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Freedom is not a goal, but a direction
- ukj 5y ago"Freedom" is a symbol. Like all symbols and all symbolism it means nothing to Bob and everything to Bill. It means one things to Sarah and another to Sally. One person's freedom is another's tyranny and vice versa. It's all a treacherous language game.
- myfavoritedog 5y agoFreedom means different things to different people, but it's not because it's all a treacherous language game. It's because the concept is complex. The forces that underlie freedom like choice and power are not just treacherous language games. They also mean different things to different people, but they're very real at a base level. If it were all a treacherous language game, then playing would be futile. There would be nothing to talk about. To the contrary, Snowden is talking about Freedom from the context of a society that was a humanitarian, economic, and cultural disaster - Mao's China. Those failures were far from a language game.
- RobertRoberts 5y agoFreedom is the default for existence. The only way to not have freedom is for others to remove it from you by force or threat of it. The threat of it is what causes us to self limit our own freedoms. (sometimes for a greater good, sometimes not)
- secondaryacct 5y agoThat means nothing: I want to be free to copulate with any mate - what should you do when I approach yours? Well, this is this balance and how to reach it that is the difficulty: what you say has no substance and everyone agrees.
- RobertRoberts 5y agoSo you choose not to under threat of consequences. Or take the risk.
- elliekelly 5y ago“Freedom” can be given up by choice, too. Often because the trade-off is better for both. Marriage, for example.
- RobertRoberts 5y agoYep, I said the same thing with "limit our own freedom".
- user3939382 5y agoI spent a lot of time reading political philosophy books from smart people with big reputations and the definition and dynamics of liberty was definitely an overriding theme. My takeaway many years later is that it's a very complex topic and many people, all with contradictory positions, have a lot of confidence in their take on it. I trump them all by having no confidence in my take!
- secondaryacct 5y agoYeah I m in the same boat. I come from France, an old, maybe aging, proud of itself democracy and... when I discovered Singapore then Hong Kong, two semi-dictatorships in different ways, omg: I had never seen people so free in ways we cant be free in France. So now that Im a permanent resident in Hong Kong, joking with everyone next step is Chinese citizenship, I'm a bit at a loss when it comes to freedom. Not corruption, efficiency, representativity, predictable justice or even fairness, where clearly I cant argue against France and for China/HK. But just freedom itself, I feel it goes so much beyond the ability to vote and complain publicly. I cant define it just like you, but when I look around me in the middle of a street in Hong Kong, even now, I feel so much freer that in Paris... it's weird.
- beaconstudios 5y agoare you sure you're not mixing up freedom and stability? Individual freedom is not something China is known for.
- sharemywin 5y agoAfter reading that I think he just said buy bitcoin.
- twobitshifter 5y agoI like this point. To others, the statement is not a definition of freedom, but a guide on how to make decisions. If you think of freedom as a point, that needs to be achieved, defended, or maintained, you’ll act in opposition to other forces, and choose angles to defend around the past basis. If instead, freedom is a vector, your goal is positive, to expand it, to open new freedoms, and to ensure that as society moves forward freedom continues to grow and be maintained with it.
- 0134340 5y agoThat statement's pretty vague without defining "freedom". And if you go on that journey, you'll find out it'll be a long one that never ends. For instance, for whom do you define freedom? Freedom to do what? Freedom from what? >society moves forward freedom continues to grow That's a big claim to say we have more freedoms now. We're encumbered by far more laws now than almost any time in history and watched by more authorities than anyone in history who have access to far more systems to know who you are, when you are, etc. Those same authorities also have more power than ever to execute those powers for "justice" and more power than ever to catch you. But hey, at least you have material freedoms, now you can choose Coke or Pepsi and forget about the other freedoms closing in around you.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoA consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they’ve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains. This is why both parties are so bizarrely hostile to Section 230.
- chasd00 5y agofreedom is just another word for nothing left to lose - Janis Joplin i didn't read the article because i'm free to not have to ;) I know it's shallow but, to me, freedom is a road trip. Being able to drive across the country without having to get permits or passports or anything, just being able to move about is freedom to me.
