blog (category: politics)
cultivating freedom
The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.
The point of an economy, even a dynamic economy, is not to have more and more; it is to liberate us from the economic--to provide a material platform from which we may go on to build the good life. That's the alternative American dream.
-- Jerome M. Segal, Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple of Living (found via No Impact Man: An alternative American dream)
MidTown Cleveland cracked by Iraqi e-Army?
One nice thing about online RSS newsreaders is that their scheduled caching often holds onto items that have been taken down.
This post showed up in the Midtown Cleveland blog in my Google Reader this morning, though it was already removed when I went looking for it on their site:
Hacked
This site was hacked by the Iraqi e-Army. Tell your Mr Fool Bush to get outside our country; Iraq, or all American websites will be hacked. All the database of this website was hacked, all names, contact numbers, zip codes, everything is with us now. Bye - actually, see you a lot later.
Lessig's shift of focus
I count Lawrence Lessig as one of my real-time mentors, (though he doesn't know me.) I've been very influenced by his work on intellectual property and his views on free software, open spectrum, Free Culture.
Considering he is at the very forefront of his field, his decision to change the focus of all his attention -- especially to a field where he'll face severe opposition and in which he is "nothing more than a beginner" -- is remarkable and, I think, admirable.
He'll continue as CEO and boardmember of Creative Commons, boardmember of the iCommons Project, and head of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, but:
I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues.
"Corruption" [...] will be the focus of my work.
I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.
I am 99.9% confident that the problem I turn to will continue exist when this 10 year term is over. But the certainty of failure is sometimes a reason to try. That's true in this case.
Instead, what I come with is a desire to devote as much energy to these issues of "corruption" as I've devoted to the issues of network and IP sanity. This is a shift not to an easier project, but a different project. It is a decision to give up my work in a place some consider me an expert to begin work in a place where I am nothing more than a beginner.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Required Reading: the next 10 years, Lessig Blog; (emphasis mine)
org flatness through info flow
We [at Google] have something called a project database, which is visible to all employees, which lists all the projects, and we use that to manage a lot of the remote stuff. There's also something called the snippets database where people put in what they are working on.
... a culture which requires, if you will, people to write down what they're doing and then other people get a chance to see it, even if they're not in the same place. That seems kind of obvious but it's not true in almost any organization. At other organizations they can't see what the other organization is doing, and the CEO can't see either because the management prevents communication.
So you get a flatter organization -- flatness is not a function of reporting hierarchy, it's a function of information flow.
-- Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google Inc., My [Fred Vogelstein's] other interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Wired)
wisdom of crowds vs experts
[...] 'all of us know more than any of us' (including the professionals) and that self-experimentation combined with information-sharing with millions of other self-experimenters could lead to a much healthier population at much lower cost than the dysfunctional system we have now. This is another example of the Wisdom of Crowds [link mine].
[...]
While self-experimentation may lack objectivity [...] it has the unarguable advantage of taking into account individual variability (our bodies and minds are all different), and the personal engagement of the 'patient' must inevitably improve its efficacy. [...] It is only learned helplessness, and the outrageous prohibition of self-experimentation [...] that diminished self-experimentation from the principal means by which we accepted responsibility for our own health, to "inadvisable", "rash", and "irresponsible" behaviour. We now defer to 'professionals' to tell us what's good for us, at huge and arguably unnecessary cost to the 'health care system', our self-reliance, our independence, and our sense of personal responsibility.
-- Dave Pollard, Self-Experimentation: For More Than Just Diets (How to Save the World)
Experts certainly have a role, but they can hijack the agenda and deprive the whole process of legitimacy just because they have so much knowledge. So one of the problems with democracy that we have in the world right now is that people just don't think it achieves anything for them - that's why you get participation declining so dramatically in many Western democracies. [...] The experts have to provide the information that allows lay people to make informed decisions, without taking over the process.
-- Thomas Homer-Dixon, Worldchanging Interview: Thomas Homer-Dixon (Worldchanging.com)
leveraging the web in democratic politics
A crowd can become smart mainly because it is a collection of individuals, who're different, who have different knowledge, different resources, different viewpoints, and somehow a synergy emerges in what they do. Their different pieces complement each other, and something bigger becomes possible. It isn't that there's any great wisdom in averaging what a lot of people think. A vote by majority is pretty dumb. Lots of people applying their unique skills to working together - that can be really big.
-- Flemming Funch, The Dumbness of Crowds (Ming the Mechanic)
But most efforts at such teledemocracy so far, such as [...] www.vote.com, or even [...] www.moveon.org, are simply new versions of the public opinion poll. Billing themselves as the next phase in a truly populist and articulated body politic, the sites amount to little more than an opportunity for politicians to glean the gist of a few more uninformed, knee-jerk reactions to the issue of the day. Vote.com, as the name suggests, reduces representative democracy to just another marketing survey. Even if it is just the framework for a much more substantial future version, it is based on a fundamentally flawed vision of push-button politics.
-- Douglas Rushkoff, Open Source Democracy (txt / pdf)
pioneer on the plain
I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night, and attended the Kerry/Edwards rally in d-town Cleveland this afternoon. Came for the sensationalism and stayed for the fluff and clapping.
