The Seagull Knows: Notes on a Constipated Discipline

The opening moment of the workshop on Methodological Strategies for Real-Life Theorising was unintentionally profound. A story of a seagull crieing above the glass façade of the Blavatnik School of Government – a building that stands as a temple to the #deathcult that shaped our lives for the last 40 years of #neoliberal change. In hindsight, that seagull metaphor may have been the wisest participant at the event.

The sessions that followed offered a painful reminder of just how entrenched and constipated academic political theory can be. Many of the speakers, well-meaning, no doubt, spoke in dense, self-referential language, seemingly unaware (or uninterested) in the world burning outside. We are living through accelerating #climatechaos, surging right-wing extremism, and widespread social fragmentation. Yet here, the main concern is career-building through opaque frameworks and method fetishism. One can’t help but wonder how many in the room truly believe they are doing good?

The crisis is deeper than any single workshop. The very career paths that brought these scholars here have been shaped, filtered, and “concreted” by 30 years of neoliberal funding models. The result is a form of political theorising that appears to want to find a way out, but only by squeezing itself through the tightest gaps in the #postmodern mess. And even then, only while clutching tightly to the privileges and assumptions granted by the current paths.

Constipated Language, Abstract Struggles

Throughout the first sessions, there was a recurring sense of people talking to themselves. Even the attempts to make theory “concrete” – to move into empirical territory – felt more like power grabs than inquiry. There was talk of “transient theory,” of “mid-level normative frameworks,” of “ethnographic insights”, but very little clarity on what any of this meant in real practical or political terms.

Instead of confronting the deeply ideological assumptions embedded in liberal academia, the speakers soft-stepped around them. One could sense them trying to smuggle ideology back into a discipline that’s been left hollow. The “heroic era of theory” is dead, and what we’re left with is a ritual performance of relevance. At one point, the liberal impulse to block discomforting inputs in public policy was laid bare. This is ethics as insulation, not action. There was repeated deference to “existing norms and frameworks,” – the very architecture of the #deathcult, now warmed up and served again as policy advice.

The Seagull Still Watches

By the end of the day, some fresh air drifted in. A few scraps of cloth were handed out to the otherwise naked theorists. There was genuine engagement with normative complexity. Questions like “what is mutable?” began to shift the conversation. “Engaged political philosophy” and talk of “normative judgments” began to inch the discussion closer to the ground.

The presentation on restitution, for instance, highlighted real political dilemmas. Who decides what gets returned, and why? Is it justice, diplomacy, or geo-political calculation? One question noted that giving back looted objects is not just about ethics, it’s about giving back the values they represent. But this was quickly hedged with talk of “choice.” Liberal hedging again. No one wanted to say: yes, do it, without compromise.

Even here, markets remained the baseline. The dominant “common sense” is still economic flow. Value is defined by trade, not meaning. Discrimination itself can to easily be reframed as a market distortion, another cost to be corrected, not a systemic condition to be fought. The anti-market perspective, grounded in actual social justice, in living memory, in reparative truth, is invisible to meany people until it becomes a threat. At that point, the strategy shifts to distraction and buying off. That’s the logic of #neoliberal containment.

From Political Theory to Political Theater

What we witnessed was not just a methodological workshop, but a staged performance of institutional survival. Theories were dressed up, displayed, but never walked out into the street. Real political agency remained absent. The political philosopher, once imagined as a public actor, now hides behind peer-reviewed paywalls, while the world asks different questions entirely.

Still, by the end, perhaps there were reasons for the seagull to hold off its stone throwing – for a while. A few voices showed signs of life. A few questions struck true. But it will take more than scraps of normative cloth to cover the nakedness of political philosophy today.

The seagull will be watching.

#Oxford #Event

The event: Many political philosophers theorise not only for the sake of pure theory, but also because they want to convince citizens and policymakers to bring about changes in the real world.

Such policy-oriented research often draws on interdisciplinary methods, integrating empirical insights and normative and conceptual arguments. This, however, raises methodological challenges of its own. For example, how to deal with the fact that the social sciences are fragmented and different disciplines work with different paradigms and methodologies? How can philosophers, who bring their own normative assumptions openly to the table, deal with the – sometimes implicit – normativity that is also inherent in many other lines of research? What level of abstraction of normative arguments, eg basic normative theories or mid-level overlapping principles, should philosophers draw on when discussing with policymakers? And how to deal with the fact that in the current political climate in many countries, distrust towards “experts” also extends to philosophers?
Workshop agenda

Day 1: Thursday 24 April 2025

Methodological Strategies for real-life theorising

Chair: Jonathan Wolff, Blavatinik School of Government

Liron Lavi, Bar-Ilan University and Nahshon Perez, Bar-Ilan University: Conceptual Concretization in Empirically Informed Political Theory: What Makes a Concept Applicable
Carmen E Pavel, King’s College London: Mid-Level Theories of Justice and Public Policy
Kian Mintz Woo, University College, Cork: Explicit Methodologies for Normative Evaluation in Public Policy

Theorising between values and cases

Chair: Daniel Halliday, University of Melbourne

Rouven Symank, Free University, Berlin: Integrating Ethnography with Political Theory in Policy-Oriented Research: Challenges and Insights from Cultural Restitution Debates
Florence Adams, University of Cambridge: Discrimination as an Object of Social Science
Erika Brandl, University of Bergen: Measuring the justice of architectural development policies:debates on temporal scopes and indicators in the Hillevåg plan

My notes on this event:

The seagull is perhaps a good metaphor for nature fighting back against the last 40 years of human #deathcult culture that this building is temple of.

