Rushkoff Here
I believe that the reality in which we live is largely if not entirely hackable. We have been fooled into believing that social conventions, law, economics, and nature are hardware - when they are actually software and open to modification. With a little more effort, we can refine the hardware as well.
The current culture wars, as I understand them, are between people who look at our circumstances as pre-existing conditions, and those who see them as largely of our own making. Those in the former camp prefer to see reality as confined by the operating system of a Creator, and the human role confined to behaving within the rule sets established by Him. Those in the latter camp recognize the function of evolution, and the opportunity (if not obligation) for human beings to participate in the ongoing construction of our world and its operating systems.
Some of this design activity is like software modification. We legislate for bike lanes, tax rebates for solar energy development, or freedom to grow plants. This should be the easy part, but - given the beliefs of those in the Creator camp (and the support they get from the most intransigent members of the corporate capitalist elite) - it's quite hard. It can even get depressing to argue against people who don't believe the rules of the game can or should ever be changed.
The other kinds of hacks - the physical hacks - are actually harder. It's hard to figure out how to make traffic flow in a city originally designed for cars, efficient storage for solar cells, or ways to grow organic food or herb on already polluted and demineralized topsoil. But these are the hacks at which Happy Mutants excel, and that are so regularly celebrated on this site.
For me, the physical hacks so often chronicled here serve not only as models or instructions for more hacking, but morale-boosting and solidarity-building reinforcements for the social and spiritual hacking required of activists living in a society hell-bent on corporo-fascism, self-destruction, and religious war. In a world governed largely by people who believe (or want their citizens to believe) that the world is going to end on schedule by decree of the Creator, it is imperative that mutants arise to the challenge of changing the landscape from under them.
But in order to do this successfully, these mutants must be happy. Uninformed by a spirit of underlying joy, the modifications we make to the core program will be no more enlightened than those of our predecessors.
Thus, we BoingBoing.
(Douglas Rushkoff is a guestblogger)
the latest
latest episodes
welcome, and may i say: ROCK ON!
Amen! So happy to see my friend, mentor, and co-conspirator Doug on here. As Doug once told me, "Meme-play and gene-play are the only games in town." Let's get down to business!
Welcome. Believe it or not, there are those of us that belong to both camps: we believe in the Creator, but don't have a problem in accepting evolution or our responsibility to make this world better.
Again, welcome!
Ai ai Captain!
Yes, but the really grand question is: how could someone who writes and thinks so well not use paragraph breaks?
I don't see how this is an argument for a kind of technocratic system. After all, if we look at humanity in terms of "programs"- hardware or software- in order to change said "programming", one would need access to the reigns of power and assert their own coding; Culture creation, Social/Behavorial modification, etc.
Since, we're told "evolution" demands this of us- as though it's a natural corollary in this "Us vs. them" scenario- we don't need to ask questions about the ethics and morality of engaging in that kind of thought and the consequent systems that would arise out of it. I know I don't like the idea of my "code" being manipulated.
I tend to view the current "culture war" as a form of this same kind of manipulation.
The Neo-Con architects of the Terror Wars are mostly Jewish, and I know Dick Cheney is not an Evangelical, not even religious. Could it be that the wholesale bilking of middle American Christians is in fact an example of this same kind of manipulation, of people and cultures as a "code" that in effect needs to be managed?
Maybe that kind of thinking is part of the problem.
Oh, wait, Does this mean I don't believe in evolution?
Should be - "I don't see how this is not an argument for a kind of technocratic system"
Welcome welcome welcome, Mr. Rushkoff! I'm digging your thoughtfulness. I believe that certain well-established mystical practices, such as those of the whirling dervish, serve to hack our suppositions of reality. And I hope to soon see some modern applications of these practices by the more adventurous thinkers of our society. Chemicals can only get you so far. Its like trying to lose weight by diet alone - doesn't work too well without exercise.
We can has paragraphs, please?
I really want to be able to read what you said. Not have my eyes cross when I try.
Paras fixed. It's a quirk of the system, it expects
tags by default.
Hooray!
User modifiable world here we go!
WOW! The paragraphs were fixed just as I was about to echo JoeTortuga's complaint (@8).
