Siegeressay der IPO 2008 in Iasi (Rumänien) von Jan Seidel (Landfermann-Gymnasium Duisburg)

(sprachlich durchgesehene Version)

Thema:

Ein freier Mensch muss es ertragen können, dass seine Mitmenschen anders handeln und anders leben, als er es für richtig hält, und muss sich abgewöhnen, sobald ihm etwas nicht gefällt, nach der Polizei zu rufen.
(Ludwig von Mises: Liberalismus, Teil I, Kapitel 11. Online: http://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises - Zugriff am 25.5.08)

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act und live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Freedom as defined in the quotation demands a lot from the individual. Unlimited tolerance to everyone who contradicts one's own principles presupposes great effort of the human being, especially in a free society where nevertheless common values and norms are the foundation of the individual's law. These common principles regulate society and are internalised by the individual himself. Police as the executive part of society guarantee the individual's rights by supervising a society based on common principles and values. Thus the author wants the individual to tolerate differences and assure the freedom of choosing one's own lifestyle. But what does freedom of the individual mean today? Are not there a lot of liberal democratic societies which guarantee exactly that right to choose one's own lifestyle and moral principles? And does not society as a whole with its codex of values and norms contradict the freedom of the individual to act and live as someone else (other individuals, society) considers properly? The questions can be summed up with a somewhat provocative consequence: today, in postmodern liberal societies, everyone must have the freedom to create their own moral standards, even if they are completely wrong. The moral codex of a nation becomes indifferent and virtualised in a simple offer to the individual to accept them or not to accept them.

What can the ideal of freedom and morality then mean today in postmodern societies in our technological age? We will accompany our "free man" in his little journey through a postmodern, "free" world.

I ACCELERATION

Faster, faster, faster! We have to find a decision now! There is no time to reflect, to think about moral decisions. We just have to act! No compromises!

Decisions today, as for example critically examined by Paul Virilio in his essays and books about speed and acceleration, are not any longer reflected deeply in complex moral discourses and conversations. Since there is no time to talk, decisions are rather based on their realization in, and their integration into, the economic and social system than on rationality or reason. The growing technological improvements and conditions, which seem to change throughout the whole world nearly every day, demand a vast acceleration of the thinking and reasoning process ("The machine demands a sacrifice"). Within this process of making faster and faster decisions that are based on the fact that everything is changing and fluctuating nearly uncontrolled every day, the "free man" is often left alone with his decisions. His moral considerations and reflections are dependent on the free society in the process of changing and he is in a continuing struggle to adapt his moral consideration and identity to it. More and more he gets used to the fact that he is living in a pluralistic society and begins to see other points of view and lifestyles as equal to his, because a common ground is missing. At the same time people strive to find identity, common values and a common ground so that it is this dialectical process between getting lost in relativism and requiring a common morality, which makes completely liberal, postmodern accelerated societies so complicated. Consequently, tolerance is not an active effort, but passive acceptance because the individual’s moral argumentation is not universal either.

In an ideal moral discourse, language as the original medium of communication regulates dialogues and discussions and thus aims at a general consensus between the different participants as the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas pointed out in several books about the philosophy and sociology of discourses. In an accelerated world or society, language is no longer the perfect means to find a consensus. It simply takes too long, is too strenuous and seems today utopian rather than realistic (as it used to be in the Greek polis e.g.) because the more participants with different moral opinions and points of view you have, the more time it will take to find a consensus. (Even if you want to achieve a consensus, it then may be only a compromise between different parties, but not a solution.) Other forms of media take over the place for fast communication, such as power or money, which shorten the discourse and make the struggle easier to find a fast realization.
The former power of theory including reason, ideas, criticism and judgment fade in importance and are replaced by status, reputation or income. This lack of theoretical discourse leads to the situation in which morality plays no big role in discussions any more, because it just involves too much effort to talk about. The "free man" in our liberal definition thus will not be very interested in calling the police because
a) he has become indifferent about right or wrong,
b) moral decisions are less important whereas the main point is that the individual’s reputation will not suffer because of his actions (so he truly might consider to be tolerant and moral if it is really necessary) and
c) tolerance means accepting every kind of behaviour although it could also be wrong. Also: I do not care (see a).

II VIRTUALITY

What if everything I communicate has no reference any more to what I have considered as real? What if the Internet is "more real" than reality itself? What if words like "tolerance", "freedom" or "morality" have lost their meaning?

For the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard reality has developed into a state of fading more and more after the period of the Renaissance. At first symbols and signs meant to represent reality, then they imitated reality and finally they created and replaced reality once and for all.
This shocking and provocative antithesis to the natural human obviousness that everything we talk about reflects and refers to something real may only be the topic in discussions if we talk about virtual reality itself, referring mostly to the Internet. However, the very presupposition of the phenomenon of the Internet itself is the lack of references of words in a postmodern, globalized world. What does "freedom" still mean? "Be free...", "taste the freedom...", "you are free to go wherever you want", "I am free to buy whatever I like" could both be political propaganda, individual attitude, graffiti on the wall of a railroad station or simply the wording of a commercial for Pepsi. We do not know because the word freedom itself has unlimited references so that Baudrillard ascertains a universal lack of references for words.