- arnoooooo 5y agoI can understand how it could be considered that in a very non-free society, but no. Freedom exists only as an equilibrium between your freedom and that of others, between paralyzing order and utter chaos.
- mfcl 5y agoI was thinking, I can currently go from NA to Europe today if I wanted to. But that level of technology and orchestration would not be possible in a lawless and barbaric society (at least I don't think so). This possibility offers me a lot of freedom (traveling around the world) and in exchange, I had to follow rules and work. I gave some freedom and got more in exchange. The same thing applies for many other things like communication, food, entertainment, etc. But in the end we all win, for each unit of freedom we give away (or invest), we get more back (ideally). So is equilibrium the right word? Or maybe we are talking about different things. I don't know, I'm not making a statement or counter-argument here, just thinking out loud. There are definitely attempts in the world to restrict freedom not in the word of efficiency, but control and power. The line between the two can be blurry.
- slx26 5y agoThese are all very interesting thoughts, including the comment you are responding too. I just want to make the situation even more tricky and point out that freedom is not only about the amount of choices you have available, so giving something away to get more choices is not always positive. There's a bound on complexity, and it turns out that freedom requires "space" to decide, not only "availability" of choices. Rules and restrictions, even if implicit (unspoken rules, cultural expectations, etc.), do reduce our freedom by reducing our space to decide, pressuring us in some ways. EDIT: in any case, beyond a fairly low minimum, freedom is usually not so much about raw number of choices as it is about relative number of choices, comparing what options others have access to and what options do we have access to. So I think we should focus and work more towards "healthy freedom ranges" and freedom equality and coverage (not leaving some people out) than pretending that any single change increases or reduces our freedom in a dramatic fixed amount. To me, the freedom scale is clearly not linear. (Now I'm not even so sure "freedom" is the right word to focus on. It's more about "unobstructed human potential" than about "possibilities" to me.)
- samuelizdat 5y agoFreedom is the degree to which you are able to navigate the power process. The power process is the ability to identify and change something within a system. For example, if there is a vending machine with coke and you want pepsi. Is there a process that you can use to make that happen? If there is, then you have freedom. This of course extends to bigger things than soda. "Sovereign is he who makes the exception"
- slx26 5y agoInteresting, but it should probaby be divided by the desire / expectations to navigate the power process too. Otherwise, it gets too far away from the common usage of the word.
- hirundo 5y agoI think that's a reasonable definition of freedom ... and not at all what Snowden is talking about. That underscores why it's so hard to discuss. The word itself is a Rorschach test.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI dunno, you're talking about what you can and cannot draw into your sphere of influence. You have, in your analogy, the option to refuse anyway. Probably cheaper to not use a vending machine anyway.
- glitchc 5y agoThis equates power to freedom, where the degree of freedom correlates to the degree of power, and only the truly powerful are free. If that is your thesis, then you are in agreement with Snowden.
- 0134340 5y agoMore power draws more responsibility so not necessarily. Yes, you have more freedoms as in choosing what to buy but material freedoms are only one branch in the many freedoms one can have. So I can agree with OP in that ability of one to manipulate power for freedom is a good definition of one's true potential for it. One can also give away certain powers or responsibilities for more freedom.
- hereme888 5y agoExcellent article, and beautifully written. Thanks for sharing.
- dumb1224 5y agoI thought the discussion will be around the culture revolution, not so much as 'freedom' but I guess there are intricate links. Quite unlike many other 90s kids growing up in China, I read a lot of the old books and journals from that era inherited from my grandfather. Novels, novelette, magazines what not. Not to nitpick but I think a rightist (Aì Qīng) in chinese political spectrum is actually left-wing (in the sense of aligning with the west, pursuing free individuality and less compliant with conservative values etc). I was in Tate London where Ai's exhibition was on and there was actually pretty cool footages accompanying the sunflower seeds. Regarding Edward's article and his connection to Ai's book, I think I could understand it from memory of reading culture revolution books. They are all about human nature and individual struggles, very little is about actually political stances. It often portraits intellectuals against village fools (mob riding the revolution waves to obtain power over everyone), their realisation of life and coming of age (since protagonists are often from privileged background and aristocrat families who have leftist values, or rather, called rightists in China). The value clash between total opposite sides, tribal, village, modern, metropolitan, aspiration, destination, mundane, soul crashing... It resonates with ordinary people because it's picturing societal and individual psychologies. This is my naive take.
