Review of The Dragonfly Effect

I found The Dragonfly Effect both moving and challenging. I saw immediately the potential one has when it comes to using social media to foster and promote change. I also saw the enormity of such a task as implementing a serious campaign for radical change. The authors do an amazing (and I don't use that adjective lightly) job of breaking the whole thing down so you can begin where you are and quickly get to where you want to be.

The four wings must be connected to the body. Disembodied dragonfly wings are not practical, though they may be pretty. One needs all the parts if the dragonfly is going to maneuver to its full potential.

The authors guide the reader through the use of each facet of this wonderful metaphor and show how to make the most of the social networking tools available to us all.

Read this book and go make some changes in your world.

Freedom, Faith and Responsibility - Part 2

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce.

— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

With this democracy, which I began to look at last time, comes the right to say whatever one wants (within certain bounds, of course). The problem comes from two directions. The first is being faced in the very act of allowing these people to comment and to speak and to flaunt their ignorance and to spread their worthless stupidity all over the place. But, who is to judge what is ignorant or stupid or worthless? Good question? So, those who allow this sort of commenting to continue are trying to show a basic trust in other humans. We should trust each other to do what is right. According to Paulo Freire, without that trust there will never be true democracy.

Now, I want to go back to the American Revolution. They were writing pamphlets and others were writing pamphlets to counter the first pamphlets and there was a serious dialogue happening. The entire process actually helped shape the ideals of the early America. Not that those ideals were complete and perfect, but they were the beginning of democracy in the world and the freedoms that those pamphleteers enjoyed were then written into law so that future generations could blabber away on the internet.

It seems that most people, today, think of the American revolutionaries as quaint old guys and a bunch of windbags that were only interested in not paying taxes. But, they established the very right which allows me to publish this essay on this blog. I have freedom of speech.

There is a cliché that says, “Freedom is never free.” And I believe that, and I’m sure you believe it, too. So, in taking the liberty, not only to write this essay, but to post it for all the world to read, I take that saying into consideration. I do not want to betray your trust and at the same time I have the faith that we as human beings can make democracy the powerful political and social ideal that it has the potential to be. That requires something else, which Paulo Freire mentions: “true words.”

Freire says that true words embody both action and reflection. If action is missing, then we see what we see today on the internet—what Freire calls “verbalism.” Without reflection we get mere “activism.” To truly change things we need both. We need “praxis.” Freire writes, “Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.”¹ So, we have freedom, especially in this country, and every voice should be heard.

Ultimately, it comes down to how we choose to use our voices. We can use them to spread hatred and tension, we can use them to merely throw empty words into empty space where their lack of authenticity will change nothing. Or, we can choose to follow Freire's words of wisdom and we can speak "true words" that engender both action and reflection and thus have power to change our world.

Happy 4th of July! Remember the First Amendment and The Golden Rule!

NOTES:

1.     Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Continuum, 2000). 87

Freedom, Faith and Responsibility - Part 1

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce.

— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Since we're coming up on the month of July, and that reminds me of revolutions, I want to think particularly about the events leading up to the American Revolution. There were people taking the freedom that they believed to be theirs by right and they were using that freedom to write pamphlets.

Today, we are witnessing the largest experiment in democracy that the world has ever seen—the internet. People can comment on just about every news item and if they can’t comment directly, they can save the article on any number of social bookmarking sites. This, is in effect saying to everyone else that this is the news that I think is worth reading.

The problem I have with the democratic, free speech of comments is that many of the comments are irrelevant, degrading to others, disrespectful and some are simply a waste of cyber-ink. But, to take the right to comment away would be worse than if it had never been granted in the first place. So, what is the solution?

Comments are not the only thing. Blogs, “tweets” and status updates on Facebook all share the same pros and cons. It is important to some people to be able to tell the entire world that they just relieved their bowels and are now going out for a night of wild partying. And the next day we get to hear about the hangover!

I know! I don’t have to read these things, but they are there. This is why comments are especially bothersome; one has to read through all the garbage to find one useful or even meaningful comment. People cannot refrain from replying to the first idiot commenter and so the stupidity soon begins to fly and before you know it there are pages and pages of worthless bantering about which President is to be blamed for the color of toilet paper in the bathroom of some backwater gas station. It is asinine and annoying and democratic!

NOTES:

1.     Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Continuum, 2000). 87

Book Recommendations From Hell: A Cry For Help

I recently (well, if you consider a couple of months recent) began reading A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis.  My reason for choosing it was because several "what-to-read-next?" websites recommended it as being like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  I can't think of any way that the two books resemble one another.  Now, if I had typed in Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, say, or maybe even A Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace, A Frolic as a recommendation, would make sense.  But, Gravity's Rainbow?  Well, I guess you live and learn; you can't always trust technology to steer you in the right direction, can you?