The "free man" of our example then does not know how to deal with terms like "tolerance" or “morality". Surely, they may be culturally fixed and learned during the socialization of the individual, but are they not all in all arbitrary, dependent on the context? Should not each individual decide for himself or herself what the term means to him/her? Whether it means to him to accept his Muslim neighbours or if it means to buy both Pepsi and Coke?
But if there are so many ways of using a term, the term becomes virtual, it does not represent anything any more, it becomes a simulated term without either comprehensible or relevant origins. The indifference of terms then meets with a simulated world of Websites, Disneyland and television, leading to a hyper-reality (Baudrillard), a reality so "real" that it has no need for an actual reality any longer. The main importance for my actions lies thus (as already indicated in I) in the fact that they have to seem moral and tolerant (the first one who mentioned that point was possibly Machiavelli in "II Principe") so that they fit in perfectly with a hyper-realistic world. It then will make no relevant difference for the world if my intentions for my actions are true and sincere or if they are only hypothetical imperatives (Kant) based on egoistic thoughts.

III OUR REALIZED UTOPI@

The equality of the Internet and its support of free participation of every one who is "connected" may be a perfect utopian scenario for a liberal, free society. As long as you are connected to a machine, as long as you participate in forums and boards, you are someone only by the power of your words which appear nearly magically on the screen. When it is so difficult to find and actively create identity in an accelerated, hyper-realistic world, the Internet gives me the possibility of finding myself by the creation of virtual profiles, of avatars and of meeting with other people from the whole world who are connected, too, and thus have a common ground with me. The Internet is eternal, because everything I write will be saved for ever, it creates both virtual room and virtual time and it demands nothing else from me but connecting myself with it. The idea of a Kantian Weltbürger [citizen of the world] is realized instantly after I have connected myself, because if there is no room (or only a virtual room, if you want to call it like this, consisting of nothing more than "links" and "URLs") there are no other countries, there is only one connected village communicating and losing oneself in a simulation which is able to simulate anything, be it identity, room, time, relationships, sex, politics, war or whatever.

Finally, we have arrived at our own little realized Utopia we have wished for such a long time: no intercultural differences, one common ground (connection), free communication, unlimited tolerance. Now we can finally give up living in our local environment: we just connect and everything will regulate itself.

Our "free man" has arrived at his goal: he has connected to the Internet and every difference between him and other people disappears in the vast equality and complexity of a globally connected village; he finds his identity profiling himself in contrast to, or in correspondence with, others (the human body of course becomes secondary: the final victory of the mind over the body!); morality in any case does not play any role any more (besides parts of it in an indifferent "Netiquette" maybe). Finally free!

IV THE PRINCIPLE "REALITY"

We obviously will not be able to keep the postmodern, virtual condition which I tried to briefly characterize with the terms "Acceleration", "Virtuality" and "Our realized Utopi@" and there are still a lot of individuals who do not want so either, who still feel connected to reality and real, rather than indifferent meanings of strong words like "tolerance", "freedom" or "morality".
The quotation, although it partly fits in with our interpretation of postmodern, progressive societies, then has to be read in a different way, in a philosophical way which contradicts the postmodern assertions that tolerance means indifference and morality is too complex a concept to talk about.

In global crises such as natural catastrophes, wars, terrorist attacks but also in personal tragedies, the confrontation with death, we realize that reality still exists and is able to destroy our personal and global Utopia. Our free man is reminded that he is mortal, that actions are not indifferent and that you need to have a real identity and a real moral attitude to cope with a mortal world and a mortal human being or else you will despair in it. He may then understand the significance of real relationships to other human beings, of "slowing down" or "de-accelerating" the process of thinking, because it needs time to understand reality and to act in and with it.

However, the most important task is a philosophical task. Morality must have the immediate presupposition that it is universal for every individual and that it is based on the Sollen [Should], not on the Sein [Be], a basic anthropological difference for ethics. So if someone "does not please" me, e.g. has looks which I dislike, I may not have the right to call the police, because my argumentation only refers to his Sein and represents a personal dislike, but if someone deeply contradicts my own moral convictions, which I am able to universalise, referring to the Sollen, then I have the right to call the police to defend my convictions. Sein and Sollen however have to be real conditions for my actions, if they were virtual, they would disappear in a fog of indifference, I have to presuppose them to act in a morally reasonable way.

Tolerance on the other hand, e.g. tolerance for other cultures, is not anything either that may be based on passive indifference. Tolerance has the significance of actively accepting different opinions, different points of view, different cultures which may differ completely from my own cultural background. Tolerance actually has a negative connotation rather than the term "respect" and is often translated with the verb "to endure" as in the quotation from Mises. Then it also means that I must have a real identity, really internalised values and that I endure other people's opinions although I may not correspond with them.

The presupposition that I am living in a real world, that I have the responsibility to defend that real world and its necessary principles of morality and tolerance for living in an interculturally diverse world (as mentioned in the quotation) has become a permanent struggle for every individual who is concerned about reality and living in that reality instead of creating a hyper-reality or a virtual reality. We may not prove that reality "exists" or if we all are just trapped in a hyper-reality we cannot get out any more (as Baudrillard would suppose) but we can still formulate the sentence: "I want to live in a real world with a real significance in which words like tolerance and morality still have a strong meaning for my existence with other human beings."