The language is constipated, a growing feeling that these people are pissing funding and focus against the wall while the world burns from #climatechaos and hard right social breakdown.

I wonder how many people here think they are doing good?

The problem on this career path is that it has been shaped by #neoliberalism for the last 20 years, funding and status have both been ground through this mess, and now reflect it.

After the first session I feel they are trying to squeeze themself out of this post modernist mess. By going back to basics, but it’s so constipated it’s hard to see if there is any value in this.

Looking at them talk and answer questions, you can feel them being lost. It still feels like they are talking to themselves.

A power grab, by making theory concrete, to build empirical research. They dodge this by saying the theory is transient.

If this is a bios? They fix this by making the bios visible. They find this question hard to answer as its a root issue.

They are “soft” sneaking ideology back into the current dead Political Science and theory world they work in.

The heroic era of theory is challenged for making public policy. They argue that we should start from the existing norms and frameworks. This from the #deathcult we get wormed up #deathcult worship as policy. Mess. Of course liberal rights have priority in the end, “we must also include institutional facts”.

The seagulls at the start of this event might be the wisest one here. The rest have no cloths, and the language is so constipated that the smell is likely off putting for any real outreach that they need in the scrabbling for coverings to continue their careers.

The liberals start to talk about #blocking the inputs that make them uncomfortable. In ethical public policy making.

From a working insider view, the people doing this don’t have the skills or knowledge if we focus on philosophy and theory only.

Good question, what is given, what is mutable is very mutable. So the Liberal “common sense” is likely a strong #blocking on the path of the change we need.

“Engaged political philosophy” “normative judgments” as we go on they start to be more relevant. “where there is convergence and divergence”

The event starts naked and smelly but as it goes on the air clears at times and some scraps of cloth are provided.

Relevant information that is easily excessable,

The power in a committee is the appointment of the people sitting on the committee rather than the committee process it self. The answer to this is hesitant and bluff, and distaste to cover this.

A chair or witness roll is different in committees.

Why restitution, why now.

Liberal
Justice

Reperatition is politics, not just ethical, geo politics and funding, based on former colonist will, is a tool for “ethical diplomacy”

Can any of these be seen as a reason not to do it. Don’t have an answer. Normative lessons.

When we give back objects that we value from our looting, we are giving back our values. We still chose.

My parents work is displayed in our #mainstreaming institutions, but these institutions are not interested in the objects, as they do not fit into there existing story’s and category. Subject archives will take them. But this is still shaping history.

Markets as the dominant “common sense” everything is economic flows. Value is defined by this.

Discrimination is contested with the hard shift to the right #DUI

Distortion in the market, function efficiently.

Discrimination is about greed, American greed, a moral dilemma. Liberal but not to liberal. Talk about the market path, let the market do its thing.

Markets aligned characteristics, money the logic of the #deathcult

As my work is anti market they can’t see any value, so put no resources and focus on the path in till it becomes a threat then distraction and buying off become the difficult paths.

Trump now is turning this neoliberalism around as discrimination. What is this, discrimination against nation states, rather than economics/market.

At the end the might be reasons for the seagull to hold off the stone throwing for a while.

Neoliberalism, Fascism

The best working definition of fascism is simple, economic: “The continuation of capitalism by undemocratic means.” This isn’t abstract theory. Fascism in the 1920s and 30s emerged precisely in response to a very real threat of revolutionary socialism. The Russian Revolution sparked global fear among the capitalist class that their time was up. Fascism – in Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria – arose as a counter-revolution. It wasn’t merely authoritarian nationalism or aesthetic militarism. It was the repressive armour worn by capitalism under existential threat.

Look at the details: In Spain, Franco rose after a democratically elected socialist government began to challenge entrenched economic power. In Germany, the first Nazi concentration camps were built for communists, not Jews. In Chile in the 1970s, the overthrow of Allende’s democratic socialist government was orchestrated by domestic elites and foreign (read: U.S.) interests terrified of socialism spreading in Latin America. Fascism wasn’t a deviation. It was capitalism defending itself with violence. Today, we face the same moment – and too many are looking the other way.

For 40 years, neoliberalism, that mix of deregulation, privatization, and gutting of social safety nets, has shaped our economics and cultures unchallenged. Its effects are easy to see: skyrocketing inequality, mass precarity, and ecological breakdown. But there’s a dangerous myth that neoliberalism is simply unregulated capitalism. In truth, it’s much closer path to economic fascism without the jackboots, until now.

#Neoliberalism didn’t grow in a vacuum. Its roots are in explicit reaction to socialism’s successes. Take Friedrich Hayek, ideological godfather of neoliberal – he was deeply disturbed by Red Vienna, where municipal socialism (like public housing) was working too well. His entire framework arose as an intellectual counterattack to collectivist policies.

And Hayek wasn’t just an ivory tower academic. He directly shaped the policies of Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, and the Chicago Boys – bringing theory to life through brutal economic “shock therapy.” Thatcher herself famously declared during a cabinet meeting: “This is what we believe” as she slammed Hayek’s book on the table.

From Mussolini to Musk, capitalism’s new wannabe strongmen. There’s little material difference between Mussolini’s Italy selling off state assets to loyal industrialists and today’s global elites (#nastyfew) hoovering up public infrastructure in the guise of “efficiency.” Mussolini at least expected those capitalists to serve the nation. Neoliberalism assumes, foolishly, that global capital will take care of society without loyalty, borders, or accountability.

