Childhood's End and Surveillance
You may listen to the podcast version of this essay here.
Dear privacy seekers,
I want to try something different on this episode and explore a work of fiction that brilliantly analyzes privacy and surveillance. That work of fiction is Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. If you have not yet read this book, or not read it in a while, I suggest you pick up a copy immediately and sit and read. Remember that sitting and reading a physical book for hours at a time without your phone and computer in the room is a great exercise to restore your humanity. The book is brilliant, there’s no question about it, and fabulously constructed: at just over two hundred pages it is to-the-point, and as far as I’m concerned as long as any novel needs to be. It even brought a tear to C. S. Lewis’s eye.
I understand that some of you probably only read non-fiction. You might be one of those who only read history and science and don’t have time for unreality. The thing is, fiction can discuss ideas in a far richer way than non-fiction can, and the best writers in history have been drawn not so much to non-fiction, but fiction. Good fiction also works on first principles instead of the historian’s inevitable collection of minutia. Aristotle said that history is about particulars, literature about universals, and thus literature is superior. That’s Aristotle’s argument, but I think we can see the truth in it. Reading Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon will give you an idea of how totalitarian systems function even more usefully than reading a history of the early Soviet Union. Especially page-for-page.
But also consider this: the Soviet architects themselves got their ideas from fiction. The idea of a communist utopia comes not from real-world observation but from the imagination; indeed it rejects basic observations of human nature and organization: whether that’s Plato’s Republic or Thomas More’s Utopia from 1516, which coined the term. We can go further: in many if not all cases people get the ideas for their real-life behaviors from fiction. As Oscar Wilde said in his essay “The Decay of Lying,” “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Think of who your inspirations are. Perhaps you get your ideal of courage from Batman; your morality from Aesop’s Fables or Howard Roark; your idea of love from Jane Austen or Twilight. Where do you get your idea of a battle from—a concept quite foreign to modern humans?—I’m guessing, perhaps, Lord of the Rings? We should note that every dictator is an artist trying to fashion his own cruel painting of how the world ought to work.
At the very least there is something to fiction that is worth taking note of. So if you’re interested in privacy and you have not dabbled in what fiction has to say about it, I would encourage you to of course pick up the books I just mentioned, but also take a stab at Dave Eggars The Circle and The Every, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Zamyatin’s We and Franz Kafka’s The Trial. These are just some examples from recent literature.
Back to Childhood’s End. In the story an advanced group of aliens arrives on Earth and park their spaceships over the biggest cities in the world. They don’t really do anything else. They don’t even communicate for a long time—and even later when they do communicate it is through a human spokesman. But at first they do nothing. And humanity, understandably, starts to get concerned. They organize and in one instance shoot a missile at the ship; the missile is easily deflected. At this point humanity recognizes that these beings are much more technologically advanced and are capable of eradicating humanity should they chose to. And so humans start self-policing based on what they assume to be the interests of these surveying aliens. In other words, they start behaving differently. They end Apartheid in South Africa, for example. They end wars. “By their mere presence,” the narrator tells us of the aliens, “they had changed the history of earth.” And the narrator goes on to note of this burgeoning “One World” that:
by the standards of all earlier ages, it was Utopia. Ignorance, disease, poverty, and fear had virtually ceased to exist. The memory of war was fading into the past as a nightmare vanishes with the dawn; soon it would lie outside the experience of all living men.
What makes the book so compelling is that it describes a convincing response by humans to this bizarre scenario. It is a basic impulse that when humans are being observed, they act differently. That is the basic power of surveillance and I challenge anyone to deny that this is true. When security cameras go up in front of a business, criminal activity diminishes. It doesn’t even need to be a real camera but only look real. The media is reporting that in Chinese schools cameras are starting to monitor student’s engagement in the class. I think they are going to find that all students are engaged from now on. Given your awareness of governmental and corporate snooping on online activity, how many things have you stopped searching for online—or perhaps so pushed to the back of your mind that you cannot even think about what you would have searched for before?
Surveillance can of course have positive effects. “What gets measured gets done” is a popular and no doubt true managerial term. Parents survey children to make sure they are learning to do the right thing and not injuring or scarring themselves: mind you, these are children who are still coming to terms with their free will and we might argue are in need of some form of guidance for some period of time. We watch our employees to make sure they are making the most of their time. Amazon tracks their drivers to maximize their utility and ensure that you can get those five orders that you placed yesterday when you want to receive them. Many people track their daily habits and calorie consumption so that they can improve themselves. When faced with the brutal reality of our actions, we do find the proof needed to help us change for the better. When someone knows they are being watched, they will behave differently.
