Floating Abstraction Day
by Joseph Rowlands
There's a television cartoon called Futurama that I want to talk about. At times it's hilarious, and the half hour shows are packed pretty tight. The story hinges on a guy named Fry who gets stuck in cryogenic freeze for 1000 years, waking in a world of robots, aliens, and space ships. The potential topics for the show are wide-reaching, and they occasionally hit on a very interesting theme.
In one episode, the planet Earth is celebrating what they call "Freedom Day". It's a day they all look forward to, where they prove how free they are by allowing one day of absolute freedom. On this day, you can do whatever you want. When one character trips another, breaking a bone, he brushes it off by saying "Freedom Day". On Freedom Day, you can do whatever you feel like.
There's one obvious problem with this. When one person pushes another, you'd expect the other to push back. You'd quickly have a fist fight. But none of that happened on the show. People ignored attacks on their lives as simply an expression of freedom. They're not supposed to retaliate, or the first person isn't really free. But then, is the second person really free? If he's not allowed to retaliate, isn't his "freedom" curtailed?
Obviously the term "freedom" is greatly abused here. The show doesn't make a point to clarify this issue. Instead, it leaves the big question mark of why people don't bother to retaliate. It's ludicrous behavior on the part of the participants. They're allowed to do whatever they want, but if someone attacks them first, they're supposed to just smile and take it. The whole premise of the day requires that people consistently act against their own self-interest by not defending themselves.
Okay, it's fiction. And very entertaining fiction at that. So let's not judge it too harshly. But the idea has a strong resemblance to a popular notion about individual rights. The idea is that rights, especially property rights, are just mere conventions. We made them up, and we can take them away. It's just another way of running the world. It's like picking the left or right side of the road to drive on. They're arbitrary.
Of course, that argument usually adds that property rights are unfair, immoral, and a tool of the upper class to exploit the poor. But ignoring that for now, the real issue is whether rights are just arbitrary social constructions, or whether they're an expression of real facts of reality. Did we make up rights? Or did we identify them? Are there real human needs that justify them, or is it just a convenient system?
And this show indirectly clarifies the issue. It shows people taking abuse with a smile, having their bodies and property destroyed without a word of protest. The idea is preposterous and comes off that way.
In real life, we would expect people avoiding attacks, defending their lives and property, as well as their friends and family. Not because they believe in some social conventions, but because everything they value is at stake. Self-interest is not arbitrary. Acting to preserve your life is not mere social convention.
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