(Aka: Understanding Our Goldfish Bowl)

Let us take a moment to ponder our friend the goldfish, let us suppose he swims merrily in his tank, I ask of you my dear reader and colleague a simple question? Is our goldfish free? Perhaps you may think not, as it is clearly within a bowl, unfree to swim in its natural habitat. Although perhaps even if our goldfish swam within the sea, undoubtably, he would be filled with vile fear of the sharks and larger fish, operating on a basis of procuring survival and avoiding death. Perhaps in this case, our goldfish friend, while free to swim all they wish in the ocean, isunfree from the pain and chaos of the bloody natural world. Perhaps then we are to decide this a natural unfreedom, and our goldfish is better off safe and cozy within the world which he maintains the free will to swim up and down left and right, within the safety of the bowl. Although, we must notice the empty bowl, and the sadness of the fish, sometimes dying more prematurely than in the wild due to his confines, while his needs are met, his telos will never be. Thus, we begin to add to the bowl, opening more space, more rocks to pick apart, hiding spots in the bush, perhaps other fishes to bond and fight with, thus upgrading from a mere bowl to an aquarium more resembling the state the humble goldfish was plucked from. We have provided then our goldfish through these additions, additional freedoms, freedom to hide, freedom to indulge curiosity, freedom to choose where and how he can interact with his world. If adequatelydesigned, this aquarium may very well prolong the life of our humble goldfish. So once again, I ask you, given these additions, is our goldfish free? or at the very least more so than he was? Why? If you do not have an answer by now, I hope to give you the tools for one by the end of this short essay. 

We then, are not unlike the goldfish, deeming our state of nature chaotic and harsh, limited to only the natural chaos inside of us which for thousands of years kept us breeding and existent. Fueled to procure enough for ourselves and those we are charged with caring of, neglecting the desires and chaos within others, only aspiring to survival. And thus, violence and bloodshed follow beget themselves as a natural reaction to said survivalist competition. If only then, there was a way to organize our behavior, this chaos, this competition, this drive for natural survival for something beneficial of all. “We may recall that government in general is understood as a way of acting to affect the way in which individuals conduct themselves (Foucault 1988a)” (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996) Thus, just as for goldfish, we became in a way its government, while our governments achieve the same objectives for ourselves. Let us then consider ouraquarium so to speak, and the ‘governmentality’ that comes along with it. Like the goldfish, we are free, willing, and powerful enough to move in the space of our society, to choose a mate, to indulge curiosity, and to choose how we spend of our free time. Yet, the question of what precisely ‘Neoliberal Governmentality’ means within this context remains. Although the beauty within this question is that we must only peer closely beyond our bowl, and upon investigation of its lines cracks and bounds we arrive at a conclusion. Though we seemingly have an immense freedom of choice, almost all of said choices have become framed under certain economic factors, which school we choose for which job, both of which will dominate our time, becomes framed under the auspices of the free market, even our mating habits and raising habits of our young become pinned against a the notion of homo economicus. (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996)For which parent doesn’t want a good life for their child, where they can afford the necessities and luxuries they desire? This is exactly the nature of neo-liberal governmentality, we have been given a wide-open aquarium, where we can exist and swim freely, and even if we dislike one aquarium, we can often hop into the next, most of which are free from the vile chaos of nature. Yet, with all our choices framed under economic mechanisms, or put another way, with the walls of the aquarium being made of such economic mechanisms, we must ask the question with the largest implication, are we still free?

Considering the growing trend of things like school, healthcare, and environmental protection, being framed under competitive economic terms. Thus, as these traditionally state held priorities are taken upon a neo-liberal government, we must contend with the fact that “the rational conduct of government must be intrinsically linked to the natural, private-interest-motivated conduct of free, market exchanging individuals because the rationality of these individuals’ conduct is, precisely, what enables the market to function optimally in accordance with its nature.” (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996) Thus, in an instance where a preference for free market competition an eroded state support system emerges, so while one under neo-liberal governmentality, has the will to go to the doctor for a broken leg, or to school for an education, in the advent of non-economic viability of such choices, our freedom becomes indeed limited. I argue then considering this analysis, we are indeed unfree to a degree, while I concede, that neo-liberalism has been successful in raising us out of certain states of nature and allowing for freedoms of expression and existence within social domains. It indeed remains a tyrant to those who have the unlikely fate of falling into passions outside of what is deemed economically viable. In a sense, failing the criteria “at least in part, what Foucault meant when he spoke of a permanent agonism: the endless task of finding different ways of establishing the play between regulation and openness, between constraint and possible transformation? Might not this concern for truth and existence be also a concern for freedom as requiring an endless exploration of thepossibilities for the always-to-be-re-invented activity of individual and collective self-creation?” (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996)

Thus, we can understand, while we are free to swim within our fishbowls, and exist socially in ways which we want, wholly unfree, to change our fishbowls themselves, such is the case whenever something establishes itself as hegemonic, it becomes too vast to chip away at without risking the stability of all. Thus, in a sense leaving us captive to its design, and for fear of tumbling something great for something less then better, we end up sacrificing all we have had. By no means is my proclamation of ‘Unfreedom’ a proclamation of a return to anarchy or communism, but rather one of a creation of the so called ‘Permanent Agonism.’ (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996) For the separation of the social from the political within neo-liberalism, has led us to times of crisis. 

​Fear of intervention of the state, under the non-interventionist logic of neo-liberalism, leads to justification of inequality, consider then popular phrasing of ‘The Personal Is Political’ within feminist struggles, where feminists were successful in pointing out the non-interventionist logic on social issues as a flaw. (Barry, Osborne, Rose 1996) Additionally, the fact that decades of neo-liberal policy lead to a ‘stalling of social mobility’, under increasing inequality, culminating in anti-political-politicians like Trump dominating the political scene. (Sandel 2022)These issues only stand to compound under neo-liberalism, because like the fish in bowl whose owner has grown tired of feeding it, and instead allows the fish to peck at a failing auto feeder, the availability of space and resources compound away. Our access to crucial factors like education and housing, have also decreased, (Thorne 2010) in effect, leaving us with a smaller aquarium to inhabit, and with owners to scared to examine our aquarium. Thus, just like how in the first paragraph of this essay we have seen that we can make the fish freer by adding to its aquarium, it also becomes more unfree through the subtraction of these resources. Therefore, toachieve a freedom beyond the confines of how we choose to swim and spend our time, we must also look to achieve a freedom to radically understand and shape our aquariums. 

Works Cited

BARRY, Andrew, OSBORNE, Thomas and ROSE, Nikolas S. (eds.), 1996. Foucault and political reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism, and rationalities of government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p19-34 ISBN 978-0-226-03825-4. JC261.F68 F68 1996

VAN MILL, David, 1995. Hobbes’s Theories of Freedom. The Journal of Politics. Online. 1995. Vol. 57, no. 2, p. 443–459. DOI 10.2307/2960315. [Accessed 2 December 2023].

BROWN, Wendy, 2015. Undoing The Demos. ISBN 978-1-935408-53-6.

SANDEL, Michael, 2022. Democracy’s discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times. In: Democracy’s discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times. Harvard University Press. p. 2–6. ISBN 978-0-674-27071-8.

THORNE, Ashley, 2010. College Tuition vs. Home Prices vs. CPI…No Comment by Ashley Thorne | NAS. . Online. 20 July 2010. Available from: https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/college_tuition_vs_home_prices_vs_cpi_n o_comment [Accessed 28 November 2023].