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Freedom, Responsibility, Initiative

Page history last edited by Angela 9 years, 11 months ago

We're here to talk about Utopia.

What is utopia?  It is basically just an idealised form of society.  

And what is society?  It's basically a large community organized through social convention.    

So it seems that when talking about Utopia, we're actually talking about trying to organise ourselves into the kind of society which becomes the most satisfying community for us. 

 

Communities are at heart a gathering of individual persons, and the entity that is 'community' becomes the sum of all the individual relations within the community, however close or distant.   In the context of their relationships, how does the individual relate to community?  Is the individual supported by community?  Restricted by it?  How do individuals themselves build or unbuild community?

 

Here's two ways to state our basic social problem, as human beings organized into a group:

1. finding ways of maximizing individual autonomy and liberty and a humane social order without inviting either widespread forms of individual irresponsibility or of social oppression or stagnation.

 

2. reconciling individual autonomy and agency with both the inevitable rules and demands of social units, and the inevitable duties and responsibilities individuals incur as social beings.

 

The community described in The Dispossessed is generally agreed to be anarcho-syndicalist.   That means that the people have agreed to an administrative structure that organises the work needed to be done to support the community.  The most significant difference between their society and our own is that they do not have laws, or a law-making body.   They do have a set of philosophical writings on which they base their culture and also use as principles for their administration set-up,  but instead of laws they have social convention,  a set of expectations that people have of each other.

 

We'll get more into the implications of these social expectations in the later discussions.   In this discussion we're going to focus on the individual and their relationship to the group, the sum total of the networked individuals.  

 

There are three concepts that seem to govern the relationship of the individual to the group.   These are freedom, responsiblity and initiative.   Let's have a quick discussion where we define some terms.

 

 

DEFINING TERMS

  

'Human nature'?

What do you believe is the basic nature of a human being?  Or, list five adjectives to describe the core nature of a human being.

How do you feel about the opinons expressed around the group just now? Positive? Satisfied? Worried? Depressed?

Do you think that your basic attitude about human nature would or would not affect the kind of community you could form?

 

 

What is Freedom? 

How would you yourself describe freedom?

 

Conceptually you can frame freedom as 'negative freedom' and 'positive freedom'.  

Negative freedom is easier to describe. You can call it 'freedom from'.  It means you are free from restrictions, obstacles, or constraining commitments/responsiblity.  You're 'freed up' to do whatever you want, there is a lack of limitations.

 

Positive freedom is a little trickier.  You can call it 'freedom to'.  It has a strong relationship with taking initiative, or having the right conditions.   That is to say, you're free to do something through the availability of resources, through being given social support, through possessing collaborators.   Positive freedom is often realised through commitments to other people, or through taking on responsibility.

 

Saying 'positive' and 'negative' implies that one is more desirable than the other, but actually the terms are about presence and absence, not good and bad.

 

What might be an example of each kind of freedom?

Which kind of freedom is more appealing to you?  Does either kind give you a sense of unease? 

Which kind of freedom is easier to realise?  

What are the benefits to each kind?  Drawbacks?

 

 

What is Responsibility?

How would you describe 'responsibility'?  What does 'taking responsibility' mean?  What does it mean to 'have responsiblities'?

 

Let's call our responsibilities towards civil society our 'civic responsibilities'. 

In our current society, what are the civic responsiblities of an adult human being?

In Shevek's society, what are the civic responsiblities of an adult human being?

 

Which kinds of responsibilities appeal to you more? 

Which do you feel are too complicated or heavy? 

Which feel too difficult to accomplish?

 

What do you think should be our civic responsibilities?  

What should an adult human being be responsible for in a just society?

 

 

What is Initiative?

How would you describe taking initiative?

 

"You must take initiative!"

"Do this or not, the choice is yours!"

"This will only happen if YOU make it happen!"

What's your emotional reaction to each of those statments?

 

How is the ability to take initiative important to society?   

How could it threaten social structure?

