Harrison Bergeron
.
The dystopian short story "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, opens with the line "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal."
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Unfortunately, this equality has been achieved by handicapping the most intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society down to the level of the lowest common denominator, a process central to the society which is overseen by the United States Handicapper General, who at the time of the story is the shotgun-toting Diana Moon Glampers.
Harrison Bergeron, the title character, is by age 14 exceptionally gifted in all three aspects -- already seven feet tall, "a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder" -- and outgrowing hindrances faster than the Handicapper General's office can think them up. When he is taken to prison for plotting to overthrow the government, for a moment he escapes and manages to break free of his imposed handicaps, and into a television studio:
"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook. "Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"
The ensuing hullabaloo is televised, with the Handicapper General herself eventually arriving to settle things; Bergeron's parents, Hazel and George, are at home watching television, and see the whole thing. However, thanks to their concentration handicaps, once it is all over, they forget what exactly it was that had caused so much excitement.
Brave New World
.
- This is the article about the novel by Aldous Huxley. For the Iron Maiden album, see Brave New World.
Brave New World is a 1932 dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley. The book anticipates developments in reproductive technology, eugenics and mind control that combine to change society beyond recognition. It is widely recognized as Huxley's most famous and enduring novel.
The term brave new world is also used in print media when refering to a plan of action that may have undesired or negative outcomes. For example:
- The predictions of open source software ruling the world are starting to come with a feeling of inevitability; where is shareware going to fit in this brave new world? [1] (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/25/1159224)
Contents [hide] Synopsis
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Set in the future, it describes a dystopian society of Huxley's imagination. In this society people are "decanted" into a chemically-enforced and totally conformist caste society. Children are engineered in fertility clinics and artificially gestated. The three lower castes are manufactured in groups of up to 96 clones, and they are chemically stunted and/or deprived of oxygen during their maturation process to control their intelligence level and physical development.
The Alpha caste consists of those destined for leadership positions, with Betas filling professional and administrative posts requiring high education, but without the leadership responsibilities of the Alphas. These two groups together form the upper castes, with Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons comprising the lower castes, each with a descending degree of intelligence (Epsilons being so stupid as to be illiterate, and trained to perform the most menial tasks without complaint). People are thus manufactured to fill their jobs, rather than jobs being created for people. Within these classes are sub-groups, plus or minus, which further determines their roles in society (every possible combination appears at least once in the text, with the exception of Delta-Plus). Members of each caste also wear uniforms, the color of which identified which caste they belonged to. Alphas wear grey, Betas mulberry, Gammas green, Deltas khaki, and Epsilons black.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated, by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep, to believe that their own is the best class to be in. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an anti-depressant and somewhat hallucinogenic drug called soma.
Contrary to what modern readers would expect, the biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering. Huxley wrote the book in 1932, twenty years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. As the science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental, not a genetic, hell".
Citizens have no awareness of history except for a vague idea of how terrible things were before the inception of the present society. They know that humans used to be viviparous and what parents and birth were, but these concepts are taboo, and "mother" and "father" are this society's equivalent of dirty words.
The protagonist, named John, is the son of two citizens of the Brave New World (he is the result of an accidental contraception failure). His parents were visiting a "savage reservation" when his mother got lost; she was stranded inside the reservation and gave birth to him there. He grew up with the lifestyle of the Zuni Native American tribe and a religion that is a blend of Zuni and Christian beliefs. The culture shock which results when the "savage" is brought into regimented society provides the vehicle by which Huxley points out that society's flaws.
The key moral point of the book revolves around the problem that the people in the society appear, and state that they are, generally happy. John Savage, however, considers this happiness to be artificial and "soulless". In a pivotal scene he argues with another character, world controller Mustapha Mond, that pain and anguish are as necessary a part of life as is joy, and that without the former to provide context and perspective, "joy" becomes meaningless.
In other themes, the book attacks assembly line production as demeaning; feminism and the liberalization of sexual mores as being an affront to love and family; the use of slogans or thought terminating cliches; the concept of a centralised government and the emergence of Socialist and Communist attitudes, as well as the use of science to control people's thoughts and actions. It is also interesting to note the names of two of the main characters—Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx (alluding to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and founder of communism Karl Marx).
The title of the book is a quotation from Miranda in Act V of Shakespeare's The Tempest, when she is joyfully reunited with her family. John Savage is a keen Shakespeare fan, which sets him further apart from the vast majority of humanity in Huxley's dystopia. Like most of the world's artistic and cultural achievements, Shakespeare's works are banned and unknown in this society to everyone but the World Controllers.
In 1993, an attempt was made to remove this novel from a California school's required reading list because it "centered around negative activity."
