Hopelessness is a deeply conservative reaction to social change/challenge. Sacasam and “meme” culture can be conservative with its strong focus on reaction, in this focus pushing reactionary/conservative rather than hope/progression. In a globalising world strong “inward” looking tribalism is often about conforming a narrow “consumerist” change/challenge to individuals with NO power for wider social outlooks. In the era of #climatechaos all of these dominant “invisible” movements are the problem not the solution. The #deathcult feeds this movement of #stupidindividualism and is clearly and obviously not the challenge/change we need to flourish.
Tag: climatechaos
The is such a thing as society
“The is such a thing as society” we need to build our tools for this anti “common sense” statement.
The advantage of “governance” of the #fediverse (which it needs if it is to become a part of our #openweb based society that is essential for social change/challenge in the era of #climatechaos) is that the is non, this is a good thing.
The Fediverse comes from the “cats” of #libertarianism and to a lesser extent #anarchism without the (O)
In this, we don’t HAVE to think how it fits into current working practices and current economics. Rather, people PUSHING these “common sense” solutions to the fediverse “governance” problems are a part of the problem, not a solution that might work.
To be “native” to the fediverse we need to use code to build “society”. Organizing for SocialHub Community Empowerment has to be anti “common sense” as the fediverse itself is.
Power comes from power, It’s something you TAKE/build and in the best outcome share, it is NEVER given to you.
Private property – Wikipedia was invented in a mythical past when someone with a big club drew a line in the sand and said to the social group step over that, and I kill you.
Notice this is not the foundation of the fediverse, we are base on an open flowing social web and our lines in the sand are “blowing in the wind”. Yes, lots of people do not understand this.
Don’t unthinkingly push current “common sense” #deathcult ist thinking over #openweb projects.
Q&A on outreaching the fluffy/spiky debate to the fluffys
Have been working with bridging this often hostile divide for more than 30 years in hundreds of campaigns on the ground and online. The best outcome you can hope for is “diversity of tactics/strategy”
It’s a miracle when the two sides can hold this bridge in place, the effect of this miracle is more powerful outcome for both agenders BUT the longer this bridge is held in place the stronger the internal and outside forces push to demolish it – it falls, have never seen a bridge hold for the whole campaign.
The #mainstreaming agender always supports the #fluffy aproch and pushes down the #spiky aproch so its less a question of right/wrong more a question of holding the balance agenst this #mainstreaming pushing. The balance is where maximum power lies. So yes in this forum, and in general, the “spiky” aproch has more “power” than the fluffy aproch simple because its is repressed by the mainstream and meany of the “common sense” fluffy crew.
The “debate” is in this case is a metaphor for action, it’s important to keep both approaches working and hold a bridge in place, so people can cross and communicate between them.
In tech outreach work using the hashtag #geekproblem to highlight the “need for control” that is a clear block and not a solution to the very human mess we are in. We need to build structers/code where we “lose” control of our current #mainstreaming agenders and take “control” by building bridges and holding these human bridges in place, so we can choose different paths.
The project for “governance” i brought here in the first post is a “spiky” aproch to this outcome FAQ link
Yep, best to build tools/process from “lived expirence”. We are swimming in a river of social shit with the #mainstreaming of neo-liberalism and postmodernism that is the bases of “thinking”. Thou these ideology died years ago, the zombies of both are still eating our social brains.
You guys experienced it here, when I came to this well “fluffy” space I was met with a well “spiky” reception. The more dogmatic liberals can often be VERY spiky were the #fahernista radicals are generally kinda “fluffy” in their actual outcomes. Lifting the lid and look at the actions, don’t take what people say at face value, to see the fluffy/spiky debate in action, by lifting this lid you start to build a bridge…
Putting and holding this bridge in place is the start of power for social change/challenge.
I came here because you guys have useful skills to help build the tools we need Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network
We live in a world full of monsters dressed in fluffy clothes
Monsters, scratch our fluff crew, and they turn spiky, repression is a universal human problem to be mediated. The subject of the fluffy/spiky debate – respect for diversity and the desire for debate based on this respect is a core outcome. We need to build bridges.
That is clearly passive-aggressive.
You feeling discomfort… did you read the links and think about what I was expressing or did you stop at the “discomfort”?
Yep, talk about what people bring here, engage, think…
” A. I find it interesting, and revealing, that nobody here actually talked about what the thried was about Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network ”
UPDATE
Good place to start from.
In the 1990’s anti-road moment that grew into the early 2000’s anti-capitalist/antiglobalisation movements. This time solved meany issues in activism/grassroots outcomes. One of these was a way of mediating the blocking of communication we have here. They called it the “fluffy/spiky debate”, note you will only find mentions of this as we are crap at keeping our own history, lets not start a conversation on “our” academics and the crap they feed 
- fluffy is what we have here – let’s all get on and be nice to each other.
