Rage all you want against the 'terrifying new revelations' about government data collection, this is the INEVITABLE arc of human societies.
I know Toynbee may socio-historically old-fashions, but it seems a never-ending repetitious cycle: humans scrabble their way out of chaos and savagery, build cohesive societies that take care of basic needs freeing their citizenry to think and dream and grow. Ultimately, the weight of a society exceeds its carrying capacity (largely through the people's ignorance of how great they have it compared to the alternatives) and everything collapses in anarchy and violence, until some inspired individuals lead the way back out of chaos again.
But we're social animals (emphasis on the latter). Freedom is HARD; look carefully behind a student's eyes on graduation day, and you'll see a core anxiety "OK WTF do I do NOW with my life?"
(As an aside, I believe that this is the core reason that college is perceived to be so necessary to job-hunters today. It's not the commonly-ranted "companies are demanding college degrees for everything" complaint, that's confusing cause/effect. I believe that the comfort-value of a life-on-rails with few meaningful choices has kept people in school longer and longer. It's simple, lazy, expensive procrastination of "real life" for another 4+ years. Faced with a ridiculous excess of applicants with college degrees, wouldn't you as a business likewise begin to demand them if only as a first-tier way to weed out candidates who ostensibly have fewer skills? If you think about it, it's actually contrary to what they should WANT in an employee, and why a thoughtful HR department should consider carefully if they really want degree-holding applicants, if the degree isn't directly pertinent to the job.)
You can see it too if you play a face-to-face roleplaying game with today's teens, they are literally paralyzed with choices, as opposed to the linear games with fixed, obvious options that they're used to from their PC or consoles.
In a couple of moments of startling clarity from an otherwise vapid film:
"Loki: I come with glad tidings of a world made free.
Nick Fury: Free from what?
Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie.
...
Loki: Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."
They are lines that are supposed to enrage, of course, to light the righteous indignation in freedom-loving Americans (and in fact it's immediately followed by the formulaic 'defense of the lone guy brave enough to stand up' and Capt America's line "You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."
ANYONE who watches that and doesn't immediately recognize the historical truth of Loki's statement hasn't been paying attention.
As artists have a particularly skillful ability to be succinct (I don't know the artist):
Personally I suspect that freedom on the level of that envisaged by the Founding Fathers is unsustainable, because it demands a broad level of intelligence, education, the leisure to care about things larger than ones' next meal, and the willingness to put in the WORK. Lying in your hammock isn't freedom, it's the reward of freedom.
Either people are generally too indolent to be willing to work for it (think herd of sheep or cattle, happy to merely have food and get milked/sheared once in a while in exchange for perceived comfort & safety - until the farmer needs meat, but that's in the distant future...), or the governments have figured out that the way to ensure their grip on power is to opiate the masses. Either way, the masses are largely happy with it and always have been.
So stop your screaming and shouting. Ecce homo, indeed.
And, if you need a little humor on this subject - the Onion nails it again: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-outraged-his-private-information-being-co,32783/
I know Toynbee may socio-historically old-fashions, but it seems a never-ending repetitious cycle: humans scrabble their way out of chaos and savagery, build cohesive societies that take care of basic needs freeing their citizenry to think and dream and grow. Ultimately, the weight of a society exceeds its carrying capacity (largely through the people's ignorance of how great they have it compared to the alternatives) and everything collapses in anarchy and violence, until some inspired individuals lead the way back out of chaos again.
But we're social animals (emphasis on the latter). Freedom is HARD; look carefully behind a student's eyes on graduation day, and you'll see a core anxiety "OK WTF do I do NOW with my life?"
(As an aside, I believe that this is the core reason that college is perceived to be so necessary to job-hunters today. It's not the commonly-ranted "companies are demanding college degrees for everything" complaint, that's confusing cause/effect. I believe that the comfort-value of a life-on-rails with few meaningful choices has kept people in school longer and longer. It's simple, lazy, expensive procrastination of "real life" for another 4+ years. Faced with a ridiculous excess of applicants with college degrees, wouldn't you as a business likewise begin to demand them if only as a first-tier way to weed out candidates who ostensibly have fewer skills? If you think about it, it's actually contrary to what they should WANT in an employee, and why a thoughtful HR department should consider carefully if they really want degree-holding applicants, if the degree isn't directly pertinent to the job.)
You can see it too if you play a face-to-face roleplaying game with today's teens, they are literally paralyzed with choices, as opposed to the linear games with fixed, obvious options that they're used to from their PC or consoles.
In a couple of moments of startling clarity from an otherwise vapid film:
"Loki: I come with glad tidings of a world made free.
Nick Fury: Free from what?
Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie.
...
Loki: Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."
They are lines that are supposed to enrage, of course, to light the righteous indignation in freedom-loving Americans (and in fact it's immediately followed by the formulaic 'defense of the lone guy brave enough to stand up' and Capt America's line "You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."
ANYONE who watches that and doesn't immediately recognize the historical truth of Loki's statement hasn't been paying attention.
As artists have a particularly skillful ability to be succinct (I don't know the artist):
Personally I suspect that freedom on the level of that envisaged by the Founding Fathers is unsustainable, because it demands a broad level of intelligence, education, the leisure to care about things larger than ones' next meal, and the willingness to put in the WORK. Lying in your hammock isn't freedom, it's the reward of freedom.
Either people are generally too indolent to be willing to work for it (think herd of sheep or cattle, happy to merely have food and get milked/sheared once in a while in exchange for perceived comfort & safety - until the farmer needs meat, but that's in the distant future...), or the governments have figured out that the way to ensure their grip on power is to opiate the masses. Either way, the masses are largely happy with it and always have been.
So stop your screaming and shouting. Ecce homo, indeed.
And, if you need a little humor on this subject - the Onion nails it again: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-outraged-his-private-information-being-co,32783/
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