Freedom
of choice is acclaimed in our society as something good. The greater
the quantity of choice, the better. More TV channels, more species of
chocolate bar, more movies to watch, more persons to fornicate with,
and so forth. However, I think this acclaim is highly misguided.
Freedom of choice is not a bad thing, I just do not think it is
necessarily always a good thing. The ability to choose between
various options is not in and of itself of any value, especially if
those choices are poor (see all those TV channels!) A simple example
of this is as follows: in scenario A you have a choice between a
thousand poisons. In scenario B you have a choice between two cups of
tea. However much you may dislike tea (a highly unrealistic
proposition, but bare with it!) the latter scenario would be
superior, despite the fact that there was less choice involved. Just
having more things to choose does not mean our situation is any
better.
So
why do we as a society value freedom of choice, spectrum of choice,
and quantity of choice as if it were the single most important facet
of being happy and human? Why but because we are what we consume,
rather than what we create. We have created a society of, if you'll
excuse the cliche, nectar obsessed drones and all of us are
responsible. Materialistic, individualistic hedonism is the dominator
of our Age, and desperate shallowness the engine of growth. The
freedom to have desires satisfied has been placed above the freedom
to be left alone to develop and create wonderful things. We tolerate
ever more intrusions into our privacy from ever more powerful states
and corporations (provided we get our banal TV channels and little
treats on the weekend). We have willingly given away true power,
democratic power, for comfortable pleasure.
For
the average citizen what is there to live for beyond pleasure and
status-chasing, in this part of the world they happen to call the
West? With little sense of belonging to society or to a meaningful
narrative; with no natural blossoming of joy from the mastery of
skills and creation of art, we must be given false joy by being
constantly overwhelmed by material things and fleeting desires. And
in order to shift these things upon us we must first feel inadequate,
incomplete. An entire media industry exists to this end, trying to
make us feel like we are missing out on something someone else has
got; perverting our natural competitive streak into something far
more ruthless and twisted.
A
huge question mark now hangs over our heads: how long is this going
to go on for before we are awakened? In truth, we already are waking
up. But we are not enlightened just yet. We still have this
entitlement to the bountiful gifts of the earth, and feel like we
have earned the right to destroy natural beauty and creatures for the
sake of an appetite which can never be fulfilled. Desire is still
seen as an end in itself, rather than something to be channelled away
harmlessly (or in the extreme, to be flushed away like any other
bodily waste).
In
this age of desire fulfillment, no one has the moral ground to attack
any other. Desire is a universal malaise. The poor are just as
desirous as the rich, women just as much as men. We are all desirous.
The major problem is not that in our current state some people can
fulfill their desires more than others. Balancing out the level of
destructive hedonism is not going to make things that much better.
The problem is that for the average citizen the highest value is
desire fulfillment - rather than scientific endeavour, philosophical
discovery, artistic creation, natural belonging, and so on. This is
why freedom to choose between pleasures is problematic; it is no real
freedom at all, enslaving us all to unfulfillable desire.
I
am not arguing that freedom is a bad thing. I am not arguing that
oppression of freedom, or conservative fear of freedom, is any form
of solution to our goalless hedonism. I believe that individual
freedom for all should be the end goal of justice. We should be free
to be choose, but we should not use that liberty to choose poorly
(the maxim 'harm ye none, do as ye will' sums it up perfectly). Nor
should we see quantity of choice as important as quality. This
doesn't mean that I believe we should never choose pleasurable (or
even self-destructive) options, only that it should never be our
ultimate goal, nor a regular occurence, nor something to be proud of.
We
can be truly glorious -
We
are in this part of the world they happen to call the West, perhaps
the most imperialistic gathering of civilizations there ever was. The
world has imitated our vices and vitues to a large extent, and
because of this we are arrogant enough to consider ourselves the
centre of the world - which is not entirely untrue. We needn't
continue practicing our vices, which fuel wars in distant parts of
the world for material enrichment. With a new value system, we could
create a heroic individualism of universal Justice, which measures
wealth in human cultivation; education, art, philosophy, science, and
sees pleasure as a mere sideshow to these more pressing desires. To
choose such greatness is to choose wisely. Our highest honour could
be to those most virtuous, not those most self-important and
parasitic (the rich!) With our power we could lead the world, not
trammel it. We could answer the nihilism of God's death with a heroic
humanism and environmental belonging, filling the void in our souls
with a spiritual reconnection to the earth and its creatures.
The
highest praise we might bestow should be upon the astronauts who risk
everything to ascend to the final frontier, the scientists who work
toward the nuclear fusion which will end our energy needs, the
philosophers who help us make sense of a rapidly changing world and
our place in it, the great artists who bring these human achievements
to light, and everyone who ever lived for more than just themselves.
We must turn away from the vapid, empty, soulless celebrities whose
mere mention is enough to soil the whole of this newsletter, and who
will leave us empty in our graves if we do not turn away from their
sick light. We would have wasted it all for nothing.
The
problem is that this transformation of our values requires us to
challenge the comfortable, shiny, glamourous world we are fooled into
thinking actually exists. I think this would take a heroic departure
from evolution's path, the reversal of the natural instinct from
danger to security, familiarity to newness, pain to pleasure. We
would have to let go of all of our most comforting myths. We would
have to be brave to even begin such a change, but brave in an
intellectual sense, more than a 'run into a burning building to save
a child' sense.
Selim
'Selim' Talat
