The Transportation Freedom Administration

by Benny Mattis

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  A popular right-libertarian propaganda pamphlet entitled Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit posits that "There are those inclined to liberty--freedom of the individual to live his or her life in any peaceful way.  And there are those who are inclined to mastery--permitting others to live their lives only as another sees fit."  In Star Wars Episode III: The Phantom Menace, the evil Emperor Palpatine justifies his reign by promising a "Sehf and secuah societeh;" the virtuous Senator Amidala responds in disappointment that "This is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."  American culture is teeming with heroic assertions of universal freedom such as these; if I were ever given a choice between the vital joy of freedom and the stagnant decay of mere security, I would hope to choose the former without hesitation.

Fortunately, I don't think I ever will have to make such a decision.  This is not because I plan to live in the wilderness, escaping pesky questions of politics and the other downers of civil society.  It's because the whole freedom-versus-security dichotomy is itself about as meaningful as that of the Quarter Pounder versus the Hamburger Royal.  In politics, freedom and security are the same thing.

Political freedom is the security to act in spite of those who would fight for you to do otherwise.  Freedom to own and trade property property is security from those who would take it by force; national security for the U.S. today is freedom from the rule of distant theocrats.  Freedom from oppression is security from a potential oppressor, and therefore a limitation on their freedom to oppress.  It seems like the will to freedom and the will to security could just be different names for what Nietzsche called the "Will to Power."

Does this mean that the overall increase of freedom, and consequently of security, is impossible on the whole?  Is the whole notion of "progress" actually just various reorganizations of equally oppressive political ideologies?  I don't think so.  The overall power (freedom/security) of a society is increased, for example, with breakthroughs in science and technology, mediated through various methods of education; knowledge is power, and it increases the freedom (to apply that knowledge in the right situation) and security (of knowing how the world works) of every individual in society with sufficient access to it.  A scientifically primitive society will on the whole be less free than an advanced one; a caveman is not free to construct an iPad, regardless of whether he has access to the raw materials necessary.  One could also argue, as Bakunin did, that one is "Truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free;" a somewhat egalitarian distribution of power might then be considered in a way to be more free than an unequal one.

Regardless of these abstract notions on liberty, the apparent similarity of freedom and security in politics raises the question of what it really is that people are defending when they promote one over the other.  It seems, for example, that people often view the movement from freedom to security as a movement from tolerance to totalitarianism.  On the contrary, totalitarianism is the very antithesis of security!  Giving up your right to Habeas Corpus isn't a simple exchange of freedom for security; it is an exchange of every 'normal' citizen's personal security for the increased freedom of certain state officials, in the hopes that they will use it decently.  The caped crusaders of capitalism cry foul at the mention of social safety nets, lamenting oppressive violations of property rights as the desire of the 'lazy' working class for security to be provided by a 'mommy government.'  But what freedom would really be lost?  The freedom to deny a fellow human the medical care they need to survive?  The freedom to beg for charitable donations in the event of an emergency?  These freedoms don't sound awfully different from slavery.

I think that the whole freedom-versus-security dichotomy is basically useless in any serious conversation about political power.  The perspective seems mainly to serve as  justification for authoritarian ideologies, even if the people invoking it are trying to promote liberty.  From now on, though, whenever I hear somebody talking about "freedom," I'm going to try replacing it with "security," and vice versa, seeing if any meaningful difference is made.

Legos and the Meaning of Life

by Benny Mattis

This is another blog from my time at Gordon College.

***

There are some kids who go to a preschool. "Good Bricks" are the new cool thing, and so these kids get some Good Bricks from their parents. The kids have difficulty deciphering and following the instructions for assembling these bricks, but they figure them out eventually. The kids who decipher the instructions make cool creations, and the kids who can't follow the directions correctly make crappy ones.

One of the kids wonders, "Hey, who made these instructions anyway?"

The rest of them reply, "The Good Bricks 'Master Builders' made these instructions, and they are obviously the source of all that is cool." The kids continue to follow the instructions, and get better and better sets to feed their imaginations.

Then, Good Bricks comes out with a new product line, called "Trionicle." Some of the kids say, "Wow, what will the Master Builders think of next? These toys are totally different!" But some kids say "No, the Good Bricks company has totally fleeced you with their advertising and feature films. These Trionicle toys are just shitty humanoid robot-looking things; they're not good bricks at all!" There is no longer a uniform view of what is "cool," and the kids split into two camps-- the Good Brickers and the Old Schoolers. The Old Schoolers no longer look to the instructions to determine what is cool; they differentiate between cool Good Bricks and uncool Good Bricks with their own sense of coolness. The Good Brickers say that all Good Bricks are cool, because Good Bricks epitomizes coolness.

Soon, the Old Schoolers become bored of the limited selection of cool Good Bricks. They say, hey, lets take our creations apart and try to make something ourselves. Some of their new creations are cool, and some of them are uncool.

The Good Brickers are astonished at this; if the Master Builders are the source of all coolness, how can these Old Schoolers make these cool new designs? The leader of the Good Brickers says that this is because the Old Schoolers are just copying what the Master Builders have already made. The Good Brickers breathe a sigh of relief, and continue to dissociate themselves from the Old Schoolers.

However, the Good Bricks company is going down the tubes. Its designs are becoming progressively more worthless, but the Old Schoolers are making creations more original and cool than anything the Masters ever built. Moreover, all the other students are getting GameStations, because the GameStation is advertised way more than Good Bricks. So, many of the Good Brickers join the Old Schoolers, admitting that the Master Builders are not the only source of coolness. Some Good Brickers hold their ground, but they can never find spots at the lunch tables.

Now, there is a solid group of Old Schoolers, and they realize that if there is not a major spike in demand for bricks, Good Bricks will go bankrupt, and they will never be able to buy more bricks. The rest of the school is convinced that GameStation is the sole source of coolness, and some kids are even saying things like "Nothing is cool, because it's all going to be in a landfill in 50 years anyway." The Old Schoolers, affected by this ignorance in their community and wishing to show how cool brick-assembly is, spread the coolness of Good Bricks until summer vacation.

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Meanwhile, the Good Bricks Master Builders and advertisers are asking the million dollar question, "What is coolness?"

They realize that in different countries and different eras, what is "cool" changes depending on a product's place in time and space. In the 1990s, dinosaur sets were very cool. In the 80s, the advent of personal computing made futuristic brick sets cool. Different circumstances produced different standards for what is cool.

However, there are certain criteria for coolness that remained constant through all of their records. It is cool, for example, to include a protagonist and an antagonist in the backstories of their brick sets. It is cool to make a set that can really stimulate a kid's imagination. It is cool to include some sort of romantic interest for the hero, as well.

Good Bricks went out of business. The designers broke into GameStation game-design companies. The companies that made games in accordance with the general norms of coolness thrived, but the designers who ignored these guides went bankrupt. The Master Designers were bound by the nature of coolness; they could not succeed unless their designs were in accordance with it. And as their designs conformed more and more to "natural coolness," more and more people thought that the Designers were in fact the epitome of all that is cool. Even though coolness can come from places other than the minds of the Master Designers, the ideas of "cool" and "Master Designer" became increasingly intertwined.

Eventually, it became nearly impossible to differentiate between the two. Only by looking back at the history of diverse attempts at coolness were people able to see that coolness comes not from the Master Designers, but out of the nature of a relationship between gamer, game and environment; the Master Designers simply study this relationship and use it to their advantage (and, ultimately, to the advantage of someone who buys their game).