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Canongate Books - Raoul Martinez

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318 pages

English

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In the run up to the June 8th General Election, Raoul Martinez and his publisher have decided to make the ebook of his book Creating Freedom free to readers in the UK so that the ideas and knowledge contained within it can be as widely disseminated as possible. We are far less free than we like to think. In Creating Freedom, Raoul Martinez exposes the mechanisms of control that pervade our lives and the myths on which they depend. Exploring the lottery of our birth, the coercive influence of concentrated wealth, and the consent-manufacturing realities of undemocratic power, he shows that our faith in free media, free markets, free elections and free will is dangerously misplaced. Written with empathy and imagination, this scholarly, fierce and profoundly hopeful manifesto makes a dazzling case for creating freedom on our own terms.

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Human rights

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Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	29 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782111894
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0352€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

RAOUL MARTINEZ
Creating Freedom
Power, Control and the Fight for Our Future
Published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EHI ITE
www.canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Raoul Martinez, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 181 8 Export ISBN 978 1 78211 187 0 e ISBN 978 1 78211 189 4
To Mum, Dad, Chess and Kev
Contents
Preface
PART ONE: THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH
1. Luck
2. Punishment
3. Reward
PART TWO: THE ILLUSION OF CONSENT
4. Control
5. Elections
6. Markets
7. Media
PART THREE: THE FIGHT FOR OUR FREEDOM
8. Creativity
9. Knowledge
10. Power
11. Survival
12. Empathy
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
Preface
Free markets, free trade, free elections, free media, free thought, free speech, free will. The language of freedom pervades our lives, framing the most urgent issues of our time and the deepest questions about who we are and who we wish to be. Freedom is a stirring ideal, central to the concept of human dignity and visions of a fulfilling and meaningful life. Its universal appeal, its ability to unite and inspire, have long made it a powerful political weapon. For some it is a clarion call for revolution, for others a justification of the status quo. Academics, think tanks, religions, political parties and activists have recast the concept in different ways. In the scramble to define it, the ideal of freedom has been pushed, pulled, twisted and torn; expertly moulded to suit the interests of those with the power to shape it.
Even as they steer our economies, democracies and judiciaries, today’s dominant conceptions of freedom are unknown to most people. They are part of the conceptual foundation upon which society has been built, framing our thinking on everything from punishment and reward to capitalism and democracy. But this foundation, mixed as it is with myth and illusion, is crumbling. Plagued by civilisational crises – economic, political and environmental – the towering edifice it supports is not only unstable and unsustainable, but unjust. For too long the language of freedom has been used as a tool of control, helping to justify poverty, erode democracy and lend legitimacy to barbaric punishment. As inequality soars, economic crises erupt, people work longer for less, as refugees surge across borders, corporate power intensifies, forests disappear and sea levels rise, it is time to engage in a fundamental reassessment of this hallowed ideal. When a society fails on multiple fronts, its foundational ideas must be questioned.
A simple principle animates these pages: the more we understand the limits on our freedom, the better placed we are to transcend them. We may well be less free than we like to think, but only through understanding the freedom we lack can we enhance the freedom we possess. Ignorance of our limitations leaves us vulnerable to those able to exploit them. Facing up to the limits on our freedom explodes a number of persistent myths – myths surrounding individual responsibility, justice, political democracy and the market. Some of these myths persist because they advance the interests of those in power; others because they flatter us, offering false comfort. All come at a price. The way we think about freedom shapes our view of the present and our vision of the future. It is a lens through which we interpret and evaluate the world, a compass by which we set our course. But not all conceptions of freedom are created equal. Each is based on assumptions about the world, some of which fly in the face of evidence and logic.
