From: Randall Parker 

In , note these
cogitations from blucy{at}mediaone.net Bill Lucy:
> One, a recently published book -- "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The
> Dynamics of Torture" by John Conroy.

How about that book that argued that ordinary Germans were involved in the
Holocaust? Kinda similar theme in some respects.

>It's a book about the rationale behind
> torture from the standpoint of both torturer and victim. The horrific part
for
> me was that most people involved in torture are ordinary people. Not as
> surprising was that one of the incidents that was documented was here in
> Chicago, and of very recent time.
>
> Another was a demonstration of how easy it is to be totalitarian while
thinking
> one is "free".

It goes to the question of how do you define "free".

>It involved an experiment done in the 80s with a 7th grade
> social studies class in Connecticut. Almost everyone, including 7th graders
not
> in the class, became involved in what to our eyes might be a mob action.
>
> It doesn't involve much abstraction to realize that the difference between
> "thinking for yourself" and having someone think for you are minor.

How so? Seems like a big difference to me.

> Of course, I think I'm free. But Juan Miguel Gonzalez also believes he is
free.

You do not know that.

> Who is right is much more a sense of perspective than most of us care to
admit.

I don't agree at all.

> > How do you measure whether we are free? What is available to us to learn
> > and to try to do? Or what we do (or not do) with it all?
>
> I'm not really sure that as individuals we are capable of determining whether
> we are free. Do you think you have the tools to do it?

Bill, you have to define it first. Then ask yourself how you'd measure it.

Look, one can define it all sorts of ways. But I'm wary of the sorts of
definitions that seem to have as their purpose to obliterate more classical
definitions. I have a rather Lockean and Enlightenment view of what
constitutes freedom. If someone tells me I'm not free whereas by the
definition I use (a political definition for the most part) I think I am
then either they are using a different definition or one of us has our
facts wrong.

This sort of definition that goes "freedom from want, freedom from
hunger" and so on is _not_ fundamentally a political definition. It
does not define a relationship to other people or to the state. It defines
a physical condition.

A lot of people who use the word freedom are using it refer, one way or
another, to a "freedom" from need. But I define freedom in terms
of freedoms to act and speak. One might say "Yes, but if someone is
hungry then that person is constrained in various ways from acting and
speaking". Fine. But one is also constrained by gravity and phyiscal
conditions in general.

What many people on the left want is to use the sort of moral legitmacy
attached to the classical definition of freedom to tag onto it a freedom
from want and _then_ to prescribe political changes to bring about a change
in physical condition.

> I'm hoping this thread doesn't devolve. I think it could be quite
enlightening
> for all of us.

I have low expectations so anything less than total devolution will be a
pleasant surprise to me .

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5