News:

Testimonial: "None of you seem aware of quite how bad you are. I mean I'm pretty outspoken on how bad the internet has gotten, but this is up there with the worst."

Main Menu

'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans

Started by Juana, February 01, 2012, 05:36:35 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Juana

Poor phrasing on my part. I have to live in whatever the government structure is for a damn long time and I'd prefer to try to salvage the republic. I'm down with jeering, but sitting on my ass as I do instead trying to fix it is watching the republic sink and imo, doesn't make me much better than the assholes who are drilling holes in the hull. Again, I certainly don't think one person with a finger in the dike can fix anything, but enough fingers might do the trick.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 01, 2012, 09:53:46 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on February 01, 2012, 09:52:17 PM
^^^This. I don't feel like I can let things lie as they are or let them get worse without trying to do something, and if a million people do a little something, it begins to build up. There was decades of build-up before the women's and civil rights movements - legal fights and on the ground. I like to think that the continued existence of the OWS folks, for example, is the groundwork for something like that.

Okay.  I'll buy that.

Give me a root cause of failure, and let's see what, if anything, we can do about it.
Corporatism. We've tugged corporations semi-out of government before and I think we can do it again.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on February 01, 2012, 10:07:23 PM
Poor phrasing on my part. I have to live in whatever the government structure is for a damn long time and I'd prefer to try to salvage the republic. I'm down with jeering, but sitting on my ass as I do instead trying to fix it is watching the republic sink and imo, doesn't make me much better than the assholes who are drilling holes in the hull. Again, I certainly don't think one person with a finger in the dike can fix anything, but enough fingers might do the trick.

Give me a workable idea, and I'm with you.  God knows my ideas flopped. 

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 01, 2012, 09:40:53 PM
Quote from: Net on February 01, 2012, 08:23:44 PM
Don't worry, I'm not even going to try to change my local government since it's protected by the white blood cells of gods.

Who said anything about government?  Government - at any level - isn't the problem.  Your local "government" is just as helpless as any of its citizens.  I'd say the same goes for the federal government, except that it's full of insane people.  Insane people that were put there by "The People", who cannot make the connection between putting them there and insane results.

The problem is the ENTIRE system.  Corporations, "government", the people, everything.  It's grown too complex to manage, which just makes the people attempting to manage it (for a given value of "manage") more insane.

Right now, local government is the only level at which most of us stand any chance at making a change. Our best hope is to elect local-level politicians who support campaign finance reform.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel on February 01, 2012, 10:19:50 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 01, 2012, 09:40:53 PM
Quote from: Net on February 01, 2012, 08:23:44 PM
Don't worry, I'm not even going to try to change my local government since it's protected by the white blood cells of gods.

Who said anything about government?  Government - at any level - isn't the problem.  Your local "government" is just as helpless as any of its citizens.  I'd say the same goes for the federal government, except that it's full of insane people.  Insane people that were put there by "The People", who cannot make the connection between putting them there and insane results.

The problem is the ENTIRE system.  Corporations, "government", the people, everything.  It's grown too complex to manage, which just makes the people attempting to manage it (for a given value of "manage") more insane.

Right now, local government is the only level at which most of us stand any chance at making a change. Our best hope is to elect local-level politicians who support campaign finance reform.

Problem is, in my experience local government is powerless to affect the changes that need to occur.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Juana

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 01, 2012, 10:09:19 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on February 01, 2012, 10:07:23 PM
Poor phrasing on my part. I have to live in whatever the government structure is for a damn long time and I'd prefer to try to salvage the republic. I'm down with jeering, but sitting on my ass as I do instead trying to fix it is watching the republic sink and imo, doesn't make me much better than the assholes who are drilling holes in the hull. Again, I certainly don't think one person with a finger in the dike can fix anything, but enough fingers might do the trick.

Give me a workable idea, and I'm with you.  God knows my ideas flopped. 


On a your-finger-in-a-dike level, I don't think there's very much that will give immediate or impressive results. It would probably be a lot of plugging along and probably a lot of it won't matter (but at least you did something). Teaching, getting involved with and/or making donations to groups that do things to try to bail out the sinking boat or at least do social work (Planned Parenthood, for example), and so on.