It's amazing how paragraph breaks make Douglas seem so much less like a ranting street-corner lunatic.
@6
"The Neo-Con architects of the Terror Wars are mostly Jewish."
Carl Rove. George Bush. Dick Cheney. Donny Rumsfeld. Oy vey.
As Albert Einstein once observed: "If Relativity is proven wrong, the Americans will say I am Swiss, the Swiss will say I am German, and the Germans will say I am a Jew."
Memo to Rushkoff: I like your ideas. But when you said some things would be "hard" to hack, I think you need to add the qualifier "extremely".
Glad to see you here Douglas! -Steph Dumais
Very moving, particularly the ending. :) However I do find the term "life-hacking" to be somewhat lessened by examples such as getting McDonalds to give you both breakfast and lunch by... purchasing breakfast, waiting, and purchasing lunch: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/11/howto-trick-mcdonald.html
"Carl Rove. George Bush. Dick Cheney. Donny Rumsfeld. Oy vey"
http://canadiancoalition.com/adbusters01/
Rushkoff in the house! Fantastic! Top banana, Boing Boing!
Great post! The whole dialogue around culture wars is especially fascinating--it is a term that pundits and politicians love to throw around, without really understanding what they are. I think your approach is pretty dead on for one of the axes of the culture wars--internal vs. external causes of suffering.
I might suggest that we add a y axis to this x axis, which comes from cultural and individual development through stages of growth. Gebser suggests that we all grow through stages of magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and integral. The republican party tends to gravitate toward internal causes of suffering from mythic (fundamentalist) and rational (wall street) stages of development, while democrats tend to focus on external causes of suffering from rational and pluralistic stages of development. I think adding this developmental component goes a long way to show us that these culture wars are not like two equal tectonic plates rubbing against each other, but that these plates are actually stacked on top of each other, in a sense. You can't develop to rational unless you first develop through mythic, but not everyone makes it out of mythic into rational. It's not like a game of chess on a single board, more like a game of Asimovian hyper-chess, with multiple boards stacked on top of each other.
If anyone is interested in exactly this sort of approach, i wrote an essay that highlights some of the major points. It accompanies a free 30 minute video of Integral philosopher Ken Wilber talking about Integral "Third-Way" Politics. Check it out, if you are feeling so compelled ^_^
http://integrallife.com/apply/politics-civics/integral-third-way-politics
(or in case that url was too long: http://tinyurl.com/4aq2x7 )
The rising consciousness among Evangelicals regarding climate change, who see it as "stewardship", has been a really welcome shift in perspectives. Pentacostal and unitarian churches have long traditions of quite radical in their social "hacking" in striving for positive social change. The conservative Pentacostals have some of the most integrated congregations and organizations you're likely to find. Across the Arab world oil money from theocracies is pushing green technology in massive building projects.
I think you make a fine point Douglas, but I don't see the system or those at play within it, as binary, either open or closed. Nuance, and understanding that the bible-belter might also be all for pedal power, is the order of the day.
I'm curious to see more from you on BB. I enjoyed "Nothing Sacred" quite a bit.
Anyone who has worked on very large software projects knows the potential horrible unintended consequences of a simple hack. Surface portions of software are more hackable than those deeply embedded in the structure of the system, but all of them can have unforeseen results. In my quarter century of working with software projects, I've seen a great number of changes that only seem stupid in hindsight.
Civilization is a giant piece of software that is far more complex than our current ability to understand. Hacking it boldly without even any serious concern for the unpredictable effects is possible, but foolish and irresponsible.
Man, it's great to have you on board Doug!
cyber-Amen
Thank you! I've had writers block for a week, but now I feel motivated, and my fingers are itching to type.
Boingboing serves only to further its own brand.
Essentially the Gaia hypothesis says that the planet hacks us too. That might be a z-axis to djrekluse's y-axis?
!!!
Oh, THAT'S why I like this blog an absurdly large amount.
OOOooh.
Almost came to tears. Great words.
Which "brand" would you like to see BB promote, Koudlekasan? Or is you post just pointlessly pointy?
