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The Freest of Radicals

“so too, in a political sense, a free radical could be someone operating within a conservative environment where the traditional order rules, so much so that it may refuse to change, adapt, and evolve so that it can stay ‘healthy.’ to survive, it needs to make sure the potential causes of its cancer go away, permanently, if at all possible.”
—brian carroll, “automadness: terrors of EM research” (2001)

i saw ayn rand reffered to just the other day on some mailing list as a “defender of freedom to the point of radicalism,” which gave me a chill & a chuckle at the same time. what our title pretends we are is “the freest of radicals,” implying radicalism along & at once with freedom, whereas ayn rand would have freedom (for herself) before radicalism (to get there). but of course, our position is politically untenable in its very terms. freedom impairs the practicality of true radicalism… & yet…

can you not get along by not being friends? freedom is a uniter along with an individualizer. radicalism is a socializer along with a dissenter. of course, i’m painting large strokes. but perhaps my proposition aims at accepting the fact of their imperfect marriage, & to make it fruitful on both a social & an individual level. i think the goal is that if there is a game, there are plenty of different rules on every level, & the understanding of this existence of many rules becomes a “rule of rules.” it’s a thrilling prospect, but it’s a risk too: how do you “enforce,” not to say “justify” this meta-legality?

with this in mind, perhaps one may conceive of art as a simulation space, as a means to resolve, or at least attempt, this complex, perhaps dangerous, problem. i don’t doubt that this has been done before, & this is actually more of a reason to try. i believe with marshall mcluhan that technical advances (“new media”) may effect other spaces such as social; internet is already a powerful way to conduct new community experiments. prudently seeking positive change — & keeping in mind that this change must be threefold: individual (the gall to step forward), social (care for whom & what we may affect) & the both of them considered together, as a third party, for complex, changing systems require a momentum of 3. & the new possibility, now unveiled: to be “a radical, freely”; hence “everything, moderately.” as for the danger: this whole thing sounds too metaphysical for its own good.

David Turgeon, November 18, 2001 (reformatted from a November 1999 email to Brian Carroll) [xi-01]