On a many-fingers-in-a-dike level: it's expensive and takes decades, but legal action is the tried and true way to start building something solid. It rarely grants a mile, especially not immediately, but it gives an inch at a time and with time enough inches become a mile. Of course, it needs to be accompanied by larger, wider action, which is really the problem I think because we need a new model. OWS has galvanized a lot of people and is a pretty solid showing of the kind of support something like this would have, but a lot of the old methods have lost their value. Everybody and their brother has done marches and the cops have generally gotten smarter about dealing with them (Oakland PD and such aside). Petitions I don't think wield the same weight anymore either, partly because the internet has made it really, really easy to sign them and a list of numbers on a screen is not as impressive as page after page of signatures. We'd need something new and I don't know what that would be.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

The Johnny


A lot of people seem to think that any change will come in the manner of a "revolution" within a matter of months when people for some magical reason "take to the streets". A lot of people seem to refuse to do the little things in daily life that could inch towards that, like personal integrity, well defined and thought morals, empathy.

Everybody wants to be a hero in a revolution; but helping others without getting huge social positive-reinforcing and a thousand pats on his back? or actually learning about the possible systemic causes of the situation? Im sure most would say "fuck that".

The individual power we each have might be little on the great scheme, but locally we can influence how things go to our perceived notion of "doing right"...

So good luck showing the screeching monkeys that your notion of "doing right" is more than your subjective perception and that it has some semblance of reality/logic behind it.
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

Quote from: Joh'Nyx on February 02, 2012, 05:15:01 AM
Everybody wants to be a hero in a revolution; but helping others without getting huge social positive-reinforcing and a thousand pats on his back? or actually learning about the possible systemic causes of the situation? Im sure most would say "fuck that".

I've taken in it upon myself to convince people I barely know to bite into some research of their own. People have been surprisingly receptive.

Quote from: Joh'Nyx on February 02, 2012, 05:15:01 AM
So good luck showing the screeching monkeys that your notion of "doing right" is more than your subjective perception and that it has some semblance of reality/logic behind it.

I've noticed people use all sorts of things to try and keep hideous truths from seeping in: sports, religion, video games, hedonism, magickque, and I see I can add postmodernism. Whatever gets you through the night.


Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on February 01, 2012, 10:07:23 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 01, 2012, 09:53:46 PM
Give me a root cause of failure, and let's see what, if anything, we can do about it.
Corporatism. We've tugged corporations semi-out of government before and I think we can do it again.

8):hi5::|
P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

The Johnny


This might be thought of derailing the thread or whatever, if so, split it (even do the discourse seems to have wandered in many directions).


What do you guys do to promote the creation/existance of your ideal society? I implicitly assume that there are very differing viewpoints, and for precision/size sake, maybe speak of the most relevant issues.

What i personally consider the biggest problem in the world is the incongruencies between "what-we-want-the-world-to-be" and "what-the-world-is"; in other words, how ideology is a result of our most primitive and unchecked desires.

What i DO to solve this "problem" involves myself and others. First regarding myself, i try to take my education in the humanities seriously (reading and writing constantly) and doing self reflection exersices thru different manners.

Regarding my peers/friends i try to delve into why a value/opinion is held so dearly, and i confront them when i think something is "wrong".

My school's own field work revolves around interviewing people, and within the process of the interviews, the questions that are asked help the interviewee to get more awareness of their own ideas and thought processes, while the answers they give can give the interviewer an innovative perspective on how to see a situation/issue.

Politically/job-wise, in whichever job i end up, ill probably be still working with interviews which goes along with what i exposed about a process that facilitates self-reflection and comparison.

So basicly my idea of promoting "positive change" in my subjective opinion is based on a small and local scale assist in the process of self-reflection which i think is the key to a less rigid and fantasious manner of perceiving "how-things-should-be". I mean, the things i see others do are "plantones" which is basically sit around camping with some big cardboard saying how "undignified" at some social issue you are without actually doing anything and just get ignored by authorities, or go to parades advocating gay or womens or anti-violence slogans, but i dont find that they have any real impact.

