>No, what I'm saying is that human consciousness would mean nothing
>if it didn't contain a degree of freedom. That degree of freedom is
>the power of choice.
Freedom should not be equated with "the power of choice" of an individual The equation of freedom with "the power of choice" of an individual is an ideological trick used by those who want to keep health care privatized, to preserve right-to-work legislations, and to privatize utilities, Social Security, public schools, etc.
(A) Where the power of choice is a source of pleasure, choices in question are trivial and whimsical: which color shoes to wear, which book to read, which way to cook an egg.
(B) When choices in question are either/or and consequences of the choices are irreversible and morally difficult -- to live or not to live, to kill or not to kill, etc. -- the power of choice may be thought of as moral freedom, but the moments when we are confronted with such consequential either/or choices, we are less free than at the moments when we do not have to make such choices at all.
>At the practical level, the ability to choose between competing
>offerings of goods and services and institutions is the best way
>possible of discovering new and improved ways of living.
There are markets in goods and services, but are there markets in "institutions"? Can we sell and buy "institutions" in a way that we do goods and services?
As for "competing offerings," another paradox of choice is that "[c]ompetition begets monopoly and monopoly begets competition--but in an historically evolving pattern" (John Bellamy Foster, "Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millennium," _Monthly Review_ 51.11, April 2000, <http://www.monthlyreview.org/400jbf.htm>). More choices now may lead to fewer choices later.
>As to the idea, promoted by professional cranks like Miles, that
>this is all just ethnocentric prejudice -- well, I guess that's why
>Miles is living his alternative pre-modern lifestyle -- oops, he
>isn't, is he?
The transition from a wide variety of pre-capitalist modes of production to the hegemony of the single capitalist mode of production in an increasingly integrated world market was not a matter of "lifestyle choice." Nor will be the transition from the capitalist mode of production to a better future.
In any case, the word "lifestyle," an upstart in the English language (its first usage recorded by the OED to be 1929), is more offensive than the word "sublation" (whose first documented usage in the OED dates back to 1533: "1533 ELYOT Cast. Helth (1541) 88b, If lyke thynges be sene in the myddell of the urynall, they be called sublations," <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00240770>). :-) Students in freshman composition courses often love to use "lifestyle" or "lifestyles" where "life" or "lives" is appropriate. For conservatives, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, etc. are all "lifestyle choices."
>All those who don't think modernity has bestowed many genuine gifts
>upon the race should be completely free to go live in some other
>way, of course.
Are they?
Lilian Friedberg writes: "More recent and more honest studies estimate the precontact civilization to have been between nine and eighteen million. This standard of measure puts the rate of attrition of indigenous populations at between 98 and 99 percent -- that is, near total extermination. The rate of attrition of Jewish populations in Europe is commonly calculated at between 60 and 65 percent" ("Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust," _American Indian Quarterly_ 24.3, Summer 2000, pp. 367-8, <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_indian_quarterly/v024/24.3friedberg.html>).
The 98 and 99 percent of indigenous populations who were exterminated in the name of Progress were not allowed to "go live in some other way." Nor are we as individuals today. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>