Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another. In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS took the initiative to devise the methods of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated what was possible. It was far more than Hitler had thought. At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation. Timothy Snyder (2017) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
[Yet] precisely because each body finds itself potentially threatened by others who are, by definition, precarious as well, forms of domination follow. This standard Hegelian point takes on specific meanings under contemporary conditions of war: the shared condition of precariousness leads not to reciprocal recognition, but to a specific exploitation of targeted populations, of lives that are not quite lives, cast as “destructible” and “ungrievable.”
Such populations are “lose-able,” or can be forfeited, precisely because they are framed as being already lost or forfeited; they are cast as threats to human life as we know it rather than as living populations in need of protection from illegitimate state violence, famine, or pandemics. Consequently, when such lives are lost they are not grievable, since, in the twisted logic that rationalizes their death, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of “the living.”
[…]
So, one way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all.
Judith Butler (2009) Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?. Verso.
“Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?” I ask. “Oh, not now. Now we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.” “What?” I ask. “The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race. Think about that.”
Suzanne Collins (2010) Mockingjay. Scholastic. pg 276.
Our century has made a religion of communication, enshrining the idea that we ought to be constantly on tap, endlessly engaged in some or other form of exchanging information and perpetually contributing our due quotient to the sum of nonstop chatter – as if communicating with each other were a moral good, and not merely so much white noise. Our phones have become our oracles. Instant messaging is our hotline to higher communion.
In silence we can find an assured retreat from the intolerable din, but it would be a mistake to think that the allure of silence is primarily that of passive withdrawal, like a child sulking because they don’t want to play with all the other kids. Silence is not what is left once the chatter has died away: it is not a residue, or vacated space. Instead, like the darkness of night, it is a gateway into richness and depth, mystery and resonance. In the coinage of Frauds Bacon, “silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom”.
In thinking about the virtues of silence, I am reminded of the writer Sarah Maidand’s lived experiment, in which she embarked on a quest to rediscover those qualities of silence that have become impossible to access amid the crashing cacophony of modern urban life. What I love about her memoir is that it makes no bones about the difficulty of this journey into silence, which she documents in A Book of Silence. Maitland missed friends and frivolity, the fertilising properties of conversation, not least the refined palliative that is BBC Radio 4, and yet, over the long seasons of her voluntary exile from society, she gradually came to learn the value of truly listening: to her inner voice, her doubts and intuitions, the workings of pre-rational thought. And she learned to attend anew to the world around her, finding real joy, for example, in engaging more viscerally with nature (everything from gardening, to noticing that so many of the forces that our lives depend on are silent: gravity, electricity, light, tides, the unheard spinning of the Earth on its axis). The biggest surprise, writes Maitland, was discovering “the energy of silence”.
Marina Benjamin, 2017. The Value of Silence. NewPhilosopher, 17 (Communication), pp 71-72.
The way the sun rises, cresting the mountains, piercing the clouds, chasing the darkness. It is easy to miss it, day after day, year after year, that unmistakable warmth. Bringer of life. Guide to the weary traveler. The lost sailer. The blooming flower.
We owe so much to her warmth. Taken for granted. Ignored. Passed up.
It only takes a moment. To take it all in. To be grateful. One moment out of thousands.
If only we notice her warmth, the life she brings, can we share it. For she too needs to rest. And when she does and the darkness creeps back in, it is up to us to be the light. The warmth. The guide to the weary traveler. The lost soul.
Having now come to the of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought. But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called ‘practical’ men. The ‘practical’ man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind.
If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had-been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.
The Stoics saw the world as a single great community in which all men are brothers, ruled by a supreme providence which could be spoken of, almost according to choice or context, under a variety of names or descriptions including the divine reason, creative reason, nature, the spirit or purpose of the universe, destiny, a personal god, even (by way of concession to traditional religion) ‘the gods’. It is man’s duty to live in conformity with the divine will, and this means, firstly, bringing his life into line with ‘nature’s laws’, and secondly, resigning himself completely and uncomplainingly to whatever fate may send him. Only by living thus, and not setting too high a value on things which can at any moment be taken away from him, can he discover that true, unshakeable peace and contentment to which ambition, luxury and above all avarice are among the greatest obstacles.
Living ‘ in accordance with nature ‘ means not only questioning convention and training ourselves to do without all except the necessities (plain food, water, basic clothing and shelter) but developing the inborn gift of reason which marks us off as different from the animal world. We are meant to set free or perfect this rational element, this particle of the universal reason, the ‘ divine spark’ in our human make-up, so that it may campaign against and conquer pain, grief, superstition and the fear of death. It will show us that ‘there’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’, discipline the pleasures and the passions, and generally subordinate the body and emotions to the mind and soul.
