Comments on: Freedom Among Themselves

By: Philip Kibbey

Philip Kibbey — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:03:08 +0000

As Daniel stated, technology has been a benefit – instant communications and relations to almost anybody in the world – but also a severe detriment – the deterioration of personal relationships. More so, technology has facilitated and advertised the ease of non-personal relationships. Websites such as facebook, in my opinion, discourage the need to physically connect to people because it easier to virtually do connect. Day by day we are further removed from the need of a physical community because a virtual one suits are fast paced, constantly changing needs (how much those “needs” are constructed by advertising is a separate question).

I have also observed the role the media has played in breaking down communities and pushing individual freedom. Local news stories in my area on the country (Central Valley area in CA) always seem to highlight burglaries, murders, and general crime, which to me, contains the underlying message of, “who can you trust?” Little coverage is given to local community leaders and their efforts, and when it is, it is a simple ‘wow, look at them’ segment. There appears to never be any way for the media to forge a relationship between members of the community. As a result, many people feel lost because they have a distrust of their neighbors and no outlet to be involved in the community. I have felt this “lost” feeling at times as well.

The challenge it seems is how to build a community in the face of all these barriers. How do you convince people that convenient technology is detrimental to their community and well being? How do you convince people that despite the material success of untapped individual freedom, they should shift their focus to community freedom and freedom “among neighbors?”

By: Stewart

Stewart — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:04:56 +0000

Communication is being truncated by technology. Telephones allow an approximation of a conversation, but without the supposed 80% non-verbal communication. Instant Messenger is that minus the verbal part–an approximation of an approximation. Email is an approximation of a formal letter–where has the art of writing letters gone? Mass communication has eliminated distance, but has not created nearness.

@ Katherine Dalton

I’m reminded of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition in which “death” was literally to be outside the company of one’s fellow man. If immortality in poetry is a goal, then it is only possible within the the collective memory of one’s home. This explains Socrates’ (apparently) arrogant refusal to go into exile. But this sense of identity has long since been lost. What is needed to recover it?

By: anxiousmodernman

anxiousmodernman — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:36:19 +0000

True freedom (maybe to use today’s buzzword we can say ‘sustainable freedom’) requires discipline and limits. Maybe what is important is one’s connection to the setting/structuring of those limits. In a true community, that responsibility, that connection, comes into being over time as one proves to be a responsible grown-up member of said community.

Modern communications technology, by providing an illusion of limitlessness, by encouraging us to equate limitlessness with freedom, indeed runs the risk of letting the civic virtues atrophy. It’s just not fashionable to think about limits when the (virtual) world seems to expand infinitely before you. That’s not to say it’s impossible, however.

PS: as an avid reader of Eunomia I’m excited about this new venture!

By: Katherine Dalton

Katherine Dalton — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:59:11 +0000

For the Greeks, ostracism from their city (usually their natal city) was a serious punishment, and a form of civic death. I don’t think we can emphasize enough the necessity for limits of all kinds, including physical, for a life that’s both lived rightly and lived well–by which I mean that fundamental happiness that comes from belonging to a certain place and a certain people (probably about a couple hundred of them; probably not many more; without a doubt including several whom we’d frequently like to shake).