Review 001: THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS

Václav Havel states that the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.

I held down the top-right button on my watch. Waiting for the GPS signal to connect. 15° 19' 44.8" N, 61° 19' 37.2" W. Saved into memory. I selected the hike setting and started off. The beginning was a gentle climb through the jungle mountains of the Caribbean. It was our warm-up before the main section, affording us time to notice the fauna, the trees, and the way life flourishes in abundant water and light.

An hour of warm-up ends. The climb becomes steeper, roots become the trail, and the growth gives shade. My heart rate measured 134 beats per minute. Any silence was drowned out by my breathing.

I cross a small river, and the trail takes a drastic climb upwards. The final climb. A climb to the crest of the crater from a volcanic explosion in an unknown era. The outline surrounds the range, and we stand there observing before we descend straight down.

Two hours in, but only two miles hiked. The jungle does not yield itself to anyone. The gradient ends, the terrain leveling off as I enter the Valley of Desolation. Steam venting from either side of the trail. Though the trail becomes defined as the path you walk, for nothing was predetermined. I cross boiling rivers, stepping on rocks, as sulfur overwhelms the senses.

I stop to look around, look up at where the path had begun. I noticed that humans traverse the land, but their presence is never felt. My heart rate was at 160, felt throughout. Two more hours before we reach the lake, another four to hike out.

Eight hours to complete the hike. I stopped tracking. The map shows a clear path with distance and elevation over the course. My variable heart rate visible, the spikes, the rest, the drain on my body saved, stored and sent.

The movements of man are tracked. The watch that tracks the rhythm of the body. The phone that tracks the rhythm of life. The system that tracks the rhythm of all. An omniscient overseer, which we cannot see, sees all. Modifying behavior that does not align with its defined notion of life.

We conformed without consent, conforming to an unknown mean. The greengrocer of Havel hung a slogan he did not believe in, so the system would leave him in peace. We hang the data of our lives, the heart rate, the transaction, the coordinates, in the same window as a symbol to be left in peace. We live within the lie, as the sign writes itself. We are not a number, not a data point, not a machine to be tuned within a closed system.

Havel wrote in the Soviet bloc era, with ideology nailed to the wall. He warned the West that we were not exempt, that our consumer-technology society imposes the same oversight but without a dictator. He envisioned it; we live within it. A watch on the wrist and an overseer in the cloud.

My phone remained in the tree house, but connected with my watch when in range. A simple day. A day of beauty uncaptured by the system. But a day like any other, where all other metrics are captured. Passing through a labyrinth of systems, each storing a portion of information. The bank collecting data on the transaction between the guide and me, pulling another into the system to be measured later.

The system is integrated into one. Earlier that morning, we stopped with the guide at the village bakery for coffee and banana bread. A graph of three people. Three nodes. The interactions, the transactions forming the directed edges. All of it captured.

But the discussion overlooked the mountains from atop, as the baker described the destruction of Maria. A barren landscape as green turned to brown, for only the wood remained. We stood in silence, picking and eating guava from the tree. The volcanic ash nurtured life from destruction through its rich soil. It was a moment for us that remained hidden.

On a similar morning, the greengrocer of Havel removed his sign from the window. To act, for one moment, as a free man. For the power of the powerless is not made through heroic acts, but in the small refusal to hang a slogan. In the small refusal to be counted. To step outside of the collection.

For the samizdat.

The modern samizdat. It is no longer paper passed in the underground; it is life lived outside the collection. Outside the algorithm. Outside the system. Writing, art, and life are shared and found through the people. Removing ourselves from the collection. Ensuring we cannot be predicted. Invoke the samizdat.

Manipulation comes silently. Can you trust you found these words organically, or was this curated specifically to shape your view, precisely when you needed it most?