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I can understand why Communism might have this effect, but why censorship or surveillance? Anything I can read on the subject?

musage 8y ago
Not communism. Totalitarianism. > We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway. -- Hannah Arendt, in "The Origins of Totalitarianism", which I recommend. She also wrote > The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality. and > The fanaticism of the elite cadres, absolutely essential for the functioning of the movement, abolishes systematically all genuine interest in specific jobs and produces a mentality which sees every conceivable action as an instrument for something entirely different. You cannot decouple censorship and surveillance from that basic derangement. And how that combination in turn would kill enthusiasm, the ability to think new things, there's also many things said and written about that but I didn't save those because they seemed rather obvious. > The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom — that is the idea, more or less. -- George Orwell He doesn't explain why it's a fallacy. But there's things to read on the subject, of course. I'd guess that just like very sociopathic individuals are essentially just feeding on and destroying others to buy some time before they fall into the black hole at their own core, so it is with power structures made from that foundation. Cancer cells die after they killed their host, an organism made out of just cancer cells wouldn't exactly fare better. That doesn't mean they can't eat the whole world and be the "most innovative" or the "most alive", all opponents being dead. They still will not innovate or be alive in any interesting sense of the words. People who cannot even face themselves cannot say or see anything interesting about the world.

musage 8y ago

Not communism. Totalitarianism. > We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway. -- Hannah Arendt, in "The Origins of Totalitarianism", which I recommend. She also wrote > The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality. and > The fanaticism of the elite cadres, absolutely essential for the functioning of the movement, abolishes systematically all genuine interest in specific jobs and produces a mentality which sees every conceivable action as an instrument for something entirely different. You cannot decouple censorship and surveillance from that basic derangement. And how that combination in turn would kill enthusiasm, the ability to think new things, there's also many things said and written about that but I didn't save those because they seemed rather obvious. > The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom — that is the idea, more or less. -- George Orwell He doesn't explain why it's a fallacy. But there's things to read on the subject, of course. I'd guess that just like very sociopathic individuals are essentially just feeding on and destroying others to buy some time before they fall into the black hole at their own core, so it is with power structures made from that foundation. Cancer cells die after they killed their host, an organism made out of just cancer cells wouldn't exactly fare better. That doesn't mean they can't eat the whole world and be the "most innovative" or the "most alive", all opponents being dead. They still will not innovate or be alive in any interesting sense of the words. People who cannot even face themselves cannot say or see anything interesting about the world.