The Detriot Free Zone and the Formation of the Liberal City

In the last post, I talked about the city of Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Ankh-Morpork's greatness lies in its informal institutions that push the city in a liberal direction despite the dictatorship of Lord Vetinari and the lack of actual liberals in the city. Another example of this kind of process can be seen in the Detriot Free Zone (DFZ) in Rachel Aaron's Heartstriker and DFZ series.

The basic premise of Aaron's urban fantasy universe is that in the near future, after more than a thousand years, magic returns to the world. This allows dragons to come out of hiding now that they can take on their non-human forms and it brings with it the return of beings like the nature spirit Algonquin, who, seeing how humans have wreaked havoc with the environment, floods Detriot. The United States abandons the area, which, in turn, attracts humans to return to the city, preferring the absentee tyranny of Algonquin to that of the American government. As the DFZ is outside of American jurisdiction and Algonquin really does not care what humans do to each other, the DFZ has no functional government. Like Ankh-Morpork, the DFZ is not a Utopia, social services are non-existent and the chances of suffering sudden violent death are high. That being said, there is something attractive about the place. Aaron's books are about outsiders coming to the DFZ and finding a home there. Her first series deals with Julius Heartstriker, a dragon, who is kicked out of his family for not being ruthless enough. The new series follows Opal Yong-ae, who comes to the DFZ to escape her father. She works as a cleaner, buying up abandoned rentals in order to scrounge for magical items.

The key difference between the DFZ and Ankh-Morpork is that Ankh-Morpork has a history to it going back hundreds of years while the DFZ is a city without a history trying to create its own identity. This is important because much of what gives Ankh-Morpork its identity is that it is the end result of a long complex evolutionary process that is disconnected to the people presently living there, protecting it from anyone who might want to refashion it according to their own design. Yes, Ankh-Morpork undergoes tremendous change and that is a central idea in the series. That being said, this change is outside of anyone's personal control and ultimately serve to highlight the particular character of the city.

While Discworld contains plenty of entities that embody concepts, for example, Death, Pratchett never gave Ankh-Morpork a spirit. One of the major events of Aaron's first series is the birth of the DFZ spirit, who comes into being as a manifestation of all the people living within her. This sets up a wonderful exchange in the most recent book, Part-Time Gods, between the DFZ spirit and Opal where the DFZ directly confronts the Smithian paradox at the root of her nature, is she a manifestation of greed or selflessness. She is founded upon greed as that is the primary motive for why people move to her city and why they stay despite the physical danger. That being said, greed is not the only motive at work. The DFZ would not be possible if people did not come together to build a society. Both Julius and Opal are characters constantly looking to make a buck, yet they are not really motivated by money. If they were, they could have easily made other choices in their lives.

The DFZ spirit wants help figuring out her own identity recognizing that the answer to that question is wrapped in how people like Opal see themselves. On a personal level, the ongoing question with the DFZ spirit and Opal is whether they can have a relationship that is not a matter Opal becoming the DFZ spirit's servant in exchange for having all of her problems solved. The DFZ spirit is a product of individual choices but still not something that individuals can create by protesting for the right laws. Instead, the DFZ comes into her ethical self as a manifestation of the personal choices made by the characters.

One can think of the DFZ as a story of how a city like Ankh-Morpork might come into being much like Animal Farm can be read as the creation of Big Brother. What I would love to see in future books is the DFZ spirit appropriating things from the different cultures of her residents in order to create her underlying institutions while giving them a particular DFZ spin much in the way that the DFZ already makes use of different cuisines.

The Secret of Ankh-Morpork: A Tale of British Liberalism

In the Constitution of Liberty (I:4), F. A. Hayek distinguishes between what may be called the British evolutionary empiricist and French rationalist schools of liberty. The French tradition, as exemplified by thinkers like Jean Jacques Rousseau (yes, he was born in Geneva), sees liberty in terms of specific policies and political structures that can be known through reason. Its primary goal is the creation of a utopian ideal government with the right laws and the right people in charge. The British tradition, as exemplified by Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, sees liberty as emerging out of systems of human interaction that transcend the design of any particular person. These can be seen in economic markets and traditional social orders. As with biological evolution, these systems are rational in the sense that they follow clear rules and are not random even as they have no rational designer. The goal of such liberty is not any utopian ideal but to limit physical coercion in people's lives.