Characters
Of the Fordian society
- Arch-Community Songster
- Assistant Director of Predestination
- Darwin Bonaparte
- Fanny Crowne
- Lenina Crowne
- Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
- Henry Foster
- Dr. Gaffney
- Benito Hoover
- Miss Keate
- Bernard Marx
- Primo Mellon
- Mustapha Mond
- Dr. Shaw
- Helmholtz Watson
- At the Solidarity Service: Morgana Rothschild (woman whose unibrow haunts Marx at the Solidarity Service), Herbert Bakunin, Fifi Bradlaugh, Jim Bokanovsky, Clara Deterding (the President of the group), Joanna Diesel, Sarojini Engels, Tom Kawaguchi
Of the savage reserve, particularly in Malpais
- John, "the Savage"
- Linda, his mother, formerly of the Fordian society
- Warden of the Reservation, who himself is not a savage
- Kiakimé, who John loved
- Kothlu, who married Kiakimé
- Old Mitsima, one of finest Huxleyian characters, he teaches the outcast John about Indian lore
- Palowhitwa
- Popé
Historical characters
These are fictional and factual characters who died before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel.
- Reuben Rabinovitch (the fictional boy who first discovers sleep-learning)
Satire of 1930s society
As a method of underscoring similarities to his fictional dystopia and his own contemporary culture, Huxley incorporates several sly, satirical references to targets such as the Church of England, the BBC or British tabloid The Daily Mirror ("The Delta Mirror"), Henry Ford, George Bernard Shaw and Sigmund Freud.
Comparison with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Brave New World and George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are both often used in political discussions of government actions perceived to be anti-libertarian. However, a key difference between 1984 and Brave New World is that while in 1984 people are kept from knowledge perceived to be "dangerous" by means of continual mass surveillance and coercion, in Brave New World the characters are physically engineered to not desire "dangerous" knowledge in the first place. One could say that while in 1984 the people are dehumanized by the state controlling their natural instincts such as sex or free thought, in Brave New World the "state" infantilizes the masses by giving free rein to basic human instincts such as sex and ceding responsibility to herd mentality.
Both novels incorporate a class of people (in 1984 the "proles" (proletariat) and in Brave New World those who live on "reservations") who exist on the periphery of the dystopian society in a state of relative physical squalor, but with little to no societal interference, outside of an enforced state of non-education. While both classes as such are peripheral to their respective milieux, they serve as an important device for delineating contrast between the dystopian society in question and what the author perceives as being a more ideal society.
In addition, the society presented in Brave New World is, to some extent, tolerant of outsiders, in so much as it respects the idea of there being an "outside". While the dystopian world of 1984 is all-encompassing, the world Brave New World includes "savage reservations" and "the islands". The latter are effectively places of exile for freethinkers, but they are also to some extent a "safe haven". No such places exist in 1984.
Brave New World--Revisited
Brave New World--Revisited (Harper & Row, 1958, 1965) is a companion book (also by Huxley) which gives considerable additional detail about the society of Brave New World. In many ways it is different in tone and impact to the original novel, due to Huxley's evolving thought and his conversion to Buddhism between the two books.
Related readings
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman, alludes many times to how television is goading our culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where people are not so much denied human rights such as free speech and expression, but conditioned to just not care.
- The 1993 movie Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and Nigel Hawthorne is loosely based on Brave New World. Both involve a mechanized future where everybody is kept happy, where undesirable things (those that reduce society's happiness) are banned. A couple of references to the book include the fact that Sandra Bullock's character is named Lenina Huxley, a mix of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley, and a scene where Lenina Huxley tells John Spartan (Stallone's character), "John, you're a savage!", calling John the Savage to mind. The movie is otherwise not related to the book.
External links
- A Defence of Paradise-Engineering (http://www.huxley.net/). A critical review of Brave New World by David Pearce.
- http://somaweb.org/w/bioethics.html.
Publications
- Brave New World
- Aldous Huxley; Perennial; Reprint edition (September 1, 1998); ISBN 0060929871
- Brave New World Revisited
- Aldous Huxley; Perennial; (March 1, 2000); ISBN 0060955511
- Huxley's Brave New World (Cliffs Notes)
- Charles and Regina Higgins; Cliffs Notes; (May 30, 2000); ISBN 0764585835
- Spark Notes Brave New World
- Sterling; (December 31, 2003); ISBN 158663366X
- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)
- Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons Educational Series; (November 1984); ISBN 0812034058
Film noir
.
Film noir is a genre of film based in large part on the hard-boiled detective novels that grew out of naturalism, a movement in literature based on realism. Film noir is French for "black film", and is pronounced accordingly ("film nwahr"): the plural is films noirs.
Film noir tends to feature characters trapped in situations (often not of their own making) and making choices out of desperation. Frequent themes are murder, betrayal, and infidelity.
Film noir is at its core pessimistic. The stories it tells are of people trapped in a situation they did not want, often a situation they did not create, striving against random uncaring fate, and usually doomed. Almost all film noir plots involve the hard-boiled, disillusioned male (often a private eye) and the dangerous femme fatale. Usually because of sexual attraction or greed, the male commits vicious acts, and in the end both he and the femme fatale are punished or even killed for their actions.