 

There seems to be some overlap in the concepts of 'freedom' and 'initiative'.   Can we spend a little time disambiguating these two?

 

 

 

CASE STUDIES

 

Freedom from, freedom to?

“The first to suffer are likely to be those creative individuals whose work must be solitary—precisely those, in other words, who are the best justification of freedom. Such is the case on Anarres with Shevek and a number of creative artists.”     

 --Victor Urbanowicz, “Personal and Political in The Dispossessed,” Science-Fiction Studies 5, no. 2 (July 1978)

 

In the story, Shevek leaves Anarres because, despite the emphasis on freedom and initiative on Annares, he's not free to pursue his advanced physics there.   

What is Shevek lacking?

Why does this lack exist on Anarres?

Is this a structural failure of the system Anarres practices, or could another group practicing the system get it right with a few tweaks?

 

 

“There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. . . . You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. . . . There is no freedom,” Shevek says.    

                --The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.137

 

How is Urras similar to our own society?   How is it different?

When you think of Urrasti society, what's your emotional impression, would you be comfortable living on Urras?  As a part of the university?  As a part of the rich party crowd?  What if you were a member of the working class?

 

Does Shevek's statement apply to our own society?  Is there 'no freedom' here in the same way?

 

 

 

Entrepreneurial Initiative

The right of initiative ... is a more positive and striking encouragement of individual freedom. In Anarresti society, individuals are free to start new groups and organizations and, within the constraints of availability, draw on local or even more distant resources to make a go of their projects. In the context of the economy, for instance, workers can start a new production syndicate and can request and expect to receive needed resources (say, tools or other forms of equipment) from established producers. In the context of education, students have the right to request, and teachers to offer, courses and classes pretty much at will. Shevek begins a printing syndicate, termed the Syndicate of the Initiative, in order to pursue his scientific work and the work of political reform. Thus, as one would expect in an anarchist community, consenting adults can pretty much do what they want when they want, subject to the constraints of nature and the feelings (and resources) of the neighbors.

                 --The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.119

 

 

Entrepreneurialism can be defined as "the risk and effort of individuals who own and manage a business, and on the innovations that result from their pursuit of economic success." 

          --Google definition

 

Is the initiative implicit in entrepreneurialism similar to the initiative required in a professional job?  In an ordinary white-collar job? In a blue-collar or service job?

How is the concept of initiative as practiced on Anarres similar to entrepreneurialism?

How is it different?

 

In our society what constraints are placed upon entrepreneurialism?  

Are there financial constraints? Political? Social? 

Are these constraints debilitating, or represent major obstacles?

Are these constraints beneficial in any way?

 

 

 

Responsibility/Trust as the basis of cooperation

On Anarres, a proper social morality, or an ethic of “mutual aid and solidarity,” would accordingly stress a relatively small number of basic principles or ideals. Always value the particularity and autonomy, and respect the freedom, of individuals. Understand that all persons are moral equals, indeed brothers, deserving of equal respect and concern. Help those in need. Never intentionally harm or take advantage of another. And contribute to society by doing “the work [you] can do best,” and by cooperating—fairly—when it is mutually beneficial to do so. Assuming such an ethic were actually practiced, one important result would be that individuals would tend to assume, as Shevek does, that other “people would be helpful [and could be] trusted”. Trusting others is the basis of mutual aid—of reciprocity and collective action.

 

Although mutual trust is presupposed in an anarcho-communist society, the presupposition is not unconditional. It is instead subject to experiential confirmation. The trust initially extended by someone like Shevek to others will be withdrawn if their conduct proves irresponsible.

 

And since, mutual trust is the basis of social cooperation, and social cooperation is the basis of both individual and social well-being, ensuring responsible conduct must be the central goal of (ethical) education.

               --The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.115

 

 

What is the criteria for trust?

Do you need to see someone acting responsibly over time to continue to place your trust in them?

 

Is responsibility a central tenet of living in community?

Is responsiblity a central tenet of real freedom?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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