So that’s the positive of surveillance. And Childhood’s End ruminates brilliantly on this positive aspect. Humanity’s childlike fixation with racism and Apartheid dissipates as the Overlords exert their presence. And indeed the Overlords do have some noble goals. They seem to truly want world peace and are frankly the only entities in their position of power and supreme knowledge that could hope to bring something like world peace about.
But then we get to the crucial moment in the book. The head alien, Karellen, has made himself known to humans and has selected a voice to speak on behalf of them. This human representative is kidnapped by a group of rebels called the Freedom League and in a fantastic scene is rescued by Karellen. Karellen at this point leaves the rebellious League alone and in explanation reveals the most important message about surveillance that the novel has to offer. He says:
“Now that they’re located, I can trace their movements anywhere on Earth, and can watch their actions in detail if I want to. That’s far better than locking them up.”
Notice the confidence in that statement. That which gets watched—or which is threatened with being watched—gets kept in check. And no power really needs be exerted. It is merely the threat of power. This is a social concept that the French historian-theorist Michel Foucault wrote about in too much depth in books like Discipline and Punish. Foucault borrows Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the panopticon, a circular prison arrangement where inmates might be watched at any time from the central lookout position. The way that governments survey people—and they increasingly do so today though Big Tech and the surveillance net and their grip over the private sector—is enough to enforce compliance. People have internalized the policing dictates of the powers that be and are in some respects no longer capable of even having radical thoughts.
I think for example of a conversation I once had with someone about the moral good of stopping at a red light if no one is in sight whatsoever. The person I was discussing it with was flabbergasted. The state told her that she must stop at all red lights, and she had never entertained the idea that this dictate might not actually be morally good; indeed, that it might be morally bad considering the waste of fuel and time that it entails. But this conflation of the legal good with the moral good is one of the tragedies of our time.
Or, I have a colleague who recently called a police station about a speeding ticket. He asked the secretary what would happen if he didn’t pay the ticket. The secretary didn’t even comprehend what he was saying—literally didn’t comprehend. Not paying extortion? Those neural pathways in that lady’s brain were broken long, long ago.
The second half of Childhood’s End shows the other side of surveillance. People have by and large lost purpose—partly because of the welfare apparatuses—but also because they have confined their ideas and actions to what is acceptable by the Overlords. They have limited the most important part of their humanity: that part which says “But what if I did this instead of that.” Humans have disciplined themselves into submission. So when it is revealed that—and here I’ll leave some suspense for when you read the book yourself—the Overlords might have many interests, let’s say, humanity at this point has no ability, no will power, to say otherwise.
Let’s strip away the fiction. The Overlords are a metaphor for world government, an idea which in the last hundred years has gained serious ground. You can look today at would-be Overlords such as the clowns at the World Economic Forum who occasionally tweet wonderful ideas about how “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” The benefit of a world government, as its proponents have mustered, is that it can arrange things in a high-level way that is equitable and that avoids the petty disputes of individual entities. It is the ultimate arbiter, the ultimate policeman. World government would have impressive surveillance mechanisms to ensure that no bad person could hide a bank account in the Cayman Islands or in Mauritius to protect their money from a tyrannical government at home. There would be no “home.” No one could flee to a different country to avoid extradition—i.e. kidnapping—for perceived unjust behavior. World government, proponents might say, would never let a Jeffrey Epstein to exist by taking advantage of jurisdictional confusion. That’s the case that a proponent would give you. Surveillance would be crucial to all of this. A government by definition has to know things about you if they are to enforce their rules and treat you as a citizen.
Childhood’s End fabulously shows how any central planner has their own ambitions. And as regards human rulers, we’ve already discussed in our episode on “Privacy and Psychopaths” how a portion of the population not only does not care about the “general welfare,” but literally cannot conceive of anything but their own personal gratification. I think what Childhood’s End does best is to show that, even if the surveying authorities are noble and do establish compliance according to a widely-accepted standard of what is good, that this will not only always leave out an important minority voice, but destroys what makes the human free will one of the most beautiful things in the universe.
Alright, how about a few thoughts on escaping the surveillance that is symbolized by the Overlords in Childhood’s End. Obviously if we are invaded by a group of aliens with the power of these beings, all bets are off. We will be in serious trouble, and will hopefully do better than the Freedom League in fighting them off and reclaim our right to fashion ourselves.