In Russia, we see a more classical fascist arrangement: oligarchs allowed to profit, provided they serve the state’s nationalist goals. In the U.S., capital’s alignment with far-right politics is more chaotic but no less real. Corporations rarely oppose Trumpism, despite its chaos. Why? Because, as with 1930s Europe or 1970s Chile, fascism is good for business – so long as the profits roll in and unions, climate activists, and grassroots movements are crushed.

Where we are now is neoliberalism’s endgame, capitalism is in crisis again. But this time the existential threat isn’t just socialism – it’s climate and ecological collapse, a crisis neoliberalism created and cannot solve. And once again, the system’s response is not reform, but repression. Neoliberalism cannot survive democratically. The people don’t want it. So increasingly, undemocratic means are being deployed: voter suppression, propaganda, surveillance, repression, and the rise of far-right movements that promise “order” and scapegoats instead of justice. This is fascism, not a return to it, but its next iteration.

So what now? We don’t just need to resist this – we need to name it. Clearly. Loudly. Repeatedly. The myth that neoliberalism is merely “capitalism with the brakes off” must be composted. It is fascism with #PR. And as in the past, a step, a real alternative comes from the bottom up. From grassroots media, mutual aid networks, radical unions, climate justice movements, and the digital commons. We need to rebuild this solidarity, and we must do it #4opens horizontally, outside the broken institutions that created this mess.

The problem we face is simple and brutal. The right-wing eats everything. Every radical spark, every hopeful idea, every challenge to power, they swallow it, mutate it, and spit it back as bland, digestible social shit.

They take our justified rage and push it back as conspiracy. They take our care and twist it into control. Every revolutionary idea, stripped bare, rebranded, and fed into the #mainstreaming machine as more slop to feed and shape the masses.

This isn’t new. It’s the old game of cultural capture. And they’re very good at it. That’s why we need tools and paths they can’t easily co-opt. Stories they can’t rinse out and rebrand. Protocols that don’t translate into buzzword #blocking. The #4opens, the #OMN, the hashtag as resistance, are frameworks built to rot their greed and appetite.

We compost instead of consume. We grow native paths, not polished products. What we’re building is deliberately messy, deeply rooted, and absolutely unpalatable to the #nastyfew and their simpering acolytes. They want power. We want relational fabric. They want purity spirals and hot takes. We want compost, community, and continuity.

It’s a step. And that matters. As I always say – I like big ideas, but right now, I’m putting my shovel into small steps towards big ideas. That’s how you build something that lasts.

Messy language feeds back into our messy culture

The #blocking of current action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with the mess our use of language makes. And the deeper issue is how this messy language feeds back into our culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action.

The last 40 years of postmodernism and neo-liberalism have made this worse. #Postmodernism chipped away at the idea of shared reality, leaving us with endless interpretation and “personal truths.” #Neoliberalism, on the other hand, commodified everything, including language itself, into marketing, spin, and #PR. Together, they’ve hollowed out words like “community,” “freedom,” and even “change,” to the point that we barely recognize what they mean any more.

Take “mutual aid” for example, a term grounded in deep solidarity and reciprocal responsibility. Now, on both #dotcons and #openweb platforms, it gets reduced to casual crowdfunding and anonymous asks, with little relational context. Not bad, but far from what it could and needs to be.

If we want affinity-based action to work, if we want people to come together and trust and act together, then we have to compost this mess. And the way to do that might be surprisingly simple #KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid, not stupid as in naive, but stupid as in clear.

We need to reclaim simple language that carries shared meaning. This is exactly what we’re trying to seed with the positive side of the #hashtag story. Hashtags can act as anchors in this storm of abstraction. They cut through noise, bring us back to the root meaning, and allow collective orientation without needing corporate gatekeepers or institutional filters.

Think:

#4opens — a shorthand for open code, open data, open governance, open standards.
#deathcult — pointing to the suicidal path of #neoliberalism.
#techshit — composting the mess, not throwing it away.
#nothingnew — slowing tech churn, reclaiming meaningful pace and paths.

Each of these tags points to deeper, shared narratives that are simple, but not simplistic. They invite action, not confusion. Compost the abstraction. Regrow clarity. Reclaim trust paths in both tech and social spaces. Speak simply, act clearly, hashtag wisely with intention.

On this working path, It is important for the progressives and radicals to come together and focus on the real issues and challenges facing society, rather than fighting among ourselves. Finding this balance between being “nice” and being “nasty” is key to being effective in bringing about any lasting social change.

The #hashtags embody a story and worldview rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. They highlight the destructive impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashernista) on our shared lives, while promoting the original ideals of the World Wide Web and early internet culture (#openweb).

The #closedweb critiques the for-profit internet and its harmful social consequences, while #4opens advocates for transparency, collaboration, and open-source principles in tech development.

The #geekproblem tag draws attention to a cultural tendency in tech: where geeks, absorbed in their tools and logic, overlook the broader social effects of their creations. This feeds into #techshit, where layers of unnecessary complexity pile up, further distancing people from tech’s social roots. Meanwhile, #encryptionists critiques the knee-jerk reaction that “more encryption” is always the answer, reinforcing control and scarcity, rather than liberating people and community.

Together, hashtags tell a coherent and powerful story. They call for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent approach to both technology and society.

#nothingnew asks whether constant innovation is the right path — or if we need to slow down and improve what already works.

#techchurn names the cycle of flashy, redundant tech that fails to solve core issues.

#OMN and #indymediaback point toward an Open Media Network — and a revival of the radical, decentralized media that once rivalled corporate media on the early web.