- Spiky is we have in meany affective activist groups, it’s a mess lets use the tools we have to make the mess less nasty, this will be messy.
The most important part is the “debate” which leads to a VERY HARD idea “diversity of tactics” on the ground and online. The quote above is a small step to this.
A fluffy view of governance Kees Boeke – Wikipedia
A spiky view of governance Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network
Both have value, BUT one has more value for existing society than the other as it’s deigned to work in a mess. The other is fine for “calming” situations for small “inward” looking groups
In the era of #climatechaos and the #mainstreaming swing to the right-wing we need to build and maintain bridges that keep respect for the “fluffy/spiky debate” in place.
And most importantly these process need to work in mess.
What do you think?
UPDATE
Remember I have met some of these people. What do you think I should do with these guys, they hid posts 6 times, they permanently removed one post,
They pushed Ad hominem – Wikipedia attacks in meany replies, not just ones.
FINALLY, one of them likely reads some links and posts something that has relevance to what am talking about, and I reply to this very late first step and SILENCE.
Don’t blame them, this is kinda normal, but this takes the fluffy outa fluffy and shows the spiky that is always a part of activism.
As I say this is normal for this group of people
What to do with them?
On the wider subject of this thread, Identity politics and the agender it pushes
In the face of growing #climatechaos and our attention being trapped inside the #dotcons, I see most people as complete fantasists and see the worship of the #deathcult as their main motivation.
In the next 5–10 years, I see a lot of BLOCKING and lots of blowing of smoke to cover this behaver.
I live on a lifeboat, it’s not a metaphor.
The start of this post is the BLOCKING and the smoke blowing I am talking about on this blog.
The end is “feel good/bad”, which is just the chatting classes talking to the chattering classes.
There are people who are not a part of the chattering classes who have agendas, as the blog post says in the end.
Diversity is a good (ecological) thing, and the chattering classes as the blog post says are VERY bad at noticing their active role in our social poverty on this one.
The “cloud” is just a big corporate run data centre that can and will burn down
You do realize that all our data is HORRIBLY centralized and thus could vanish at any moment, come the revolution/evolution/ #climatechaos tsunamis.
Our end plan in the #OMN is that all the content is redundantly stored in the network in a #KISS way, so traditional backup is less important -when it goes wrong, and it will sometimes as we are home hosting. Just boot up a new instance and put your hashtags and user info in and all your content will be sucked back in a #lossy good enough way. This makes home hosting work well enough to scale outward to build a #openweb
As with most metaphors (and real life) the definition is not exact
* Fluffy – asking/pressuring for change though the system
* Spiky – fucking shit up to enact change and directly and sometime ethically using “violence” to property – not to people.
* Beyond spiky the is WAR where direct harm to people happens – that’s outside the metaphor.
It’s interesting to take a few moments to look at this more. #XR talks spiky by blocking bridges and occupying spaces, but they do it for a #fluffy agender of asking for change. As we are seeing now with their co-opting into “normal” this has limits on outcomes.
Where #climatecamp invaded and shut down the direct courses of #climatechaos with some limited property damage – though there were some in the movement that pushed for more property damage, was always “non-violent” to people. Though the police did regular violence to people in return, so was a one-sided agreement. This was lived “respect for diversity” and was affective in till the internal process ossified and #mainstreaming moved it to a more #XR agender where it promptly failed.
The #animalrights crew were #spiky doing damage to property, and some were not above doing damage to people. These guys were pretty intolerant but got stuff done and seceded in many of their objectives, though at heavy personal costs.
In the UK we have not had war in our movements since the Irish “troubles” though the has been way too much state violence around the world in our name.
Q. I remember when people were spiking trees to break chainsaws. Do you think the name came from that?
A. yes, the same movement. Spiky in both ways damage to the chainsaws and with possibility of hurting the users of the chainsaws this is meditated by clearly MARKING the area as spiked so sorted “diversity of strategy” #spiky in hand with #fluffy it works.
The problem is often from the dogmatic #fluffy crew collaborating with the police to stop this direct action. Due to the possibility of hurting the people with the chainsaws, this blocking effective action. Not respecting the diversity of strategy.
UPDATE
It’s interesting to look at this more as it’s an example of the success of the “Diversity of Strategises” and also their failures. Many spiky protesters see protecting nature from commercial logging as a war, with the possible injuries to the chainsaw works as exceptable to save nature. BUT in respect for the fluffy side of “Diversity of Strategises” they generally put up the notices about the spiking to stop the workers getting injured while destroying the trees. A good balance of spiky/fluffy, the fail is the liberal protesters then betraying them to the police as often happens which is a clear non respect for “Diversity of Strategises”. Possible social/ecological change is thus BLOCKED by this failing.