Contents [hide] History
The term film noir was coined by the French film critic Nino Frank, and is derived from a series of hard-boiled fiction books entitled Série Noire. Films noirs were mainly shot in black-and-white in the United States between the early 1940s and the late 1950s. Many were low-budget supporting features without major stars, in which 'moonlighting' writers, directors and technicians, some of them blacklisted, found themselves relatively free from big-picture restraints. Major studio feature films demanded a wholesome, positive message. Weak and morally ambiguous lead-characters were ruled out by the star-system, and secondary characters were seldom allowed any depth or autonomy. Flattering soft lighting, deluxe interiors and elaborately-built exterior sets were the rule. Noir turned all this on its head, creating bleak but intelligent dramas tinged with nihilism and cynicism, in real-life urban settings, and using unsettling techniques such as the confessional voice-over or hero's-eye-view camerawork. Gradually the noir style re-influenced the mainstream it had subverted. Orson Welles' Touch of Evil is often referred to as the last "classical" film noir.
In the 1960s American filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn and Robert Altman created genre films that broke the strict format of the genre's rule to convey social and political messages. In The Long Goodbye Altman's hard-boiled detective is presented as a hapless bungler who can't help but lose the "moral battle". While not a direct influence, the "Spaghetti Westerns" of Italian director Sergio Leone incorporated the moral ambiguity and gritty characterizations of film noir, reviving the moribund genre of the American Western.
The genre has been parodied (both ruthlessly and affectionately) on many occasions, the most notable examples being Steve Martin's black and white "cut and paste" homage Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam. Many of Joel and Ethan Coen's films are excellent examples of modern films influenced by the film noir genre - especially The Man Who Wasn't There, the comedy The Big Lebowski and Blood Simple, the title of which was lifted from the Dashiell Hammett story Red Harvest .
The cynical, pessimistic worldview of noirs strongly influenced the creators of the cyberpunk genre of science fiction in the early 1980s. Blade Runner is among the most popular films coming from this era. Characters in these films are derived from 1930s gangster films and, more importantly, from pulp fiction magazines such as The Shadow, Dime Mystery Detective and The Black Mask.
Influences on films noirs
The aesthetics of film noir are heavily influenced by German expressionism. When Adolf Hitler took over Germany, many important film artists were forced to emigrate (among them were Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, and Robert Siodmak). They took with them techniques they developed (most importantly the dramatic lighting and the subjective, psychological point of view) and made some of the most famous films noirs. Another important influence came from Italian neorealism. After 1945, film noir adopted the neorealist look, and scenes were shot in real city locations (not in the studio). Books by the Black Mask writers Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and Raymond Chandler (Murder My Sweet, based on Chandler's Farewell My Lovely; The Big Sleep) became among the most famous films noirs.
Technical aspects
Films noirs tend to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast (a technique called low-key lighting). Technically speaking, film noir specifies a movie made using monochrome, high contrast images, typically a 10:1 ratio of light to dark, rather than the more typical 3:1 ratio. Film noir in this sense makes use of deep shadows and carefully directed lighting. Since films using this technique usually fit the genre described above, the term lost its technical meaning and became the name of the genre itself.
See also
The Maltese Falcon
.
The Maltese Falcon is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett which was made into a quintessential film noir.
Contents [hide] Film versions
It was filmed twice under the name The Maltese Falcon, in 1931 and 1941. The story also inspired the 1936 film Satan Met a Lady, directed by William Dieterle and starring Bette Davis and Warren William, as well as many spoofs and sequels. The 1941 version is the most famous and is often considered a classic Hollywood film.
1931 Film
The 1931 film was directed by Roy Del Ruth and starred Ricardo Cortez as private detective Sam Spade. Other stars in the film were Bebe Daniels, Thelma Todd, Dudley Digges, Otto Mathieson, and Una Merkel. The screenplay was adapted from the Dashiell Hammett novel by Maude Fulton Brown Holmes. It was produced and released by Warner Brothers.
While the plot is much the same as the later movie version, the tenor is lighter, and there is rather extensive use of sexually suggestive situations in this pre-Hays Code film, and contains a rather risqué scene of Bebe Daniels apparently nude in a bathtub.
In 1936 Warner Brothers attempted to re-release the film, but was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's "lewd" content. For decades, unedited copies could not be legally shown in the United States.
The 1931 "Maltese Falcon" has also been released under the alternative title "Dangerous Female".
1941 Film
The 1941 film was directed by John Huston in his first directorial role - he also wrote the screenplay - and stars Humphrey Bogart as the detective, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the femme fatale who hires him, Sydney Greenstreet in his exceptional film debut as the extraordinary Kasper Gutman, and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.