It strikes me that one of the finest modern examples of this British approach to liberty can be found in Terry Pratchett's comic fantasy series Discworld. In particular, I would like to focus on his use of the city of Ankh-Morpork, which relies less on any of its visible institutions than on a certain subconscious sensibility embedded within its citizens. On the surface, one would be hard-pressed to think of Ankh-Morpork as any kind of Utopia. The city is filthy, crime-ridden, corrupt and under the boot of the tyrannical Patrician Lord Vetinari. And yet there is something about the city that allows it to, if not necessarily function well, at least avoid collapsing on a day to day basis. Furthermore, there is something about Ankh-Morpork that draws people from all over Discworld, whether barbarian raiders, tourists or immigrants. As paradoxical as it might sound, if you find yourself alienated by the place you grew up in, Ankh-Morpork is precisely the place that you can count on to feel at home.

What is Ankh-Morpork's secret of success? It is not the place has some particularly brilliant form of government. There is not much of a government doing anything and the little government that there is seems totally outmatched by the challenges it faces. Is there something special about Ankh-Morporkians themselves? There is no race of Ankh-Morporkians. On the contrary, Ankh-Morpork is a collection of every race and species on Discworld. Furthermore, the people themselves are not particularly wise nor virtuous. What makes Ankh-Morpork special is something about the deep-seated institutions of the city itself that transcend its politics and its racial makeup. One might even think of it as magic, something that is not too far fetched considering how the wizards of Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University mess with the fabric of reality.

In this sense, Ankh-Morpork is the perfect British classical liberal counter-Utopia. The place is far from perfect but is still a place that real people might want to live in. This only makes sense in a world that rejects Utopias. In fact, constantly hanging over Ankh-Morpork is the prospect of a path to Utopia that is never taken in the form of the messianic Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. He is the true heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork (the last king having been killed off centuries ago). He even has a sword and a birthmark to prove it. It has been foretold that he will bring truth and justice to Ankh-Morpork. (See Guards, Guards.) One of the running jokes of the series is that despite all the people who know of Carrot's heritage, there is no grand push to make him king because no one actually wants truth and justice. It is not that anyone actually likes Lord Vetinari, but his style of management, corruption and all, suits people just fine.  

Carrot does well as an honest watchman and as a human raised by dwarfs and whose love interest, Angua, is a werewolf, he is well positioned to negotiate between different races. That being said, it is obvious that Carrot would be a dreadful ruler if he ever got around to fulfilling his destiny. He has principles that he will not compromise on, while politics is the art of compromise. It is unfortunate that Pratchett never got around to completing Carrot's story arc. I imagine something along the lines of Vetinari being killed off, chaos threatens the city, and the people are demanding that Carrot agree to become their king. Carrot should then give some version of Life of Brian's "you can all think for yourselves" speech before riding off into the sunset. The city falls into chaos and it is exactly the kind of chaos that afflicted Ankh-Morpork every day under Vetinari. Perhaps Nobby Nobbs becomes patrician; regardless, it does not matter who officially rules as it is the city itself that actually is in charge.

Part of Discworld's use of an emerging order is its lack of clear ideological heroes. For example, Vetinari is not any kind of liberal. He is a dictator, who clearly does not believe in civil liberties. That being said, what great evil does Vetinari actually do? He seems to sit in his office, call people in and suggest that certain courses of action might be good for their continued health. For all that it is taken as a given that Vetinari is ruthless enough to have people tortured to death on a whim, he does not seem to do much of that. This does not mean that Vetinari is a good guy; his love of power precludes that. Nevertheless, there is something about the culture of Ankh-Morpork that resists blatant authoritarian force. Vetinari is smart enough to understand that the best way to hold on to power in Ankh-Morpork is to avoid directly giving orders. Instead, everything, including theft and murder, is legalized though regulated by guilds. These institutions gain their authority through the perpetual motion of tradition that transcends any attempt by individuals to control them. In essence, Vetinari allows the city to run itself while he devotes himself to politics, staying in power by positioning himself as the known quantity that people can live with.  

