The Grand Inquisitor Meets Free Information

This is great stuff, Dana—interesting and well written. I wonder, however, if Dostoyevsky subtlety offers another way out of the impossible choice between freedom and bread posed by the Grand Inquisitor. To me, the real reason the Grand Inquisitor saw Christ a threat, was not because he condemned mankind to freedom, but because Christ resisted the Inquisitor’s false dichotomy of choosing either freedom or bread: Christ chose neither-- he chose sacrifice instead-- and that was his sin. That is why he was consigned to the flames.

So, interestingly, Christ’s choice might offer a third and really only possible solution to our technological challenge: rejecting the Grand Inquisitor’s dichotomy, for that is how true freedom is achieved— thus Christ was set free, escaping the flames. In the same way, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov faced a similarly impossible choice between jail (or physical imprisonment) and freedom; yet neither seemed to give him want he needed, which was salvation for his sins. But Raskolnikov learned this, too, was a false dichotomy: freedom from physical imprisonment was a “false” freedom because he would be free of physical constraints but imprisoned within his guilty consciousness. In seeing beyond this dichotomy of (false) freedom and physical imprisonment, Raskolnikov found true salvation for his sins-- freedom of consciousness through responsibility and punishment.

Following Dostoyevsky’s lead, to achieve salvation we need to reject the Grand Inquisitor’s mythology and choose true freedom, which you hint at: technology has the power to provide unlimited freedom and unlimited bread. The next step, then, is repentance and accepting responsibility for our sins. What are those sins? That really is the most difficult question; but also the most urgent: Dostoyevsky’s fire is not purifying but damning and eternal. And, I guess, so will our privacy and freedom if we don't get it right.

-- JonPenney - 11 May 2009