Freedom of Thought

Freedom of thought
(understanding art through the lens of postmodernism)

“All  the  fundamental  presuppositions  of postmodern  social  and  economic  analyses  refer  to  the  structures  of advanced  capitalism.” (On Post Modernism: Aijaz Ahmad)

Art with clear ideology is art with interpretable design. The primary pursuit of art is knowledge, thus this pursuit is a philosophical one. Art is conceived in the thoughts of a mind which is working with utmost freedom where matters of truth and reality are concerned. Art continuously differentiates itself from reports scribed on truth and reality. Do these unreal thoughts possessing creative individuals possess any real significance in the postmodern world?

The postmodern world is a highly mechanized entity sewn together by complicated structures. Each component of the postmodern society is severely damaged due to a conflict between autonomy and obligation.

Knowledge exists in habitable environment. This means no matter what individuals within functioning structures do, existing knowledge continues to transform the postmodern world into one where it can sustain itself. The capitalist model has begun to resemble an unsustainable structure.

Now, one may ask, where is the room for freedom of thought if something so determined as knowledge is busy sustaining itself in the postmodern world? Needless to say, there is still significance of thoughts constructed by artists since they latch them onto not one but various centers of any structure. Understanding postmodern structures without studying its various centers is like working individually to maintain the whole. Do these centers mirror contributions made by art to the postmodern world?

By being pseudo individuals have little effect on the structure. Art signifies a state of having no effect at all on reality. Then why is it taken so seriously and what is to become of art? It’s a big problem. Art without ethical life and morality cannot be of aesthetic value. Art owes aesthetic to the sustainability of knowledge from which it is born.

Individuals are unable to think ‘outside the box’, beyond the unhidden, because the study of postmodern systems show it is predetermined what ‘the individual’ is expected to see. Thus it is further important to question whether it matters what ‘the individual’ thinks independently of the rules and disciplines of a system, even if it is doing so freely and not due to an obligation towards the structure. That is to say the individual is cultivating an ideology in the system because of autonomy.

Various interpretations come up during a discourse on the different centers of a functioning postmodern structure. Here, individuals are considered necessary components of all functioning structures. The humanist approach is adopted because it continually trains the microcosm in becoming better at being ‘individuals’. Today, there is immense value of thoughts specifically designed to influence the understanding of the world at large (including history and contemporary). These thinking minds are nurtured in institutes and corporations to meet the many requirements of the power structures. Systems running on creativity, like literature for example, on the other hand, encourage disunity in the people as to disintegrate discourse into different parts, so that in a society subjective interpretation can result in the agreement of a much larger population when conclusions of analysis are being drawn.

Needless to say, thoughts conceived with autonomy help individuals make sense of a greater number of ideas. A study on the subject of thinking freedom adds immensely to cultural knowledge.

Knowledge induces in the thoughts of an artist an essential will to choose. The unjust mechanics of postmodern systems seem to hardly matter to artists so long as their voices are heard and they earn from their art things they did not earlier possess. Values of science in postmodern structures remodel knowledge. Art still holds a great aesthetic value in the postmodern world.

One can be an artist today without an education. Their works can be insightful and mature but what about knowledge? How important is knowledge for art to become significant? Not all knowledge is scientifically legitimized. Postmodernism unfolds a high degree of difference in subjective opinions as an aftermath of this illegitimacy. In practice, legitimate knowledge channelizes actions performed by free will into self sustaining processes of production.

Modes of production matter in art because art takes manifestation within the boundaries of the existing structures. While appreciating art conceived in reaction to modernism we cannot today forego the postmodern analysis because we see through this lens the struggles of identity. We see art in its uprootedness and its aggression asserting an influence on us. Postmodern art invites the postmodern audience to sympathize with the artist as compared to traditional art meant for sympathizing with the audience. The future of art lies in something unreal, always. Transformations like this set up a new modernity.

In the pursuit to understand structure, centers exceed their limits, and sometimes, uproot other centers while assuming their functions trying to attribute the whole system onto itself. Modes of production change as centers shift their inclination.

The study of art suggests that it cannot be conceived in totality. An individual cannot assume the role of the whole. Autonomy is freedom but freedom is more than just autonomy. Study of freedom as a concept of absolute philosophy and the study of society as self regulating is of foremost priority to define the lens of postmodernism.

Postmodernism isn’t a consequence of liberalism alone. It is a consequence nonetheless of the existing and functioning components of modernity. Ethical life played a vital role in keeping some modern values still alive for the good of society. Apart from this, freedom of thought with individuals and collectives, in my study, shows itself to be at the root of radicalization of action. Cultures and societies still hold traditions in high regard thereby valuing knowledge possessed by them as ‘the center’ of the postmodern world.

Rise in the tendency to assign greater value to verified research as compared to amateur knowledge has polarized educated minds against each other and against reason, thereby limiting free thinking to predetermined rules and principles. 