Also in the film are Barton MacLane and Ward Bond as policemen, Lee Patrick as Spade's long-suffering secretary and Gladys George confusing things as the wife of Spade's partner.
The 1941 version of the film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Private eye Sam Spade and his partner are approached by O'Shaughnessy to follow a man.
During the tail Spade's partner is murdered and Spade becomes embroiled with O'Shaughnessy, Cairo and Gutman - three ruthless characters seeking the lost "Maltese Falcon", a statuette of a bird, currently black but believed to be solid gold and jewelled beneath this veneer.
The Huston version, exemplifies the noir aesthetic both thematically and visually. At the end of the film, the hero Sam Spade (Bogart) realizes that O'Shaughnessy, who hired him and with whom he has fallen in love, is responsible for his partner's death. He must make the moral decision between turning her in or running away with her. Typically for the Noir period film, the hero eventually makes the moral decision. Visually, as she is being led away, the woman enters an elevator, and the grate closing in front of her face symbolizes her jailing.
In the novel Spade also gives up O'Shaughnessy, but in a more hard-boiled manner - it is a choice between which of them will be jailed for murder and Spade is aware they will hang him but not O'Shaughnessy.
Libertarianism
.
This article deals with libertarianism as understood in the United States. For a discussion of the meaning of the term libertarian that is traditional in continental Europe, see libertarian socialism.
For the use of the term "libertarianism" in the philosophy of free will see libertarianism (philosophy).
Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others. In this respect they agree with many other modern political ideologies. The difference arises from the definition of "rights". For libertarians, there are no "positive rights" (such as to food, shelter, or health care), only "negative rights" (such as to not be assaulted, abused or robbed). Libertarians further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect these rights.
Contents [hide] Terminology
The term "libertarianism" in the above sense has been in widespread use only since the 1950s[1] (http://www.daft.com/~rab/liberty/history/whois-1955.htm). Libertarian had previously been used most commonly by anarchists to describe themselves, avoiding the derogatory connotations of the the word "anarchy". In the aftermath of the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871, anarchism and anarchists were officially outlawed in many countries for decades, so anarchists often called their groups and publications by another name -- hence the adoption of the libertaire as an alternative term in French.
The term became popular in the United States by 20th century thinkers who saw themselves as continuing the classical liberal tradition of the previous century. By that time the term liberalism had come to refer within the United States to belief in government regulation of the economy and government redistribution of wealth. These classical liberal thinkers therefore came to call themselves libertarians; and from the United States the term has spread to the rest of the world.
However, there is still confusion because in Europe, the French word libertaire, the Spanish word libertario, etc., which are usually translated into English as libertarian, traditionally referred to some kind of socialist anarchism. This is in marked distinction to the modern US usage, by which libertarians are not socialists at all, and most of them are not anarchists, but minarchists (i.e., advocates of some minimal state).
Libertarianism and classical liberalism
As noted in the previous section, libertarians see their origins in the earlier 17th to 20th century tradition of classical liberalism, and often use that term as a synonym for libertarianism, particularly outside of the USA.
Some, particularly in the USA, argue that while libertarianism has much in common with the earlier tradition of classical liberalism, the latter term should be reserved for historical thinkers for the sake of clarity and accuracy. Others make the distinction to distance themselves from the socialist and welfare state connotations of the word "liberal" in American English. Critics of the trend toward conflation assert that there is a patterned difference between many libertarian and classical liberal thinkers as far as their beliefs about the degree to which the state should be restricted. These critics argue that a more accurate term to describe libertarianism would be neo-classical liberalism.
In any case, whether one equates them or not, libertarianism closely models opinions, methods, and approaches of earlier classical liberalism and many libertarians see themselves as the inheritors of that tradition. Hayek and other libertarian Scholars state that libertarianism today has few commonalities with modern "new" or "welfare" liberalism or socialism. Many economically-oriented libertarians use the word "socialist" nigh-interchangeably with "statist" in critiquing their opponents, even rightist opponents, out of the argument that socialism is the only consistent (family of) statist ideologies. This may perhaps be compared with Marxist use of terms such as "capitalist" and "bourgeois" in critique of other (self-proclaimed) leftists (see state capitalism).
Libertarianism in the political spectrum
While the traditional political spectrum is a line, the Nolan Chart turns it to a plane to accommodate libertarians and others.In the US some libertarians feel conservative and some conservatives feel libertarian, because both groups claim as theirs the ideology of the founding fathers of the USA. Still, it is possible to distinguish quite neatly two different and often opposite traditions, and it is only a matter of terminology when confusion occurs. This opposition is clearly explained in Friedrich Hayek's article "Why I Am Not a Conservative" [2] (http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/cons.htm). In fact, there have been times when those with libertarian views were considered left-wing on the political spectrum (for instance, in the seventeenth century, the Whigs were revolutionaries, and in 1848, Frederic Bastiat was seating rather on the left side of the Assembly). It can be argued that while the balance of political opinions has shifted a lot, the anti-statist tradition of libertarianism has not moved, only evolved and grown.