We see a similar thing with Sam Vimes, the head of the city watch. While Vimes is certainly more likable than Vetinari, his values are quite conservative. Unlike his ancestor who killed the last king of Ankh-Morpork, Vimes is not a revolutionary. What Vimes believes in is the law. It is not that Vimes believes that the law is perfect. On the contrary, he is quite aware of its limitations. That being said, it is precisely because Vimes sees how little good the law can do in the face of real problems in the world that he believes that the law, for whatever it is worth, should apply to everyone, rich and poor, humans and every other race. (See Night Watch and Snuff.) Vimes is the kind of common man just doing his job around whom heroic things seem to happen.

This sensibility seeps down into the rest of Ankh-Morpork. It is a cosmopolitan place in which even dwarfs and trolls learn to if not exactly tolerate each other than at least to not murder each other too often. (See Thud.) Ankh-Morpork has legal prostitution in the form of the Seamstress' Guild. It even allows for explorations of gender identity in the case of Cherry Littlebottom, who comes out as a female dwarf. For all of this tolerance, it is not as if there are many actual liberals in the city crusading for people's rights. (There are zombie activists promoting the rights of the undead.) Most of the residents are highly parochial, interested in their mothers or some other hobby. But it is precisely such narrow mindedness that makes Ankh-Morpork's type of tolerance possible. The residents are too focused on their own private business to mind anyone else's. When the occasional mob does form, they are usually dispersed not by appeals to any noble ideals but by reminding the mob that there are more important things in their lives that they should care about.  

In Discworld, the arc of history does bend toward justice. A running theme through the series is the expansion of personhood to include an ever wider circle of beings such as golems or goblins, who were previously seen as either lacking feelings or so depraved as to be outside of personhood. (See Feet of Clay and Snuff.) What makes this possible is not that particular individuals become "woke" to oppression. Rather, it is that the underlying social system evolves as to include new groups. Once that happens, no conscious tolerance is needed. You can hate the group, but even the very fact that you hate them serves to embed them within the fabric of society, making their elimination inconceivable. (This is an important theme in understanding anti-Semitism. Jews were never in danger from people who believed that Jews killed their Lord as long as Jews were considered part of the existing order of society. Mass violence against Jews only became possible when Jews came to be thought of as something other.) 

On the other side of this coin, minority groups themselves, such as the dwarfs, change as they move to Ankh-Morpork. They might not intend to assimilate and might not realize what is happening until they are raising the next generation but by then it is too late. It is the power of Ankh-Morpork that it is able to assimilate outsiders and turn them into Ankh-Morporkians who embody Ankh-Morpork values even as such people claim to hate Ankh-Morpork and desire to return to the "old country."

Much as Ankh-Morpork attracts outsiders, the city finds itself host to a wide variety of religions. Most Ankh-Morporkians seem indifferent to religion in their personal lives even as religious institutions seem to thrive. There is even a Temple of Small Gods devoted to cast off religions that services people who might not be particularly religious but who like religion as a general idea. The only people who seem interested in forcing their beliefs on others are the Omnians. Even they find themselves caught in the web of Ankh-Morpork sensibilities and are reduced to "aggressively" handing out pamphlets to unbelievers.  

This brings us to the question of markets. As Ankh-Morpork is not a Utopia, it should come as no surprise that Ankh-Morpork is not a free-market Utopia along the lines of Galt's Gulch populated by libertarian ideologues prepared to explain the evils of government planning. That being said, what is interesting about Ankh-Morpork is that it is precisely the kind of place in which innovation either happens or which innovators quickly make their way to in order to market their ideas. It is not that Vetinari loves innovation. On the contrary, he understands more than most people how innovations can make tidal waves in society and he knows that the entire basis of his power lies in his ability to offer people more of the same. It is not that Ankh-Morporkians themselves love innovation either, at least as a principle. That being said, Ankh-Morporkians can be seduced by the magic of a new invention. This allows for innovations to make a rapid jump from a prototype that someone is fooling around with to a part of the social fabric, moving through the stage of dangerous innovation too fast for an effective opposition to build up and stop it. 

