God Without The Sacred
Power is Knowledge – Focault
“We say in this nation that we are looking for people with honesty, integrity, drive and dedication, and then when we find such people, we take them out and whip them.” Anonymous Whistleblower
“Fear is the foundation of most governments.” -John Adams
Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. The papers themselves exposed the Johnson administration to be hiding lies from the general public about the nature of US involvement in the Vietnam War (from 1945-1967). One example being the geographical expansion of the war to Cambodia and Laos. Mordechai Vanunu leaked the clandestine ‘weapons of mass destruction’ program to the British Press. He spent 17 1/2 years in prison, 11 of which were in solitary confinement. Julian Assange is one of the more prominent whistle-blowers of our time today. To date, he has somewhere in the vicinity of 1.2 million individual leaks.
Think back to when you were a child and someone did something that they weren’t supposed to do and you were the ‘brave’ student who went and told the teacher. In that moment, your social value and street cred radically dropped. You would be forever known as the tattle-tale. The one who would ‘rat’ his friends out for more of a social standing with the adults. You chose them over your own kind. You chose the state over the people. You were now the outsider, socially castigated. Sometimes, even bullied. The guilt and shame would follow you.
Okay, so this scene is a bit over-exaggerated, but is not this similar to the reflexive consequential behavior of what is now entitled: Whistle-blowing. Meaning, that today, more than ever, Whistle-blowing has become an ethical act. A moral revolution against the esotericism of the State. But, for the most part, if you Whistle-blow, you become an enemy of the State and an inspiration for the people. The whole act of whistle-blowing materializes the cracks in reality. It awakes us to thing we think we know, but don’t really want to know. That the government is corrupt. That wars are really about oil and nationalism. That immigration is really about geographical racism. That pop-culture is simply a pawn with which to blind us from the consumption of reality by mass-media.
There is something peculiar here that we must investigate. The nature of knowledge and how it is used to create factions. How on one hand, when knowledge is kept secret, we desire for it to be known. Knowledge then is power. Knowledge hides this power by being, well: knowledge. By knowing we know that know, we feel more empowered. If we don’t know that we don’t know, then we don’t feel dis-empowered, because we don’t know. But we don’t like the possibility that we might not know something we think we should know. On one hand, we are okay with our social groupings. The Lions Club. The Boy Scouts. The Girls and Boys Club. Churches. Alcoholics Anonymous. In these settings we are okay ‘not knowing’ everything.
However, on a corporate-level, we prefer to know as much as possible; as if to imply: that the truth will set you free. That knowledge is liberation. But only corporate epistemology. In this sense, people like Julian Assange take on a sort of messianic role freeing us from the veiled epistemics of the Big Bad State. My argument here is not against Whistle-blowing, it is in actuality, for it – a defense of it. More specifically, my claim is that it is a moral act. We have a responsibility to use our knowledge to heal and repair the world. To use knowledge in such a way that it disturbs the social fabric from ever becoming esoteric. But, the irony in doing so, as shared above is that we have to make choices on ‘what’ kind of knowledge appears in the public space. So, in one sense, we take over the role of the State and disseminate this new form of information to the masses. Again, ironically so.
Another irony is the presence of the Law itself. For it stands to protect people from forms of defamation, and if certain types of information are leaked, the accused could in actuality be protected from the damage of the leaks itself. I honestly believe, if there is a revolutionary space for Whistle-blowing [which I think there should be] then the changes must begin in legislation. Because, as we know, even saviors end up crucified. Actor John Cusack has had a hand in co-creating a free press initiative that challenges the place of State knowledge and attempting to put that knowledge back into the hands of the people. This initiative stands to redress the apparently hidden inequalities within the political arena. That we, as the people, need not beg for knowledge, but that it should be seen as a human element, not a group element.
Knowledge has the power to disrupt economics, social codes, identity, ethics, ecology and the whole of the social order. Without going too deeply into philosophy, here we encounter the notion of Virtue Ethics and Eudaimonia [(εὐδαιμονία) is a state variously translated from Greek as ‘well-being’, ‘happiness’, ‘blessedness’, and in the context of virtue ethics, ‘human flourishing‘] – in this state, the State stands in the place of deontological ethics (i.e., lying is always wrong – in this case: telling all truth could be considered wrong) – in this example, then the State is essentially against human flourishing because it demands that knowledge remain behind the veil. The state apparatus demand that no one know that only a man is behind the machinery in the Emerald City. But, Dorothy and her friends make it their ethical duty to keep searching. To keep probing. For the sake of those in less fortunate positions, where knowledge might liberate people from such a plight.
There is a parable in the Bible that highlights the necessity of Whistle-blowing, but also the possible sociological liberation’s that can occur when we take our role as Whistle-blowers seriously. It is typically titled: The Parable of The Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), I prefer the title: The Parable of the Whistleblower. The heroes in the story tend to be the one’s who use their talents, gain income for the ‘absentee’ landlord (aka, the Big Other) – however, I want to offer via Robert Funk a much different interpretation, that the true liberator is the one who denies the capitalistic allure of excess increase – the one who still uses the system, but then turns it on its head.
(This is true revolution, not one who works outside the system, but rather someone who uses the very tools of oppression to highlight the oppression no one else – can see; think mockery). In making the decision not to ‘play’ by the social rules – this third servant demonstrates to us the importance (and social after-effects) of Whistle-blowing. Listen in…
The third servant/slave is the real hero, because he challenges the system rather than accepting the system. He does not go along with the money-raising, greed, and exploitation of both the owner and the other two servants.
Now part of our problem is, when we hear this parable, we tend hear it through ‘capitalist’ ears, which views wealth as something that can be increased by hard work or investment. But in the social world of the parable, both in its original oral telling and in its later written form by storyteller Matthew, it is thought there is only so much wealth. And an increase to one person takes away from another.
The third servant/slave is the real hero, because he challenges the system rather than accepting the system. He does not go along with the money-raising, greed, and exploitation of both the owner and the other two servants.
Now part of our problem is, when we hear this parable, we tend hear it through ‘capitalist’ ears, which views wealth as something that can be increased by hard work or investment. But in the social world of the parable, both in its original oral telling and in its later written form by storyteller Matthew, it is thought there is only so much wealth. And an increase to one person takes away from another.
Let me share some of what author Barbara Reid says on this:
“From this perspective, the man who expects his money to be increased is the wicked one, who is unfettered in his greed…
“The third servant, then, is not wicked (or incompetent), except in the eyes of those who are greedy acquisitors or those who are co-opted by them, as are the first two servants. The third [servant] is the one who acted honorably by blowing the whistle on the wickedness of the (owner)…“The parable is a warning to the rich to stop exploiting the poor and is one that encourages poor people to take measures that expose such greed for the sin that it is”
Whistle-blowing is an ethical act. Little do we know, that some have died for trying to universalize knowledge. By taking knowledge and assuming that it belongs to all. Some would rather choose not to know, claiming that not knowing does not implicate a responsibility – but how does this attitude actually help society as a whole? If there is pertinent information that could save lives, or change policies that would allow more equality, or would eradicate pockets of injustice – is this not a moral act then? It’s funny that when Jesus died, that a veil was torn in two – as if to imply that now everyone could know what was behind the curtain. That whatever was hiding behind it, was now accessible to all. That knowledge for all has spiritual implications as well as social ones. We need more Whistle-blowers, who is with me?!
Resources:
John Cusack Article on Free Press
The Gospel According Matthew by Barbara Reid
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