#OGB stands for Open Governance Body, an invitation to practice grassroots, transparent, community-led decision-making.

It’s an ambitious but needed path and goal, to build social tech networks that “fail well”, meaning they fail in a way that can be fixed by the people, through trust and collective action, not closed-source patches and corporate updates. The #OMN’s focus is human-first. Tech comes second, as a mediator, a tool, not the destination.

Yes, the #geekproblem is real. Technical expertise becomes a gatekeeping mechanism. But tech can also empower, if we design for simplicity, accessibility, and community-first paths and values. The only working path is simple, trust-based, and human. That’s why we keep coming back to #KISS.

Why haven’t we been dealing with this for the last 10 Years? Over the past decade, we’ve lived in a state of quiet paralysis. Climate change, ecological collapse, technological overreach, all of it loomed. And instead of digging in, we froze. Well-meaning people chose fear over action. Understandably. But fear is a poor foundation for building anything sustainable.

We’re on this site to only blame – we’re here to compost. The problem? We stopped critiquing. We stopped examining the tools in our hands. Not only that, but we bought into the illusion that #NGO paths and tech would save us. That shiny apps and startup culture could greenwash a better future. And when the results disappointed, we turned inward, stopped questioning, and left things to rot.

But what if that rot could be composted? By using the #4opens – open data, open code, open standards for open governance, we have a practical framework to call out and compost the layers of #techshit that have built up. Tech that divides us, tech that distracts us, tech that damages the planet and calls it progress. Yes, like gardening, composting takes time. It smells at first. It’s messy. But give it care, and you get soil. Soil to plant better ideas in. Soil for hope.

One of the reasons we haven’t made progress is the #geekproblem, a narrow slice of technically-minded culture mad up of (stupid)individuals, which so far have dominated the design and direction of our tools. They mean well, often. But in their obsession with technical elegance and “solutions,” they’ve sidelined the social and the ecological. What’s left is a brittle, sterile infrastructure, constantly churning out newness without any substance.

Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism has flourished, encouraged by #dotcons social media systems built for engagement, not connection. These silos encourage performance over solidarity, branding over community, and endless scrolling over doing. We’ve all felt it.

And most activist groups, instead of resisting this tide, drank the #NGO poison, chasing funding, watering down their goals, professionalizing their resistance until it became another logo in a funding application. We’ve lost a decade to fear, distraction, and capture. But it’s maybe not too late.

We have the tools, in the #ActivityPub based #Fediverse. We have the frameworks, the #4opens can guide us to rebuild with transparency, collaboration, and care. The hashtags like #geekproblem, #techshit, #nothingnew, and #OMN give us a shared vocabulary for critique and regeneration. They point to a web where people, not platforms, hold power, and where technology serves life, not control. Let’s stop being afraid to critique. Let’s stop outsourcing responsibility and get on with composting.

Because that’s where the soil of a better path will come from.

On being a prat in tech and social spaces (Yes, this might be about you 😘)

From where I’m standing, a lot of people are being absolute prats when it comes to social and technological issues. That should be obvious… but clearly, it’s not. We’ve got two basic paths here:

#Block everything you don’t like. Predictably, this just creates more prat-ish behaviour and pushes us all deeper into toxic bubbles.
Ask questions. Grow. Listen. Respond. This reduces prat-ish behaviour – over time, maybe even composts it into something useful.

Now, in the era of #stupidindividualism, which path do you think most people are taking? Yeah. That one. If you’re blocking conversations that challenge you, you’re still kneeling at the altar of the #deathcult. Look up. You’re making a mess of social technology.

“Get off your knees” comes to mind, stop worshipping the #deathcult of neoliberalism, salted with postmodernism. These ideologies have poisoned our communities by turning freedom into isolation and choice into greed. I’m all for freedom, yes, you can choose to be a prat. But I reserve the freedom to call that behaviour toxic and self-destructive. What you do with that communication is up to you, just don’t pretend that #blocking it is some kind of moral high ground.

As Thalia Campbell rightly says, sometimes the best path is just to kindly correct, share info, or talk things through face-to-face. Most of this online prat-ness wouldn’t survive a real conversation, it’s bloated on anonymity, context collapse, and dopamine-fuelled feedback loops.

Yes, what meany people do now is a mess, but mess makes good compost, compost builds soil, soil feeds the common good. And talking about “common sense” is just a way of stirring that compost.

But here’s the mess makeing: we keep repeating the same shit, and instead of composting, we leave it to fester. Capitalism, rooted in self-interested greed, claims to serve the common good. But on the fundamentalist path we have been on for 40 years, it’s clearly failing. War. Growing economic divides. Visible #climatechaos. Poisoned ecosystems and communities.

We can’t survive, or flourish, in a society based on greed. That’s just a simple #KISS message. And neoliberalism, still much of our #mainstreming “common sense”, is nothing but extreme capitalism. It’s the purest form of the #deathcult. It’s eating us alive. Please talk about this.

The #dotcons we have been building our lives in for the last 20 years are undiluted deathcult, surveillance capitalism wrapped in shiny UX. The #openweb? Often like herding cats. And scratch the surface, and yes, sometimes you find the #deathcult there too. But we can’t keep going down this path. We need to stop pushing #mainstreaming agendas that lead us back into the same poisoned mess. That path is BAD. It’s ending in ruin.

We’ve got to try, seriously try, to make things better. Not perfect. Not flashy. Just better.

And that means less prat-ing about. More compost. More care. More common good.