A sharp distinction is often drawn between questions of free will and those of political and economic freedom. Traditionally, these concepts have been separated into distinct categories, but this obscures more than it reveals. We dissect reality into manageable parts for study, but, if we do not put those parts back together in order to gain an understanding of the whole, we risk losing sight of the big picture. We risk losing touch with reality. This danger is inherent in modern education where the price of progression through the system is specialisation. Too often, where we should discover connections, we are taught to see impassable subject boundaries, but the limitations on our freedom are interconnected. A thorough understanding in one area enriches and changes our perception in others. To delve deeply into the meaning of freedom we have to breach disciplinary boundaries along the way. Insights and evidence from philosophers, psychologists, economists, historians, scientists, criminologists and environmentalists all play a role in the discussion to come. By building connections and teasing out their far-reaching implications, a radical, cohesive framework emerges – one that provides a much-needed overview of where we are and where we could be.
On the one hand, parts of society remain passive and deeply cynical about the possibility of change; on the other, social movements are rapidly growing around the world in response to the interlocking crises facing us. More and more people are questioning the systems that dominate their lives and diminish their liberty. Against this backdrop, it is time to reclaim the ideal of freedom for the urgent task of putting people and planet before profit and power.
We need a movement born of a shift in consciousness, one that will challenge the assumptions upon which our society is founded. To value truth – that elusive but all-important ideal – is to try and follow it beyond the shell that encloses our present understanding: to break through the defining labels of our inherited identity, the disciplinary boundaries that characterise our education and the limits set by society on our imagination. This book challenges ingrained assumptions about ourselves and the world and calls for an urgent transformation in our thinking and behaviour. It is a manifesto for deep and radical change. Through the prism of freedom, it examines the limitations of our dominant ideas and the failings of our current system, but it also explores the great potential that exists to create something better. The ideas and means to do this already exist, but we need to share them with each other, connect with each other and act on them. We need a revolution in our thinking that will spark a revolution in the way we organise our lives and structure our societies. A better world is possible, but if we take our freedom for granted we extinguish the possibility of attaining it.
PART ONE
THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH
I
Luck
We do not choose to exist. We do not choose the environment we will grow up in. We do not choose to be born Hindu, Christian or Muslim, into a war-zone or peaceful middle-class suburb, into starvation or luxury. We do not choose our parents, nor whether they’ll be happy or miserable, knowledgeable or ignorant, healthy or sickly, attentive or neglectful. The knowledge we possess, the beliefs we hold, the tastes we develop, the traditions we adopt, the opportunities we enjoy, the work we do – the very lives we lead – depend entirely on our biological inheritance and the environment to which we are exposed. This is the lottery of birth.
We meet the world primed to adopt the way of life we encounter. The society that greets us takes our potential and shapes it. Ancient Greece, Confucian China, Renaissance Italy, Victorian England, Communist Russia – across millennia of human history there has been a spectacular multiplicity of cultures, each with the power to mould us in radically different ways. Early interactions, the treatment we receive and the behaviour we observe, begin the process of constructing an identity. Gradually, imperceptibly, we are inducted into a community.
Cultural transmission is a powerful process, one that has produced both beautiful and ugly outcomes. A glance at history reveals that there is neither a belief too bizarre nor an action too appalling for humans to embrace, given the necessary cultural influences. As much as we condemn the injustices and prejudices of past societies, there is no reason to assume that, under those circumstances, we wouldn’t have embraced the same values and defended the same traditions. We might have developed loyalty to any group, nation, ideology or religion, learned any language, practised any social custom, partaken in any act of barbarism or altruism.
Thinking about the lottery of birth draws our attention to a simple fact: we do not create ourselves. The very idea entails a logical contradiction. To create something, you have to exist, so to create yourself you’d have to have existed before you had been created. Whether we’re talking about flesh and blood people or immaterial souls, there is no way around this simple fact. 1 The implications are far-reaching: if we don’t create ourselves, how can we be responsible for the way we are? And if we aren’t responsible for the way we are, how can we be responsible for what we do? The answer is: we cannot.
The kind of freedom that would make us truly responsible for our actions – truly worthy of credit or blame – is a dangerous illusion, one that distorts our thinking on the most pressing economic, political and moral issues of our time. Yet it’s an illusion central to our lives. As we will see, examining it exposes as false a number of assumptions at the heart of our culture – ideas about punishment, reward, blame and entitlement – and demands a revolution in the way we organise society and think about ourselves and each other.
It can seem hard to reconcile the fact that we are not truly responsible for the lives we lead with the countless choices we make every day – what to eat, what to wear, whether to lie or tell the truth, whether to stand up for