Like Charles Dickens, Pratchett's depiction of businessmen was a mixed bag. I do love Harry King whose fortune literally is founded on human excrement. (See Raising Steam.) For a city in which so much is privatized, it is a mystery as to why Ankh-Morpork would need a government-run post-office or mint. (See Going Postal and Making Money.) Even in those cases, Vetinari takes a very hands-off approach and simply lets the conman Moist von Lipwig take charge. In both cases, it is the Ankh-Morpork spirit and not government planning that quickly takes over and cause these institutions to serve purposes beyond anyone's design. 

Ultimately, Pratchett also possessed Dickens' appreciation for the common unheroic virtues. People might be cowards and hypocrites (otherwise known as being self-interested), but they are redeemed by their petty loves and kindnesses. As with Dickens, this goes a long way to redeeming Pratchett. He is a defender of the common man with his bourgeois dreams of doing even the most humble job well and getting ahead as opposed to waging revolution. This is in contrast to the Marxist pretend support for the working class; no one despises the common man like a Marxist. 

The truth about Ankh-Morpork is that it is actually very well run; it is just that it is not being run by any person, not even Lord Vetinari. Ankh-Morpork is a liberal and even revolutionary city that is completely lacking in liberal revolutionaries. It is the deep-seated embed institutions of the city itself that transcend any politician, system of government or particular race that guard the city's liberty and allow it to thrive.  

And Now For Something Completely Different: An Asperger with a British Sense of Humor

I co-chair a book club geared to those with Asperger Syndrome or otherwise on the high end of the autism spectrum. We meet every Thursday night at eight P.M at the Barnes and Noble on the Ohio State campus. This past week we finished Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I had read Good Omens once before, but, like most books by either Gaiman or Pratchett, it was worth reading a second time. Good Omens is a hilarious romp through the apocalypse featuring an angel and a demon who conspire together to save humanity from the forces of both Heaven and Hell. This is top of the line British humor, my favorite kind. British humor, though, is not something that can be appreciated by everyone. The reactions of the group were mixed. As I see it, British humor reflects on different elements of the Asperger mindset and, depending on the person and circumstance, can either work very well for those with Asperger Syndrome or can utterly fail.

British humor, as exemplified by Monty Python, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, entails manic insanity mixed with running gag references that span the cultural gambit and is usually quite dark. (For example Douglas Adams has the Earth blown to bits by aliens, building an interstellar freeway, in the first few chapters of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) Good Omens deals with the world coming to an end next Saturday afternoon. Heaven and Hell are preparing for a final showdown in which, no matter who wins, humanity will lose. Unfortunately, due to an error on the part of a satanic nun, the anti-Christ has gone missing. Out to save the day are the unlikely pair of Aziraphale and Crowly; an angel and a demon who are in fact good friends and who rather like the Earth as it is. To those of you who are befuddled by this, not to worry; things only get more absurd as the book moves along. What keeps this all afloat is the fact that Good Omens is a satire on Paradise Lost and Revelations. It also makes fun of the Screwtape Letters, Star Wars, Doctor Who, televangelists, seventeenth century prophecies, witch-hunts, and James Bond just to name a few things.

British humor inundates the audience with strings of information, but revels in absolute absurdity. People with Asperger Syndrome are particularly suited to handling strings of information but are ill equipped to handle things that make no sense. British humor can be effective for such people if they have the necessary background to understand the references and if they can get past the fact that nothing makes any sense. One can then revel in how a given piece of British humor spits out information and how it follows its own innate logic off a cliff into perfectly “logical” absurdity. If the person with Asperger Syndrome does not pick up on the references, though, everything will backfire. All that would be left is a something that is all over the place and utterly overwhelming; in other words the sort of thing that those with Asperger Syndrome are woefully ill equipped to deal with.

The traditional assumption is that people with Asperger Syndrome have, in general, a difficult time dealing with humor. Humor is not logical and requires a certain flexibility in how one understands things. While this is particularly true in regards to British humor, British humor, because of how it uses strings of information, can, under the right circumstances, work very well for those with Asperger Syndrome.

Our next book is going to be Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This book also fits into the model of British humor. We shall see how the group deals with this one.