The #OMN is not a product — It’s a path you walk

The #OMN project is #DIY, it only works if we build it together. This isn’t a startup pitch. It’s not a platform that magically appears out of nowhere to fix everything. It’s not a product to consume, it’s a path you walk. The direction is participatory, not passive. You don’t get to sit back and clap… or boo from the sidelines. If you do, the system won’t collapse, but it sure as hell won’t grow.

Let’s be direct, there is no saviour coder, no NGO white knight, no perfectly designed protocol that will do the real work for us. If you’re waiting for a polished solution wrapped in a branded bow, you’re already on the wrong side of history.

And if our current (stupid)individualism keeps #blocking, even if we don’t build any of this now, the work still matters. There’s deep value in memory, the rough notes, the abandoned wikis, the half-built tools, the strange and beautiful conversations scattered across the #fediverse. These are the seeds and scraps that future builders can compost. If we can’t get our act together now, the next wave might. But only if we leave something living behind.

Right now, for me, that “something” is #makinghistory, the #OMN archiving project. It’s not just nostalgia or backup, it’s a living memory layer, a scaffolding of knowledge and intention that gives us a place to stand. Without memory, we circle the same old #techshit heap, repeating mistakes, retelling the same half-lost stories, falling into the same social and technical traps.

That’s not progress. That’s rot.

So we’re starting where we might get funding, bootstrapping the archive. It’s step one. It’s doable. And it matters. If we don’t remember soon, many of us, and the histories we’ve made, will be lost in the rising storm of #climatechaos and social fragmentation.

In the end, it’s simple, if we don’t build, we don’t change. If we don’t remember, we’ll never learn.
And if we don’t act, this moment becomes compost for someone else’s future.

That’s fine, but I’d rather build that future when we need it most now. Wouldn’t you?

Ah, the cockerel crows and the full moon glows, a fine moment to scratch at the compost pile.

You’re right, most are merrily skipping through walled gardens, hashtagging selfies and feeding the #dotcons. But seeds don’t need mass attention, they just do need rich compost. That’s what we need to build. Slow, damp, a bit smelly, but fertile.

The #sheeple are not my flock, they belong to the algorithmic shepherds. We’re feeding the stray goats and curious crows.

You don’t convert people by preaching. You do it by making better paths, ones they choose when the old ones crumble. We don’t sell the #openweb like snake oil — we show it, live in it, fix it when it breaks, and compost the crap. It’s #DIY, not #DRM

As for silos and skips, good compost needs oxygen, not airtight boxes. So yeah, a messy open pile — full of half-rotten ideas, posts, drama, even the occasional troll turd.

We trust in tools not gatekeepers, the #4opens are the shovels, rakes, and sieves. The people bring the scraps, and over time, it breaks down into something usable.

No army of mods, no paywalls, simple trust, process, and a lot of patience. Think rural anarchism, not startup governance.

On scaling… Ah, the eternal #techshit question, “Does it scale?” That’s the wrong frame. Nature doesn’t scale, it sprawls.

We’re not building an empire. We’re nurturing a network. Think mycelium, not megastructure.

The #OMN isn’t about numbers. It’s about resilience and agency. If it sprouts in some cracks, the monoculture breaks. And yes, nettles welcome

The #Kolektivas, the #fashernista paradoxes, the semi-anarchic infighting, it all goes in the pile. Break it down, stir it up, give it time…

And what do you get? Fluffy, fertile humus — ready for new growth. That’s the cycle. That’s the plan.

Can people engage with the #4opens process?

The #4opens is a completely obverse social restating of the #FOSS development model — but with a critical edition: The return of #openprocess, something we’ve lost over the last 10 years due to the shift from public email archives to our reliance on encrypted chat.

With this in mind, what is still #blocking the #openweb reboot? One thing I’ve learned from the last five years of this reboot is this: The #geekproblem is inadequate for the scale of change and challenge we face. Currently, the #geekproblem is HARD #blocking, obstructing both, funding, and tech direction. Think: #NLNet, #NGIZero, #SummerOfProtocols, #InvestInOpen — they say the right words, have potential, but are actually #blindly caught in a loop of the same limiting #blocking patterns.

This is why we need activism, this can be #spiky, sometimes all it takes Is a rock or a stick. Think of Greek shepherd dogs in the mountains — they come at you like wolves. But just bending down to pick up a rock or stick? They back off. No violence. Just clarity and intention. Think of the #4opens like this when facing #mainstreaming, suddenly, it starts to make sense.

Nuts and nutters, Yes — you’re right, this can sound like blinded ideology. But remember: Humans are meaning-creating creatures. One word for that is ideology — there are others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym

If we can compost this mess, that’s a big if, will the #OMN Work? Simple answer: Yes.
Complex answer: No. My answer to that riddle? We find the complex by implementing the simple. That’s the #KISS principle in action. Walk the simple path, we discover our way through the complex path by implementing and walking the simple one #KISS.

#Mainstreaming = #Deathcult Worship

Most mainstream agendas are pointless. Why? Because they’re built on “common sense” — Which today often just means #deathcult worship. Something to keep in mind… whenever you’re doing anything that matters. Hope this slight poetry piece helps. One thing I keep saying, please don’t be a prat, thanks.

