Omniscience

Twice in the last 12 hours I've encountered the concept of "omniscience."

In the first case, I was watching the film "The Lives of Others," which is set in East Germany before the Wall fell. The "stasi" had as its stated goal "to know everything." This was not the main theme of the film, but it is one that was highlighted frequently. In one example, the stasi are noticed by a nosy neighbor as they set up surveillance on a citizen. Unflustered, the lead stasi agent knocked on her door, referred to her by name, and threatened her with personalized consequences should she reveal that they had been there.

In the second case, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounts in her book "Infidel," being criticized by one of her teachers:

We were not true Muslims, Sister Aziza sadly informed the abashed and suddenly silent classroom. Allah did not look on us with delight. He could see into our hearts, and He knew we were not dedicated to him. The goal of prayer was awareness--constant awareness of the presence of God and the angels--and an inward submission to God's will that permeated every thought and action every day.

Sister Aziza reminded us of the angels we had learned about in school in Saudi Arabia, who hovered above each of our shoulders.  On the left and the right they recorded our thoughts, intentions, and ideas--bad and good. Even if we did cover ourselves and pray, that was not sufficiently meaningful for God. What counted was the intention. If your mind strayed--if you were doing it for the wrong reasons--God and the angels would look into your heart and know. (pg 80, hardback, emphasis in original)

The idea that struck me upon reading this is that the goal behind the concept of omniscience is the same: the utter subjugation of the individual to the ruling authority.

In the case of religion, omniscience is used as a threat to inculcate guilt for thoughts and feelings, thereby turning the individual into an informant against himself. In a religious context, omniscience is a mystical concept where some outside judges our privy to one's inner thoughts and feelings. One lives one's live in paranoid fear that some unbidden thought will come to mind and that Allah will hear it, and damn you for eternity.

In the case of the Stasi, omniscience is given a kind of metaphysical reality: the State spends enormous sums of money to spy on its citizens, to learn as much as they can about them, so that it can threaten them accordingly. Once again, the citizenry live their lives in paranoid fear that their private conversations might be overheard by a stasi informant. They are not even safe in their own homes, with their own spouses and children. True trusted friendships are impossible in a state where 1/3 of the citizens are informants, and the rest can be threatened into becoming informants.

Coming across these two examples in such close proximity to one another highlighted the way that "omniscience" is used in practice. It's not just an irrational concept--it's an irrational concept with a purpose.

Thought and Action

I thought about asking which is worse, this article, or the comments beneath it. A buddy of mine that grew up in Iran sent me the link in an email entitled "what a night of drinking and partying will get you in Iran."
There are a few things that deserve mention:
1. The idea of separation of Church and State is absent in Iran.
2. People in Iran gather in great crowds to watch the punishment (I can barely stomach the pictures).
3. The few commenters seem to have no conception of justice beyond simple obedience to authority; and this from people in Western countries.

Then there's this tidbit:

Amnesty International, which said it is "greatly concerned by continuing
human rights abuses in Iran", has highlighted figures revealing 117 people
were executed in 2006 with thousands facing floggings.
They included a woman, who had been forced into prostitution as an eight-year-old, receiving 99 lashes because of "acts contrary to chasity."

Disgusting.

Ayn Rand on The Iraq War

I was flipping through "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" today looking for some quote. The first thing I read was this:

Observe the terms in which the war in Vietnam is discussed. There are no
stated goals, no intellectual issues. But there are, apparently, two opposing
sides which are designate, not by any specific ideological concepts, but by images, which is appropriate to the primitive epistemology of savages:
the "hawks" and the "doves." But the "hawks" are cooing apologetically, and the
"doves" are snarling heir heads off.

The same groups that coined the term "isolationist" in World War II--to
designate anyone who held that the internal affairs of other countries are not
the responsibility of the United States--these same groups are screaming that
the United States has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of
Vietnam.

Nobody has proposed a goal which, if achieved, would terminate that
war--except President Johnson, who has offered a billion dollars as the price of
piece; not a billion dollars paid to us, but a billion dollars
paid by us for the economic development of Vietname; which means that
we are fighting for the privelage of turning every American taxpayer into a serf
laboring part of his time for the benefit of his Vietnamese masters. But,
demonstrating that irrationality is not a monopoly of the United States, North
Vietnam has rejected that offer.

No, there is no proper solution for the war in Vietnam: it is a war we
should never have entered. To continue it, is senseless--to withdraw from it,
would be one more act of appeasement on our long, shameful record. The ultimate
result of appeasement is a world war, as demonstrated by World War II; in
today's context, it may mean a nuclear world war.

That we let ourselves be trapped into a situation of this kind, is the
consequence of fifty years of a suicidal foreign policy. One cannot correct a
consequence without correcting its cause; if such disasters could be solved
"pragmatically," i.e., out of context, on the spur and range of the moment, a
nation would not need any foreign policy. And this is an example of why
we do need a policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology. But a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic
premises on up, is what today's anti-ideologists dare not contemplate. The
worse its results, the louder our public leaders proclaim that our foreign
policy is bipartisan.

("The Wreckage of the Consensus", Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, pp 225-226)

This is from a lecture that Ayn Rand gave at Ford Hall Forum in Boston on April 16, 1967.

Everything she said about Vietnam applies equally to Iraq today.