For the mystics: We all know that the world that we experience is a Black Iron Prison, a malign illusion, the Matrix. We can experience the world where God exists and magic is afoot when we "wake up", that is become properly conscious, cease to rely on preprogrammed scripts and what we "expect" to see, to actually look reality squarely in the face. But survival in the world that it is means that it's much, much easier (and actually more fun) to stay asleep. The purpose of revolutionary ecosocialism is to build a world where it would be easier to stay awake than to fall asleep. But for that to happen the broad majority of people have to "wake up". We don't have time to do this one-by-one. We need to seize the reins of the Frankenstein's Monster that the mass media has become to get to everywhere in the world at once. Liberation has to be as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola.
For the revolutionaries: we're trying to understand about how "coming to consciousness" actually works. Once you realise that most self-described revolutionaries are not conscious, but are instead following a Book of Rules for Living Your Life as restrictive and soul-deadening as any peddled by a church or a self-help guru, you realise why everything that they say they want (to unite with the masses to spread consciousness) never actually happens. Also, actually-existing Marxists and anarchists seem to have a distressing lack of practical compassion towards each other (as opposed to "abstract compassion" to the "working class" or "the oppressed peoples of the earth"), and seem not to be conscious of their own reactionary attitudes when it comes to dealing with their own privilege. Non-dualist spirituality and transpersonal psychology have a lot to teach us here. And no, just participating in the struggle doesn't make you all better psychologically.
Showing posts with label principles for action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label principles for action. Show all posts
2009-06-25
Anon-tech just kicked in yo
Okay. You guys will remember that 4chan and associated intarwebz nerds declared war on the cult of Scientology at the beginning of last year. What you might not have heard since then: 4chan and similar fora have disowned Chanology, mainly on the grounds of it getting boring and respectable and about something other than the lulz, a phenomenon referred to in their usual tasteful manner as "moralfaggotry". However,
Chanology is still going (and scoring some hits), so therefore we must distinguish between "old Anonymous" (aka /b/tards, SomethingAwful goons, and other Chaotic Neutral intarwebz denizens) and "new Anonymous", which is pretty much a "chaotic good" hacktivism network.
Well, now "new Anonymous" has taken up the cause of the Iranian uprising. As mentioned below, we have been skeptical about the attempts of intarwebz denizens to climb on the barricades watered with the blood of real live Iranians to give themselves a moralistic hardon. (So perhaps CM disapproves of moralfaggotry as well.) However, this is serious business, as "new Anonymous" are clearly no longer a single-issue campaign, but an example of the self-organisation of intarwebz nerds, which yesterday's post suggested was the logical outcome of the digital revolution. More fundamentally - "new Anon"'s campaigns are being supported by The Pirate Bay.
A hundred years ago, Marxists and revolutionaries knew perfectly well what had to be done. Lenin said that the working class were spontaneously socialist and revolutionary (of course, he said this about five years after saying the precise opposite, which is why arguing from quotation is of limited value.) Therefore - the goal of Marxists and others with an actual ideology and a plan to change the world was to unite with these spontaneous radical forces - and attempt what Rosa Luxemberg called "the merging of workers and science". Learning and teaching, combining concrete experience with theoretical rigour, left brain plus right brain of a new collective class consciousness.
Well, intarwebz denizens are certainly not spontaneously socialist. But they certainly are spontaneously libertarian (much like the broader "information-processing classes" are spontaneously socially liberal), and they certainly do NOT tolerate anyone fucking around with their intarwebz. Remember, that's how Scientology got in the shit in the first place, trying to censor Tom Cruise spouting clam-speak on YouTube. And now the Islamic Republic of Iran have put their foot in it as well. It remains to be seen exactly how much use "Green Anon" is going to be. But - especially given the broader political implications of the involvement of the Pirate Bay, the first ever website to have a political wing - it behooves us to watch carefully and try to draw sensible conclusions.
Revolutionaries of the 21st century are going to have to take the self-organisation of internet nerds as seriously as the self-organisation of the working class, and let's start now. The question that can only be resolved in practice is: can the information-processing class in the Internet era be part of a revolutionary coalition that can change the world for a better, and if so, what possibilities are there for common cause and action with the industrial proletarians, the global slum-dwellers, the peasant masses, and other oppressed groups? Traditional Marxism suggests that the industrial workers will be the basis of a new world, but we're far beyond traditional Marxism now.
ETA: Holy Toledo Batman, the Pirate Party has a damned functioning international already. Serious business, as I said.
Chanology is still going (and scoring some hits), so therefore we must distinguish between "old Anonymous" (aka /b/tards, SomethingAwful goons, and other Chaotic Neutral intarwebz denizens) and "new Anonymous", which is pretty much a "chaotic good" hacktivism network.
Well, now "new Anonymous" has taken up the cause of the Iranian uprising. As mentioned below, we have been skeptical about the attempts of intarwebz denizens to climb on the barricades watered with the blood of real live Iranians to give themselves a moralistic hardon. (So perhaps CM disapproves of moralfaggotry as well.) However, this is serious business, as "new Anonymous" are clearly no longer a single-issue campaign, but an example of the self-organisation of intarwebz nerds, which yesterday's post suggested was the logical outcome of the digital revolution. More fundamentally - "new Anon"'s campaigns are being supported by The Pirate Bay.
