Why are there more societies where the people are oppressed than free?

[brainstorm]

I don't know where you have gotten your ideas on natural rights, but natural rights really depend by what "rights" those in power wish to grant you. Although it is argued that humans should have some basic rights, which some refer to as "natural, or "universal" rights, that is an argument that has been around a long time.

One thing I think should be injected into this discussion is the fact that authoritarian constraint of freedom works at the ideological level. Foucault is famous for saying that freedom has to be exercised. Authoritarian ideologies are the only effective way to constrain freedom at the level of individual agency insofar as individuals submit to ideologies that allow them to believe that they are less than free.

Sociology is ripe with such ideologies, unfortunately to say. The very idea that an individual is a part of a "society" or other group already implies that individual freedom cannot be exercised without adequate social conditions. If individuals believe that their freedom is absent, how can they exercise it?

Likewise, the idea that rights have to be recognized by some "higher power" to be rights is another authoritarian ideology. The wonderful thing about calling rights "natural" or "inalienable" is the presumption that there is no power that can alienate an individual from that freedom. The right simply recognizes the inalienability of the freedom.

Of course the discussion of whether talking about empowering individuals is more than wishful thinking is endless. But so is the procession of decrying claims of "wishful thinking" and "unrealistic" as a strategy to convince individuals to give up some or all of their own power.

The question is if someone had the power to take away individual freedom, why would it be so important to belittle people for believing in freedom and exercising it?

 

[noblegas]

One thing I think should be injected into this discussion is the fact that authoritarian constraint of freedom works at the ideological level. Foucault is famous for saying that freedom has to be exercised. Authoritarian ideologies are the only effective way to constrain freedom at the level of individual agency insofar as individuals submit to ideologies that allow them to believe that they are less than free.

Sociology is ripe with such ideologies, unfortunately to say. The very idea that an individual is a part of a "society" or other group already implies that individual freedom cannot be exercised without adequate social conditions. If individuals believe that their freedom is absent, how can they exercise it?

Likewise, the idea that rights have to be recognized by some "higher power" to be rights is another authoritarian ideology. The wonderful thing about calling rights "natural" or "inalienable" is the presumption that there is no power that can alienate an individual from that freedom. The right simply recognizes the inalienability of the freedom.

Of course the discussion of whether talking about empowering individuals is more than wishful thinking is endless. But so is the procession of decrying claims of "wishful thinking" and "unrealistic" as a strategy to convince individuals to give up some or all of their own power.

The question is if someone had the power to take away individual freedom, why would it be so important to belittle people for believing in freedom and exercising it?

yeah, and saying that authority figures only grants you natural rights is sort of like saying that a school yard bully only determines if whether or not that you get beat to a bloody pulp rather than fighting the school bully off at your own will

 

[brainstorm]

yeah, and saying that authority figures only grants you natural rights is sort of like saying that a school yard bully only determines if whether or not that you get beat to a bloody pulp rather than fighting the school bully off at your own will

Yes, but even when you for whatever reason get beaten (hopefully not to a "bloody pulp!") there are ideologies that subject repressive power to judgement or at least self-judgement.

Consider for example the ideology of Christ's persecution and crucifixion in Christianity. In that story, Pilate judges Christ innocent but still washes his hands and allows him to be subjected to bullying and killing by the soldiers. The Jewish constituency similarly refuses to execute him, by self-proclaimed observance of their own laws that prevent killing, but they fail to hold the Romans accountable to the law not to kill, instead choosing to allow the Roman execution to be carried out to their benefit.

So while these are two different tactics of repressive power: 1) going with popular opinion and 2) getting around your own conscience by letting someone else do your dirty work for you; there is also a third form of power, which casts the other forms of repression into the light for evaluation.

Freedom of thought and speech are inalienable because of this third power, I think. In other words, there's something inside people that causes them to recognize when something's not right, when there is repression going on and they're participating in it - either by self-repression or helping to repress others, or both.

They may not get beyond a rising feeling of discomfort but they know that freedom is being repressed and they are probably subconsciously welling up with the desire for freedom and truth. The funny thing is that part of what brings them back into repression is when they express their desire for freedom through external rebellion, because once they attack something or someone outside themselves, they have shifted their consciousness back away from the real locus of their repression, which happens inside themselves.

That's why I think Foucault said that freedom has to be exercised. Rebelling against repression only leads to more repression. Exercising freedom involves disengaging repression and freely engaging anything else without repression.

Ethics and reason are safeguards that allow people to exercise freedom sustainably so that they don't fall back into self-repression and self-violence and/or repression of and violence toward others.

Rebellion is the exercise of freedom that brings free individuals back toward control. The reasons for this are that 1) Rebellion consumes consciousness with an externalized projection of authority and 2) Rebelling draws or teases out repressive power geared toward crushing rebellion. The parental expression, "you're asking for it" applies.

Inalienable rights are natural and non-rebellious, which is what has allowed republican democracy to evolve and flourish as an ideology. There is no legitimate power anywhere that can claim with legitimacy that the constructive exercise of freedom with respect to ethical and reasonable self-authority should be repressed.

That is why repressive power periodically surfaces and falls under its own weight in the light of its false legitimacy. This happens on the stage of political representation but where it actually has its effects is inside individuals. It is this process of self-repression and the corresponding absence of ethics and reason that lead individuals to stop participating in repressive regimes of knowledge-power and exercise their freedoms toward constructive goals.

 

[qwe]

societies evolve, just like an individual evolves throughout life. vote progressive :p

 

[Max Faust]

C'mon, the US won the Cold War, can we get past that point?

It seems to me that China won.

 

[brainstorm]

It seems to me that China won.

"Winning a war" is a declaration, a status. The reality is that since WWII, at least, the tactic has been exercised to abdicate victory to the opponent and then embark on a program of internal resistance.

The question is what the stakes of the war are other than ethnic-national territorialization of land, resources, and people? What are people actually struggling over?