I just ran across an interesting software hack recommended by Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of
Democracy.
The Art of Hosting
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1155394240
WOO-HOOO!!
ameme.
right on!
That's a good manifesto you've got there. Sign me up.
Howdy! I've been thinking about this a lot too.
There are recent pieces in the Economist and New Yorker that touch on this divide--and its place in history:
[blockquote]The “silent majority” had been disoriented, throughout the 1960s, by the collapse of traditional moral values. And they had boiled with righteous anger at the liberal elites who extended infinite indulgence to bomb-throwing radicals while dismissing conservative views as evidence of racism and sexism. Nixon recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from “positive polarisation”: dividing the electorate over values. He also recognised that the media, which had always made a great pretence of objectivity while embracing a liberal social agenda, could be turned into a Republican weapon. He encouraged Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, to declare war on the “effete corps of impudent snobs” in the media, with their Ivy League educations and Georgetown social values.[/blockquote]
also,
(in 2008) [blockquote]George Packer dismissed the remains of the culture wars as “the spasms of nerve endings in an organism that’s brain-dead”.[/blockquote]
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12260881
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer/?currentPage=all
Interesting post. The two inherent problems with the system are 1) society will always be split and 2) we don't (and probably never will) know enough. Point 2 is the biggest simply because we think we are doing something for the good of humanity, but who is to say what happens 5 100 1000 years down the road. We live in a world defined by constructs we have artificially created: time, money, politics, etc. Anyway, once we get things "right", it will only be because we are really what is being served.
"The Neo-Con architects of the Terror Wars are mostly Jewish."
Carl Rove. George Bush. Dick Cheney. Donny Rumsfeld. Oy vey.
Perhaps they meant Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams,
Abraham Shulsky, Richard Perle...Douglas Feith....Dov Zakheim, etc,etc.
That's why we BoingBoing! It's all so clear now!
This is probably my favorite BoingBoing entry ever. Thank you sir! XD
17-There seem to be some fractals shooting off from the essay. Chakras?
18-I'd love to see churches get more involved in environmental stewardship. And I'd like to see churches more active in social justice/ feed and help and house the hungry kind of thing. Maybe I should join the Baptist Church up the street and try to engineer some charitable and environmental projects.
Douglas Rushkoff,
Thank you for offering us such a clear eyed view of this deadly and intractable culture war. I think we must understand it and then engineer a cultural mutation that gets us past it.
I know physical hack is a metaphor, but I'm stuck on this literal image of taking a pickax to the ground. (And then planting a garden, yeah.)
Cyberia will be coming to me in the mail via amazon. What do you think the future of publishing/writing/reading will look like?
Thank you.
Viva la revolucion! Wheee!
(And thank you MRSBUG for your clarifying comment.)
@35
http://www.uua.org/socialjustice/
There you go. Minimal dogma required.
I was over in the main-line media getting bored and concerned at the same time; then switched over the BB and -- something refreshing I can think upon. Thanks.
Maybe I should join the Baptist Church up the street and try to engineer some charitable and environmental projects.
I'm a Unitarian and one of the coolest events I ever took part in was a ride around Chicago visiting historic churches and congregations sponsored by a humanist group from University of Chicago. The congregations, Baptist, Pentacostal and assorted other blends had music, drink and at the end a huge party for us. The donations collected and pledges raised were donated Katrina relief.
Unitarians, secular humanists, church groups all working to raise money to help people in need. There's more common ground than areas of conflict
@#35:
"17-There seem to be some fractals shooting off from the essay. Chakras?"
Are you referring to the mention of "magenta, red, amber, orange, green, and teal" coloring systems? Those don't have much of anything to do with chakras, just some shorthand (aka jargon) that is commonly used to reference these psychological and cultural stages of development.
I understand they can be off-putting for some, as most jargon usually is, but sometimes it is easier just saying "orange" than it is "rational/industrial/multiplistic/worldcentric," or "amber" instead of "mythic/agrarian/traditional/ethnocentric." Heavy-lifting words, i call em.
But if you like, you can apply the eastern chakra system to this as well, which insofar as we consider it a useful metaphysical scheme (some don't), can also be seen to develop in an evolutionary sequence, stage by stage.
