Review: On Freedom

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On a sunny day in August 1978, Havel eluded the secret police, made for the Czechoslovak-Polish border, and hiked to the top of a mountain. There he and other Czechoslovak dissidents met Michnik and other Polish ones. They built a fire, ate, and drank vodka. In the photographs, they look happy. Michnik asked Havel to write. Three months later, an underground courier delivered Havel's manuscript to Michnik in Warsaw. From a moment of contact at a border on a mountaintop arose Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless," a profound meditation on freedom.

In the essay, Havel translated the experience of "normalized" Czechoslovakia into general political lessons. "Normalization" meant adaptation to the party line, even though no one believed it expressed anything beyond the convenience of the powerful. Normality in this sense of "normalization" has no substance, only form. It is the habit of saying (and then thinking) what seems necessary, while agreeing implicitly (and then explicitly) that nothing really matters. Life becomes an echo chamber of all the things we never dare to say.

timothy snyder "negative freedom"

predicted Trump's coup attempt

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