necama, posts by tag: philosophy - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei Led us to this perfect day. Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ All but Wei were sacrificed. Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx Gave us clean cities and parks. Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood Made us whole; made us good.

Ira Levin -- This Perfect Day

Usually, it is the artists who first suggest ways our society could go wrong. Painters paint images of dispair and loathing; musicians write discordant and melancholy works; novelists write distopian novels of a bleak future. The scary thing is, sometimes they see the writing on the wall far better than we do.

The quote above is from one such novel, This Perfect Day. In that book, the population of the world is kept in a drug-induced stupor and treated as a mass of sheep, and we read about the rise of conciousness in one member of that society. At one point, the protagonist notes that in his world, people are free: free from crime, free from poverty, free from disease, free from war. Later, he notes that this "freedom" comes at the price of being truly free -- there is no freedom to chose.

Now let's look at America, where we are used to "Freedom" meaning that we are free to do things. We are allowed to make choices -- studip ones, even! -- about where we will live, how we will work, even to break laws if we are willing to face the consequences of our actions. It's an exhilerating thing, this freedom. To facilitate this freedom requires an open society where the basic premise is one of trust, even if that trust must occasionally be enforced by the legal system. Enter Bush and his cronies. Since 9/11, this basic attitude about the role of government has changed. Now people want to be free from things -- like terrorism.

So, we pass new laws, and the pretext of our society changes. We aren't quite as free to do things as we once were, and amazingly enough, people seem willing to accept this, all in the name of security. The really funny thing is, that these changes to make us safer offer an illusion. Airport security is a joke; anybody with the inclination and time to do it will get contraband through the screening procedures. Honestly, I find it amusing that they ban the carrying of emory boards and nail clippers, yet they allow people to wear belts and carry pens and pencils, all of which make more effective weapons than emory boards and nail clippers.

What else did we do? Oh, yeah. We also tightened up our immigration laws, which, admittedly, were poorly enforced. But, really, what are we? We are a country of immigrants. If you don't believe that, ask the nearest native american where his people went, or ask about what happened at Wounded Knee. Ask yourself where your ancestors were five or ten generations ago; odds are, it wasn't here.

The truth is, America is kind of like a cult: the cool-aid is rampant consumerism, the rules are our laws, and our opponents change to fit the war of the day. In the fifties, it was the communists. We were at war with Russia. We had always been at war with Russia. Today, it's Al Qaeda and Iraq. Today, we are at war with MiddleEast. We have always been at war with MiddleEast. And what will be the truth tomorrow?