Cornel West and Micheal Moore on Democracy Now! today discussing their activities and excitement about participating in the Occupy Wall-Street protests. They complain that the Democrats and Obama are attempting to co-opt the movement, and Amy points out "but you both supported him."
Cornel protests "critical support" based on their fear of the Republican alternatives, "but I think both of us knew that he tended to go too much to the center... The occupy movement has been able to show how both parties are tied to oligarchy."
As per my previous complaint: even the strongest voices of the left openly observe that they asked for that which they protest against. The Green party has been around for over a decade, essentially begging for the chance to represent based on the values that these people claim to support. They have remained a footnote in history because the OWS crowd and the voices of the left have spent the last ten years saying "we wish things were different, but we are too afraid of failure to stand for something else."
The leadership on the left naturally reflects this lack of courage and vision. It is foolish to criticize them for delivering the world that their supporters believed in. Again, it may not be what was wished, but this is what was requested.
I attended a Green Party meeting this evening. There were twelve people there. Aside from myself the youngest is over fifty years old. They are very excited about the OWS, and are trying to address the criticism that they should have more of a presence at the protests, despite the fact that almost all of them have participated.
Politics is not my preferred arena; I gained more from talking to the attendees about who they are and how they experience themselves after the meeting than I did from the agenda items. Additionally, my basic discovery that "I am responsible for my own experience" makes the entire premise behind our governmental system an uncomfortable fit, even if it makes it easy for me to love the DIY Hacktivist types. But all the noise has caught my attention, and struck a chord with the shift I've been making.
I'm working on asking smarter. I'd like the wisdom and courage to ask, and receive, according to my deepest wishes.
(love, joy, freedom, power)
So back around 1998 I was getting, and passing on, BBS delivered messages on feminist lists pointing out that the Taliban sucked and we should really push our government to stop supporting them. My journal entry from 2011/11/11 says I'm really sad about what's happened, but I'm also worried that the way our country reacts might cause more problems than it solves. In 2006 I started trying to convince my mother that she had too much debt to support her house / lifestyle and she ought to cut back and simplify. The bulk of my career so far has involved tech support for efforts to fix Native American and USA government relations, and then reshape how we deal with poverty, and there's the whole Free software and did activism in West Philly thing, blah... Blah. Blah.
You know something? It's nice that the protesters finally decided to get off their ass and take note of the fact that "it is up to us, the people, to decide our future." You know what else? You asked for this crap. Every time you skipped the PTA meetings, and treated your teachers like poorly behaved babysitters, and decided it was easier to watch another movie than volunteer for anything at all, to drive instead of biking, to buy the sweatshop sneakers, to work for that shitty boss instead of risking a pay cut to do something worthwhile, to vote for someone in the two party system, to live on credit cards, and to throw every dollar you ever made at people who were producing what they thought you wanted at (human) costs that you were only too happy to ignore, you said "please sir, can I have some more" to the stupidest vision of what our species can be.
Oh. So now that you can't actually afford an X-Box to piss your life away on, you want to do something that matters?
Fine. Good. But let's not stand here and pretend that it's Wall Street's fault. Whether you knew it or not, this is exactly what you've been asking for. When you're done with the pity party, please have enough sense to go home and create something better.
Yes, that was me having a pity party of my own. It's all very ironic. I was promised that the beatings would continue until morale improved, and that I could listen to Ani sing Recoil in between.
Pretty sure that relationship is dead. Stupid.
I/we forgot the first and most important rule. Love is a verb. My culture frequently obsesses over the worst question possible: "What do you want?"
Quick and obvious observation: Hunger is pretty clear form of want. Want an orange? Pull it off the tree, tear off the skin, eat it. Lucky it's an orange. You know what happens to a cow when I start getting really hungry?
I've had a few reminders recently about womens' experience, particularly as related to street harassment, rape, etc. My point: being wanted pretty much sucks. Especially if you are wanted by someone who has the power to actually do something about it.
