A Call for a Chorus of Voices

Eric Hughes eh at speakeasy.net
Thu Sep 13 13:03:32 PDT 2001


2001 September 13
A Call for a Chorus of Voices

To All Who Would Defend Liberty and Freedom:

Yesterday I wrote an open letter to all my fellow citizens.  Today I write 
to all those who would defend liberty, on-line and everywhere else, from 
the looming threat of demagoguery that now hangs over us all.  This morning 
I arose from my sleep with two realizations.  First, that I would have 
changed the title of my letter had I thought about it.  This has been 
pointed out by others.  Second, that yesterday was the ninth anniversary of 
the first cypherpunks meeting; I had not realized this in the moment.

When I began to write yesterday's letter, I had in mind to write a 
different letter than the one that thence I wrote.  I had first intended a 
message to you my comrades, but in the moment I started typing I began to 
cry, because I had been struck as if by an external blow with the 
realization of whom I wanted to address.  It was difficult for me to touch 
the well of my sincerity, because I have been and yet remain deeply cynical 
about my country, my government, and the particularly resilient propaganda 
of our media in the image of democracy.  I had written only the title 
before I was overcome.

For now the next phase of the work has commenced for which cypherpunks was 
preparation.  The goal to affix into our society a bodiless ability to hide 
has greatly been achieved, yet the nascent robustness of these systems is 
as yet fragile.  Our institutions do not yet breathe the ethos of 
individual liberty without supplemental air.  The threat is not unique, 
however, and the task at hand is wider than our own concerns.  As personal 
ability is bound up in technology, the technologies of which my friends and 
I have been so fond are but a section a larger movement, the movement to a 
democracy more about the "demos" than the "kratein", more about the people 
than the ruling.

I shall not enumerate these trends into which cypherpunks so neatly 
fits.  We are at a juncture in the road of our culture, whether to pursue 
the path of safety by limiting the individual and ignoring their desires or 
to pursue the path of safety by strengthening the individual and working 
out a new commons of desire.  We cannot choose both; they are mutually 
hostile to each other in spirit and in practice.  Our response to this 
week's terrorism will mark the proclivities of our future course.

I have been challenged to write a narrow essay on privacy particularly.  I 
regret to say that I cannot.  My heart is elsewhere, and I have moved from 
privacy alone as a tool for my aspirations.  I could not be as eloquent 
about privacy in isolation, because in truth I see no longer the isolation 
in which I was previously so comfortable.

And thus I call for a chorus of voices to ring out and to proclaim the 
welter of specific consequences of walking down the path of individual 
liberty.  My heart has been full in reading the spontaneous upwelling of 
sentiment from Perry Metzger, Sean Hastings, Matt Blaze, and Blanc 
Weber.  Add to these your own voice, your own words, your own concerns.  I 
seek the vision of a harmonious chorus without director, a single message 
rising in many throats, the motive wheel without a center.

Speak about whatever you will, but speak true and speak from the 
heart.  There are enough whose hearts are privacy and anonymity that I have 
nothing but faith that chorus shall contain enough of those voices.  My 
heart is with you all, even though I shall not lead the charge.  To touch 
one's own true voice may need the passage through ordeal, yet persevere, 
for everyone can find it.

May peace arise from you all, and may the power of your souls become 
manifest in your deeds.

Eric Hughes



[Please feel free to post this at will.]





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