An artist crafts together pieces of art and still another mechanism is needed to bring that work to consumers. According to me, a critic of postmodernism primarily criticizes non-functioning systems in the legitimization of knowledge in arts, architecture, economics, broadcasting, advance technology etc. Since the postmodern plunge in terms of accessibility of these systems to the individuals, utopianism too has lost out on its audience. Postmodernism has begun to resemble dystopianism perhaps because the audience chooses to show sympathy rather than receive it.

Therefore voices in postmodern culture have also limited themselves to ‘reactionism’. Recent trend in reaction videos on the internet for example, made by individuals, suggest that a large audience is participating in analysis and review instead of original work. The limitation of resources might be what’s causing this. Even highly mechanized process like imitation has failed audiences because there just aren’t enough resources with the people to keep the modes of production running. 

While plagiarizing one must investigate whether freedom of thought is to be sacrificed so that postmodern systems, here the internet, continues to function according to a very specific grand design? Freedom is not absolute independence. An important characteristic of freedom is the limitation imposed on it by logic. Philosophizing freedom isn’t subjective, it is purely logical. Logical imitation of what is known is sometimes born of necessity.

In ‘On Post Modernism’ Ahmad emphasizes that post modern critiques cannot be applied to societies that are predominantly agrarian. He is suggesting here the implausibility of postmodernism, a capitalist perspective on culture and human psychology, in logical structures such as India (a union). His Marxist views stand true to a feeling I also get that postmodernism is a movement centered mainly on the proletariat. It is often thought suitable to keep postmodern systems functioning according to the needs of the working class to avoid any strikes and rebellions. Often these systems are damaging to those who use it. Ahmad also explains Foucault’s perspective which denies that social systems center on only one component. For Foucault every system has many complex centers which can be studied individually to understand the structure as a whole.

The peculiarity of the postmodern lens is that it is not in place to be imitated within the second and the third world counties because there simply isn’t enough. Still, schools of thought and modes of production given to us by postmodernism are used to excel at entrepreneurship, to gain from a global capitalist model. On the bright side while these systems will not punish drawing of immense wealth or surplus they will allow the benefit of regional languages, cultures, identities and ethnicities. The consolidation of neo-liberalism allows for it to happen but the beneficiaries of this approach must be the respective indigenous states. Needless to say, states do not easily refuse to be part of a capitalist system. By seducing people with visions of the fruits of labor postmodernism sows the seeds of consumerism. These systems take and they take but seldom do they return, in practice, the resources needed to set up a model of one’s own.

Art, which is rich in cultural wealth, helps these systems exploit indigenous people marginalizing and stereotyping the lower and the middle classes.

Resources used in postmodern systems, cutting-edge technology for example, should be the first to be made more readily available to everyone so that there is freedom of thought and not just mechanized imitation. But new technology cannot be handed out to random persons due to the risk of its misuse. Technology cannot be shared openly but knowledge can and should be shared with the people. The knowledge needed to invent systems should be made accessible to the people given that the social system doesn’t just point at structural patterns demanding their imitation for consumption. Internet, for example, is exploding today with all kinds of things. We are witnessing a tsunami of opinions and businesses.

Our role, as individuals in the postmodern structure, our desires are to do somethings privately. Consequently, our obligation towards the ruling class does not matter much. By resigning from social obligation how will resources be made readily available for designing a self sustaining model? Knowledge is the foremost important resource for the people. It allows them to employ themselves in systems that have declared them an insignificant minority.

“A technical apparatus requires an investment; but since it optimizes the efficiency of the task to which it is applied, it also optimizes the surplus-value derived from this improved performance. All that is needed is for the surplus-value to be realized, in other words, for the product of the task performed to be sold. And the system can be sealed in the following way: a portion of the sale is recycled into a research fund dedicated to further performance improvement. It is at this precise moment that science becomes a force of production, in other words, a moment in the circulation of capital.” (The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard)

The knowledge art communicates to the people becomes primary principle on which art earns its aesthetic value. The problem is that rigid structures such as knowledge do not leave much room for the freedom of thought. It is still a good question, what is to become of art in the coming time? Postmodernism proves that social systems now affect individuals in ways that are now measurable. Here, the objective of analysis is to invent a design that will definitely shape the perception of the audience/consumer. It is imperative that we acknowledge today, that a restriction is in place on thoughts we are allowed. Only those thoughts appear in popular/successful art that is to us not forbidden by society.

So what may be the possible impacts of such restrictions on the human thought? Why do people normally behave similarly and why is there in place a system run by the people to manipulate society into accepting uniformity as a virtue on par with evolution when it is in fact dystopian.

For Lyotard, postmodern science is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, non-rectifiable, and paradoxical. It is redefining the word knowledge. In his study the term scientist is used to describe a storyteller who tells a story only after thoroughly verifying it, when perhaps art is telling the ongoing story of experimenting with truth and reality.

Now, if the problem has been acknowledged and the resolve traced in making memory and data banks freely available to people, the microcosm of categories in which art fits inevitably become fields to become structures next. One asks what happens to art. Of course one is free to choose what becomes of it.

