A few of my working-assumptions about how we interact with and discuss information are breaking down.
I've thought for a long time there's too much information. In the same breadth, I would ask people to speak up. I've been advocating for a dialogue about the seemingly endless stream of potential issues they may have with the world. I've wanted to blame their reluctance to do so on fear and laziness primarily. I'm thinking now that the problem is a kind of conditioned stupidity.
I think the reason I feel myself willing or capable of discussing “things in general” is because I'm after a kind of philosophy and habit, not specific answer to any one problem. That habit involves talking and becoming familiar with sometimes so many topics, it seems like I'm really getting nowhere at all.
I can watch a talk on Disaster Capitalism and learn a, helpful to me in my discourse, fact about Venezuela being the pride of neoliberal ideals until it's implosion. 99% of the people I will ever meet won't even take the time to google what neoliberal even means, so I get nowhere in sharing the talk thinking it's a little more eye opening of the consequences of this failed political system. I was in 7th grade during 9/11. Naomi Klein telling me now (the talk's from 2007) how the Bush administration creates opportunities for businesses to thrive in disasters requires a long and dedicated memory in the forming of a “political opinion.”
I take in a lot of information, from all over, to primarily see if it has consequences. There's a difference between a million voices, and ten of them predicting things that come true. The problem comes in making those ten the loudest voices. And I think in order to do so, you either need to raise the capacity and willingness of an entire population, or, you have to plug a subsection of that population into a different machine. “Just putting it out there” for “people to finally find out about” is drops in an ocean.
But here's where I think it's a 2 pronged attack. You not only need to create your own system outside or independent of what's happening, you need to disable or inhibit the mess. I can't remember the last time I watched Fox “news,” but it's endless sounding chamber has significantly more of an impact than your well-researched independent progressive podcast. The information in that podcast could be vital to structuring or discussing something, and it's not for lack of effort that it will fall away to obscurity.
I can watch a talk on being suspicious of stories when that's, in a sense, all we really have in “polite dialogue.” I can agree that it shouldn't be a simple story or structured in a dichotomous way, but a story can be true to more things than it's simple failed structure. It's the story of empowering leaders that reinforce movements or caution us of past folly. It isn't Too Big To Fail that people are going to reference when discussing whether or not to implement financial regulations, it's going to be Elizabeth's Warren's soundbites and advocacy of students over banks. I think I have more a semantic issue with the talk, more than the message of being suspicious of simple narratives.
Or say we leave the political and historical realm alone. I go on about relationships as much as anything else. But again, people are flatly reluctant or unwilling to discuss their lives in any other terms beside “personal.” "This is personally gratifying. You wouldn't understand. Why would I consider some other idea or statistic when I'm perfectly capable and happy with the game I'm running?" I provoke not to hear how comfortable you are or justified you feel, I'm trying to figure out how and why you're thinking about something a certain way. Is it because of the sources of your information, a fundamentally bad assumption, the fact of there being too much information? They have implications for how you structure, or bother engaging in, a discussion.
I've thought for a long time there's too much information. In the same breadth, I would ask people to speak up. I've been advocating for a dialogue about the seemingly endless stream of potential issues they may have with the world. I've wanted to blame their reluctance to do so on fear and laziness primarily. I'm thinking now that the problem is a kind of conditioned stupidity.
I think the reason I feel myself willing or capable of discussing “things in general” is because I'm after a kind of philosophy and habit, not specific answer to any one problem. That habit involves talking and becoming familiar with sometimes so many topics, it seems like I'm really getting nowhere at all.
I can watch a talk on Disaster Capitalism and learn a, helpful to me in my discourse, fact about Venezuela being the pride of neoliberal ideals until it's implosion. 99% of the people I will ever meet won't even take the time to google what neoliberal even means, so I get nowhere in sharing the talk thinking it's a little more eye opening of the consequences of this failed political system. I was in 7th grade during 9/11. Naomi Klein telling me now (the talk's from 2007) how the Bush administration creates opportunities for businesses to thrive in disasters requires a long and dedicated memory in the forming of a “political opinion.”
