Spoiler Alert – this review will reveal sundry details of the episode.
The Prisoner, in the form of AMC’s new series, ends with epispde six, Checkmate. Much of what one might have suspected is confirmed: The Village is a place in one’s mind, we learn that Number 6 has the chance to run The Village, and he takes that opportunity, replacing the community administrator, Number 2.
(Number 2, by the way, lives in Palais Two, while many other residents of this imaginary place live in much smaller A-frame cottages; the imaginary Village is no egalitarian dream.)
Number 6, at the end of the episode having chosen to run The Village, commits himself to making it a better place.
And here is how the new version of The Prisoner differs from the old: the old community was a real place, and Number 6 had no interest in running it. In this way, I think the old series was actually brighter, and the new one a darker vision.
Now I know that the community in the new miniseries is meant to be a therapeutic place, but therapy so coerced and controlled is the definition of a dystopia. It’s hardly a place one would wish to live.
Ask yourself: if you could run a community, and shape the lives of all its residents with only your judgment of their betterment, would you do so?
The answer tells much about a person. To answer yes is to assume a God-like judgment. One often thinks about what one might do, what powers one might have, without considering how these powers would vastly exceed one’s judgment, even if one should magically acquire them.
And yet, it’s certainly intoxicating, for some, the thought of shaping a political community, of directing it in a particular way, through one’s vision.
The insistence that a political community requires a political leader who will bend and twist and cajole and exhort is mere pride.
Hayek was right, about order: apart from minimal rules of law and organization, one should strive for a spontaneous order. The free and voluntary transactions and associations among common people will produce a better community than any politician’s proud vision, any bureaucrat’s smug assertion of tenure and authority.
I’ve had fun blogging about The Prisoner. That imaginary world may be dark, but our own experiences offer lots of light moments. It could only be a free and optimistic society – just like America – that would develop and protect blogging, about any number of ideas, stories, and topics.
A blogger can sit at a computer, at a time of his choosing, and write on any topic he wants, as often as he wants. There’s freedom and optimism in that – The Prisoner one day, or for several, and something different thereafter.
One of the many reasons – from among others far more precious – to be grateful in America this Thanksgiving.