Tuesday, November 30, 2010
APOLOGIES
My apologies to you and to police chief Bill Blair.Where the name Boyd came from I have no idea. I regret the mistake.
REVISITING DIALECTICAL MATERIALSM
“I have done nothing wrong so I have nothing to hide.” I shudder when I heard a man on TV say it. It was in response to the purchase of surveillance cameras in troublesome areas of the city to keep an eye on citizens’ behaviour and misbehaviour. My civil libertarian instincts outweigh my sense of pragmatism when I hear a citizen proclaim willingness to be watched. I am always prompted to ask: “Does that include tapping your phones? Opening your mail?” Nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Awful stuff.
Dialectical Materialism was at the heart of Marxist theory. Translated into action it would come to mean: “The end justifies the means,” or sometimes “The greatest good for the greatest number.” It was, in a way, the ultimate pragmatism. It was also an idea under which dictators could rule and people could be deprived of their rights. It was the essence of revolution. It still is.
Pardon me for my undergraduate zeal and pursuit of the reason why we will accept cameras on every street corner. That may not by what Police Chief Blair wants for Toronto, but he is trying to get the surveillance systems used for the G20 to use for police surveillance of many of our troubled streets.
It’s old news by now, replaced, as news always is, by the avalanche of events that we are deluged by on a daily basis. The furor seems to have died down, except perhaps in the two opposing camps: the civil libertarians who believed that our privacy is being violated, and the absolutists who believe that we should sacrifice ourselves in the interests of public safety. In other words: the end justifies the means. Or does it?
I happen to be enough of a pragmatist to believe that when the greater good is at stake, we willingly surrender our precious privacy. But the critics will say, and I don’t disagree, that it is a larger issue than the surrender of rights for the greater good: it is a question of the majority versus individual rights. John Stuart Mill was explicit in his work “The Tyranny of The Majority.” We must, at all costs, safeguard the rights of every citizen. The question has to be: at what point does the common good outweigh the rights of the individual? The debate has gone on for years. No one can be right. But it is not a case of ”right” or “wrong,” It is really case of what works in what we have learned to call a “civil society.” In Canada we recognize the group. We do not, like the Americans, enshrine the individual rights at the cost of social good. Working as a society, not a collection of individuals, there are principles of the group that often transcend the rights of the individual. In making a contract to live in a society, there are conditions.
I examine my defense of individual rights and I am prepared to take the step that seems to abrogate those r9ights. Because it is not again a question of right or wrong,. But one of whether a certain kind of behaviour or reaction is appropriate. Good and bad is a dualism. Life is not that simple. I regret that there are among us so many people who would deprive us of property or life and limb, that we must protect ourselves with those cameras. But take care. We must not open the door to a total loss of personal freedom.
The choice is tough.
Dialectical Materialism was at the heart of Marxist theory. Translated into action it would come to mean: “The end justifies the means,” or sometimes “The greatest good for the greatest number.” It was, in a way, the ultimate pragmatism. It was also an idea under which dictators could rule and people could be deprived of their rights. It was the essence of revolution. It still is.
Pardon me for my undergraduate zeal and pursuit of the reason why we will accept cameras on every street corner. That may not by what Police Chief Blair wants for Toronto, but he is trying to get the surveillance systems used for the G20 to use for police surveillance of many of our troubled streets.
It’s old news by now, replaced, as news always is, by the avalanche of events that we are deluged by on a daily basis. The furor seems to have died down, except perhaps in the two opposing camps: the civil libertarians who believed that our privacy is being violated, and the absolutists who believe that we should sacrifice ourselves in the interests of public safety. In other words: the end justifies the means. Or does it?
I happen to be enough of a pragmatist to believe that when the greater good is at stake, we willingly surrender our precious privacy. But the critics will say, and I don’t disagree, that it is a larger issue than the surrender of rights for the greater good: it is a question of the majority versus individual rights. John Stuart Mill was explicit in his work “The Tyranny of The Majority.” We must, at all costs, safeguard the rights of every citizen. The question has to be: at what point does the common good outweigh the rights of the individual? The debate has gone on for years. No one can be right. But it is not a case of ”right” or “wrong,” It is really case of what works in what we have learned to call a “civil society.” In Canada we recognize the group. We do not, like the Americans, enshrine the individual rights at the cost of social good. Working as a society, not a collection of individuals, there are principles of the group that often transcend the rights of the individual. In making a contract to live in a society, there are conditions.
I examine my defense of individual rights and I am prepared to take the step that seems to abrogate those r9ights. Because it is not again a question of right or wrong,. But one of whether a certain kind of behaviour or reaction is appropriate. Good and bad is a dualism. Life is not that simple. I regret that there are among us so many people who would deprive us of property or life and limb, that we must protect ourselves with those cameras. But take care. We must not open the door to a total loss of personal freedom.
The choice is tough.
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