From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 13 2002 - 16:39:13 MDT
Dale wrote:
>
> In distinguishing privacy from privation you are disagreeing with what
> seems to me the important point -- I say privacy IS privation.
> Privacy is privation from the public. Think of the old Greek
> distinction between the oikos and polis, the private rather
> authoritarian (for ancient Greeks) space where bodily functions are
> maintained as against the public institutions of court, market,
> assembly where citizens deliberated the matters of the day and
> distinguished one another for each other. It is common nowadays to
> simply valorize the private as positive and demonize the public as
> negative, in part because public life is so ugly but this is doubly
> mistaken -- stealing from us the pleasures of civic freedom and
> relinquishing our hold on civic autonomy.
### A lot has changed since the ancients last scribbled on ostraca. The
political arena is controlled by huge organizations which stole most of the
freedom, and a lot of the pleasures. Some personalities might thrive in this
environment, others, like me, regard participation as a necessary evil. As
Germans say, "Jedem das seine".
------
>> Yet, a libertarian must remain acutely conscious of the fundamental
>> wrongness of politics, which is the art and practice of using and
>> manipulating organized social violence, lacking which political
>> bodies would be merely discussion societies.
>
> For me this is a disastrously impoverished conception of political
> life. It is as if you think only soldiers, judges, police,
> legislators, and, momentarily, possibly, voters in a voting booth or
> activists in the streets are engaged in political activity. As if
> politics is either the thuggishly ugly act of firing bullets or the
> arridly ugly act of bureaucrats administering social needs. No
> wonder you hold it in such contempt! For me I am never more
> political than when I am teaching a class, organizing a project,
> arguing a point with a group whose disagreement risks my reputation.
> Politics is not just organized violence
> -- but organizing as such. That's why Aristotle called human beings
> "political animals".
### I believe you might be guilty here of stretching meanings close if not
beyond the breaking point. According to Webster's:
Politics:
1 a : the art or science of government b : the art or science concerned with
guiding or influencing governmental policy c : the art or science concerned
with winning and holding control over a government
2 : political actions, practices, or policies
3 a : political affairs or business; especially : competition between
competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership (as in a
government) b : political life especially as a principal activity or
profession c : political activities characterized by artful and often
dishonest practices
4 : the political opinions or sympathies of a person
5 a : the total complex of relations between people living in society b :
relations or conduct in a particular area of experience especially as seen
or dealt with from a political point of view <office politics>
<end quote>
Only the last meaning seems to be close to your usage. I daresay, most
English speakers would rather concentrate on meaning 3 in the context of our
dispute, reserving terms like "civics", "social activism", or "advocacy" for
the activities you mentioned.
--------
I'll note in
> passing that the rather unqualified celebration of privacy as sacred
> space and the demonization of public life as at best a boring chore
> well deputized to drones and at worst some kind of institutionalized
> criminality, goes a long way to explain why otherwise freedom loving
> people often greet David Brin's rather sensible proposals in The
> Transparent Society with horror and rage. IMHO.
### I love The Transparent Society! Even if some old-fashioned privacy goes
overboard, it is a good bargain, since the power of the power-hungry ones is
likely to be weakened.
No, you don't have to love politics to appreciate Brin's proposal.
It seems a part of our misunderstanding lies in our disparate uses of
"politics', which for me is a beast much different from "public life". I do
enjoy participation in the agora, as evidenced by my posting record on the
ExI list, to give you an example.
Rafal
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