I am a Democrat only by registration.
In line for the rally, a bald, moustachioed man in front of me giraffed his head around the shoulder of the man just up from him, and petitioned the other's thoughts on John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as running mate. The questioner didn't wait for the assent that came, but hurriedly gave accordance and produced his own opinion. A short while later he asked the same question of the older, impatient woman behind me, who approved as well. She was quick to turn away, though, and continue searching out a hiding place to stow the umbrella she wouldn't be allowed to bring inside.
I tried to -- and then not to -- prepare for my turn, which I saw coming from miles away. With every slight twist of his head toward me, he triggered a radar blip.
What would I answer? What do I know about this stuff? What do I care about these particulars?
Exasperated, I finally inched forward to blunder into interception, unprepared but unwilling to prolong an inevitability.
He caught my eye and, excited at another opportunity, clucked "So, what do you think of Edwards? Think he's a good choice?"
"Um, well, from what standpoint? I mean -- as a possible Vice President, or for enhancing Kerry's electability?"
He stared.
I goofed down my misguided course, "Like, I'm just voting Democrat as a kind of compromise anyway."
"A compromise? Oh, for Nader?"
"Well, I don't know."
"Oh, for Bush?."
And he intoned it like a question, but turned away from me like it was a statement, and a final one at that.
My mind grinded to bind together words denying such a pronunciation and endorsing an idealism and zeal that supersedes the imperfect silliness of these "leaders". But I got hung up on the fact that self-unheeded, these are pretensions, and silently dropped my words all over the sidewalk, like when I try to carry too many groceries in from the car.
This bald, moustachioed man found a diversion in the vendor approaching with $5 (or 3-for-$10) buttons depicting Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld as the "Asses of Evil".
I am a Democrat only by confusion.
de foi trempée
Still don't know where I'm headed after camp is over, late August. After a year of shifting about, around Europe, etc, since uni-graduation, I'm ready to settle down a bit and become more seriously involved in a more permanent community and enterprise. I've been thinking SanFran and the west coast in general, or South America, (to continue with Spanish,) but so far I haven't got any leads on jobs or living situations -- mostly because I haven't yet pursued these issues much.
I was thinking Seattle for awhile, as I'd heard much about the city's vitality and the area's natural beauty, but a Seattlite here at camp and has spoken some to me about the city's current downturn. I want to go someplace that is on the rise actively and culturally, but don't have my finger on the pulse of these things.
I've commented often in the past year on noting that nearly all travelling Canadians display prominently their country's flag, generally sewn/ironed into backpack or jacket. My supposition followed that they are tired of being pegged American, and want to distinguish and separate themselves from the stereotypes and assumptions that this pegging brings. I still know so little about my northern neighbor, though -- the one some of us call "America Jr." Today I ran across a well-written essay, My Canada by Stephen Downes leading me to consider venturing further north of the border than simply the casino and bars in Niagara Falls.
What we are seeing today is the beginning of the fruits of our labour. We set out to build a nation based not on a particular language or culture or even a particular geography, but as a set of background assumptions and institutions. Our national character is defined not by some fundamental founding document and predefined identity but rather by the institutions and measures we take in order to ensure well-being and harmony among our people.
In the individual and communitarian sense, the empowerment of the individual means giving that individual the space (and the means - see the first principle) to find, and express, their own identity, to realize their own potential. What we have seen in this nation is that people find their identity in a myriad of ways, some, by preserving and promoting their culture, others, by the free expression of thought and empotion in literature, art or song, others, through an affinity with a higher power, with their ancestors, or with the natural world, and still others by souping up, jacking and racing a Camero.
The Visage of War
When I'm home I keep my head out of the general sort of global happenings -- the daily, the new -- to a large extent. I don't read the paper, (except the funnies,) or watch the news, and online I can avoid headlines and seek out the information I want - read about the parts of humanity I might be interested in. Here, it's easier in some respects, as my sphere of life is kind of outside the world, and global goings-on don't seem to affect me quite as much.
I am not completely isolated from things, though: My coworkers like to update me on the doings of crazy Americans, like the sniper and his short-lived reign of terror, and Bush and his own, larger scale and more terrifying, reign. And, living in a hostel, I meet others from around the world each day, and must confess to them that I share the same nationality of a lot of loony, shortsighted, and ignorant folks. I won't apologize for being American, nor am I embarrassed, but I will only be held accountable for the current situation to the extent that every other person in the world is responsible to the same degree. Everyone's a loony and everyone's shortsighted and ignorant. And everyone's responsible. I don't know enough about details to discuss politics. I don't want to. I know too much of it is selfishness and power struggle and bullshit, and I'm tired of it. I don't want war, or terror, or division.
I am not proud to be an American, nor am I ashamed. I have no reason to be proud (to hold respect for myself) because I was born in one place rather than another. I have no reason to be ashamed specifically of the actions of a people born near me. Any self respect and ashamedness I hold deals with me, and deals with humanity, and is not held to an artificial border of state.
Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
-- H.D. Thoreau, Walden
luft of center
Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
--Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II (source: Bush Watch)