An Introduction
In 1978 (coincidentally - the year of my birth) a man in Eastern Europe named Vaclav Havel wrote, “The Power of the Powerless”. While I was happily nursing in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada - Havel was participating in one of the most significant freedom movements of our time. The struggles which brought many Czech families to Canada before and during my youth never encroached upon my young mind, and it was only recently that I began to become curious about the ideologies responsible for much of humanities suffering over the extent of our collective development.
An Explanation
“The Power of the Powerless” was written originally for a discussion piece on freedom and power. In it Havel espoused the concept of “Living within the Truth”, which was at the time a mechanism to oppose the ideological tyranny and lies of what he described as the “post-totalitarian” state of control in his home country of Czechoslovakia. It was a, “dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social levelling” driven by, “an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion.”
In a couple of excellent essays, writer Matthew Herbert lays out some of the key elements of Havel’s thinking on the subject, and I won’t dive too deep into what has already been said - I will, however, take it a few steps further and explore where I feel today’s world mirrors that of one many decades past.
Some Exploration
We live in troubled times.
It is hard not to see parallels between today’s ideological trajectories and those of years past - while the stage has changed, the actors are still the same, and the playwrights of misery still have plenty of ink in their quills.
In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind, it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.
While the source of the historical wandering may have been scarcity, we now see a bloated and apathetic populous lining up for safety instead of bread.
It matters not where you start when tyranny is concerned, the only markers on the road are images from the rear-view mirror - I believe we ignore them at our peril.
Join me next time as I look further into ideology and how “Living Within the Truth” may yet still be the best path toward a free and prosperous future.