Libertarians do not identify themselves as either "right-wing" or "left-wing". Indeed, many reject the one-dimensional left/right political spectrum and instead propose a two-dimensional space with "personal freedom" on one Cartesian axis and "economic freedom" on the other. This space is shown by the Nolan Chart, proposed by David Nolan, the founder of the United States Libertarian Party.[3] (http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html) Though many libertarians may believe the separation of personal and economic freedom is actually a false dichotomy, the Nolan Chart is frequently utilized in order to differentiate their ideology from others (e.g., conservativism and modern liberalism) which generally advocate greater limitations on different modes of freedom according to their respective conceptions of rights. The libertarian conception of rights maximizes individual liberty and autonomy, which leads libertarians to advocate the fewest possible limitations on either mode of freedom.
The validity of the Nolan Chart is disputed by many non-libertarians. Socialists, modern liberals and conservatives often argue that the libertarian definition of "freedom" is flawed or incorrect. In addition, the placement of Communism and Fascism so close together is controversial, and some critics may see this as evidence for their view that the Nolan Chart is overly simplistic.
For more information, see main article: Nolan chart
Individualism, liberty, responsibility and property
The fundamental values that libertarians claim to fight for are individual liberty, individual responsibility and individual property. Libertarians have an elaborate theory of these values that they defend, that does not always match prevailing views regarding liberty, and that strictly opposes collectivist views in this regard. As an example, many libertarians hold that personal liberties (such as privacy and freedom of speech) are inseparable from economic liberties (such as the freedom to trade, labor, or invest). They make this point to contrast themselves with socialists who believe that economic regulation is necessary for personal freedom and personal well-being, and with conservatives who tie free trade with a restrictive regulation of personal issues such as sexuality, drug use and speech.
Many criticisms of libertarianism revolve around the notion of "freedom" itself. For example, socialists would argue that the economic freedoms defended by libertarians result in privileges for the wealthy elite and violations of workers' rights.
Other criticisms revolve around the desirability and practical usefulness of certain freedoms. Conservatives, in particular, would argue that excessive personal freedoms encourage dangerous and irresponsible behaviour, or that they are too permissive on crime.
It is a chief point for many libertarians that rights vest originally in individuals and never in groups such as nations, races, religions, classes, or cultures. This conception holds it as nonsensical to say (for instance) that a wrong can be done to a class or a race in the absence of specific wrongs done to individual members of that group. It also undercuts rhetorical expressions such as, "The government has the right to ...", since under this formulation "the government" has no original rights but only those duties with which it has been lawfully entrusted under the citizens' rights. Libertarianism frequently dovetails neatly therefore with strict constructionism in the constitutional sense.
The classic problem in political philosophy of the legitimacy of property is essential to libertarians. Libertarians often justify individual property on the basis of self-ownership: one's right to own one's body; the results of one's own work; what one obtains from the voluntary concession of a former legitimate owner through trade, gift or inheritance, and so forth. Ownership of disputed natural resources is more problematic and solutions such as homesteading have been studied from John Locke to Murray Rothbard. This is particularly important since most criticisms of private property rest on the notion that no person can claim rightful ownership over natural resources, and that since the making of any object requires some amount of raw materials and natural resources, no person can claim rightful ownership over man-made objects either.
Anti-statist doctrine
Libertarians consider that there is an extended domain of individual freedom defined by every individual's person and private property, and that no one, whether private citizen or government, may under any circumstances violate this boundary. Indeed, libertarians consider that no organization, including government, can have any right except those that are voluntarily delegated to it by its members -- which implies that these members must have had these rights to delegate them to begin with.
Thus, according to libertarians, taxation and regulation are at best necessary evils, and where unnecessary are simply evil. Government spending and regulations should be reduced insofar as they replace voluntary private spending with involuntary public spending, and replace private morality with public coercion. To many libertarians, governments should not establish schools, run hospitals, regulate industry, commerce or agriculture, or run social welfare programs. Nor should government restrict sexual practices, gambling, drug usage, or any other 'victimless' crimes. Libertarians also believe in an extremely broad (and in some cases all-inclusive) interpretation of free speech which should not be restricted by government. For libertarians, government's main imperative should be Laissez-faire -- "Hands off!" -- except to protect the individual rights recognized by libertarianism.
Libertarians believe in minimizing the responsibilities of citizens towards the government, which directly results in minimizing the responsibilities of the government towards its citizens.
See Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy the State for early modern anti-state thought and Lysander Spooner's The Constitution of No Authority for a critique of social contract theory.
