Abstract
This chapter contends that freedom can exist and thrive only in the space of nothingness. The latter is the antithesis of physical and metaphysical restraint in so far as freedom seems definable only as “the absence of restraint.” The presence of this absence makes freedom what it is. While freedom is rooted in and desired by every sentient being, human and non-human, this chapter focuses only on the human side, the side that immediately involves personal as well as socio-political areas of life in the context of briefly discussing the national politics of a few States, with some consequential international issues.
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Notes
- 1.
Paraphrased translation of one of his famous sayings.
- 2.
For example, Dina Bass and Pimm Fox of Bloomberg News refer to Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School, and say that the “Iranians got around the clampdown by using servers outside the country to route Internet traffic around blocked Web sites.” June 21, 2009.
- 3.
With regard to the protestors’ tenacity, Washington Post reporters Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin write: “The government has struggled to quell protests for five months, deploying security forces on the streets of Tehran and officially banning opposition demonstrations. Yet, on Wednesday, anti-government demonstrators openly defied the ban, even as police fired tear gas and warning shots. In video clips captured by cellphone cameras, helmeted police officers could be seen beating protesters, including women, with batons.” “In Iran, Rival Rallies Show Off Rift Endures: Clashes Erupt as Regime Marks 30th Anniversary of U.S. Embassy Siege,” Thursday, November 5, 2009. About two months later, Diaa Haddid of Associated Press reports: “Iran’s opposition has been heavily dependent on the Internet to organize protests and air the views of its leaders despite repeated attempts by authorities to block access to some sites.” Sunday, January 10, 2010.
- 4.
This is a nation of approximately seventy-five million people, with an average age of thirty-three!
- 5.
Baidu, as China’s state-run Internet search engine, is not a monopoly to control all the receiving information. Furthermore, the Chinese government’s shared interest with the Iranian regime in controlling the country’s Internet traffic has led to its publicly accusing the United State’s government of cyber role in the Iranian upheaval—the same charge made by the Islamic Republic. For further details: “China Raises Stakes in Cyber War, Points to US Role in Iran,” The Economic Times, January 26, 2010. Also, “China Paper Slams US for Cyber Role in Iran Unrest,” Strait Times, January 24, 2010. On the Iranian charge, see: “Iran Accuses U.S. of creating ‘Hacker Brigade,’ ” PC Magazine, January 25, 2010.
- 6.
In fact, from the Marxian perspective, the USSR and PRC had never been truly socialist. Russia and China, as agrarian/feudal states, had not gone through the capitalist mode of production to mature politically for the post-bourgeois, superstructural conditions of a true socialist society. So, as a phony socialist state, China, like Russia before her, will have to fail. Marx and Engels would have defended themselves by concluding that the return of Russia and China to capitalism is the costly punishments for cheating on Mother History! This is true, in spite of the fact that on some odd occasion Marx, who was disappointed and frustrated by his failed predictions of a socialist revolution in the most industrially advanced Britain, and then the other Western nations, in the end hoped for Russia to pioneer socialism.
- 7.