What do you mean by “mainstreaming”
Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.
A. we all worship the #deathcult (neo-liberalism) in polatics, economics, most of the food we eat, our jobs and social lives are all mediated/mostly created by this invisible world-view. In progressive terms #mainstreaming is pushing this agender to build carriears and social structures to further the personal #stupidindividualism created by the #deathcult we live in. This is a circle that is going to kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years from #climatechaos and the social feedback loop of political #fascism
#stupidindividualism is created by the social disintegration of the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, fascism is an outcome of this.
Examples from the UK groups @NovaraMedia while producing fab content its all distributed through the #dotcons and in the end they aspire to be the new @guardian to take the role of #traditionalmedia This is fair anufe but the wider “we” need to balance this with #grassroots media which is a non #mainstreaming mission.
Most #NGO agrenders are #mainstreaming this is an easy to see view.
I played a role in training thousands of grassroots “journalists” over the last 25 years at #undercurrents, #indymedia, #visionontv and now #OMN the majority that are still creating media went onto build there carriears in the mainstream and #NGO sectors few stayed in non #mainstreaming production missions. Cant blame them for this, though no alts were sustained from this which was why we did the training.
In each case grassroots/alt structures were devoured by the #deathcult pushing the need for mainstreaming survival – cant blame people for this.
BUT we need a working alternative if we are going to change the world that does not kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years #XR
learning for expirence the #OMN is a political/tech tool to mediate this issue.
A humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow
I think it is time to talk about giving up our desire for total control and moving to thinking about the world as flows rather than static. Our illusionary “static” individualism is a mental illness that makes us powerless to resist the displacement and death of billions of us over the next 100 years due to fascism/ #climatechaos forcefully rebalancing the human/natural world.
Static view is “individualism” its all about you as a selfish mythical island.
Flow view is “social” is all about you embedded in the flow of social/ecological realty.
You need “power” to urgently rebalance these views, social tech is a good step to this “power”. The #OMN project is a clever useful humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow. For the religious crew this is a #lifecult for the humanistic its just the right thing to do.
Shovels and compost are a good metaphor.
What does anarchism want #4opens #OMN is an attempt to find an answer
Q. “We’re supposed to think of #metadata as less than #data, but it isn’t: often it is more. . .#govts that want to control their people & crush #dissent want #metadata.” #privacy #Whatsapp #BigTech
This is an interesting point, but it only makes sense if you see people as isolated individuals and the being no such thing as society. No alternative to the capitalistic free markets and no hope of changing the death spiral we are on – you might be right. BUT this is a deeply reactionary #deathcult point of view and need to be called out as such – LOUDLY.
For the last 10 years we have had a movement to banish metadata on one side and to hoard it on the other. To banish our humanity or to control our humanity. Nowhere is the celebration of humanity to be found… it’s pastime to put our feet back onto the ground and think about this for a moment. Metadata, data about data is what gives humanity its power in both an individualist sense and at a social scale.
One thing we know for sure is that ideas about privacy change, in the feudal era the village priest know everything and policed everyone, the king had sex in front of the counters to prove his line etc. The current capitalist idea of privacy which we all internalise is set to change, what it becomes we do not know.
What is the free-market? it’s a signalling device based on knowledge of metadata. For people who know little about the “free-market” is a flow of horde metadata as is “money”. In meany ways you are made up of metadata, the words that come out of your mouth are the made up names of things, likely the “things” are made up from words handed down through the ages. When you look at it all HUMAN civilization is a flow of metadata.
If we are to have meaningful social change – let’s look at anarchism as an example. How will we replace the “free-market” where will the signals come from to distribute the goods in complex society? And yes we might end up with “simple society” by killing billions of people from #climatechaos that’s true, but that’s a different subject.
Q. Metadata is the currency of surveillance capitalism. Traded as behavioural futures, and used by the military to perform situational spectroscopy upon whole nations. We can try to minimize metadata, but it’s always a tricky problem. When we generate metadata we hand cash to the likes of Google, who call it “behavioural surplus”. And to shadier organisations to use it for disruption and control. In the past there were entire academic conferences about using social media metadata to prevent “contagion” – by which they meant social movements opposing autocratic governments.