HOw about you guys?
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

Cramulus

Quote from: Joh'Nyx on February 02, 2012, 09:41:32 PMWhat do you guys do to promote the creation/existance of your ideal society?

That's a great question.
That's a huge question.

speaking in really broad, vague terms----------

I work from the memetic model. When I think about the boiling network of ideas, I see myself as a communication node, and meanwhile I am also a member of numerous communication nodes. Signals pass through these nodes, and they're transformed as they travel.

I believe that you have to put the ideal world (the imaginary world you want to live in) in your heart. The best thing you can do is to intensify signals which seem to point towards that world, and discourage signals which pull things away from that world. Feedback is the main thing that transforms a signal. So when somebody says something shitty, sometimes you have to push back at it, challenge it, make the bad signal more difficult to spread. Sometimes you have to ignore the bad signal, rather than feeding it with your attention. It is tricky to determine which is which.

Sometimes a really good idea comes along. You can sense that there's something incredible there. Maybe the idea isn't fully formed yet, but you can tell that it's moving in the right direction. (like the Occupy protests) When you recognize something like that, you have to protect it and care for it. People will get distracted by some detail and miss the real spirit of it (for example "occupy protesters are just lazy hippies with ipads").

The best thing you can do for the world is to find a signal with real power, a shaft of light from the world you want to live in, and allow yourself to be consumed by it. You have to let it work the control panel of your brain, let it use your body and your will to further itself. You will be improved in the process.

This is why we're on a board talking about Discordia -- we sensed something about that idea, we let it enter us, and it transformed us in some way. We have a symbiotic relationship with it - it helps us and we help it. We are willing to use our brains to further the idea and spread it. This forum here is one of Discordia's limbs, you and I like are digits on that limb. The Discordia animal crawls through the infosphere, nudging things, turning things over, leaving its scent everywhere.



Quote from: Sprockets and Widgets, by ECHYou cannot effect a large scale change, and if you make a serious attempt you WILL be neutralized. Instead, each and every one of you should make a conscious effort to effect a small reprogramming of the MACHINE(tm) in a manner that affects you and your immediate surroundings. keep the mutation small, and give it a chance to become effectively contagious. If we all effect a change on our own paradigm, there WILL be an eventual overlap, at which point the large scale change which you have hoped to effect all along will be impossible to stop.

The Johnny

Quote from: Cramulus on February 02, 2012, 10:04:51 PM
I work from the memetic model. When I think about the boiling network of ideas, I see myself as a communication node, and meanwhile I am also a member of numerous communication nodes. Signals pass through these nodes, and they're transformed as they travel.

I do think that its important to have a model in which you visualize yourself working from. For example, im working from the "cognitive scheme" of conscious/unconscious and desire/reality dualities. Its basicly the theory behind the acts.

Quote from: Cramulus on February 02, 2012, 10:04:51 PMI believe that you have to put the ideal world (the imaginary world you want to live in) in your heart.

Castoriadis speaks about the "radical imagination" which is basicly the capability of imagining a different/better world than the actual world as a basic requirement or the first steps needed for an actual change to take place. A lot of people don't put the effort into, or strongly belive that all viable system options have been tried out and have failed (ex. Communist Russia), so they resign themselves politically because that's just "how things are".

Quote from: Cramulus on February 02, 2012, 10:04:51 PMThe best thing you can do is to intensify signals which seem to point towards that world, and discourage signals which pull things away from that world. Feedback is the main thing that transforms a signal. So when somebody says something shitty, sometimes you have to push back at it, challenge it, make the bad signal more difficult to spread. Sometimes you have to ignore the bad signal, rather than feeding it with your attention. It is tricky to determine which is which.

Its very tricky, because when someone starts screeching, and one screeches back at them, the end result is just reinforcing the idea that there is no common ground to discuss at, and that its "us versus them".

Quote from: Cramulus on February 02, 2012, 10:04:51 PMSometimes a really good idea comes along. You can sense that there's something incredible there. Maybe the idea isn't fully formed yet, but you can tell that it's moving in the right direction. (like the Occupy protests) When you recognize something like that, you have to protect it and care for it. People will get distracted by some detail and miss the real spirit of it (for example "occupy protesters are just lazy hippies with ipads").