Obviously, the development and spread of cyber communication are not destabilizing or negative everywhere. For example, the connection of the cellphone to the Internet has been and will continue to be a positive development for India. This most populous democracy is benefiting from its colonial past by receiving numerous outsourced jobs, involving the latest instruments and gadgets whose primary language for communication is English. In fact, every walking and talking Indian, in this nation of over a billion people, can carry fully customizable cellphones linked to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, text-messaging, emailing, every online newspaper, latest dictionaries and encyclopedias—in a word, everything that is needed for information and communication—stored in a tiny device held on the palm of a hand. All this, is at the disposal of numerous Indians whose command of English is more methodical, and grammatically more accurate, than millions of English speakers in the rest of the world. So, in contrast to the authoritarian regimes who perceive the Internet as a serious challenge, the Indian government has no reason to fear but welcome it with open arms. These tremendous opportunities, which have already led to a considerable economic and financial success for this nation, will probably make it one of the world’s two super-states. Only China and India have the capacity of becoming “super-states”—the term whose application requires a nation-state to be endowed with an exceptionally large population and a highly advanced industrial output. Unlike the Western nations whose technological and social developments took many decades of costly trial-and-error, these potential super-states, along with the smaller but equally rapidly advancing East Asian and some Latin American nations are presently taking shortcuts for development. For instance, instead of spending fortunes and decades for installing numerous kilometers of telegraph cables or telephone-lines, they are using cellphones even in remote villages; and instead of paying for mega-tons of paper and using costly, often inefficient and time-consuming postal service, they are enjoying cost-free emailing with nearly the speed of light. By benefitting from such innovations and shortcuts, some of these Third-World nations will soon catch up and surpass a number of First-World countries. As time progresses, even newer, as yet unknown techno-electronic horizons will be opening up for these developing nations, while Europe’s rusty industries and reverent old towns with narrow streets and alleys cannot simply be bulldozed and leveled for post-industrial sites, or paved for wide and efficient traffic routes for business and commercial transportation. The Third World does not have any aged industries to be stuck with, or many structures blocking the way to development. Among the main reasons for the astonishing postwar superiority of German and Japanese economies was their opportunity to build anew on the ruins of World War II. It is widely believed that the rising China and India, which make up 37% of the world population, will dominate the globe from the mid or late twentieth-first century onward. (Some of the information in this note on India and the other developing nations are my memories of watching Thomas L. Friedman’s comments on the “Charlie Rose Show,” Public Broadcasting Corporation, Thursday, March 26, 2009). Amid these global cyber movements and technical developments, the Online Jihadists have not been falling far behind. The “Twitter Terrorists” are filming explosive and bloody actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and posting them on YouTube in order to expose the vulnerability of the Western forces. Through the website jihadica.com they are presently threatening to “invade Facebook” by their Wahabbi supporters and fanatics in the Middle East, North and Central Africa, South and East Asia, North and South America, and Western Europe. These are some unfortunate angry, intolerant, resentful, and dangerous inhabitants of the shrinking global village whose existence is becoming increasingly and equally intolerable to the rest of the world.
- 8.
In actual situations, the presence, absence, or degrees of restraint can change from time to time. For example, a lion, after having enough of a new kill, would normally impose no restraints on the nearby gazelles, and the gazelles are somehow aware of their freedom to continue playing around for a limited time. But when the time comes for the lion’s next meal, the restraint fades away: then, the lion becomes the fearsome oppressor, and the gazelles, the terrified oppressed with no freedom of movement, except seeking shelter to hide or running away to safety.
- 9.
It is hard to know whether in that doghouse under those shading trees there was also a faith in freedom.
- 10.
After Life, Liberty is the most important element for all animals, including humans. The same order is to be found in John Locke, in the American Constitution, and in the Third Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The First Article starts by stating, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights… .”
- 11.
This event is so fluid and contemporary that no book can be written on it for some time. Among the newspaper reports, see “In Iran, Protests Gaining a Radical Tinge,” The New York Times, December 10, 2009.
- 12.
For an historic report of this match: “Cold War Violence Erupts at Melbourne Olympics,” Sydney Morning Herald (July 12, 1956). The fortieth anniversary of this most celebrated water polo event is remembered in “A Bloody War that Spilled into the Pool,” by Ron Fimrite, Sports Illustrated (July 28, 1996). On the human “struggle for freedom,” Jaspers says, “We have seen it in 1956, in Hungary. The agony of exploitation and economic distress, the accumulated despair of years, the unbearable loss of freedom, the enforced untruthfulness of life as a whole—all this brings matters to a point where a nation will dare all, will dare the impossible.” Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen, translated by E.B. Ashton as The Future of Mankind (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 41.
- 13.
And, of course, the American Indians, African Americans, Mexicans, and later the Hispanic Americans, among others, including American women, had much to add concerning the restraints imposed on them.
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Khazaee, M.K. (2012). Freedom in the Space of Nothingness. In: Wautischer, H., Olson, A., Walters, G. (eds) Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2223-1_30
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