this text is kind of a way of
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| "The Elephant IS the Room" benjamin harubin 2016 a mashup |
if you read the comments on the losing side, you'll find many examples of 'the failure on our part to engage with others in a meaningful way'.
this failure is blamed on individual failure as well as the nature of social media itself and the actors who send their robot fleets on the high media sea.
and yes it's all true.
...and it's true that there's gonna be a/another actor in the whitehouse.
whether or not there's a Man behind the man behind the man,
or a secret cabal.
but whatever. there's still this feeling of insecurity.
it doesn't really make much functional difference what the actual mechanisms of state are.
i for one am not a proponent of 'conspiracy theories' in the sense of a discrete body of people who are pulling all the strings.
but there are interests... forces... groups... bodies.
science tells us that our social structure is built on top of our individual biology, and that our biology is built upon chemistry,
the way that chemical interactions are built upon the laws of physics.
in other words, politics, power and the state are extensions of who we are as a species, currently.
they are as much biological in nature as our hair.
and also like hair, there are gaps in our understanding of them.
indeed, legally corporations are people i hear.
are they not men?
so i don't see the election as hiring one idiot over another, but as more of a compass direction indicator; a meme war; just the pulse of the drivers of state.
clearly there are forces at work that are beyond anyone's comprehension.
combined with artificial agents, this is a complex system indeed.
if you have any scientific bent, then see that our technologies are also an extension of our biological brains,
so we can cut to the chase and just proclaim that we don't understand ourselves.
here philosophy can merge with science.
the resurgence of references to Karl Marx and Marxism is interesting.
although you may agree that the applications of the his theories have been disasters, his was an early attempt to wed rationality and science to human economic behavior.
since then, information scientists and evolutionary biologists have added their studies.
maybe what we need is even more rationality. more consilience.
what would a new rational approach to economics or politics look like.
it's up to us to create it.
what kind of experiment can we as scientists run?
and i say 'scientists' in quotes because we DO have an agenda; there is a built-in bias: that is, some kind of concern for human welfare, or at least our own welfare.
but before you start screaming about advanced social engineering nightmare dystopias, realize that
a: we already have one, and
b: the engineering is by itself not the issue, whether it is used asymmetrically against others or voluntarily to help all humans is.
so we're all more like creative technologists insomuch as we interact socially.
but marxism, or anti-capitalism as understood is not the solution.
to somehow ban the acquisition of wealth is to deny certain biological traits,
and hence is doomed to failure.
and clearly Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' has theoretical validity.
if we can just balance the table and keep the damn thing running!
socialism and capitalism don't actually exist!
what kind of experiments can we as creative technologists run?
what does medicine do we it can't run fully rigorous experiments as in other sciences? it runs trials. and that is what political people are doing. governments are trials, flourishing or collapsing under their own weight.
so much media focus has been set on the presidential election, where your voice is heard (probably) but is very tiny.
whereas an individual's immediate sphere probably contains many more avenues of action, local though they may be. the world doesn't really depend solely on one big shit show.
what matters are individual actions, inasmuch as we can act.
in the micropolitical sphere of our everyday lives, it's up to us to construct alternate modes of action- to solve our dilemmas in creative ways.
if you surrender to fear in your immediate thoughts and actions, you are helping to spread that meme.
while i acknowledge that a destructive attack (virtual or physical) on 'the enemy' has its purpose,
there is a limit to it's effectiveness, as we have seen.
but for those who have to fight, be positive and fight smart.
wait, instead of creative technologists, we should emulate horticulturalists,
and grow better social and economic structures, on whatever scale,
through patience, love and understanding.
and paying attention to what works.
what's so funny about that?
the responsibility rests where it always has, and not in some all encompassing "choice" that will take care of everything once and for all.
the experimental opportunity that lies before us is on a unique scale, because of internetivity.
it is voluntary, and it is of the crowd and of the individual person.
our jobs should be to create successful models of human interaction that can serve as meme germs. every time you even talk to someone of a different class or viewpoint than you, you are creating new structures.
it is in this way perhaps that THE MACHINE can be steered more towards human benefit and long term survival.
because You Can't Tell People What to Think.
but cheer up,
keep your eyes open,
no fear.
and fight the good fight.
rock on