The best thing you can do for the world is to find a signal with real power, a shaft of light from the world you want to live in, and allow yourself to be consumed by it. You have to let it work the control panel of your brain, let it use your body and your will to further itself. You will be improved in the process.

This is why we're on a board talking about Discordia -- we sensed something about that idea, we let it enter us, and it transformed us in some way. We have a symbiotic relationship with it - it helps us and we help it. We are willing to use our brains to further the idea and spread it. This forum here is one of Discordia's limbs, you and I like are digits on that limb. The Discordia animal crawls through the infosphere, nudging things, turning things over, leaving its scent everywhere.

I think that one of the core ideas behind Discordia is that ideas/perceptions are mostly social constructions, and one supporting the idea that things don't have an inherent meaning opens up the possibility of thinking things in a whole different manner.  Thinking thru the lens of "constructivism" allows to notice how the meaning behind race, gender, class, etc changes over time and that it doesn't have anything to do with "essence"

Quote from: Sprockets and Widgets, by ECHYou cannot effect a large scale change, and if you make a serious attempt you WILL be neutralized. Instead, each and every one of you should make a conscious effort to effect a small reprogramming of the MACHINE(tm) in a manner that affects you and your immediate surroundings. keep the mutation small, and give it a chance to become effectively contagious. If we all effect a change on our own paradigm, there WILL be an eventual overlap, at which point the large scale change which you have hoped to effect all along will be impossible to stop.

Yes exactly, instead of everybody trying to be "an hero" thru the methods of slacktivism (fed with ridiculous tropes like YOU ARE THE ONE and other junk) one should focus on the hard to notice (and sometimes costly to do) little things that make the path for a "better society".

Maybe im rambling a bit, but its a topic that i find interesting, because i know most people in this board arent content with how things are, so, sort of like comparing strategies.

But Cram, i understood waht you said mostly on a theorical level, but how do you act this out? Is it mostly oriented to people you talk to on an everyday basis? the internet? your job? strangers? on projects? hobbies?
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

Cramulus

Quote from: Joh'Nyx on February 02, 2012, 11:28:01 PM
But Cram, i understood waht you said mostly on a theorical level, but how do you act this out? Is it mostly oriented to people you talk to on an everyday basis? the internet? your job? strangers? on projects? hobbies?

It's all of those things in small ways.

There is a common theme in all of my projects and creative works. What gives me the most sublime joy is to create self-sustaining systems that are a creative outlet for others.

That is - What I most want is to create something that I can let go of, something that once I stop controlling it, it will walk on its own. And everybody that touches it has a unique way of relating to it that makes the whole thing richer.

Five quick examples-------

----Intermittens magazine, for example, was set up to be a very open-ended creative outlet. I showed people how to do it, and it looked so much fun that other people made their own. Now we've got 12 issues! All it took was one push and the snowball rolled downhill.

----OMGASM - the idea was to start a project/prank movement with no leader. Vex's idea was inspirational: The MachineTM has its own methods of sustaining itself (rewards, routines, social pressure, etc), I wonder if we could come up with an engine which worked the same way, but with better goals/activities/output.

----The Dreaming LARP - this was a live action game set in a dream world. The game activities were things like getting together with your friends and voting on game politics. Essentially, I wanted to tap into existing social circles that already have their own routines and hangout spots... and inject a layer of narrative and game activity. The game also explored the idea of people playing the same game in different parts of the world. When the game was over, I made a magazine about it.

----At a very small magnification, my weekly D&D game is part of this idea. I run a weekly D&D game. My friends come by and play. And it gives us all something to talk about and look forward to. It gives each of my players a stage that they can use to perform for each other. And it's so much fun that one of my newcomer friends wants to start his own game now.

----Here at this community, I hope that my personal creative efforts infect other people. I want other people to initiate projects like Intermittens, WOMP, stupid slang words like "spag", etc etc etc, and contribute things that will make the whole community a richer place for creativity and collaboration.