If this isn't what you meant by "fractals shooting off the essay," let me know and i will try to clarify!
I also wanted to suggest this free dialogue for anyone interested in these sorts of Integral approaches to culture, technology, and spirituality.
Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber - Exploring the Technium. Part 1. Technology, Evolution, and God
http://integrallife.com/node/12177
Douglas, i think you might be particularly interested in this, considering your statement:
"morale-boosting and solidarity-building reinforcements for the social and spiritual hacking required of activists living in a society hell-bent on corporo-fascism, self-destruction, and religious war. In a world governed largely by people who believe (or want their citizens to believe) that the world is going to end on schedule by decree of the Creator, it is imperative that mutants arise to the challenge of changing the landscape from under them."
The accompanying essay tries to paint a picture of exactly what that changing landscape looks like in the 21st century.
(i just submitted this link to Boing Boing; but in case they don't post it, i wanted to be sure to share with all of you.)
well, that's about the most uplifting manifesto I've read in a long while. *raises glass* to the good fight!
Wow. You certainly have made an entrance.
Douglas, thank you for The Merchants of Cool.
Just sayin'.
One of the most interesting parts of international contact or travel is coming to understand what parts of our social and cultural patterns are tied to our particular community. Many of these are hard to recognize without some additional perspective from which to consider them. Even learning another language and having to re-think how to express what you mean when you say something can provide enough contrast to raise interesting questions.
Wow. Lots of fellow Unitarians on BoingBoing. Not surprising now that I think about it.
As for the fundamental differences between liberal and conservative mindsets, I found this article to be very enlightening. Check it out.
And more directly related to this post (which was fantastic by the way - I look forward to more! Now I need to go read other stuff Douglas Rushkoff ("Doug" is it?) has written)... Most of my conservative friends don't like the idea of embracing non-conservative morals, not only because their morality is supposedly dictated by God, but because "we know it works". It may not be optimal, but tweaking it is too risky and more likely to lead to something bad. This is very similar to what this post said, a general feeling that tweaking is bad, although (according to my experience) not so much because "The Creator says this is good" but because of risk. What I tell them is this: The 747 "works" by any reasonable meaning of the word. It is safe, efficient, reliable, not too loud, does not require an exceptional amount of maintenance, etc. But right now Boeing is designing the 747-8, a new version that aims to bring a lot of 787 technologies to the 747: Quieter and more efficient engines, composite materials, and an entirely new wing (with a 787-like non-constant curved dihedral) that is lighter, more flexible, and more aerodynamic. Now, why mess with the 747 if it isn't broken? What if these new materials don't last as long as we thought they would? What if they break more catastrophically than aluminum? What if these fancy efficient bleedless engines turn out to be a maintenance nightmare, or if the new electrical systems that power stuff in the airplane (now that engine bleed air is no longer available) need frequent adjustments? What if this new wing shape stresses its skins in unforeseen ways, and what if its unprecedented flexibility runs into harmonic modes and it starts flapping... The answer, of course, is that if we don't try it, we'll never know. When we build machines, we rarely pass up the opportunity to implement a new idea when someone believes it will lead to an improvement. Why should it be any different with moral/social systems? Just because something works, this doesn't mean it works optimally, and as long as the non-optimal aspects of the system (e.g. social injustice) are obvious, we owe it to ourselves to try and optimize the system. This is true even when there is a risk of making it worse by accident, since even then, we'd learn something.
A refreshing cool drink of water for the mind that made this mutant happy today. Thanks!
@40
I was just trying to make a joke because all the color sequencing did bring to mind a fractal, especially when you mentioned a second tier of colors. It was sort of an inside joke for myself because I remember hearing about Douglas Rushkoff and fractals, and chakras all around the same time. I just throw them together in my own mind, but that doesn't mean they are related. Anyway, it looks like some interesting material you have posted and I would like to read it. I warn you I once took a philosophy of the mind course and understoond not a whit.
@Airshow fan - "When we build machines, we rarely pass up the opportunity to implement a new idea when someone believes it will lead to an improvement. Why should it be any different with moral/social systems?"
