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<p>At the suggestion of JennyQ I am (re)reading Russel Shorto's
"Amsterdam: A History of the Worlds Most Liberal City"... in
response to the topic of you interviews and e-mail here, I liked
the way he spoke of "freedom" and "liberty" in the context of the
formation of Amsterdam and the Netherlands in general. <br>
</p>
<p>An important distinction seems to be between "freedom from" and
"freedom to". Both Right and Left (being political
intrinsically?) seem overworried about "freedom from", looking at
*who* or *what* (institution) is going to obstruct one's "pursuit
of happiness" whether it be taxation or regulation or making
various (somewhat private) acts such as abortion or gun-ownership
or helmet/seatbelt/healthcare-insurance (non)use illegal
(obstructable and punishable). It seems that the from/to duality
is at the crux of this. When I am in a healthy frame of mind, I
am much more focused on what/how/why I want to do than I am about
who/what/why I am going to be stopped. As I negotiate the
foreignness (to me) of public transport (short and long haul) I
can lose sight of my goal which is to get from one place to
another and become obsessed with the (appearance of the) failures
of the given system (bus/train/taxi/etc) and the supporting
materials (signage, phone apps, schedules, people-who-advise) and
lose sight of the idea that I really just want to get where I'm
going (freedom to) and railing against the various stumble-stones
(they seem huge when you are too clumsy/ignorant to lift your feet
or walk around them) instead (freedom from).</p>
<p>Feudal Europe had a lot of systemic constraints on the common
man, but when living within those constraints there was often a
lot of freedom. What Shorto describes about Amsterdam/NL is the
emergence of the idea that an individual *can* or *should* have
the freedoms to do many things *without* the constraining
interferences of church and state at the time. He also describes
how the formation of common share stocks and exchanges both
yielded a "freedom to" (invest in short and long lived ventures)
while creating a new set of ways to exploit. The "victims" of the
VOC (dutch east india Co) were wide and varied and the "freedom
to" by those who benefitted from holding stock in it's ventures
and/or being employed or facilitated by it's operations was
balanced but hidden from those who would need "freedom from" the
various exploitative strategies employed by the "management" in
the name of "freedom to".</p>
<p>Our modern hyper-capitalistic first-world seems to be this in
spades. For every "freedom to" we have (say, eat avocado toast
daily or buy a new pair of name-brand athletic shoes monthly),
someone else may well suffer mightily to make that happen (drug
cartels owning the Avocado farms in MX and child-labor in
indonesia constructing sneakers for a month's pay equal the price
of one pair retail in the US or EU).<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/17/22 11:49 AM,
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear FRIAMMERS,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am off to the Mosquito-Infested-Swamp
(Hereafter, “MIS”) soon and probably won’t be able to
participate in THUAM this Thursday. I will try to rejoin you
at least by the second week of June, if for only as long as my
car battery can hold out. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I leave you with two podcasts from Ezra
Klein. I can hear your eyes rolling because there can hardly
be anybody more elitey than Ezra Klein. And nothing is more
eye-roll inducing than elites-interviewing-elites. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, I think he is on to something here.
The first interview is with a hard right notre dame professor,
and the second is with Anne Applebaum,who I guess is a liberal
historian. Both speak to a manner in which the right and the
left might seem to agree. That all the talk about freedom
both on the left and on theright misses the point that
“freedom is just another word for nothin’ much to loose.”
Modern society has become cytolytic and the internet has
become a kind of centrifuge that spins out the cell fragments
into an organization alien to their form. Universities are
kinda like that. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-does-the-post-liberal-right-actually-want/id1548604447?i=1000561003813"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-does-the-post-liberal-right-actually-want/id1548604447?i=1000561003813</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anne-applebaum-on-what-liberals-misunderstand-about/id1548604447?i=1000561763183"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anne-applebaum-on-what-liberals-misunderstand-about/id1548604447?i=1000561763183</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Applebaum, channeling Arendt, speaks of
“loneliness”, not as a phenomenon of not being around people,
but of having lost a sense of common purpose in the people
around one. Hence this atavistic longing for the Good Old
America. Now what nobody in this conversationseems to
remember is that these cells were often bound to gether by
hatred of one another. When we moved into the MIS a half a
century ago, there were two camps, two well defined THEY’S
which were not accompanied by equally well defined WE’S. But
one said was loosely catholic and the other loosely
protestant, and so they each had a church to go an grumble
in. Now, even those camps have been dissolved. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am wondering if there was ever such a
thing as a community that was not, in significant part, based
on a hatred for the communities around it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nick <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="color:#0563C1"><a
href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a></span></u><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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