In response to: Beyond the Ideological Lie: The Revolution of 1989 Thirty Years Later
Thank you to Law and Liberty and to Professor Mahoney for marking this glorious anniversary. I am in full agreement with Mahoney that the events of 1989 were most fundamentally a revolt against enforced participation in ideological lies. He provides an eloquent account of that “anti-ideological revolution”—a message also delivered in that year and some of the preceding ones by figures like Václav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Pope John Paul II. I have two points to make in response to Mahoney’s insightful essay. First, I will reflect briefly on the peculiar moral deformation the human person undergoes in the midst of an ideological regime. This will allow me to make a suggestion about why the promise of 1989 seems unfulfilled. Second, I wish to amplify Mahoney’s argument about the so-called “end of history” with reference to China.
It is given to human beings to say what we think. Saying things usually helps us think about things more clearly. Further, our thoughts and speech inform our actions—these actions then become sources of reflection in themselves. Herein lies the basis of human freedom. According to the totalitarians, however, our thinking is wholly determined by our membership in a class (whether that be racial or socio-economic). Our speech is not really evidence of our freedom, but only a reflection of certain conditions for which we are not responsible. In the Marxist formulation, being precedes consciousness. Once social and political conditions are transformed, all can be made to think correctly—and if they can’t, they can be safely discarded and left in the dustbin of history.
The totalitarian experiments never achieved anything resembling what they promised. And this fact was visible to all. These failures did not deter these social and political engineers from their goal—and they still do not. They might be attributed to various causes unrelated to the political project itself: a surprisingly recalcitrant population filled with enemies; an implacable enemy in the West; or the legacies of the bourgeois era. Whatever the cause, the totalitarians remained undeterred throughout the century and insisted on total ideological conformity in speech and deed. This meant that one’s personal appraisal of the meaning of events could very rarely be indulged without fear. Indeed, ideological speech is the very opposite of personal speech: it is wooden, predictable, empty, abstract, and uniform. Everyone knew the proper phrases and the necessary acts of conformity. And one grew so accustomed to these adaptations that they almost became second nature. One could safely assume that nobody’s speech was congruent with their thoughts. One could also safely assume that any “official” statements or information bore little correspondence to reality. Hence it is not surprising, to quote Hannah Arendt, that “the experience of a trembling wobbling motion of everything we rely on for our sense of direction and reality is among the most common and vivid experiences of men under totalitarian rule.”
.....................
Read more: www.lawliberty.org
It is given to human beings to say what we think. Saying things usually helps us think about things more clearly. Further, our thoughts and speech inform our actions—these actions then become sources of reflection in themselves. Herein lies the basis of human freedom. According to the totalitarians, however, our thinking is wholly determined by our membership in a class (whether that be racial or socio-economic). Our speech is not really evidence of our freedom, but only a reflection of certain conditions for which we are not responsible. In the Marxist formulation, being precedes consciousness. Once social and political conditions are transformed, all can be made to think correctly—and if they can’t, they can be safely discarded and left in the dustbin of history.
The totalitarian experiments never achieved anything resembling what they promised. And this fact was visible to all. These failures did not deter these social and political engineers from their goal—and they still do not. They might be attributed to various causes unrelated to the political project itself: a surprisingly recalcitrant population filled with enemies; an implacable enemy in the West; or the legacies of the bourgeois era. Whatever the cause, the totalitarians remained undeterred throughout the century and insisted on total ideological conformity in speech and deed. This meant that one’s personal appraisal of the meaning of events could very rarely be indulged without fear. Indeed, ideological speech is the very opposite of personal speech: it is wooden, predictable, empty, abstract, and uniform. Everyone knew the proper phrases and the necessary acts of conformity. And one grew so accustomed to these adaptations that they almost became second nature. One could safely assume that nobody’s speech was congruent with their thoughts. One could also safely assume that any “official” statements or information bore little correspondence to reality. Hence it is not surprising, to quote Hannah Arendt, that “the experience of a trembling wobbling motion of everything we rely on for our sense of direction and reality is among the most common and vivid experiences of men under totalitarian rule.”
.....................
Read more: www.lawliberty.org
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario