Privacy, Terror and Trump’s Totalitarianism
Jon Neiditz
Insightful Ideation by Hybrid Intelligences for Everybody, + Voices for the Strategically Silent!
The best case for privacy, given where the world appears headed, may be as the quiet place of reflective solitude in the face of mindless totalitarianism.
Montesquieu saw the moving and guiding principle of monarchies as honor, of republics as virtue and of tyrannies as fear.?To those, Hannah Arendt added totalitarianism, which she said does away with such principles entirely by undermining the reflective, thinking individual.?Looking at the 20th Century totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin, she found the intellectual basis of the death of the thinking individual in logically-tight “ideologies,” the “ice-cold reasoning” of Hitler and the “merciless dialectics” of Stalin.
Arendt did not live to watch reality TV.?The bread and circuses?of the 21st Century, does reality TV involve a story illustrating or questioning a motivating principle??The story is almost always the same: a competitive series of ordeals in which the winner is the last one standing, as in a tontine.?Who can survive??Who can survive naked??Who will be fired??The story, of course, is the war of all against all.?But not nearly of all, only of the contestants.?The rest of us are just supposed to watch, at most perhaps to tweet whom we want saved.?Well, not all of the rest of us.?There is still the puppetmaster, the guy who does the firing.?He could be President.?He could fire the Muslims.
So to me, Arendt is most dated where she talks about totalitarian leaders as logicians and dialecticians.?The 21st Century boob tube takes care of that for them; they just have to express popular anger in partial sentences without committing a HUGE gaffe.?And by HUGE, I guess I mean even bigger than saying that all members of what according to Pew will soon be the largest world religion?should be banned from entering the nation that invented the First Amendment, because THAT was not a big enough gaffe to stop him!
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Where Arendt could not be more correct, on the other hand, is in her refined sense of what totalitarianism destroys, and therefore what we need to fight to maintain:?the reflective, thinking individual, who enjoys enough solitude — rather than loneliness — and personal freedom to be able to make well-considered moral choices.?As I write this, with Los Angeles schools shut down for the day due to a “credible threat,” and France considering bans on encryption and public wifi, the protection of the reflective individual against terror and totalitarianism seems like it might become the most important meaning of privacy in this century, and a meaning in which privacy and security are not in many respects opposed.?In closing for now, I therefore offer you this excellent Apprentice whose image I hope will come to mind as you watch the debates tonight:
Thanks for reading. Every week I try to give you new ideas and tools for dealing with the swarm of technology invading your working life here.
Of Counsel at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, LLP
9 年Well said.
Caretaker of animals, researcher, reader, writer, etc. at At home. Currently working on my fourth and final American Genealogical Studies course and working towards certification in genealogy.
9 年So do I,Rachel. Several incidents have included throwing a pig's head at an entrance of a mosque in Philly, graffiti in California and New Jersey, not to mention the beating up of a Muslim cab driver in Pittsburgh.
I think the DOJ should file charges against Trump for incitement of violence. There have been several incidents since he opened his dirty, fascist pig mouth and starting spewing filth and hatred.
Director at Institute for Continued Learning at Dixie State University
9 年Jon, will you please run for president? Your words couldn't be more profound and more timely. We are at the cusp of a point where ignorance delivers us into the dark ages - or worse. But, as the American Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., warned us so many times, the bigger threat is not the ignorant bigots but those of us who stand by and do nothing. Below are just samples of this great man's warnings to us, which is a call for all of us to take action: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul. Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Forensic Investigator ? Digital Assets Specialist ? Keynote Speaker ? Attorney
9 年'Tis a rare (and welcome) thing where thing where totalitarianism is invoked (correctly) as the root cause of a specific ill (as opposed to a symptom). Thank you for reminding us that ideas are important…thank you also for pointing out that those who conflate important ideas with silly ones (or ask that we ignore good ideas outright) should be treated with a boulder-sized grain of salt.