- bena 5y agoI believe I've gotten downvoted here for voicing a similar thought. Some things can't be "solved", you constantly have to do the work. Democracy, relationships, tolerance, etc and I guess freedom, but that's similar to democracy. There's no end goal to them. You can lose them if you don't work at preserving them.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoagreed. "The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions." its a fight against entropy, same as road repairs. its not that I don't want big sweeping reforms, but I believe in gradient descent. all good progress is good progress. like the UK restricting conversion therapy. I want it gone, but this is still an improvement.
- sdave 5y agoFreedom is a .... consequence , of ....
- ttfkam 5y agoYou do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your humanity. Want to know how to fight back against authoritarianism? Look to the folks who've been fighting against racism for (literally) hundreds of years. Racism in the US is just fascism that hasn't hit white people yet.
- bobornotbob 5y ago"You don't extend tolerance to those who <insert your definition here>" is the argument that was made by every authoritarian regime in the world.
- ttfkam 5y ago"You do not extend tolerance to those who are kicking the crap out of you because they are Black" is the argument that was made by every authoritarian regime in the world. See how dumb that sounds? There are absolutely instances where intolerance to some behavior is acceptable. The question only becomes, "Are they denying another's humanity or not?" Not denying another's humanity and right to simply exist? Then it's not authoritarian. You should tolerate them. Easy peasy. Claiming simply being homosexual should be a crime or that police should have the right to kill people who aren't posing an immediate threat? That's authoritarianism. You should not tolerate them. Easy peasy.
- defaultprimate 5y ago>You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your humanity. Straight outta Mein Kampf
- axhl 5y agoNot quite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoPosting a wiki article is not an argument
- rob_c 5y agoNot sure I agree with the title. Freedom should be a right that isn't to be taken from you, not a journey or a goal. Shame the rest of the article reads like a love letter to Ai (not a complaining about the artist I like his work). But given the article's author, whenever he speaks or writes I'm expecting more somehow...
- ttfkam 5y ago[flagged]
- jtbayly 5y agoSo... is Snowden on the right or left? Think carefully before you answer. If he's on the left, why are you responding negatively to his concern for cancel culture by attacking the right? If he's on the right, then perhaps there is more cancelling on the right than you want to admit?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago> So... is Snowden on the right or left? Why is it so important that he identified by one of those?
- h2odragon 5y agoChapelle is a "Right Winger?" Is he a "White Supremacist" too, yet? "Clayton Bigsby" was a dog whistle!
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoRegarding LGBT issues, Chapelle's ideology harmonizes well with the right.
- h2odragon 5y ago
- tomp 5y agoSame for equality and meritocracy.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoit is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with "national security" — a euphemism for state supremacy — are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. Amen brother. I realized that National Security is all about US Gov security & US Gov partner's security & major campaign donor security and that's about it.
- evancoop 5y agoPerhaps there is some definition of freedom in mathematical terms in which the total scope of decision-making autonomy is maximized over all citizens? The barbarian example would yield a low tally, as the leaders of a hoard are "free," but their subordinates have little decision-making capacity. In terms of the limitations of personal freedoms, the boundary might lie where the diminishment of others' freedoms exceeds the diminishment of one's own if restrained. (E.g. killing someone eliminates all of their future decisions, but preventing a murder eliminates only one decision for the potential murderer?)
- beaconstudios 5y agothere is sort-of, it's called utilitarianism. However, maths isn't a magical cure-all - the ethical dilemma is just shifted onto how you quantise your ethical problems.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ComodoHacker 5y agoLooking from a dialectic perspective, the higher in the social hierarchy you are, the more freedom you have in some of your decisions and less in others. Decisions like where to live, what to wear, who to befriend etc., become more free and at the same time less yours. Taking it to the extreme, is a leader of an authoritarian state free to stop oppressing their people and install democracy? Is a leader of a democratic state free to start oppressing their people and install authoritarianism? Perhaps the grand theorem of freedom would state that freedom in the Universe is constant.