Anarchists and minarchists
All libertarians agree that government should be limited to what is strictly necessary, no more, no less. But there is no consensus among them about how much government is necessary. Hence, libertarians are further divided between the minarchists and the anarcho-capitalists, which are discussed at length in specific articles. Both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists differ in their beliefs from the anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-socialists and libertarian socialists, who are usually considered not to be libertarians at all (the feeling is mutual; anarcho-socialists and libertarian socialists claim that capitalism is incompatible with freedom, and thus libertarian/anarcho-capitalists cannot be considered libertarians at all).
The minarchists believe that a "minimal" or a "night-watchman" state is necessary to guarantee property rights and civil liberties, and is to be used for that purpose only. For them, the proper functions of government might include the maintenance of the courts, the police, the military, and perhaps a few other vital functions (e.g., roads). While they are technically statists since they support the existence of a government, they would resent the connotations usually attached to this term.
The anarcho-capitalists, believe that even in matters of justice and protection and particularly in such matters, action by competing private responsible individuals (freely organized in businesses, cooperatives, or organizations of their choice) is much better than action by governments. While they consider themselves to be anarchists, they insist in rejecting the connotations often attached to this term regarding support of a socialist ideal.
Minarchists consider that they are realists, while anarcho-capitalists are utopian to believe that governments can be wholly done without. Anarcho-capitalists consider that they are realists, and that minarchists are utopian to believe that a state monopoly of violence can be contained within any reasonable limits. Critics of both these positions generally point to the historical record of democratic governments as evidence that democracy and popular rule have succeeded not only in containing government abuse of freedom, but have in fact transformed the state from a violent master of the people into their loyal and peaceful servant.
The minarchist/anarcho-capitalist division is very friendly, and not the source of any deep enmity, despite the sometimes involved theoretic arguments. Libertarians feel much more strongly about their common defense of individual liberty, responsibility and property, than about their possible minarchist vs. anarchist differences. Since both minarchists and anarchists believe that existing governments are far, far too intrusive, the two factions seek change in almost exactly the same directions.
Many libertarians don't take a position with regard to this division, and don't care about it. Indeed, many libertarians consider that governments exist and will exist in the foreseeable future, up to the end of their lives, so that their efforts are better spent fighting, containing and avoiding the action of governments than trying to figure out what life could or couldn't be like without them. In recent years libertarianism has attracted many "fellow-travelers" (to borrow a phrase from the Communists) who care little about such theoretical issues and merely wish to reduce the size, corruption, and intrusiveness of government.
Some libertarian philosophers argue that, properly understood, minarchism and anarcho-capitalism are not in contradiction. See Revisiting Anarchism and Government (http://www.liberalia.com/htm/tm_minarchists_anarchists.htm) by Tibor R. Machan.
Utilitarianism, natural law, and reason
Libertarians tend to take either one of an axiomatic natural law point of view, or a utilitarian point of view, in justifying their beliefs. Some of them (like Frederic Bastiat), claim a natural harmony between these two points of view (that would indeed be but different points of view on a same truth), and consider it irrelevant to try to establish one as truer.
An exposition of utilitarian libertarianism appears in David Friedman's book The Machinery of Freedom, which includes a chapter describing an allegedly highly libertarian culture that existed in Iceland around 800 AD.
For natural rights libertarianism, see for instance Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
See also relevant paragraphs about this difference in points of view in the article about Anarcho-capitalism.
An alternate justification for libertarian ideas (broadly speaking), predicated on the use of reason and the observance of a certain code of ethics (rather than pursuit of social ends) is contained within the philosophy of Objectivism established by Ayn Rand. It should be noted that although Objectivism and libertarianism overlap, Rand did not consider herself a libertarian.
Some libertarians do not attempt to justify their beliefs in any external sense; they support libertarianism because they desire the maximum degree of liberty possible within their own lives, and see libertarianism as the most effective political philosophy towards this end.
Controversies among libertarians
Libertarians do not agree on every topic. Although they share a common tradition of thinkers from centuries past to contemporary times, no thinker is considered a common authority whose opinions are to be blindly accepted. Rather, they are generally considered a reference to compare one's opinions and arguments with.
These controversies are addressed in separate articles:
- Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property
- Libertarian perspectives on immigration
- Libertarian perspectives on abortion
- Libertarian perspectives on the death penalty
- Libertarian perspectives on natural resources
- Libertarian perspectives on interventionism
A typographical convention
Note that some writers follow the convention of using libertarian (spelled in lowercase) to mean a general advocate of libertarianism, while Libertarian (capitalized) refers specifically to a member of a libertarian political party.
Quotations
"Libertarianism is a philosophy. The basic premise of libertarianism is that each individual should be free to do as he or she pleases so long as he or she does not harm others. In the libertarian view, societies and governments infringe on individual liberties whenever they tax wealth, create penalties for victimless crimes, or otherwise attempt to control or regulate individual conduct which harms or benefits no one except the individual who engages in it."
