my topic is not - so Martin will post it up there for now. Here it is - would be great if people were able to muse overnight and bring some thoughts to the session: Almost daily now there is another headline about a flood or other extreme weather event in a different part of the world. If these extreme weather events continue to increase, we may eventually reach a point where acceptance that we are sliding into an environmental disaster reaches critical mass. By critical mass I mean the point at which the majority of people no longer view radical change in our daily behaviour as an annoying idea imposed on them by others, but rather as a personal imperative driven by their own sense of necessity. Or, to put it more basically, where fear overtakes denial as the stronger instinct. At this point, one would presume that the level of global human energy that comes online to actualise change should bloom to thousands of times its current level. While, from our current decrepit vantage point, that might seem like a victory in itself, the subsequent challenge, of "what to do now?" will be just as important to our salvation, and no doubt be subject to all the same squabbling, power-plays and screw-ups that plague the majority of mass decision making. Up to now, it seems amazing how little public energy the growing challenge to come up with a 'new way' appears to occupy. Where are the models, the proposals, the scenarios? Isn't solution or scenario modeling the standard approach to managing an imminent serioius threat? Instead, all humanity seems to have come up with is a hotchpotch of good samaritan ideas, such as having four minute showers, and tokenistic, commercial and political piss-fartings such as carbon trading. If the developed world is living in a manner that cannot be supported by the planet then surely that manner itself has to change. And yet, humans, like all beasts, are hard wired to acquire and horde both material and power - and certainly not to relinquish it. The challenge therefore, is this: What does a world look like that is both sustainable and palatable? As the first of our new, more applied, COSC series, I can think of few more worthwhile challenges than to make an initial attempt to devise a practicable, high-level, new model for a sustainable modern society, suitable as a target for transition over the next few decades. To provide a little structure for the discussion, I propose the following primary criteria for the solution - we can discuss and adjust these if necessary at the beginning of the session. The solution should: 1. Discuss change across the various primary struts of society - political, legal, commercial, technological, social, cultural, communal etc.. 2. Address the major known environmental impact areas: food and nutrition / transport / manufacturing and consumerism / waste / 3. Be fully cognizant of human nature i.e. as palatable as possible to existing generations and culture. 4. Be practicable within the confines of current technologies or those reasonably foreseeable in the coming decades. Now, I am fully aware that this is not a likely brief for a 90 minute discussion but I think that although we can't hope to weave anything like a complete fabric for a solution in one session, it would nevertheless be very worthwhile if we can simply make a general start by tossing around some thoughts and creating a few good threads.

3 Feb 2009: Paul's Topic

I have struggled long over this post. I have been puzzling, maybe not daily, but at least ever few days, how I could lead the next conversation.

I have been thinking about my dreams. I have been puzzling if there is any hidden meaning in them. Wondering if maybe some strange thing that has been dredged up from my subconscious has some meaning. Is it telling me the future? Is it rehashing something from the past? Is it something that I'm current worried about? And I have been trying to put it in the context of our meetings... but nothing. I just haven't been able to grasp at a meaning.

Now obviously my short span of concentration hasn't been enough to totally dissuade me from imaging that there is something there, but as yet, it just hasn't bitten me.

So, given my predicament, I have chosen a more basic subject for focus of our next discussion, something more primeval, something that can be grasped and held onto. Fear.

In my imagination, this is coming from a similar place to dreams. It is something which drives us, which shapes our world. What we are willing to put ourselves up against. What we are unwilling to embark on. It must, must, come from that imaginative part of our brain. The part that remembers as a child hiding behind the couch when something unimaginable(/imaginable) was happening on the television. The lying in bed with the dread that something/someone was hiding in the wardrobe ready to pounce when the eyelids shut. The scary future, the worry that the familiar world will skip a track and suddenly be playing a different tune.

So, I don't give have a strong topic to lead, rather just a starting point for a discussion. Hopefully we can tie in to some of the earlier topics, and maybe just add a little more background to them to further discussions.

11 Mar 2009: Greg's Topic

For this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the topic of the flow of time.

What really sparked my interest is I heard a scientist discussing this issue and she said that none of the physical laws are time directional, in other words they don't support an 'arrow of time' as most humans perceive it. Following from this two distinct possibilities were presented:

1. There is a absolute flow of time from past to present to future. In this model, the future hasn't happened yet (whatever that means) and time is independent of human (or other) consciousness. The future could be considered non-linear and chaotic, and therefore impossible to predict except in the most limited domains. This is the model to which almost all humans prescribe, and even those that don’t usually operate day-to-day as if they do.

2. Flow of time is only human construct, and actually all 'moments' or 'states' or whatever of the universe exist simultaneously. In this case , the flow of time is purely a human construct.

An additional question regards single or multiple/infinite timelines or event sequences. Either model could be consistent with the universe splitting at any or all points. Certainly, option 2 where all states exist simultaneously in a single event sequence seems to be incredibly fatalistic.

One interesting question regards entropy, where systems tend to move from high to low potential energy and from ordered to a disordered states. Is this a genuine arrow of time or another human construct?

5 Aug 2009: Paul's Topic

I'm trying to think of a suitable topic, but not particularly successfully.

To distract you all, I suggest you do the survey on America's Apocalypse. (if you can't be bothered reading the article the link is here - which on my second run through I was an "humanitarian internationalist", which was a lot better that what I was labeled the first time...)

OK, now nice that you've forgotten that I was supposed to be choosing a topic...

So, I'm thinking that tomorrow we'll talk something along the line of "Social Responsibility".

- Should you donate to charities? (or are the ones that demand only the ones that are good at advertising?)
- Should you give some money to beggars? (or is that just proving them with a local maximum from which they can't jump out of?)
- Should you volunteer for the local sports club/council/group? (or should that be just a role of local council?)
- Does what work requires of people now leave them in a state which is unable to have the energy to contribute to society building? (and that stuff is better left to the professionals anyway?)

Anyway, something along those lines!

26 May 2010: Paul'sTopic (although he couldn't make it)

OK, we all have a week to form some opinions on this topic... (which is less ethereal than possibly some...)

A number of European countries/lawmakers (Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc.) have proposed/legislated that the burqa should be banned from public display. Is this an attack on religious belief, a liberation of oppressed women, a racist backlash again recent years Muslim terrorism or just politicians trying to draw peoples attention away from disappointing economic activity over the last couple of years?

So the conversation can head in a number of directions from there, but I think a couple of themes come though:

- Should religion have freedom to express itself in whatever it's forms?

- Should members of society be forced to have responsibilities as well as rights? What limits either way?

- Is this a particularly European issue because of lack of multiculturalism? (well beside other Europeans - but is Australia any different?)

Anyway, we'll start with that, and maybe see where it leads.