A sharp take, systems are visibly broken

In the end, all social action happens through generalized talk, categories, metaphors, shorthand. That’s how language works. But we live in a cultural amnesia where this is forgotten, mistaken for “common sense.” The #OMN embraces this messy, human space, while the #geekproblem seeks rigid machine-like CONTROL. They’re often technically right, but socially intolerant. We, by contrast, are often technically wrong, but humanly right. What we need is a bridge between these approaches, or we’ll just keep circling. The #OMN needs some control; the #geekproblem needs a lot of humanity. But they don’t see this, and so they keep #BLOCKING. For example, take the common pattern where someone says, “why don’t you just develop it?” That line unconsciously dumps all responsibility on narrow “geeks” while ignoring the role of social imagination, UI/UX design, and the deeper process we’re trying to solve together. That’s the #geekproblem: not the code, but the refusal to look at the problem outside the code. So here we are again—rinse, repeat. Let’s not. Let’s build the bridge.

We are living through a deep crisis, not just of environment, economy, or governance, but of imagination and the will to live. The old systems are visibly broken, the #IPCC reports confirm what many already feel, we are trapped inside a #deathcult, and #mainstreaming culture offers only distraction, careerism, and status games for isolated individuals. There is no hope there.

But hope is not some fluffy optimism, it’s a social force. And in every grassroots, federated, DIY tech project, the solution is always the same, more people. Not more gatekeepers. Not more hierarchy. Just more people. This is the core truth of the #OMN (Open Media Network). It’s not a product, it’s a process. It’s not a startup pitch, it’s a compost heap where good things grow, if we turn it, feed it, and invite others to join in.

We already know how the far right wins, they appeal to real feelings of injustice, then twist those feelings into #stupidindividualism that serves their own class interests. It’s reactionary ideology, and it’s spreading fast. What do we do? Step away from their game. Get involved in building something different. The #4opens gives us a simple, powerful tool to judge who’s building towards the commons and who’s just repackaging and pushing the same poison.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens

Building #OGB is about power without #powerpolitics

If we want the #openweb to survive and thrive, we need new forms of power, ones that can defend the community and challenge traditional power dynamics without falling into the traps of control, hierarchy, and co-option.

The problem is clear: If we follow traditional power politics, which are built on control, manipulation, and exclusion, we will fail. We’ve seen this play out repeatedly, grassroots movements spark change, only to be then sold out and absorbed, neutralized by the #mainstreaming flows of #blinded personal and institutional power.

The #blocking issues, what’s stopping us building the #OGB? This is about the “Silo Path” vs. the “Aggregation Path”. Centralized control (the silo path) is easier to manage, but it kills autonomy and leads to gatekeeping. A decentralized, organic approach (the aggregation path) requires more effort but keeps power in the hands of the community. The #OGB needs to be built on open trust networks, not locked-down institutions. This leads to perception of a lack of “perceived power” and currently people, default to following power. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue, If we don’t look like power, we will struggle to attract participation. But power doesn’t have to mean hierarchy, it can mean influence, legitimacy, and real impact. We need to keep building structures that feel like power while staying true to open, bottom-up values.

This brings up issues of funding and recognition of grassroots growth, which is where almost all valuable social and technological change, comes from, ONLY grassroots movements, not the #mainstreaming institutions that later co-opt them and claim ownership and CONTROL. The problem is that these CONTROL institutions default to sucking up resources, draining the energy and focus from grassroots projects, leaving hollowed out shells, undervalued and underfunded. To fix this, we need a cultural shift that recognizes and invests in decentralized, community-driven alternatives.

An important change is needed before we can be coming the change and challenge, to actually make this work. This is the path of supporting “Organic Intellectuals with Muddy Feet”, Change happens on the ground, not in #NGO meetings or #dotcons boardrooms. We need to elevate people who are actively engaged in building solutions, not just talking, or co-opting them.

To learn from effective grassroots paths, the #OGB draws from real-world activist organizing, not abstract theories or #fashernista posturing. Let’s look at some examples, in coding, loose scrum for open source dev leads to adapting flexible, iterative structures for governance. In culture, Burning Man’s self-organizing, mutated from Rainbow Gatherings, illustrating that radical decentralization works at scale, though this dose brining issues. And in tech federated networks (like the #Fediverse), show that distributed, non-hierarchical systems can replace corporate monopolies.

To take a few steps, we need to avoid the trap of fighting over power, where internal battles drain energy and distract from the real mission. This is needed to keep the focus on building the native path, not arguing over control. In this #KISS path, the #OGB must function as a shared infrastructure, not a battleground for egos.

The Path isn’t to directly destroy existing power structures, it’s to build alternatives that are too effective to ignore. The #OGB isn’t just another governance tool; it’s a blueprint for creating sustainable, community-led power without falling into the traps of traditional politics.

Let’s work together as if we are at a turning point. We can either follow the same old paths of control, stagnation, and eventual failure, or we can build something new that actually works. The choice is ours. Let’s make it happen, please.

#4opens #nothingnew #DIYculture #openweb #grassroots

It’s not easy, and it’s not as simple as clicking “sign up” and walking into a ready-made community

Q: Very interested in what you have to say. I’ve been trying to find a place in the #Fediverse that’s not in thrall to big tech. How do I join up? #OMN #OpenWeb. Hungry, feed me!

A: This is harder than it should be, and that itself is a telling sign of where we are right now. The #Fediverse is a fascinating, messy, and diverse space, but much of it is still trapped in the gravity of the #dotcons. What you’ll mostly find are either clones of corporate social media—Twitter-like, YouTube-like, Reddit-like—attempting to reimplement the same narrow and limiting designs, or small, scattered projects built by devs scratching a personal itch.