In part because while we can say that a plane which gets us to our destination with greater speed, or comfort, or fuel efficiency is clearly better than one which does less of each, there's no such universal definition of "better" for a social or moral system. Your better may be my worse and vice versa.
For instance, if we decided to follow the Chinese and lower the crime rate by enforcing strict social conformity and limiting speech the state deemed disruptive, you'd have at least two ardent opinions on whether that's a better way to live or not. Thus the resistance to change.
@Douglas Rushkoff
Lovely opening post, nice nutritious food for thought, looking forward to the rest of your guestblogger stint. You divided the culture wars into two camps, and to my joy you've triggered some Ken Wilbering, which is a grand route into the fine detail of a discussion after the first 'one camp or the other' blow has been struck. So also @DJRekluse, thanks for your contribution and I'm off to read your essays.
I do love it when we boingboing.
@Cicada:
A history professor of mine once said that the most efficient form of governance is, and always has been, a dictatorship. Octavian, Napoleon, Pinochet were all "effective", but hardly places of great liberty or human dignity. The professor continued that democracy is the least efficient, often messy partisan and contradictory, but it afforded the human being the most dignity in the face of the state of any given system.
Or as Churchill put it, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried"
One of my favorite authors, guestblogging on one of my favorite websites! It doesn't get any better.
Buzzwordtastic. You're like a hero in a Neal Stephenson novel.
Interesting Topic. Since this is BoingBoing (with many posts on hacks), I'm not surprised to see the number of optimistic commentators. However, this seems more like a topic on Edge.org.
Just want to give my 2cents that the most difficult thing to hack is also the most beneficial thing to hack which is human nature. I think I fall into the pessimistic crowd that believes our biggest problem is ourselves. I do think that science can solve our technological problems (i.e. hacking mentioned in this thread) but science can never solve the flaws in our human nature.
Examples that comes to mind ...
The human nature problem of over weighting short term gain over unknown long term consequences . This is the basic cause of our economic problems. We can devise (hack) our laws and institutions to protect against our past mistakes (great depression, savings and loan)- but greed would always exist and pop-up in the next scam.
The human nature problem of fear.
This is the basic cause for Bush's election/re-election. (of course, if you're a fan of the current administration, then fear is good.)
The human nature problem of treating self interest above interest of the group. When gas got expensive, it's drill drill drill.
The human nature problem to prefer status quo.
This is the on going problem of global warming. Change is always bad if I have to do it.
On top the deficiency in our nature, there's also hackers that recognize our weaknesses. The hacks become more sophisticated (thanks to science) and we're basically doomed. Marketing getting you to buy things you don't need ; media getting you to vote for people that don't serve your interest.
Could someone post a hack on how to make humans better, kinder, more rational? I use to think religion is the problem, but now I see the problem is human nature (we need to deal with the bad stuff in life) so people created (hacked) religion to try to solve their problems.
And Armitage, Libby, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, donner and blitzen.
@ MGFarrelly-- Democracy is precisely the source of the resistance. A dictator would simply enact policy and use force against anyone who disagreed. The plurality inherent in democracies means that chances are everyone's going to get a bit of a say in the policies of the government...and if there's enough disagreement, nothing gets done.
Look at it this way- George Bush might be absolutely the worst thing ever, but about one person in three in the country thinks he's doing a good job. If you marginalize the views of a third of your population, what does that mean about your society? Or do you accept them in and accept that it'll be very difficult to get any major changes?
I'm a democrat, no doubt, but I do think most Republicans are sensible, reasonable, decent people who just see the world through a slightly different filter than me. I don't however, put sinister minds such as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in that category.
I think what motivates a lot of Republican voters is family and church. I'd say most liberals say they are pro-family, but many many (including me)aren't really down with the church thing. A lot of us are in groups, but I'm not sure if any of these sub-cultures has that universal appeal of the spiritual fellowship.
Anyway, Democrats have to tap into a deep source of meaning like the Republicans have with their Christianity. He almost does it by invoking the legacy of civil rights. But it hasn't quite swept the nation like Sarah Palin did. People aren't responding to her policy statements, they just feel like she is one of them because of that shared background of family and church.
