Ep27 -- The Freedom Ruckus

 Welcome back, everybody. I trust everyone had a lovely prime day last week.  It's kind of a strange idea for a holiday if you actually think about it. But most of us really don't think about it, which is, I guess what Amazon's counting on.  On the other hand. It may be the most, truly American holiday ever. Rather than transforming religious or civic rituals or memorials into nothing more than consumerist orgies with little or no bearing on the original purpose of the celebration.  Prime Day is just consumerism for consumerism's sake. And as a celebration of what Amazon does best, that is: force us to stop thinking and keep buying.  And then keep on buying. And keep on not thinking.  Or on the off chance that we do think about it. 

We often think about it wrong. That is many of us equate our experience on Amazon with something resembling freedom.  What does it say about a society whose citizens, when they imagine one of the most fundamental foundations of our humanity, think,  you know what I put on that list? Being able to buy whatever I want whenever I want and get it fast and not have to be bothered with any of the possible negative repercussions of such convenience.  So this week, I want to talk a little bit about freedom. What it is, what it isn't. And how so often in America, those who shout the loudest about preserving and protecting freedom are those who hold the most restrictive and self-serving definition of what freedom actually is.  Stay tuned.  

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we all get conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind.  But first, a word about a sponsor.  

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by Microsoft. And no, it's not because I'm still freaked out about Clippy that creepy peeping Tom of an assistant that Bill Gates unleashed on Microsoft Word users 30 years ago. Even though I'd have every right to be.  It's not even specifically about the role Microsoft played in last Friday's CrowdStrike global IT outage debacle that rendered tens of millions of computers worldwide, stuck in endless reboot loops because of a faulty antivirus configuration file.  And Microsoft's role, by the way, was integral to this disaster, but in a way that they've brushed aside with an oops, it's not our problem kind of response.  Now you don't need to know what any of these terms mean to get the gist of the story. 

The exact problem was in a configuration file that's intended to change the functioning of something called a kernel driver, which exists at the deepest level of an operating system, and therefore is super important to the functionings of a computer. 

Now Microsoft claims to very carefully monitor updates to kernel drivers made by their partner developers like CrowdStrike. But apparently. Microsoft doesn't care, all that much about configuration files that change the way kernel drivers work. Or in this case, screw one up that happens to sit on tens of millions of computers worldwide.  As a Microsoft spokesman told Wired Magazine, "the CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally," adding that "Microsoft does not have oversight into updates that CrowdStrike makes in its systems." And believe it or not, that's not what pisses me off most about this whole story.  What pisses me off the most is that Microsoft stock is now higher than it was on Thursday before all this happened.  

So, if you don't think this is going to happen again and happen on a bigger scale than happened last week. You don't understand the true wonders of unfettered market capitalism.  

Microsoft is not only not being punished for this massive oversight, they're essentially being rewarded for it. And I'm sure this has nothing to do with the massive layoffs at Microsoft early last year that of course led to a 16% increase in gross profits in the past year, along with a 45% increase in stock value. Nothing to see here, of course, and definitely nothing that might require some regulatory interrogation.  After all, what could possibly go wrong?  In other words, forget it, 

Jake, it's Silicon Valley.  

And we're back.  Over the weekend I was out doing my stair workout and as I was doing my plank or my ab rollout or whatever, I overheard these two guys talking politics. And let's just say they weren't big fans of Joe Biden and not in the way that George Clooney wasn't recently a big fan of Joe Biden. 

I mean, really not big fans.  And at one point one guy says, well, it's all just about freedom.  And I thought to myself, is it?  Is that really what it's all about?  And what popped into my head was this quote. And I'm not sure who said it first, but I read it first on the Twitter feed of graphic artists. Michael Okuda. 

The quote is "Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities, isn't freedom. It's adolescence." Now I have two adolescent sons and we've taught them to be pretty responsible. So this quote may actually be an insult to adolescents, but you get the point.  And when I went back and looked up the quote on Michael Okuda's feed, the top comment was, "though nowhere in the constitution does it mention responsibilities." Boom. All right, America, you're free. Embrace your adolescence and let 'er rip.  But wait, hold on a second. Sure the word responsibilities doesn't appear, but surely the concept of responsibilities is in there somewhere.  And of course I didn't need to dig too deep into the document since it's right there in the preamble.  You all remember the preamble, right? Sing it with me:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."  

