Is Freedom an Anachronism?

Message Share Topic Printable Version Google Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Windows Live Yahoo Bookmarks reddit Facebook MySpace Newsvine Furl Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic

   Will freedom be seen as a weird dead ideology mostly linked to the 20th century? The way in which we associate Puritanism with the 17th and Feudalism with the Middle Ages.

In the 21st century freedom is no-longer possible. DNA Registers, Biometric Passports, Car Tracking, Shopping Tracking, Chipped ID Cards,  CCTV's, most nations new security acts over the last few years. 1984 isn't a prediction, it's a promotional video. 

In the past few people lived in small communities. Everyone's business was known to the majority. It was virtually impossible for an individual to act differently to the herd and not become known to all.

The later 19th and 20th centuries provided an explosion in population and growth of chatioc population centres, where neighbours and state alike were unable to keep track of all. 

So the 20th century may simply be an anomoly, where is was possible for an individual in a mass city to become anonymous.

So, is freedom merely anonymity from the state? A place with a malaise of people too numerous to quantify by other people and the technology not yet in existence to do it electronically?

Or to put it bluntly, merely an accidental consequence of shagging like rabbits in a low tech society.

Edited by Paul - 08-Apr-2007 at 10:15