- photochemsyn 5y agoWe could examine this by comparing 'anti-freedom' systems like chattel slavery (Old US South Cotton Plantations) vs. wage slavery (Appalachian Coal Company Towns). In the former, refusal to work for the masters led to beatings, torture, mutilitaion and death. In the later, refusal to work for the bosses led to homelessness and hunger and death. Now, one could argue that the coal company town was 'more free' than the cotton plantation, I suppose. Ultimately freedom requires the dismantling and weakening of hierarchical social power structures. Let's say the people in that coal company town were the ones who elected their bosses, rather than some remote collection of wealthy shareholders. Wouldn't that be even more free? Democratization of corporations seems like going in the direction of freedom. Germany is ahead in this, as corporate boards in Germany include employee representatives, not just shareholder representatives.
- wtmt 5y ago> building out a similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective “social harms.” FWIW, this seems to be a common thread in many countries apart from China and the US. “Sedition”, for example, has become the stick to use for any kind of dissent uttered in India over the last few years (a lot more so compared to before). > rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with “national security”—a euphemism for state supremacy—are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they’ve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains. Again, please add India to this list. It would take a lot to detail out how things are in the country. So let me share one recent set of incidents in a major city (where Google has its largest offices). Police, without the backing of any law or specific authorization, were stopping people on the streets and asking them to unlock their phones and show their WhatsApp chats so that the police could read and see if the person was involved in transacting ganja (marijuana/weed). But such things go on without the courts batting an eye or punishing the abuse of power with serious consequences. I’ve kinda lost faith in democracies and the claims of checks and balances with the executive, legislature and judiciary. Power corrupts all of them equally, and they all side with each other rather than with the people who they took an oath to serve.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoOh, let's start with a shorter snippet. Something banal and absurd, easy to relate to, that shows where these 'sedition' things tend to go: If you cheer on the Pakistani cricket team, that's sedition. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/28/sport/india-arrest-kashmiri-muslims-pakistan-cricket-spt-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/28/sport/india-arrest-kashmiri-m... 'On Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh Police tweeted that five people had been arrested in incidents throughout the state after "anti-national elements used disrespectful words against the Indian cricket team and made anti-India comments which disrupted peace."'
- bogle 5y ago
- 1cvmask 5y agoI am glad that they posted this with the subtitle instead of the original title "Cultural Revolutions" which was posted a couple of days ago and sadly got no traction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29247018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29247018 The way Edward Snowden weaves Ai Wei-Wei's account of his journey through the Cultural Revolution (1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246165/1000-years-o https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246165/1000-years-o...) and his own is great: From the time I began studying China’s quest to intermediate the information space of its domestic internet, as part of my classified work at the NSA, I’d experience an unpleasant spinal tingle whenever I came across a new report indicating that the United States government, was, piece by piece, building out a similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective “social harms.” I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying “East” and “West” were, or are, the same; rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with “national security”—a euphemism for state supremacy—are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they’ve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains.
- pron 5y ago> Under the influence of politically correct extremism, individual thought and expression are too often curbed Uh-huh. I can only assume this refers to the so-called "cancel-culture" which probably doesn't exist (I am not claiming that there aren't "cancellation" incidents, but for this to exist as a "culture" or a trend, it needs to be shown that fewer people today can express and publicly disseminate fewer opinions than in the past; this is probably the very opposite of reality). Freedom is almost self-contradictory. A person living alone in the world can be free, but two cannot. Either they have the freedom to curtail the other's freedom, or they do not. Either way, someone here is not fully free. So whenever people speak of more freedom, the question is, more freedom for whom and at the expense of whom. Like anything political, freedom is a resource that needs to be allocated among people, and there are valid debates over how. But within reasonable circumstances, there is no one direction toward freedom, but many directions, each giving more freedom to some and less to others.