A hundred years ago, Marxists and revolutionaries knew perfectly well what had to be done. Lenin said that the working class were spontaneously socialist and revolutionary (of course, he said this about five years after saying the precise opposite, which is why arguing from quotation is of limited value.) Therefore - the goal of Marxists and others with an actual ideology and a plan to change the world was to unite with these spontaneous radical forces - and attempt what Rosa Luxemberg called "the merging of workers and science". Learning and teaching, combining concrete experience with theoretical rigour, left brain plus right brain of a new collective class consciousness.
Well, intarwebz denizens are certainly not spontaneously socialist. But they certainly are spontaneously libertarian (much like the broader "information-processing classes" are spontaneously socially liberal), and they certainly do NOT tolerate anyone fucking around with their intarwebz. Remember, that's how Scientology got in the shit in the first place, trying to censor Tom Cruise spouting clam-speak on YouTube. And now the Islamic Republic of Iran have put their foot in it as well. It remains to be seen exactly how much use "Green Anon" is going to be. But - especially given the broader political implications of the involvement of the Pirate Bay, the first ever website to have a political wing - it behooves us to watch carefully and try to draw sensible conclusions.
Revolutionaries of the 21st century are going to have to take the self-organisation of internet nerds as seriously as the self-organisation of the working class, and let's start now. The question that can only be resolved in practice is: can the information-processing class in the Internet era be part of a revolutionary coalition that can change the world for a better, and if so, what possibilities are there for common cause and action with the industrial proletarians, the global slum-dwellers, the peasant masses, and other oppressed groups? Traditional Marxism suggests that the industrial workers will be the basis of a new world, but we're far beyond traditional Marxism now.
ETA: Holy Toledo Batman, the Pirate Party has a damned functioning international already. Serious business, as I said.
2008-11-30
The morality of marketing
Let's face facts - virtually no-one has an opinion of their own on anything. Knowledge, like virtually everything else in human culture, is social, and opinions spread like viruses, through contagion. Ideas are only real things when they seize the masses - and there's no moral difference between a good idea you thought up and one which you pull out of the mediasphere.
The idea of "originality", that people who originate ideas or memes, is an artefact of capitalism, based in the institutions of copyright and intellectual property. A lot of the soul-deadening nature of modern culture can be traced back to the fact that we only award people who come up with ideas for which property rights can be established, promptly alienated, and trades. In another culture, artists, memeticians, writers, politicians etc. might be honoured for the way they channel the "loa" of our culture into new product which enrich us all, but we might not be so hung up about the idea of "individual genius", which appears to just ruin everything.
You do not have an autonomous mind - you are an expression of the totality of human culture, especially in this cosmopolitan intarwebz era. Therefore, the question of the morality of marketing, propaganda, language-based thought control, call it what they will, cannot be boiled down to the question of "messing with someone's head" - we all do that, in a way, every day. There is only one human cultural mind which our individual consciousness refract in different ways. So, the question of the morality of marketing is a question of to what greater social end the meme is being spread (whether for the continued rise of collective consciousness, or to keep people ignorant so the savvy can profit from them); as well as whether the techniques used foster or retard trust and social cohesion, on balance.
The question of whether we should use deception and manipulation is, when you come right down to it, the question of whether we should use violence. The answer is: yes, in the right place, and at the right time, and only if we are willing to be fully accountable for the consequences of our actions. Swearing off marketing is the memetic equivalent of pacifism. Noble, but perhaps not sustainable in the world-as-is.
I realise I've just written off the existence of what might be called the "Higher" or "God" self in many mystical traditions. Well, good - every man and woman might be a star, but stars obey the laws of gravity etc. All that really exist in the "astral realms" are currents in the culture-sphere - we collectively make all these currents, but individually we are powerless against them. A "meme" is, in a way, a decision to all swim in a particular direction, which creates a new current, bolsters an existing one, or negates one we don't like.
The idea of "originality", that people who originate ideas or memes, is an artefact of capitalism, based in the institutions of copyright and intellectual property. A lot of the soul-deadening nature of modern culture can be traced back to the fact that we only award people who come up with ideas for which property rights can be established, promptly alienated, and trades. In another culture, artists, memeticians, writers, politicians etc. might be honoured for the way they channel the "loa" of our culture into new product which enrich us all, but we might not be so hung up about the idea of "individual genius", which appears to just ruin everything.
You do not have an autonomous mind - you are an expression of the totality of human culture, especially in this cosmopolitan intarwebz era. Therefore, the question of the morality of marketing, propaganda, language-based thought control, call it what they will, cannot be boiled down to the question of "messing with someone's head" - we all do that, in a way, every day. There is only one human cultural mind which our individual consciousness refract in different ways. So, the question of the morality of marketing is a question of to what greater social end the meme is being spread (whether for the continued rise of collective consciousness, or to keep people ignorant so the savvy can profit from them); as well as whether the techniques used foster or retard trust and social cohesion, on balance.
The question of whether we should use deception and manipulation is, when you come right down to it, the question of whether we should use violence. The answer is: yes, in the right place, and at the right time, and only if we are willing to be fully accountable for the consequences of our actions. Swearing off marketing is the memetic equivalent of pacifism. Noble, but perhaps not sustainable in the world-as-is.
I realise I've just written off the existence of what might be called the "Higher" or "God" self in many mystical traditions. Well, good - every man and woman might be a star, but stars obey the laws of gravity etc. All that really exist in the "astral realms" are currents in the culture-sphere - we collectively make all these currents, but individually we are powerless against them. A "meme" is, in a way, a decision to all swim in a particular direction, which creates a new current, bolsters an existing one, or negates one we don't like.
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