We haven’t yet built the truly native, #DIY #openweb alternatives, and it’s not for lack of effort. There have been decades of attempts, countless working groups, community-driven projects, and radical experiments, but again and again, they have been met with #blocking, not just from external forces, but from within our own communities. The failure isn’t technical; it’s social, political, and cultural. The conversation on http://hamishcampbell.com delves into this deeply.

The Open Media Network (#OMN) was created as a framework to address these issues, to move beyond the false choice between corporate clones and isolated passion projects. But it, too, has struggled to gain traction in a landscape that defaults to control-based thinking instead of trust-based collaboration. The #OMN dev site is http://unite.openworlds.info, but it has been static for the past two years, stuck, like so many other alternative projects, due to a lack of momentum, a lack of funders and coders who understand social needs, and a culture that too often rewards and pushes closed, individualistic development over collective, open building.

So what can you do now? For immediate participation, the best bet is to start using and supporting the #Fediverse platforms that exist, even if they are still copies of the #dotcons. They work, they are functional, and they serve as a stepping stone toward something better. But don’t stop there, push beyond them. Get involved with projects that are trying to break out of these patterns. Contribute to discussions, support developers who are thinking outside the mainstream, and help to fund and create the bridges we desperately need.

It’s not easy, and it’s not as simple as clicking “sign up” and walking into a ready-made community. The #openweb requires effort, participation, and sometimes frustration, but that’s the reality of building something instead of recycling the #mainstreaming. If you’re hungry, the food is there, but you might have to help cook it first.

I have been walking this path for 30 years as an #openweb organic intellectual, technologist, and part of the #OMN.

The #NGO mess is hard blocking

We need to talk, again, about how the #NGO world pushes HARD BLOCKING over the native #openweb paths we need to take. This isn’t some new issue; we’ve been having the same conversation for years. And yet, here we are, watching the same bad behaver and the same mistakes repeating, only now, with the #mainstreaming flooding in, with more funding and institutional interference.

The simple antidote to this incompetence? Listen. Think. And stop blocking. Seriously, it’s not that complicated. If the #NGO crowd could grasp this, we might actually find a compromise that builds bridges instead of walls. What do we currently get? More #BLOCKING, more CONTROL, and an ongoing refusal to engage with the people working on the paths we need for digital commons building.

The example I keep talking about is the #OMN approach, which is messy, leaky, and human. At the #OMN, we have a different view: if it’s not messy, it’s not worth doing. And by messy, we don’t mean technological chaos, we mean social messiness. Because here’s the #KISS truth: Social change is messy, The best ideas leak and evolve, Security and CONTROL in the social realm are just dressed-up gatekeeping. If you try to lock everything down, what you’re really doing is blocking creativity, trust, and progress. We need a leaky system where communication and data flow in ways that benefit community needs, when we don’t have an idea of what the community is.

The #geekproblem has spent years pushing CONTROL and SECURITY as the primary solutions, because they don’t understand social reality. The cult of CONTROL is why the #geekproblem is still a very real problem. This isn’t a personal attack, it’s just a fact. Many of these folks see the world in mechanical terms, where every problem has a technical fix. But social trust isn’t a tech problem, it’s a human one. And let’s be clear: while CONTROL can create functioning systems, it also creates bad societies.

Fear-based governance has always led to failure, whether in tech, politics, or history. Look at the Soviet Union: they built an economy on CONTROL and FEAR, and it collapsed under its own weight. If we blindly follow this same path in the #Fediverse, we’re going to end up in the same place.

Who organizes the #Fediverse? For the last few years, there’s been a struggle for control over who organizes the #Fediverse. Most want it to be a #DIY but some, this is described by our #fashionista as a #DoOcracy, where whoever does the work makes the decisions. Where the more native path is parallel communities cooperating, as is outlined in the #OGB social tech project. The two, are currently blocking each other, it’s a mess that needs composting.

One thing we can be shore is that the #twittermigration and #mainstreaming influx isn’t going to magically fix this. And the current path of doing nothing is itself a form of BLOCKING, by refusing to change, we entrench the same old power structures.

We need to be #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) about this:

No more dressing up old CONTROL structures in #fashernista cloth

No more gatekeeping disguised as governance

No more pretending that fear and CONTROL will lead to a better society

What will unblock this needed path? How do we shift the balance from CONTROL back to TRUST?

1️) Stop treating the #Fediverse like a product to be managed, it’s a social movement.
2️) Shift from CONTROL-based structures to TRUST-based ones, this means radical transparency and the #4opens.
3️) Stop repeating #mainstreaming mistakes, if we follow the centralized web’s path, we will be consumed by the same mess.
4️) Find and fund coders who actually understand TRUST, not just software engineers, but community builders who can work in code.

The first step on this path is the need to move beyond #geekproblem agendas and build something that actually has power for social change. The #OMN is one such path, but only if people stop blocking and start listening, understanding and building. So, the question is simple: Are you on the side of CONTROL or TRUST? Because one leads to stagnation, and the other leads to a real alternative future we say we need.

Find out more about this

A path we need for the #openweb

The #NGO crew can be poison, not because they’re bad people, but because of how social structures and agendas shape behaviour. For the social health of the #openweb, we need to be mindful of what we take in. Just like in nature, some things are toxic in large doses. “Nice” doesn’t always mean “good.” There’s no contradiction here.

“Don’t drink from the #mainstreaming.”

But remember, shit makes good compost! Instead of just being cynical, let’s grow something better from this mess. A healthy #openweb world is still possible.

The Real Problem, is that too many people have been stuck in the #dotcons feedback loop for too long, lazy consumption feeding corporate control, which in turn dulls critical thinking, making people even more dependent. The illusion of #mainstreaming “ethical” alternatives all reinforce this cycle.