- gz5 5y ago+1 "with freedom comes responsibility" (Eleanor Roosevelt's context was different, but the phrase is important)
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago> A person living alone in the world can be free, but two cannot. This seems to say that the opposite of freedom is impact. That is, freedom is lost when one person impacts another. I feel restraint is a more effective antonym.
- memelordxx 5y ago> A person living alone in the world can be free, but two cannot. Either they have the freedom to curtail the other's freedom, or they do not. I mean, even a person living alone in the world would lack the "freedom to curtail another's freedom" in that sense. Furthermore, he would still be bound to the laws of physics, for example, and would never achieve your definition of freedom. I think the freedom the author is discussing is something deeper than "capability to do x", more like the specific liberty of being heterogenous to the culture you live in (hence his lionizing of tolerance). I think you're absolutely right that there is a scarcity of this freedom that is precipitated by a scarcity of resources, as in your example. I think history has proven that it's not a zero-sum game, however, and that certain cultures have managed to produce a higher degree of this "freedom" than others. A culture that values and protects open scientific inquiry, for example, would perhaps discover advancements that reduced the aforementioned scarcity of resources which should have the effect of increasing the freedom that was previously diminished. Perhaps why freedom should not be regarded as a goal is because, as you have pointed out, it cannot be absolutely attained, neither by an individual or much less a plurality of them. To instead orient a culture in the direction of increased freedom seems more achievable and fruitful.
- motohagiography 5y agoI'd argue that before freedom can be a goal or a direction it's necessarily an identity first. When we think of freedom as an external thing, it's a reaction that defines itself as inferiorized to the thing one is becoming free from. I like Snowden's thinking and think he's one of the greatest exemplars of courage alive today, and not to use his personal email newsletter as a foil, but I think he missed some key depth. The crux I think of the culture war is whether the ideal of freedom originates from identity - or is the effect of experience. This crux is related to the tension between individual and collective good, but not defined by it. I think the line is deeper. The peculiar aspect of viewing freedom as an identity is it necessitates - if not a belief in the divine, at least a presumption of it. If you believe freedom is an effect of circumstances, it relates you to the material world as being subject of it. If you see freedom as a state of existence or an axiom of being, it has to originate from somewhere, which implies it was made or granted - and not by humanity. This is why the culture war isn't intellectual or about ideas or a specific "religion," but it is the exact same kind of religious conflict we've recorded for milennia, because it's over beliefs about identity. "Attacks" or subjugation of freedom isn't an attack on an ideal, they become an attack on "free people." However, the complement or opposition to this free identity is the one where people identify as un-free, or as subjects to forces - unfortunately for us all, those forces are of the freedom-identified. Unlike freedom, this view doesn't come from divine presumption, but material physical expereince, either of real direct oppression and abuse, or via the logic of ideas in language. Their belief comes from things that mostly happened to them. It's a founding axiom of their identity, where your first words are for things that reflect your identity as a subject, slave, or oppressed. This identity requires an earthly oppressor, independent of whether it is real or mostly symbolic. For all my criticisms of it, it's a consequence of lived experience and not faith in some divine force. Anyway, into heady territory here, but on this freedom/culture issue I think we've tried everything else. If we're doing pithy aphorisms, I'd say instead that identities are irreconcilable. We can co-exist, but we cannot fully know or understand each other, even if the greatest thing in life is the little bits we do get to know and understand about others. I'd say that recognizing freedom as those parts of others we existentially cannot understand and treating it as unexplored opportunity for growth goes a long way to reconciling the interests of those who identify as free, and those who do not.
- debacle 5y agoNo one is ever truly free. Maybe great, great ascetics who are so detached from the world that their freedom has become a prison of their own. When I was young, I felt every bite at my freedom deeply. Having a job, a schedule, responsibilities. Each one was deleterious to my freedom in a way that, as a young man, I was unequipped to handle. I've learned at some point in the last few years that we trade in our freedoms every day of our lives. If you have a driver's license or pasteurized milk in your refrigerator, you have traded in some way in your freedom. What I see today is a contingent of people who don't value their freedom at all. They have no spiritual relationship with their existence as an individual - their identity is predicated on their characteristics and not their innate uniqueness. Down that road is every manner of tyranny.