Anyway, maybe David Brooks will give Obama some good advice in the paper tomorrow.
P.S. Someone needs to link to Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown this week. It is something else.
It isn't really in the spirit of healing the culture wars, but it is very interesting, nonetheless. I posted it in the other discussion, but it belongs here.
http://troublogtown.blogspot.com/2008/09/heres-this-weeks-cartoon.html
BoingBoing became a verb today. =D
CICADA@58: The problem is in our access to information. I don't believe that 33% of us would agree with bush's policies if we all had access to the same unbiased information about his performance vs. what he and his ilk espouse. People in our society today are too easily manipulated with knee-jerk issues because most of us don't bother to research the facts from neutral sources, which are themselves becoming an extinct animal. When you have the scientific method itself on trial, how can we establish a basis for objective observation?
We need a better method of holding our representatives accountable to what they promise. Simply whether they can manage to get elected again is too easily manipulated with spin and media saturation & control.
We need a report card, if you will, that can be used to measure the performance of elected officials equally; and it would seem to me that we need to put an equal cap on campaign spending across the board. If we can afford to give away $700 billion + to bail out Wall Street, and all this ridiculous amount spent on defense, why can't we simply run campaigns off of a certain amount of tax funding exclusively, once a candidate has a quota of petitioners to qualify? If we close this and other gaps where special interests and lobbyists are able to control officials, then perhaps they would be more responsive to their constituents, and perhaps we wouldn't get such a heaping helping of fail in office.
@Phikus:
Bang on. Lack of solid information leads people to make very bad decisions. I just heard Newt Gingrich (!) on NPR appealing to congress to slow down and carefully consider this bailout. Turning over to talk radio, I heard panicked, scared people saying "What are we going to do?!? Is congress going to mess this up and delay?!?"
I refuse to believe that the better angel of our nature takes the form of Newt Gingrich, but in appealing for caution, debate and understanding, he's certainly half as right as a stopped clock at least.
@Phikus- Ignorance may account for some of the difference, but there are many situations where even having as total and complete access to information as possible doesn't produce agreement because the underlying preferences are different-- someone who simply wasn't bothered by large economic disparity isn't going to change his or her mind due to any amount of economic data, yet will be at odds with someone who favors extreme economic equality.
To use myself as an example, many of my own views on housing, transportation, and urban development are determined solely by the fact that I have a profound dislike of crowds. No amount of information is going to change that preference.
"This should be the easy part, but - given the beliefs of those in the Creator camp (and the support they get from the most intransigent members of the corporate capitalist elite) - it's quite hard. It can even get depressing to argue against people who don't believe the rules of the game can or should ever be changed."
I like Doug's books. They're usually thoughtful, reasoned efforts.
However, I have to disagree with his position here. A conservative person is merely one who prefers the devil he knows rather than the one he doesn't. I work in an environment where if I changed everything I thought needed changing people would be gasping trying to keep up. We need to prioritize what we impose on the world. We need to spend the time to do it right, do it well, and sell it for all it is worth.
We technocrats like changing things, trying new things, and shaking up the technologies we use. Yet, after a few decades of doing this, I realize that it isn't always the right thing for the rest of the world.
Don't let your sense of boredom cause you to make a rotten decision just because you think you know more than everyone else. That's arrogance. And we call people that do such things bad, bad names.
Welcome Mr Rushkoff:
maybe you can explain something that came up last time your name was mentioned here. I'd read an interview where you claimed that "anyone who reads the text" of the Bible could see that Joshuah and Moses had gay sex ("face to face"), but I find no evidence of that anywhere.
So why do you believe this to be the case?
MGFARELLY: Thanks.
CICADA: I hear what you are saying. There are always going to be individual preferences. I still think it's the best system we've got, for preserving the rights of the individual to flourish, if we can just give it its due. No one group knows all the answers, so the system was designed to be a balancing act.
The Constitution was flawed in the beginning, but it had enough flexibility that it has been able to to breathe and grow from time to time. If we could just stick with it, instead of finding ways to circumvent it, I think we'd be ok. If the bill of rights could be held paramount, and greater accountability infused into the system, maintaining those checks and balances, I think we've still got the best fabric for holding a society together and yet allowing individual liberty that we have managed to come up with yet.