This post isn’t aimed at anyone in particular, but if you feel called out… well, maybe think about why.

Q: Why does this matter?

Because right now, #fashernistas (trend-chasers) and their projects are flooding into the #openweb space. Some of these projects are good, but many are just recreating the #geekproblem, building things that look different on the surface but are more #techshit repeating the same mistakes.

We use the #4opens as a litmus test for these projects:

Open Data – Who controls it?
Open Source – Can it be independently verified and improved?
Open Process – Who gets to decide?
Open Standards – Can it be freely networked and flows built upon?

If we don’t actively promote and support real alternatives, people will just step to more of the next “ethically marketed” #dotcons. If we don’t do #PR, they will, and they have far bigger budgets.

Q: What’s the deal with #hashtags, they empower people to break out of controlled algorithms.

Click a hashtag → See real conversations outside your curated bubble.
Follow a hashtag → Keep up with a movement, not just what a platform wants you to see.
Use hashtags → Help build DIY, horizontal networks that weaken centralized control.

Example: Try clicking on #boatingeurope

Simple truth: Hashtags can be used to give you more power, and take power away from the algorithmic walls of the #geekproblem and #dotcons. They help connect ideas, people, and actions outside #mainstreaming corporate control.

Not using them? That’s fine, but why actively reject something that makes change easier? Social transformation isn’t painless, but it’s doable. A simple first step is to just start using shared social hashtags, and when you get pushback, stick with it.

Nobody said social change was easy.

The #mainstreaming progressive are finally moving to what I have been saying in the hashtag story. They are talking about the #blocking of left paths by our #fashionisters, we do need to work at shovelling this mess to grow the seeds we need for change and challenge.

There are piles of shit from this mess.

Why the Fediverse Needs a Connection Between Mainstreaming and Grassroots

This is a key point that often gets misunderstood. #Mainstreaming isn’t inherently good or bad—it depends on who is influencing whom.

Good #mainstreaming = Bringing #openweb values into the mainstream (transparency, decentralization, cooperation).

Bad #mainstreaming = The mainstream (corporate control, surveillance capitalism, hierarchy) infusing itself into the #openweb and reshaping it in its own image.

In the current context, mainstreaming is mostly bad because it tends to dilute radical alternatives into market-friendly compromises. The #deathcult (neoliberalism) doesn’t absorb things in good faith—it co-opts and neutralizes them.

That’s why we need mediation, pushback, and a clear understanding of context when talking about #mainstreaming. Sometimes it’s the right move, but right now, the priority is defending and growing the roots of the #openweb before our # #fashionistas can sell it off as a brand.

One of the best things about the Fediverse is that real people and community’s get to choose what kind of digital paths they want to take. Don’t want #Meta snooping around? Join or host an instance that blocks them out. Prefer not to have people search your content? Lock it down in your settings. Want to mediate the strong #blinded flow of “normies”? Close the doors via your instance settings. It’s a “nativist” system that offers a radical degree of agency compared to the #dotcons.

But what happens when people start demanding that their version of the #Fediverse become the default for everyone else? That’s where things get tricky, and where we risk losing the most valuable aspect of this messy, decentralized network: the bridges between worlds. The danger of closed loops, it’s understandable that people want their corners of the #Fediverse to feel safe, sustainable, coherent, and aligned with shared values.

The problem is that when we focus on tools so that every group can retreat into its own echo chamber, we recreate the failures of the wider #dotcons web: fragmented bubbles where ideas stagnate, and meaningful conversations can’t happen. This is what I mean when I talked about #mainstreaming echo chambers, the tendency for people to isolate themselves in what feels comfortable, which ultimately makes everything smaller.

The irony is that this impulse to close off is, in a way, the same as the desire to keep the Fediverse open. Both are reactions to the failures of centralized tech platforms. People who want to mediate #mainstreaming influences are trying to nurture the fragile seedlings of the grassroots culture they’ve built, while those advocating for broader adoption hope to prevent the network from collapsing into irrelevance. Both impulses come from wanting the Fediverse to survive, they just express that desire in too often opposite #blocking ways.

The failed bridge of #FediverseHouse is a normal path. This tension came to a head with projects like #FediverseHouse and #Fediforum, which aimed to be a gathering space but ultimately failed to build lasting bridges. It wasn’t because people didn’t care, it was because there wasn’t enough understanding of how to hold that tension between the grassroots and the mainstream without one swallowing the other. The projects lack the simplicity of #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and got tangled in the same old dynamics of control and fragmentation.

Keeping the bridge in place has a lot to do which sharing resources, in non #mainstreaming ways, yes, we understand, this is a hard leap for meany people but only people who can make this step can acturly be useful in the end to the “native” #openweb paths. The solution isn’t to pick a side, but to intentionally hold the bridge. In a smaller, view, that might look like running accounts across multiple instances and boosting content between different ideological spaces to keep ideas flowing. It might mean advocating for #4opens values even in mainstream-leaning spaces, or gently nudging the more isolated pockets of the Fediverse to stay curious about what lies outside their walls.

The Fediverse doesn’t need to be one thing, that’s its strength. But if we let the bridges decay, we lose the possibility of cross-pollination, of radical ideas seeping into #mainstreaming consciousness, or of everyday people stumbling into a space that makes them question the status quo. Instead of fighting, as we so often do, to make one version of the #Fediverse dominant, maybe the real work is in keeping the network alive, messy, imperfect, but always connected. Because it’s in those connections that real alternatives grow.