Am not in any way disagreeing with the above, I am pointing out that it is actually not the agender you think it is… raising the question of which side are you on. If nothing changes then you are right, but if nothing changes we end up with billions of people dyeing from #climatechaos and the state control/fascism that comes with this. As I outline this is a #geekproblem world view that of only thinking of tech and not social – hope I can help to balance this.
This is a #geekproblem
We HAVE TO CHANGE we can’t keep doing this same old shit. Privatizing metadata for a tiny number of geeks is not a social change project. Cant put this any simpler.
Q. This goes back over a decade to the “Freedom in the cloud” talk. What if internet users were to run their own services, and keep the logs (metadata) ? Simply moving the logs from Goog and Zuck to the users would be one of the biggest improvements to the internet. It would pull the rug out from under their business model.
That’s the plan with the #OMN and we go further (but only if the users/producers flick the switches) we have an expanding metadata commons that has two powers – one negative in that it destroys the business model of late capitalism one positive that it expands commons that gives us growing space for creativity and expression.
Summing up the choice we face:
* Capitalism wants to privatise metadata to the capitalists #dotcons and the capitalist then control the government – fascism is back into fashion.
* Chinese communism, wants the state to control the metadata so they can control capitalism, we are back to the command economy on steroids.
* Liberalism want to privatise metadata to the individual to return to a mythic free-market past.
* What does anarchism want #4opens #OMN is an attempt to answer this last one.
To recap I understand our current push for privacy from the #dotcons BUT am asking what are we to replace this with? The closing/privatizing of metadata to individuals ” is a deeply reactionary #deathcult point of view and need to be called out as such – LOUDLY!”
Ideas?
Anti dogmatic thinking
Brining #indymediaback
The fallow flower beds/farm that is #indymedia needs to be bought back to life slowly with as little change to the structure as possible. In our current social tech state just about ANY change will start ripping and when this starts it escalates quickly to do real damage. The original 2000-2008’ish structures cover 90% of issues in a good way, let’s live with that for a while.
The are a host of outstanding big issues in the remaining 10% that are undefined – let’s concentrate our energies on these missing bits and roll out solutions respecting “diversity of tactics”. The ansears to the missing 10% generally cannot be found pre-defined, we should be very weary of people coming in with fixed agender. Diversity and good process in hand with on the ground #4opens working overtime as a part of the real network is the ONLY valued test.
Slow/diversity/nurture vs fast/dogmatic/tearing. To highlight now before we roll out bigger, there will be lots of the second and little of the first much of the time. It is just how it is…
* #4opens is not dogma, it’s simply the last 30 years of open source development codified as social structure.
* PGA is not dogma, it’s the embodied wishes/dreams and planning of thousands of peoples over meany country’s and years of time.
* Indymedia is not dogma, it’s the expirence of meany radical media groups coming together to build an open network to fight neoliberalism (#deathcult) on the ground, in the streets, in the fields and online.
The difference between indymedia and the hundreds of failed “radical” media projects over the last 20 years is that indymedia flourished for a good time before it succumbed to the “forgetting” of the #PGA and #4opens foundation it was built on and was thus helpless against the internal forces that ripped it apart. Leaving no malubilerty to shift to the heavy blows from the forces attacking from the outside.
We core crew need to learn how to become benign older folks who answer every “better” solution put forward by the thrusting young with “how does that work with the #4opens” then fallow up with “lets look to see if that furthers the PGA hallmarks” to all their enthusiastic “youth” energy for “change”. Keep it gentle and most importantly, keep the focus…
At meany stages there will be howling mobs soured by hatred and through wing shit to create a stinking mess… our job is to keep focus and calm… a hard thing to do in a messy/disaster world #Brexit and #climatechaos pushes, but it’s the simple job we are taking on.
Q&A what is a fashernista in the hashtag way.
Q. I’ve read a lot of your stuff but I’m hoping you’ll clarify something. What’s a “fashernista”?
A. A large part of society who do what’s fashionable. Not what’s right/wrong/best. In the era of the #deathcult of neo-liberalism this has always been the wrong path to take. It’s a simple idea.
men-make-their-own-history-but…
#fashernista is a feedback loop of #stupidindividualism at mo.
The hashtags are designed to make the mainstream as dirty as possible so people see the need to pick up #openweb #4opens tools “spades” to clear the stinking shit and pools of piss #climatechaos is increasingly going to show we live in (consumerism/alienating work/greed is good) Make compost (decay of death) to plant seeds (fertile life) to grow flowers (lifecult). It’s a convoluted metaphor 😉
Its a hard to understand, simple thing. In the era of the #deathcult the fashernisas are almost always wrong and a part of the problem. In the era of the #lifecult fahernistas are mostly right and a part of the solution, does that make it more simple?
What would a #lifecult look like in this era?