The first thing you can do is to pick which location you want to be in. For now there is still some competition among governments. One of the best minds of today, Rick Rule, says that “jurisdictional risk is the biggest risk that any of us face.” In other words, the ruling authorities on your landmass pose the most immediate danger to your well-being. You should therefore choose where you live carefully. There are more than two hundred countries in the world, and many of them would be willing to take you on as a resident or citizen. Compare the surveillance of the USA to that of Uruguay or a village in Malaysia. Poorer countries definitely don’t have the means to even put up cameras. Assuming you feel comfortable living in one of these places, you have done wonders for your freedom and privacy. Of course these are just a few examples. You can live in more familiar places and still evade the immoral surveillance of the Fourteen Eyes governments.
Regardless of where you are you can take the standard measures to avoid surveillance. Don’t unnecessarily stand in front of cameras, whether in front of a self-checkout at a store or in a street corner. Avoid cameras in your home and property that are online-enabled. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of any loophole in law that let you cover up public cameras without damaging them. If you use a crypto ATM or something that isn’t attached to your name, I don’t see any problem in approaching from the side, placing a sticky note on the camera—for temporary safe keeping—and take it with you when you leave. Don’t encourage surveillance in your neighborhood or anywhere else.
Surveillance on the Internet I have covered elsewhere, such as in Episode 18 of my podcast. A VPN and the Tor browser should be your constant companions. Get to know and love the Tor Browser. Spin up a USB with the TAILS temporary operating system on it and start to make it part of your life. It doesn’t have to be for everything, but start adding it to your routine. Get off of Mac and especially Windows and migrate to Linux. My preferred distro for newcomers is Linux Mint. I try to show people whenever I can how you can do everything you need to on Linux Mint that you would do on Mac and Windows.
Free and open-source software should be your companion well. FOSS tends to offer you software that is not recording your habits and sending them back to some headquarters. It typically doesn’t require you to create accounts and give up that information. Certain privacy extremists will refuse to use any software that isn’t open-source. You don’t have to go this far, but recognize what it means: FOSS can fulfill most if not all of your needs.
Financially, use cash and gift cards for everything in your life which will take them. Stop with the credit cards. Gift cards purchased with cash are a great way to make private transactions online, and if you ship that item to an Amazon drop off location or a place disconnected form your name, you’re doing pretty well. Start trading with neighbors again and shopping locally and maybe even trading. Get to know the farmers in your area. Be a community person.
Cryptocurrencies offer immense possibility for avoiding surveillance. At their best they work as online cash. I’ve talked about them regularly and recently as well, and I offer a course on how to acquire and use them at Bitcoinprivacycourse.com. If you have not yet dabbled in crypto, now is the time to dabble. With Bitcoin you can purchase goods online that you wouldn’t be able to purchase with cash, and you can do so without tracing it back to you: assuming you do it correctly. Monero is a great privacy coin, though not nearly as widely accepted as Bitcoin.
Live outside of the city center. Make use of curtains, fences, garages, and removable license plate holders. No one has any business knowing anything about you. Acquire a place to live without attaching your name to the endeavor: this might require paying a lot of cash upfront or some creativity. If you are interested in privacy and freedom you should become wealthy as quickly as you can. Put your mind to it. Put in the work.
Think about how you deploy surveillance in your own life. Do you monitor every single thing that your child does? You’re almost certainly building up a rebel later in life who might very well dump everything you believe in. Do you collect all of your customer’s and clients’ data: their names and titles and IP login locations, and interests? Not only is that not appreciated but in my experience it is irrelevant in giving people more of what they want. I don’t survey my customer or viewer base in any way. I get enough sense of what they want and don’t want based on the views and the likes that my videos get—and my book sales and reviews. It’s not rocket science and no, you don’t need a $10,000 per year on CRM software to tell you what your customers really want deep down in their souls. Don’t contribute to the impulses of the evil excesses of surveillance culture.
If you are a store manager, do you constantly dictate what your workers must do and survey them? I assure you that is not appreciated and will come back to bite you. I recall when I was younger a boss like this. The employees quit in droves. I was threatened with firing after giving him an at-ease military stance every time he gave me instructions. Have I mentioned my dislike for authority? Good times. Fortunately, I’ve had no boss since then and never will again.
In conclusion, the value of privacy is that it allows us to be ourselves and to make mistakes that we are afraid to make when others are watching. Let’s return to the written word: specifically one of the most important moments in Western literature. There’s a stretch in the book of Genesis where Adam and Eve, who have otherwise been in constant communion with God, end up by themselves. Here they choose to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and then hide in fear as God re-enters the picture and comes looking for them. This is the birth of privacy. Sure, their actions deprive them of utopia, but there can be no utopia when there is free will. The two concepts are incompatible. It’s a perfect illustration of human action when absent of surveillance: for good and ill, but in the end all-too-human.
Yours in peace and privacy,
Gabriel Custodiet
https://watchmanprivacy.com