-- Definition written by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, during the process of granting the Advocates for Self-Government status as a non-profit educational organization.
Modern libertarians
Notable theorists and authors
- Randy Barnett
- Clint Bolick
- James Bovard
- Nathaniel Branden
- Gene Callahan
- David Friedman
- Milton Friedman
- Friedrich Hayek
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe
- Rose Wilder Lane
- Ludwig von Mises
- Robert Nozick
- Ayn Rand
- George Reisman
- Lew Rockwell
- Murray Rothbard
- Thomas Sowell
Politicians and media personalities
- Michael Badnarik
- Neal Boortz
- Harry Browne
- Larry Elder
- John Hospers
- Russell Means
- Theodora B. Nathan
- David Nolan
- Gary Nolan
- P.J. O'Rourke
- Ron Paul
- Justin Raimondo
- John Stossel
- Jesse Ventura
- Walter Williams
Celebrities
- Dave Barry
- Richard Branson
- Drew Carey
- Clint Eastwood
- Bernhard Goetz
- Penn Jillette
- Denis Leary
- Melanie
- Trey Parker
- Eric S. Raymond
- Kurt Russell
- Tom Selleck
- Wil Wheaton
Libertarian magazines
See also
- See also: liberalism; minarchism; anarcho-capitalism; capitalism; Objectivism; individualist anarchism; libertarian communism; small-l libertarianism; The Free State Project; seasteading; Libertarian theories of law; deregulation; Republican Liberty Caucus, Mass surveillance
- Opposes: mercantilism;statism; conservatism; collectivism; socialism; fabianism; communism; nazism; fascism; Welfare state; planned economy; state interventionism; regulation.
- Related topics: Civil Society; Open Society; political models; ideology; Liberator Online
External links
Libertarian links
- Ideas For Liberty Wiki (http://www.ideasforliberty.com)
- The Libertarian Learning Centre (http://www.mondopolitico.com/ideologies/libertarianism/whatislibertarianism.htm)
- Australian Libertarian Party (The LDP) (http://www.ldp.org.au/)
- Australian Libertarian Web Site (http://www.llibertarian.org.au/)
- USA Libertarian Party (http://www.lp.org/)
- Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/)
- Libertarian.org (http://www.libertarian.org/)
- Free-Market.Net (http://www.free-market.net)
- Reason Foundation (http://www.reason.org/) publishers of Reason Magazine
- Advocates for Self-Government (http://www.self-gov.org/)
- the International Society for Individual Liberty (http://www.isil.org/) - see their Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty (http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf)
- American Liberty Foundation (http://www.americanlibertyfoundation.org/)
- Foundation for Economic Education (http://www.fee.org/)
- Institute for Humane Studies (http://www.theihs.org/)
- Libertarian International (http://www.libertarian.to/)
- Libertarian Alliance (http://www.libertarian.co.uk/) (UK)
- Laissez Faire Books (http://laissezfairebooks.com/)
- Bureaucrash Activist Network (http://www.bureaucrash.com/)
- Libertarianpunk.com (http://www.libertarianpunk.com/)
- Future of Freedom Foundation (http://www.fff.org/)
- Mises Institute (http://www.mises.org/)
- LewRockwell.com (http://www.lewrockwell.com/)
- LibertyForums (http://www.libertyforums.com/)
- Open Directory links (http://dmoz.org/Society/Politics/Liberalism/Libertarianism/)
- Liberté, j’écris ton nom (http://www.liberte-cherie.com/)
- Beloved Freedom (http://www.beloved-freedom.com/)
- Understanding The Libertarian Philosophy (http://members.aol.com/MrSage365/Liberty.html)
- The Libertarian Society of Iceland (http://www.frjalshyggja.is)
Non-libertarian links
- Critiques Of Libertarianism (http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html)
- Opposition and discussion of Huben's text (http://www.helsinki.fi/~ssyreeni/l-diaries/l-diaries-c-09-01)
- Another opposition (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/response_to_huben.html) by David D. Friedman, with a rebuttal (http://world.std.com/~mhuben/andreas.html) and a reply (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/rerebutal_re_huben.htm)
Articles in category "Modern Library 100 best novels"
There are 101 articles in this category.
William Gibson (novelist)
.
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American author, mostly of science fiction novels, who lives in Canada. He is one of the leading members of the cyberpunk movement.
Gibson was born in Conway, South Carolina, USA. In 1968, he moved to Canada, and in 1972, he settled in Vancouver, B.C., where he began to write science fiction and has spent his adult life. His early works are generally futuristic stories about the influences of cybernetic and cyberspace (computer simulated reality) technology on the human race living in the imminent future. His '80s fiction, especially, has a noir, bleak feel. His first novel, Neuromancer, won three major science-fiction awards (Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Memorial Award).