We humans though, we need the love. We need to give it and receive it, and doing that well is just about the most useful and rewarding skill and experience a person can have.
Reminder to future-self. If you practice the whole love thing well, there is a pretty good chance that the whole "want" question will simply be replaced with joy and satisfaction. On the other hand, whether you lead or are led down the "what do you want?" path, chances are you will eat and eat until there is nothing left, and find yourself hungry at the end.
You spoke of wanting to be more of an activist; laudable, assuming that the experience of being an activist suits you.
In college we made a study of systems and injustice. Investigated capitalism and found that both wealth and poverty are an inevitable consequence. Saw that the history of racist policy in this country has not closed, and that even if it did the inequalities will affect our institutions for generations to come. We looked at the destruction of our environment as related to the industrial revolution, and the implications of our resource usage for undeveloped nations. We considered the problems we create when we assume that other cultures are supposed to want what we want.
It was all very complicated and interesting, and left me burning wish to go out and change the world.
Since then I have learned that behind all the complexity things remain simple. Everything I learned could be summarized: "Life is suffering. Trying to change that creates more suffering." Every system of suffering I have ever seen was born of someone's attempt to make the world a better place, if not for others then for themselves. We don't create our dreams: we create our dreaming.
There is a way out, of course, but I only know a part of it. Suffering is alleviated when we learn to accept and work with it. Here is where I am challenged:
Given that we are made for both joy and sorrow, hunger and satisfaction, love and loneliness, how do we live in the world in such a way that we can encompass all of these things? If misery is inevitable, can we use our lives and creativity such that we are not its allies? Is this wish a trap as well?
I am not the first to ask such questions. Maybe I should look it up on Google...
I've been trying to explain that I just work here, that I just want to pick up my bike, but it hasn't done any good. There are two of them, my back is toward the wall and they've positioned themselves to block any escape. One of them steps in close, gropes at my pants.
"What's in your pockets? What you got?"
I don't move, don't say anything. Suddenly they are both yelling, "what the fuck is in your pockets!" It's more an accusation then a question. The one in front shoves my chest. As I fall back I see his fists. Two punches straight in the mouth.
The world turns black, slows down. I feel my body slowly drifting toward the ground. Two thoughts pass through my mind. "It was stupid to try to talk to those guys." Then, "If you fall asleep, you won't wake up."
I can't see, but I manage to keep my feet under me. I can feel that they are still close, one still up against me on the front, the other to the right. I gather strength into my legs and then push up and out toward the front, feel a body make and then break contact with my hands, the space clear. Then to the right, I manage to get a hold on something and I start kicking it. My vision suddenly returns.
For the next ten minutes two men will try to knock me on the ground and smash my head in with a rock. I will make a few choices.
I am no superhero but these men never managed to hurt me beyond those first two punches. Both have been captured by the police. I will forgive them, but they lack the empathy and responsibility that freedom requires.
I intend to make something good out of this.
The color black is like silence. An experience we all know, yet does not exist.
Morning. The sun is well above the horizon, yet not at full glory. I am biking to work. Suddenly I am aware of the nature of the color around me. The shirt I normally call black is truly a dark red, the pants a hint of green. The road is a vibrant thing, shimmering red, green, blue. The primary colors of light. The further I look ahead, the more they blend into white.
Wired Magazine explained recently that the "online" world of the web is fading in importance as apps that just work and machine to machine conversations take over the Internet. A major driving force behind this phenomenon is that those of us who grew up with the World Wide Web are reaching the point where we have a few bucks to spend, and would rather pay for a service then spend our time fiddling with computers in order to get access to the ideas, music, news, people, etc. that we love. They take a look at the history of industrial development and the like as a model to understanding the further implications of this phenomenon, and point out that regulated oligopolies appear to be the natural end point for capitalism.
There are some broad implications that occur to me, which I'd like to think through.