In this way we shall arrive at the true end of man, happiness, through having attained the one and only good thing In life, the ideal or goal called arete in Greek and in Latin virtus — for which the English word ‘virtue’ is so unsatisfactory a translation This, the summum bonum or ‘supreme ideal’ usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: wisdom (or moral insight), courage, self-control and justice (or upright dealing). It enables a man to be ‘self-sufficient’, immune to suffering, superior to the wounds and upsets of life (often personalized as Fortuna, the goddess of fortune). Even a slave thus armed can be called ‘free’, or indeed titled ‘a king’ since even a king cannot touch him.
Another example of these ‘paradoxes’ for which the Stoics were celebrated is one directed at the vanity of worldly possessions: ‘the route to wealth is the contempt of wealth’.
There is an emptiness in the air. A void. A friction that shouldn’t exist but does. Filling every space it finds. it suffocates. The air doesn’t feel cold, but is absent any warmth, as if hope was forbidden. In exile. Consumed by silence, unable to scream, meaningless as the echoes would be.
To be vulnerable. Afraid. Not of danger, but of your own existence. To fear yourself and not others. Afraid. Alone. Empty. A quiet desperation.
Life has no meaning without death, and death is meaningless without life. To wander aimlessly to the end; to breath emptiness into the void. To stumble and falter. Hoping. Dreaming.
To fill the void with philosophy. Unable to ease the friction. To understand more only to understand less. In the meaningless echoes are a spark of hope. A hope of meaning. A warmth in the void of existence. However elusive. Fleeting. Out of reach. Onwards we stumble. Into the void. In silence.
This student came to me, he said, “I’m leaving.” He was in one of my more advanced classes, I think it was ‘theory of action’ – if you want anything abstract then it’s theory of action. We were having a great time in class, it was fascinating, although totally irrelevant, and he came to me one morning and he said, “I can’t stay because last night I was drinking beer with my buddies and I realised that I practically couldn’t talk to them anymore. I love my friends, I love my family, and I don’t want to lose them. And if I stay here I’m going to lose them.” I was both horrified and I knew he was right. […] There are all sorts of essays written by people from working class families who become professors and they all tell the same kind of story: some can go back, they switch on and off their personalities, and others have a very hard time doing it.
People keep saying that we need to have a national curriculum and I say to them, “We have a national curriculum – through the media […]”. School’s job is to somehow break through that … we have to work on changing the media. The school is educating the heads, not the hearts or anything else, and the media is educating us in ambition and distraction, […] turning us away from the important problems rather than towards them.
John Dewey talked about educating the whole person. What I talk about is that we need to be thinking about educating not just the whole person, but all our children in the whole range of the culture’s wealth. […] So we need to be thinking more broadly about what parts of culture we’re passing down to our children. There’s also the ‘problem of generations’, and this may be the biggest issue of all. If you start looking at education from the perspective of the culture instead of the individual and one of the main questions, in western culture at least, is: “What are we passing down to the next generation?” Are we passing down our cultural wealth? Or are we passing down our liabilities? And when you look around and you see the greed, the racism, inequality and all the rest, you know that we’re passing down our liabilities. […] Instead of just looking at our own child and how he or she is going to get a job we must start looking at what the culture is passing down. Are we passing down any kind of belief in the value of the Earth and the need to preserve it? No! No, but we’ve got to.
Technology improvements and the rapid acceleration of computer systems and network have significantly impacted societies over the last 20 years, with countless improvements in work areas of productivity, health, connectivity, education and science (Gruyter, 2014, p. 459). Technology provides the foundation of the modern developed nation with computer systems operating and managing electrical, water, sewerage, telecommunications, transport and other utilities in vast, complex automated arrangements. Technological innovation has significantly enabled globalization by overcoming traditional territorial and national boundaries, connecting societies, organizations and people that would otherwise never would (Naseem, 1999, p. 636). These technology enhancements have created a hyperconnected world in which everyone has ‘the potential to communicate and to interact with anyone, anywhere at anytime’ (McGuire, 2014, p. 77). While there are countless benefits to hyperconnectivity, it also aids in the growth, proliferation and reach of criminal entities in scales that range from gangs to non-state terrorist groups. Paralleling the surge in dependence on technology and computer systems is the rise in threats to computer systems themselves, and threat of using computer systems to attack groups within society (Döge, 2016, p. 487). A challenge that has arisen when developing policy and legislation is clearly defining and separating cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwar. This essay will contextualize the distinctiveness of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwar, and will define the circumstances that allow for cyberterrorism to be separated from cybercrime and cyberwar. (more…)