- bluetomcat 5y agoFreedom is context-dependent. Living in a civilised society gives you different kinds of freedoms (and obligations) compared to living in some form of a hunter-gatherer society. Like, freedom to pick the desired room temperature from your AC remote, rather than freedom to roam around and hunt whatever animals you choose.
- long_time_gone 5y agoI love your comment. I have a small question with this part: > What I see today is a contingent of people who don't value their freedom at all. They have no spiritual relationship with their existence as an individual - their identity is predicated on their characteristics and not their innate uniqueness. Is it possible there is some "hierarchy of needs" for freedom and that "characteristic freedom" must be achieved before "uniqueness freedom" can be achieved? Said another way, maybe these people actually can't feel innately free until they feel their characteristics are accepted as part of free society.
- debacle 5y agoThe answer is anxiety. Even before COVID, there was a great + growing anxiety about the world. It was palpable. I think that our anxiety is normal, it is biological, and it is inevitable. We are not that much more evolved than we were 20,000 years ago, but the things we worried about then are almost trivial now, and the ways in which we managed those anxieties are ineffective against the anxieties of the day. You can't run away from global warming, the surveillance state, or our increasingly rewarding but terrifying relationship with our world. We need a new spirituality to combat this anxiety - it wont go away on its own. We need mnemonics that placate the animalistic parts of our brain that are appropriate for our times, and we need to be able to identify when our anxieties are being preyed on by others.
- testing192847 5y agoagreed
- photochemsyn 5y agoExcellent article. For years I've suspected that when American 'leaders' look at the kind of power the Chinese government (or the Saudi government) has over its people, their main emotion is not revulsion but rather envy, and this seems rather bipartisan in nature, and is a sentiment found not just in the political sphere but also the corporate sphere. It's the complete intertwinement of the corporate and political spheres that leads to totalitarian regimes who view their own people as the greatest threat to their continued grasp on power and so institute highly repressive mass surveillance system, mass incarceration of dissidents and so on. However, there's another aspect to this, in which 'freedom' is not just legal in nature, but economic and physical as well. What does it mean to be 'free' in a company town where the only employers are Amazon and Walmart? What does it mean to be 'free' when energy sources you need for survival are controlled by someone else? The Chinese model seems to be 'we will ensure you have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your total loyalty to the state is required'. The American model I'm afraid is becoming 'we will ensure you have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your total loyalty to your corporate employer is required.'
- yosito 5y ago> The Chinese model seems to be 'we will ensure you have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your total loyalty to the state is required' Judging based on the most recent incidence of mass starvation, which model do you think worked better? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
- photochemsyn 5y agoI'm not sure if that is relevant to this particular issue, but the history is fascinating. Not everyone gets excited about fertilizer chemistry but when Nixon went to China and opened up trade, the very first major industrial projects were the construction of massive ammonia fertilizer plants across China, built with American technology (*well German technology from the 1900's more accurately, just updated). This ended the famine cycle in China [1]: > The removal of the limits to agricultural growth and China’s industrialization came in the immediate aftermath of US President Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China. The first commercial deal signed immediately after the visit was China’s order for thirteen of the world’s largest synthetic ammonia complexes for producing nitrogen-based chemical fertilizer. China purchased additional plants in the 1970s, developed its own capacity to build chemical fertilizer plants in the 1980s, became more or less self-sufficient in the 1990s, and began exporting chemical fertilizer by the turn of the new millennium. [1] https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/9279-modern-china-s-agricultural-contradictions/ https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/9279-modern-china-s-agricu... Now is a rigidly authoritarian state necessary for this kind of technological development? Err... no.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago> A close review of Snowden's official employment records and submissions reveals a pattern of intentional lying. He claimed to have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in fact he washed out because of shin splints. He claimed to have obtained a high school degree equivalent when in fact he never did. He claimed to have worked for the CIA as a "senior advisor," which was a gross exaggeration of his entry-level duties as a computer technician. He also doctored his performance evaluations and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his resume and stealing the answers to an employment test. In May 2013, Snowden informed his supervisor that he would be out of the office to receive treatment for worsening epilepsy. In reality, he was on his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets.
