The Grand Inquisitor Meets Free Information

“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’ They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them… They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them—so awful it will seem to them to be free.”

When the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov condemns Christ to the fires for having himself condemned mankind to freedom, those of us who look to throw open the cloistered doors of technology and intellectual property --- that is, to make free-as-in-freedom software and to loosen if not lose the property rights that have accumulated in ideas--- must remember that it is the flame of our auto-da-fé, too, the old priest is stoking. The closing of technology and the privatization of thought represents to many the immoral exclusion of some human beings from the world “intellectual work(s) of beauty and utility” when it is now possible to provide “all the human value of every increase of knowledge” to everyone for virtually nothing. This divide, this terrible imposition of caste where it does not belong and need not be, may well be the central crime of our age. But solving this problem, bridging the gap, means more than simply overcoming those “owners of culture” who cling to their entrenched interest in the old world. We must overcome also the natural resistance residing in the very world we seek to change, for information may want to be free, but it isn’t so clear that people always do.

The problem of spurning freedom is not at all unique to the technology and intellectual property context, but Dostoyevsky suggests to us that it may be particularly acute here. The Grand Inquisitor taunts Christ: “There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever, the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness. Those forces are miracle, mystery and authority.” It is precisely these forces that closed source technologies so perfectly harness. Why would a man look beyond the black box of his cell phone, the impenetrable wall of his computer, when their function is alternately magical and miraculous to him? These things are as impenetrable to him as the rituals of his Church, which he knows to be of unquestionable authority. There is fear, too, in attempting to look beyond the black box. The Grand Inquisitor says: “Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet..." If this true, man may not easily accept a free information world.

What then, is the answer, if the Grand Inquisitor is right, if man will either himself destroy the freedom we offer or spurn it, finding it awful? One meta-answer, provided by Dostoyevsky’s novel, is merely that we offer freedom anyway. (The Grand Inquisitor may condemn Christ, but The Brothers Karamazov doesn’t, at least not entirely). Indeed, in the end, the Grand Inquisitor releases Christ before he is killed. Christ kisses the Grand Inquisitor, but despite having saved him, the priest does not repent of his condemnation: “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.” But if our aim is to have people take not merely what we offer but indeed own what is already theirs, then we must address the Grand Inquisitor’s charge more directly than to merely point the way to freedoms that may in turn be freely spurned.

Another solution may be contained in the Grand Inquisitor’s charge itself. Men, he says, can have either freedom or bread, but not both, and accordingly they will always choose bread. But just as technological contexts may be particularly susceptible to the rejection of freedom, so too might they carry with them their cure, for “(i)f Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar's own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.” It is perhaps only in the universe of the mind and machine that we are able to produce unlimited bread. No one must go hungry in a world of ideas, and so it seems that free-as-in-free software and the sweeping away of the ownership of knowledge may answer the charge the Grand Inquisitor levels. If man can have “freedom and bread enough for all” perhaps he may finally be convinced to accept both.

Merely abolishing private property in ideas will not necessarily result in man’s acceptance of his own freedom, however, though it may nudge him along that path. Coming to offer the “curse of the knowledge of good and evil” as anyone who seeks to upturn to social order does, means also that we must be careful to not merely install ourselves in the Grand Inquisitor’s shoes: Man does not live by bread alone, and if all we offer him is a different loaf, there will have been no worth at all in our endeavour. But if we can ensure that the bread of free-as-in-free ideas and technology are not divorced from freedom itself and allow that there is, indeed, enough for all, then we may see the coming of the day in which “(a)ll that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

-- DanaDelger - 04 May 2009