I take in a lot of information, from all over, to primarily see if it has consequences. There's a difference between a million voices, and ten of them predicting things that come true. The problem comes in making those ten the loudest voices. And I think in order to do so, you either need to raise the capacity and willingness of an entire population, or, you have to plug a subsection of that population into a different machine. “Just putting it out there” for “people to finally find out about” is drops in an ocean.
But here's where I think it's a 2 pronged attack. You not only need to create your own system outside or independent of what's happening, you need to disable or inhibit the mess. I can't remember the last time I watched Fox “news,” but it's endless sounding chamber has significantly more of an impact than your well-researched independent progressive podcast. The information in that podcast could be vital to structuring or discussing something, and it's not for lack of effort that it will fall away to obscurity.
I can watch a talk on being suspicious of stories when that's, in a sense, all we really have in “polite dialogue.” I can agree that it shouldn't be a simple story or structured in a dichotomous way, but a story can be true to more things than it's simple failed structure. It's the story of empowering leaders that reinforce movements or caution us of past folly. It isn't Too Big To Fail that people are going to reference when discussing whether or not to implement financial regulations, it's going to be Elizabeth's Warren's soundbites and advocacy of students over banks. I think I have more a semantic issue with the talk, more than the message of being suspicious of simple narratives.
Or say we leave the political and historical realm alone. I go on about relationships as much as anything else. But again, people are flatly reluctant or unwilling to discuss their lives in any other terms beside “personal.” "This is personally gratifying. You wouldn't understand. Why would I consider some other idea or statistic when I'm perfectly capable and happy with the game I'm running?" I provoke not to hear how comfortable you are or justified you feel, I'm trying to figure out how and why you're thinking about something a certain way. Is it because of the sources of your information, a fundamentally bad assumption, the fact of there being too much information? They have implications for how you structure, or bother engaging in, a discussion.
For
the years I spent reading and arguing specifically about religion, I
was only able to take away habits. I learned to pick out the loser in
a debate. I learned the dialogue of people trying to obscure language
and inappropriately structure an argument. I learned that I didn't
want to be an evolutionary biologist, cosmologist, or geologist, and
found it sad that they had to be plugged into “debates” about the
age of the earth or incompleteness of the fossil record. It gave me a
habit of looking for where my heroes failed me. It tempered my mood
when I heard something terribly damming or explicitly reinforcing
what I agreed with. You can approach things skeptically without
regarding them as arbitrary.
Maybe
I'm just coming around to not wanting your voices anymore. When I
created my party house, the roommates had a tenuous vote, at best,
but rarely was I going to be to stopped in whatever I was doing. I
recognize that the world belongs to the movers and shakers,
regardless of what's being pushed or who's falling through the
cracks. I just still don't think that mode of engaging with the world
is sustainable nor resilient. For the many points I agree with in
The Venus Project documentary there's none bigger than if you want a different result you have to
change the environment people are working in. It's how I got American
college party cliches to happen “organically.” I want people to
have a bigger vote in how their lives are carried out, I haven't
given them a setting in which they can or feel they should.
The
biggest issue there is, what's easier than the internet? If you're
afraid, do it anonymously. If you're dumb, spend even a week Googling
you'll know more than the leading expert in the field did their
undergraduate years. I think this just begets how you structure it.
Tie it to economies. Tie it to how people become educated or
motivated. Tie it to food. There's too many “facts” for people to
vote facts, but they'll vote for food in their mouths. They'll vote
for a bigger TV and new heart. The internet is impersonal, but people
will stand up for their kids or best friends. They'll advocate for
their own sob story before they empathize with the plight of someone
an ocean away. What if you bite the bullet of creating a “brand”
but actually carried out the work you saw needing to be done?
If it wasn't so damn inefficient and amoral.
Other stuff I write
If it wasn't so damn inefficient and amoral.
Other stuff I write
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