It's a democratic Republic, not a true democracy, and it's not a perfect system. It depends greatly upon the vigilance of a true 4th estate, and a well informed citizenry. Therein lies the rub, as I remarked previously.
The founding fathers gambled that we'd be a little more into having freedom and protecting it that we have turned out to be of late. Sure, we get out the flag and parade it around, pontificating our "freedom" all over the world like it's our best export. But when did we start going for style over substance? For appearances over proven results? When did we start valuing the symbols over the real thing that is being symbolized? It takes a great deal of willful ignorance to let it get this fucked up. I have to believe that in the end we are better than this. I have to believe we are starting to wake up from the greedy fever dream that has overtaken us.
Yes, those at the top of the Illuminati pyramid have better tools and data for manipulation of others than has ever been available to any ruling body in the history of civilization, but we also have the best access to information than any other past citizenry, if only we can empower ourselves to use it.
Though it is never enough simply to blog or write or pour all of your protest into one medium, I still think it is a tool with a lot of power to fight in the trenches of the info wars we find ourselves in. You might be surprised how many people can be enlightened or awakened to alternative points of view if you reach out. I find it helps to try to have an open mind no matter how set in your convictions you might be at first. If we all can be bothered to discuss how we'd like to make it better in this way, and strive for objectivity, then sometimes the best idea floats to the top of our collective consciousness.
If we use our interlinked-ness to then organize and follow through, we might be able to transform our society to make it more livable and breathable. This remains my fervent hope. Thanks for reading this long diatribe.
I disagree with the third paragraph precisely because I agree with the main point. It is not difficult to believe in or take inspiration from God as we become better and better creators. God is know as The Creator, and we're getting better all the time. If we could come to the point of being able to create a universe, could we plausibly deny the existence of God? Think not about whether there is or isn't a God. Think about what the theoretical limits of intelligence might be. Is it theoretically possible for something to be 1,000 times more intelligent than the most intelligent woman? Perhaps much greater than this?
@ Phikus- "But when did we start going for style over substance? For appearances over proven results?"
If I had to guess, shortly after the Battle of New Orleans. A war were the US got its capital burned down and where it was incredibly lucky not to have gotten screwed sidways in the peace talks got spun as a major patriotic victory for decades afterward.
As for the Founding Fathers, I don't think they assumed that people in government or people in general could be relied on to pursue democracy or liberty without being subverted to tyranny. As a result, they made a government that was essentially a massively knotted ball of twine, hoping that it'd take many, many years to get it unravelled enough to actually make a functional tyranny out of it.
CICADA: I can't argue with that. The twine is the system of checks and balances. Jon Stewart's writing team put together a faux social studies / government book called AMERICA (the book) which is awesome. The author cites, int he chapter on the Constitutional Convention, one of the framers of the Constitution saying (and I'm paraphrasing)
Welcome, Mr. Rushkoff.
It's always great to have another brilliant mind to share their thoughts with us, and help make us smarter.
I love Doug's work; have since "Media Virus" (actually, since the "GenX Reader"). But I'm tired (so very tired) of having to add the comment that belief in God doesn't necessarily equal a non-belief in "BoingBoinging" (to use today's word); nor does atheism guarantee any kind of creative, mystic perspective.
It is right to question all kinds of stuff, and to have fun doing it. It is right for believers to question their beliefs; I'd say that is true for believers in not-god as much as those who believe in god.
I don't see the culture divide as being waged between theists vs. atheists; believers in a creator vs. believers in pure science. Some of the finest, most creative people I know have a deep belief in God.
I see the divide as being between those who see doorways as spaces to be guarded against intrusion vs. those who see them as invitations to explore and share. There will always be walls. How we react to them shapes our behavior.
Drawing a line between people who believe in God and people who believe in people is, I think, another way to block a door.
I've been thinking, almost obsessively, about this post and Rushkoff's others for the past 24 hours.
But I have to ask what he means by "I...happily mutated in the late-1980's"?