- cochne 5y agoWhat does any of that matter?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWhy should I care what a serial exaggerator and liar computer technician thinks?
- cochne 5y agoIn this case he is not making factual claims. It is purely a philosophical discussion. You can agree or disagree with the content itself. But I don't think a person being a liar or not should necessarily stop you from interacting with their content. If you found out Plato or Aristotle often lied in their daily life would that stop you from reading their works? That would be strange to me.
- foxhop 5y agoFreedom is a tricky word for people to grok. This is because people look at it from the FREEDOM TO perspective rather than the more valid FREEDOM FROM perspective.
- yosito 5y agoThe phrase that stands out to me in this is "the riot of human diversity". It's a great phrase. Probably worthy of a book or even a manifesto. I'm a multicultural person. Dual US/EU citizen. I've spent years living in each of the US, South America, the Caribbean and Europe. Since the mid-2010s, I've been acutely aware of different societal pressures to conform, and I've been "cancelled" by various groups of aquaintences over having opinions or failing to have opinions that the group demanded. Thankfully, I've got a few loyal friends, and a strong sense of self that have allowed me to recover and thrive. Through it all, one thing I've learned very well is that people in the world have very diverse views and opinions. It's a beautiful thing, and I will never make someone my enemy over their views. I have one moral standard to which I hold myself and others: do no harm. Beyond that, there is room for tolerance and disagreement.
- hunterb123 5y agoNever change! Diverse thought is much more important than "diversity" itself. These days it seems there is tolerance for the superficial diversity, but no tolerance for diverse thought. If you have a controversial thought you will be persecuted by the group until you conform. Also it seems if you are part of a certain diversity sometimes you are pressured to have a certain thought even harder than another person. Try to have a debate with them first, if you are met with hostility they aren't your friends, they don't know how to convey their supposed thoughts or even control their emotions. Politely tell them to fuck off and find a better group of more accepting people.
- lodi 5y ago> I have one moral standard to which I hold myself and others: do no harm. Right, but who determines what's "harmful"? Is it more harmful to punish a child or to not punish him? Is a cartoon of Jesus harmful? Muhammad? Are "micro-agressions" actually traumatic? Furthermore, what does it mean to "do" something? Is "meat-eating" a default state, or are you actively "doing" harm every day you continue to not be a vegan? Are you "doing" harm if you purchase some sneakers without knowing whether they were produced in a polluting or exploitative manner? --- I'm personally not a moral relativist; I think there are better and worse answers to most of the issues above. But I've just found that short commandments like "do no evil" or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" don't really offer any real guidance when tested against challenging real-world ethical problems.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- milky2028 5y agoIs it just me or is this nonsensical trash that seems to say absolutely nothing?
- milky2028 5y agoLike, I’m a Snowden guy. I rep this dude but this article is garbage.
- outside1234 5y agoAre there any projects to actually try to evolve the web to avoid censorship / intermediation? It seems to me we are good at identifying the negative trend but aren't actually acting on them. Or am I just missing the obvious?
- fsflover 5y agohttps://prism-break.org https://prism-break.org
- b1gb4dc0v1d 5y agoGotta love all these comments about censorship but not a peep that FB/Twitter were running a huge censorship campaign against Trump last year - like covering up the fact that Biden's son was fucking underage girls on camera and was under multiple federal investigations for corruption. Also, funny the same people here talking about freedom are the very first people to declare you must be wearing a mask and be vax'd with boosters and a return to lockdowns. You are all posers.
- b1gb4dc0v1d 5y ago[flagged]
- Sparkle-san 5y agobruh, you're embarrassing yourself.
- fdagobrrrrr 5y agoShut up and wear your mask slave! Take this vax! Wear are your papers!? Have you gotten your booster shot yet? Why not? No more buying groceries until you take your third booster shot and attest you will bend to our will SLAVE!
- dghughes 5y agoI think many people use the word freedom when they mean safety.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]