In our endeavor to create decentralized versions of the most popular web applications — dUber, dAirbnb, dFacebook, dAmazon et al — we are working towards a digital fanghsheng — giving people back the control of their data, of their assets, of their money, of their choices, of their lives.

1.3. Types of Freedom

In terms of autonomy as per the digital fangsheng, some of the most consequential questions to ask:

Do we look to be free from the capture of our data by the GAFA or are we free to choose what happens to our data, including the choice to have data custodians if one so wishes? Is Bitcoin signalling the separation of State from its Monetary Supply, just as Secular states did for State and Church?

These are these two flavors of freedom — the freedom to, and the freedom from. This has played out in history in the ongoing conversation of religious freedom since the Age of Enlightenment, as pioneered by the US and France with their respective postures of freedom from and freedom to.

The “freedom to” practice any religion, and The “freedom from” having to practice any religion

The Freedom To

This was instituted for the first time by the First Amendment of the US Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

As a new country, the US of 1789 lacked a significant history of religious practice with all its challenges but was well aware of the doctrinal oppression that a monopolistic religion can bring forth. Thus, it wanted to move from a single religion — as the state-sanctioned compulsion legitimizing the Christendom of Europe.

Instead, it postured itself as a safe haven for any religion. This allowed people from all religions to display what they believed in and to which Gods they wanted to belong to. This is referred to as passive secularism since the State is not actively involved in taking religion out of the lives of its people as long as it does not step on another’s religious life.

The Freedom From

This was instituted for the French state as protected by Article XI of the French Declaration of Rights of Man

The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.

France, having had a long history of Catholic compulsions, wanted to free itself from its grips. It moved towards a secular state, one where the state ensured no one could display their religious affiliations in public offices, being so scarred by the one religion that dominated most of life for ages.

The French approach is referred to as assertive secularism since the State goes out of its way to prevent any single religion from getting accepted as the popular one.

This means the French state does not even keep records of religious or ethnic data in its census, and has state-sanctioned replacements for the more important Christian rituals, such as a Republican (carried out by the Republic of France, thus, secular) wedding for the Catholic wedding, the Republican baptism for the Catholic one, the Lady of the Republic for Notre Dame (Mother of Jesus). In that, the state became the new p̵s̵e̵u̵d̵o̵-religion and the only religion in town.

Essentially, in public and civil offices, the US moved from one religion (Christendom/Protestanism) to many religions, whereas France moved from one religion (Catholicism) to zero religion.

In order to signal acceptance of all religions, the US state would officially celebrate festivities from a wide array of religions, such as Christmas for Christians, Diwali for Hindus, Eid for Muslims, whereas the French state is always vehemently silent about that. The religious pluralism as protected by the US posture of passive secularism has eventually lead to the proliferation of religious thought as long, which is catered to by those in public offices to get more votes. This has resulted in the US becoming a hyper-religious country over the last 200 years, in fact, the most religious in all of the “developed” world.

Contrasting the Two Freedoms

Generally speaking, these two types of freedom (the freedom-to and the freedom-from) have been referred to as positive and negative liberties respectively, as was first popularized with Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958) —

“I am slave to no man” as an example of negative liberty (freedom-from)

“I am my own master” as an example of positive liberty (freedom-to)

The freedom flavors (the freedom-from and the freedom-to approaches) are based on a spatial metaphor. It is as if freedom is a journey in space, from the place of being constrained to the destination where one is no longer constrained. The passive secular model focuses more on the destination via its freedom-to that destination, and the assertive the source via its freedom-from that source.

This contrast between the flavors was discussed at length in the Constitutional committees of both Turkey and India (during the time when the modern states were founded) where they referenced the historical postures of secularism from France and the US.

Turkey, primarily being Muslim populated, chose the French model in order to keep Islam in check, while India chooses the US model since it had so many already. As part of the keeping Islam in check, Turkey instituted the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Turkish: Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, normally referred to simply as the Diyanet) “to execute the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, enlighten the public about their religion, and administer the sacred worshiping places” [source].