That's pretty much all about responsibilities, isn't it? Establish justice. Ensure domestic tranquility. Provide for the common defense. Promote the general welfare. For everybody who hates welfare. It's like the 29th word of the Constitution and it's capitalized, which is weird, but there you have it.  So clearly responsibility should have something to do with freedom. But that definitely annoys a lot of people, so they're probably leaving it out of their personal definition of freedom. 

Is it even possible to come up with a single definition of freedom that will satisfy everyone?  There's positive freedom and there's negative freedom. The former being the freedom to do things and the latter, the freedom from interference or restraint.  I mean. The Heritage Foundation thinks freedom means the government not taking away our God-given rights, but Harvard professor Danielle Allen would say, we give the government power to protect our freedoms. 

I often think there are two kinds of people in America. And no, I don't mean people who divide the world into two groups and people who don't.  There are people who think that the government is the most powerful institution in America.

And there are those who think business is the most powerful institution.  People mostly on the right are more likely to say that the government is the most powerful institution and represents the biggest threat to our freedoms. It just needs to get out of the way and let the free market determine who or what has real worth in society. Like, for example, Microsoft. 

On the left, it's that predatory capitalists are the biggest threat to freedom and equality. And the only thing standing between us and oligarchy. Is a regulatory structure that can keep business from total domination.  Now. I don't know about you, but it seems pretty clear to me, which is the more powerful institution. I mean sure.

Nominally we're all created equal. But even if all you ever looked at were campaign contribution disclosures, it becomes pretty clear that some people and some industries are more equal than others. Hat tip George Orwell.

 I think for most people, freedom is an individual concept. What can I do or not do, say or not say? It feels like a private thing. We tend not to think about freedom in public or societal terms. And that gets at the point that most people who aren't crazy about responsibilities tend to ignore. That is, not only do our behaviors in public by definition, impact other people, but everything we do has some impact, no matter how small on everything else. We all live in the same ecosystem as Gregory Bateson warned us. He also said, "we live in a world that's only made of relationships." 

So when people say freedom means doing whatever I want whenever I want, and that's my business and nobody else's. That's kind of impossible. And besides, is that really a useful definition of freedom? Or more specifically, is it wise to give freedom such an exalted position in your life? Is freedom really what it's all about? Or is there another way to think about it? 

As I was looking around for different ways to think about freedom. I stumbled upon a blog post by business consultant and therapist, Peter Shallard who calls himself the shrink for entrepreneurs.  He wrote a piece called "The self-sabotaging paradox of being obsessed with freedom" that elegantly laid out an alternative way to think about freedom.  He says "the thing about freedom is that it's a juvenile value. It's valuable as a stepping stone to something else, a deeper, richer life purpose."  And that I think is the truer, better, more productive way to think about freedom. If you make freedom the goal, then by definition, you must feel unfree right now. So you vote for some politician who tells you it's all about freedom and they pass some law with freedom in the title, and suddenly you're free. You can have books removed from the library, control which bathrooms kids use, or fire people for whatever reason suits you. But as Shallard points out, if the goal is freedom, you'll never wholly feel free, and sooner or later you'll feel shackled by something else and crave freedom from it.  And it's just a never-ending cycle of feeling free, then feeling trapped, then escaping and feeling free, then feeling trapped. Now. Shallard focuses on entrepreneurs, which is fitting since we seem to be in a time when lots of Silicon Valley billionaires are lining up behind a presidential candidate that they feel will remove the government shackles that are holding them back. So you got to ask yourself, if Elon Musk or Peter Thiel feel like they're victims in today's world, unjustly trapped by onerous government restrictions, what is it that would satisfy them and relieve their sense of victimization?  Do you really think that loosening labor and environmental restrictions and lowering taxes so they'll have five or 10% more wealth than they currently have will be enough?  Or will their sense of victimhood simply return and they'll then demand even more concessions to once again fleetingly feel free?  Now, none of this is to say that we shouldn't fight for more freedom. But it's kind of like the opposite of the way people talk about regulations. Not all regulations are bad and should be eliminated and not all forms of freedom are necessarily good. At least on balance. You have to ask yourself what end would this freedom serve? Does it further the responsibilities laid out in the preamble to the constitution? Does it make it easier for the largest number of people to reach their fullest potential? Or will it just temporarily make you feel good at somebody else's expense?  Most importantly, when someone tells you that it's all about freedom.,  You might want to tell them this:

"That word you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means."  

Well, that's it for this week. If you liked this episode, please share it with anyone else you think might enjoy it. And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other, some slack, and use your f$%^ing turn signal.