My first thoughts are for those of us who are convinced of the principles behind Free Software, and who would see that those principles guide the future. It's been stated repeatedly that our interest is not that people are prevented from making a profit, only that we want to ensure that said profits do not come at the cost of people's liberties. To win the pragmatic side of the debate is likely more important that to win the ideological debate. I suspect that in this case it is actually good news that most people don't care how things are done "behind the scenes" so long as everything basically works. Why? Because machine to machine communication is simplest with open, standardized protocols (I'm thinking TCP/IP and the like). The trick is not, as was thought, to take over the desktop and win the hearts of computer users. The trick is to make sure that the open platforms are the best way to handle the back-bone first.
Okay - Stop writing this for a certain audience. This is a think through..
Damnit. I got to the end without any of the steps. So what is the end? The end is that we use REST to deliver real life services.
Thats the trick. Okay - so what does that mean? That means that your "pizza" application is both a free app and an open api. Nobody fucking cares about the advertisements, coupons, etc. They want to push a button and trade their money for Pizza. Or, more importantly for a guy like me, photos, or what the fuck ever.
Like rats in a cage - push the button, get a food. Button -> food, button -> food, and pretty soon you've got a rat that wouldn't leave his fucking cage if you paid him.
And thus was conquered a world.
Son of a bitch!
Writing an e-mail was inordinately difficult because my brain is trying to comprehend that the Internet + non-dualism + the development of multicellular life implies that the Borg are a probable future; but when we arrive as such it may be a form of enlightenment. If current individuals were particularly intelligent in the next couple of years, they could probably existing technologies to establish themselves as effective precursors. Conclusion: Facebook + wireless sunglasses could turn "friends" into multi-organism beings. But the sci-fi writers knew that no later than 1989, so why does this feel like news to me?
Queries:
Does your brain do this kind of thing? Does everyone's? How much of conversation is spent simply attempting to establish a premise from which you can actually say something useful? How often do you find it hard to tell someone what your schedule is this weekend because you are preoccupied by the idea that sending someone an e-mail in order to make plans is functionally similar to one neuron passing on a message to another, only less efficient?
I've mentioned a wish for effective dense communication in the past. So are we all walking around, intensely frustrated by an inability to communicate the bigger picture of our circumstances to each other, or is all this crap in my head a uniquely problematic: akin to schizophrenia or ADD?
I drop a little ticket and a bill for 200 yen into the machine that sits next to the driver. It makes a small noise, and the he looks at the machine. His eyes widen, he starts speaking in a hushed but urgent voice. I watch blankly until my friend translates. "You paid too much. It was only 150 yen. He doesn't have the right change. You should have used the other slot for change."
"What is that, like fifty cents? Tell him not to worry about it." I move to get off the bus.
My friend gives me a funny look. "He's not going accept that." She tells him anyway.
The driver seems on the verge of panic, he raises a hand to the side of his forehead. The door closes and he stands up, starts talking to the other passengers with that same urgency. Many passengers appear concerned, possibly pitying. A woman brings out a white purse. They exchange money, bow their heads to each other several times.
The driver turns back to me, bowing and smiling in a slightly strange way. As if he had barely avoided disaster. As if I were a fickle giant who might have crushed him had he failed to return with a little coin.
"Thank you," I say, hoping he is one of the people who recognizes that phrase; hoping that he won't recognize up the edge of confusion and irritation I hear in my own voice.
When we are on the street my friend warns me "He probably wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight if that woman hadn't given him change. They are very careful with guests, so don't make it hard for them. It's kind of rude."
That's the second time she's had to warn me. I am certain that I am a foreigner.
As children, my siblings and I were given a rule for conversation: anything we wished to tell our mother had to be finished within four sentences. If we went over the limit she would make us stop, think it through, and then get to the point. It taught us to consider the meaning of our words, separate important ideas from the useless ones.