As a strange twist of fate, the current head of the Turkish state has empowered the Diyanet to use for Islamic propaganda for controlling the masses using religion.

From its Wiki entry:

According to some observers (David Lepeska, Svante Cornell), since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, the mission of the Diyanet has changed — from one of exercising state oversight over religious affairs and ensuring that religion did not challenge the Turkish republic’s “ostensibly secular identity”, to that of promoting mainstream Hanafi Sunni Islam, “a conservative lifestyle at home, and projecting “Turkish Islam abroad”

Trying to go from one to no-religion, the latter became a garb to invite that one religion via the no-religion institution. The same can be seen in the fervent zeal of the atheist trying to convert the other side. Evangelism, as the movement of conversion to bring everyone into the one and the same fold — be it of atheism, ignosticism, Islam (as in Turkey) — always lurks around the postures and practices of assertive secularism via its negative liberty respectively.

In the case of France, the evangelical attitudes in its policy framings laid the foundation for “integration” sans barriers and beyond our individual differences. This is depicted in the “Fraternité, ou la Mort!” (Fraternity or Death!) — where everyone must embody a “we are in this together” (integrated with each other) attitude towards each other. Thus, an African-French person is just a French person, while an African-American, is American, and also with African heritage as it reflects the positive liberty posture.

When The Daily Show host Trevor Noah made a joke about the French National Team’s victory at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, saying “Africa won the World Cup!” since so many of the players were of Sub-Saharan-African descent, the French Ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud wrote a letter to the Show where he berated Noah for defining the team as “African”:

Unlike the United States of America, France does not refer to its citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us, there is no hyphenated identity. Roots are an individual reality. […] By calling them an African team, it seems you are denying their Frenchness. This, even in jest, legitimizes the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French.

Hyphenated Identities

In response, Noah asked, “Why cannot they be both [French and African]?”

Because the French state does not operate on the modality of positive liberty of the US that makes room for a varied taxonomy of its citizens. The French state does not even collect this type of data in its census, unlike the US. However, the unfortunate dark side to this rationale is the forgetting of the colonial “roots” [the Ambassador’s own words in his letter], which serves well in reenforcing the one and only French identity, as they say here, “typiquement français”.

India, rather wanting to embody the diversity by taxonomy approach of the US, chose the model of passive secularism to make space for the multitude of religious practices already in place in the country since ages. This went along well with the framing of “united in diversity” of Gandhi (India’s founding father), Nehru (India’s first Prime Minister), and the other founding figures of the post-colonial state.

However, the dark side of passive secularism is it could reinforce segregation based on race, religion or other markers, as each camp is separated to make space for enjoying their right to exercise their freedom as long as they do not intervene. This became instrumental in the “separate but equal” interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution as confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896.

as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by “race” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

As history has shown us, the freedom-from in course of time morphs into the freedom-to, showing us that the two sides act more like a Ying-Yang, co-creating each other, like the two sides of the same bitcoin, rather than a strict dichotomy.

1.4. Crypto Laïcité

In our blockchain rhetoric, when we use the term, autonomous software, are we claiming that it allows us to be free from the human peskiness (think of TTP), thereby, being free to have “[c]ompletely non-reversible transactions” since “[w]ith the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads”?

With the eventual letting go of the monopoly of monetary supply, will the state go from one money to many monies via a passive cryptoism or one money to no-money via an assertive cryptoism?

The assertive cryptoism was in part attempted in the Soviet dogma of “end of capital” where the final goal was to remove the need of any capital with an ecology of balances, since our world is a spherical globe. But this needs all of the states in the world to adopt this no-money posture, something that fostered the expansionist attitude of the Soviet state towards Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South-East Asia. Transplanted to now, imagine a global blockchain of balances: who owes what to whom when, where and why.