“Freedom is as essential to art as it is to the rest of the world. The concept of freedom is thus one of the most important points of intersection between the traditional branches of theoretical and practical philosophy. Freedom is of theoretical interest because we can wonder what freedom is, and whether or not we are capable of being free. And it is of practical interest because, given that we are capable of being free, and that being free is desirable, we can wonder how to live in such a way that this capability is most fully realized.” (Hegel, Nietzsche and Philosophy – Thinking Freedom: Dudley)

Dudley explains that it is the will of the individual which allows them to break from this obligation to serve the needs of the structure and act with freedom. He adds that the individual is free only if the compulsion to act with free will isn’t due to the conditioning of the outside world. In his study of Hegel’s works he reduces ‘freedom’ in art, as a philosophy of free beings utilizing infinity as means to reach an ideology. I think about the various centers of a social system despite feeling a pressure that without one center a philosophy cannot survive. Within me, perhaps, is an industry of thought. I am attempting to launch an inquiry into academics, a force which monitors and standardizes thoughts for the sake of acceptable knowledge. Because of freedom I miraculously begin again to conceive ideas with my own will to choose what will suit my writing best. The prospect of freedom of thought in a highly determined world begins to seem like a very real possibility.

Modern industrialism resulted in class struggle. Naturally, with changing societies such cases of cause and effect as minimum wage and class have overtime resulted in various unique social issues. Consumer culture in capitalist systems is perhaps the best example of this cause and effect.

In the era of globalization, this divide in the way we perceive knowledge has made us blind to the barbarianism of late capitalism in the third world. The human condition has polarized over time and resources have become scarce. In such a context, where the mind no longer consciously controls what it thinks, how important is the freedom of being able to think without any restriction? While on one hand the lack of proper structures has societies running clueless, on the other restrictions on accessibility of utmost essential resources has limited human thought to imitation and unscientific analysis. Limited modes of production have turned final commodities into consumer’s only possessions. The production process does not however end with consumption of highly mechanized resources and the consumer can choose to actively also be a producer. This failure of the postmodern world in managing resources proves that an irreversible mechanization has already taken place long before consumers can even begin with their intended original work.

This is to say just for example, that Indian literature has over the years acquired certain traits because the Indian readers have somethings in common among them and so a writer cannot help but fit into the classification judged under those traits. Today, we speculate about a reality visible only to the eyes of a proletariat that is growingly becoming insecure about its thoughts. These insecurities arise whenever the proletariat is questioned on the ground of logical philosophy. Together these insecure individuals corrupt the system. As system regulators their unethical lives determine patterns of accessibility of resources. As system regulators they obstruct freedom by corrupting structures during their interaction with the structure because of their unethical prejudice towards their obligations.

We associate freedom of thought to various facets of existence while still struggling to truly understand the entire phenomenon behind it. Should freedom of thought only be rooted in political affairs or scientific knowledge? As thinkers we always wish to explore the design of any creative work. As an observer of reality we become so fascinated with structuralism that in a post-structural world we cannot help but feel physically chained to the upright pillars of the structure. We cannot see ourselves breaking easily from the torments of what has been determined. But it isn’t always like that. The reason we feel trapped within structures is because there is an incredible pull between its various centers. We are caught the gravity, living with fear that if we were to do something unusual one of those centers might lose normality. We fear traditional knowledge at some point or the other in our lives. Yes, it is fear.

The postmodern world over burdens us with the weight of history to the point where we will feel accomplished if we construct a thought countering what’s accepted. Frankly, it becomes a movement if it is popularized. But from the point of view of an artist art has its own restrictions on free thinking.

Here, the point is that we are growingly becoming uncertain of our mastery over knowledge, even in knowing we have to ask ourselves how credible is our knowledge? Secondly, we have become weary of narratives. Whenever there is conflict of terms instead of launching an investigation into the nature of the conflict we turn the other way and look for an alternative which will be better suited to our needs and our intellectual thirst.

It can be said that being aware of the psychology behind certain acts of the individual in maintaining social bonds too is somewhat postmodern. But now we have grown out of this recognition of psychological elements and started focusing on our relationship with the centers of any given well functioning structure. Education has helped us do that. I cannot stop thinking about my inability to change the way my mind will react to all that is constant in this world around me. Death, sickness, politics and sexuality all draw out the same response from me every time and that has a severe stagnating effect on my creativity and the way I perceive art and artists. In writing my own opinion I am free to say whatever I feel, but in writing on a topic shared by a large number of people my opinions will have to be thoroughly verified under the postmodern lens. Knowledge is of no use if it is not readily and freely accessible to the individual outside of the structure built on that system of knowledge. Without the awareness of using knowledge individuals are unable to conceive the new ‘reality’ at the onset of modernity and as a result they are exhausted with nihilism. The restriction in fact is so severe that what an entire generation investigates understanding it to be a concept of immense depth, can be coined into a single word, into numerous syllables, for the understanding of the future generations thereby converting an expansive study into history.

Art as a product of the artist’s intellect when compared to a mechanized or an imitated product for the consumption of the people, without any doubt, dehumanizes the artist’s effort to make the invisible visible.

The artists’ thoughts are manifestation of the world through lenses of varying ideologies. These ideologies give meaningful narration to the otherwise vague interpretation of life.  Ideologies are also key components of the intelligence unique to human beings.