More recently, Gibson has begun to move away from the fictional dystopias that made him famous, toward a more realist style of writing, eschewing his trademark jump-cuts in favour of continuity and narrative flow. The novel Pattern Recognition even saw him enter the mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. There is, however, still the focus on technological change, and in particular on its darker, less predictable social consequences.
In addition to his paper works, he also wrote an electronic poem called "Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)" in 1992, and flirted with writing a weblog from January to September 2003. Gibson had also written a highly anticipated treatment of Alien 3, few elements of which ever found their way into the ultimate film.
Two of his short stories have been turned into movies: 1995's "Johnny Mnemonic", starring Keanu Reeves, and 1998's "New Rose Hotel", starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. Gibson, together with his friend Tom Maddox, wrote the X-Files episodes "Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter" and made a cameo appearance in the latter. Gibson also made a cameo appearance in the miniseries Wild Palms, which was heavily influenced by the work of Gibson and other cyberpunk writers.
Despite all these, Gibson never had a special relationship with computers. In fact, he only recently started using e-mail.
Table of contents [hide] Bibliography
Novels
- Neuromancer (1984) (part 1 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
- Count Zero (1986) (part 2 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
- Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) (part 3 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
- The Difference Engine (1990) (with Bruce Sterling)
- Virtual Light (1993) (part 1 of the Bridge Trilogy)
- Idoru (1996) (part 2 of the Bridge Trilogy)
- All Tomorrow's Parties (1999) (part 3 of the Bridge Trilogy)
- Pattern Recognition (2003)
Collections
- Burning Chrome (1986)
- Which includes:
- Johnny Mnemonic (1981)
- The Gernsback Continuum (1981)
- Fragments of a Hologram Rose
- The Belonging Kind, with John Shirley (1981)
- Hinterlands (1981)
- Red Star, Winter Orbit, with Bruce Sterling
- New Rose Hotel (1981)
- The Winter Market (1985)
- Dogfight, with Michael Swanwick (1985)
- Burning Chrome (1982)
Uncollected short fiction
- Doing Television (1990)
- Skinner's Room (1990)
- Cyber-Claus (1991)
- Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City (1997)
Miscellaneous other work
- The Art of the X-Files, Introduction (1998)
External Links
- William Gibson's website (http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/)
- Archive of William Gibson's weblog (http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/archive.asp)
- Wikiquote - Quotes by William Gibson (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson)
- An extensive fan site (http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/)
- William Gibson on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?William_Gibson)
- William Gibson on the Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com/Name?Gibson,%20William%20(II)
Fahrenheit 451
.
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury. It is set in a world where books are banned and critical thought is discouraged; the central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this case, means "book burner"). 451 degrees Fahrenheit is stated as the temperature at which paper ignites and begins to burn. See fire point.
Contents [hide] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
After meeting a girl named Clarisse McClellan, Montag, a fireman who sets fire to houses possessing contraband books, starts questioning the world he lives in. The plot is driven by Montag's rejection of the mindless world which he inhabits. He begins to collect books, to the horror of his wife, Mildred, whose only interest in life is the viewing of vacuous television shows (a parody of 1950's programming). When ordered to put fire to his house, he does so before turning his flamethrower on Beatty, his fire chief. With the aid of Faber, a well-educated but timid old man, he eludes a police search and escapes the Mechanical Hound, a robotic tracking device. Montag flees into the forest, where he joins a wandering band of intellectual rebels, who have committed books to memory. The book ends as he watches "the city" destroyed by an atomic bomb.
Analysis
Although given the time of the book's publication, its theme brings to mind the repression of intellectual freedom that characterised the McCarthy Era, Bradbury's critique of the censorial tendency also encompasses acts motivated by radical egalitarianism and what would today be called political correctness.
The book also deals with apathy toward and ignorance regarding one's surroundings and a devotion to the law of the sort characterized for many by Nazi Germany. Montag lived his life as a fireman without thinking about his actions: to him, books were banned and he was only enforcing the law. Montag is awoken initially to the possibility that the law might be wrong through encounters with the eccentric girl named Clarisse, and by watching a woman burn with her books. Montag then began to wonder what the books could contain that would make some give their lives for them and others want to destroy them. This drives him to an eventual meeting with the Fahrenheit 451's wise man Faber. Montag then realizes that all this time he had sought to destroy that which he didn't understand.
Film and radio versions
The book, with some plot changes, was made into a film in 1966 by François Truffaut, with Oskar Werner as Montag. There are plans for a remake in 2005, directed by Frank Darabont.
In addition to the movie, there have been at least two BBC Radio 4 dramatisations, both of which follow the book very closely.
Influence on popular culture
The title of Bradbury's book has become a well-known byword amongst those who oppose censorship, in much the way George Orwell's 1984 has (although not to the same extent). As such, it has been alluded to in dozens of later contexts, amongst them the ACLU's 1997 whitepaper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning? and Michael Moore's 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11.
See also: Cinema of France, List of French language films