How do those things even work?  I've noticed on YourNextRead.com, that there is an option to thumb-down a recommendation.  PLEASE, if you come across one that you know is NOT a good recommendation, thumb that shit down!  It does NOT mean that you don't like either of the books; it DOES mean that someone looking for a similar book will be baffled by that recommendation, and said bafflement may cause recommendationophobia or something.  Do you want to be a cause of these persons contracting an extending case of Luddititis?  I mean, come on!  If you have read, say A Frolic of His Own and Gravity's Rainbow, and you see one of those being recommended because of the other, what are you going to do? THUMB-THAT-SHIT-DOWN! Repeat after me: THUMB-THAT-SHIT-DOWN!  You can give each book five stars, LIKE I DO.  They are both excellent literary fiction.  BUT, they are not alike.  Okay, I guess I have probably beat the holy bejeepercreepers out of this dead horse.  You get me.

Don't misunderstand.  I like A Frolic, but every time I pick it up to begin reading, all I can do is think about how much it is NOT like Gravity's Rainbow and that just knocks me right down.  I'm trying not to give up and try some other year.  I guess I'll just keep at it and bitch away here on my trusty blog....
Later gators.

Complacent or Vigilent?

Sometimes, the most cautious are still caught unaware by severe weather, e.g. my friend in Joplin, who was driving home with his family from his daughter's graduation, in May 2011, when their world was turned upside down by that unexpected change in the weather.

Today, in the news, they are asking:

Could better tornado warnings cause complacency? - msnbc.com

Meteorologist Rick Smith said he hopes that for residents who prepared and were spared, that their work doesn't lead to complacency.
"I don't want people to think preparedness efforts are ever wasted," Smith said. "The weather radios people bought, the plans people reviewed on Friday and Saturday, it's not like you're never going to use those again.
"If you didn't use them on Saturday, you should be thankful and glad."

Having myself lived in an area where tornadoes are prevalent, and watching peoples' reactions to them, I have come to the conclusion that people are going to be what they are: that is: if they are already complacent, they will continue to be; if they are not, they will continue to be vigilent.  All things considered. Still, I agree with Rick Smith quoted above, that preparedness is not wasted.  People need to take that stuff seriously, without regard to how many times they have survived or their relatives have survived or whatever.

Those people involved in developing these warning systems are doing all of this to save as many lives and as much property as they can.  When people disregard their warnings (even if they turn out to be not as bad as they sound at the time of warning) they are, in a sense, slapping the developers, scientists, storm-chasers, and all the others involved in warning them, in the face.

I moved away from that part of the country, and one of the major decided factors in my doing that was the weather.  I had grown up with that as a child, and don't remember being overly cautious or frightened.  But, as an adult with a family, it was a completely different game.  I know some people can't move, or refuse to for whatever reason: family, land, fear of the unknown, jobs.  This list could go for days.  But, if they stay, they should be vigilent and give heed to the warnings.  The warning system does save lives.

There is probably a metaphor, or a symbol of some kind in this.  At least a lesson that could be shown in a story without going all Aesop on the reader, right?  Kind of like the movie The Day After Tomorrow is a lesson about screwing up the environment....  Hmmmm....

Attention Spans Are a Terrible Thing to ... to Something ... I Can't Remember

We should use technology to push our minds to new breadth and new depth. Don't simply give up on the old technology (such as books), especially at the expense of the attention span. Technology should be used to learn about new areas in which to spend more time thinking deeply. But, online reading, online browsing will change our brains to the point that we will have trouble thinking deeply; our attention spans will be incapable of handling that sort of pressure.

What will happen as fewer and fewer books are read; what will happen as fewer and fewer teachers and professors actually require students to read the books assigned? Nicholas Carr interviewed several people for his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains; people who were students, teachers, etc. One philosophy major stands out. He no longer reads actual books. How is that possible? Another interviewee states that he is no longer able to read War and Peace. (That may not be a fair example, because I know plenty of people who make that claim and it has nothing to do with attention span). For that person, Tolstoy's novel is too long and complex. That is disheartening. People are allowing themselves to be changed to such a degree, by reading online -- only online -- that they can no longer enjoy complex and tedious tasks. Their brains are changed. Literally.

Already, people are more impatient than they used to be, in general. (No, I don't have any statistics for that, it is a personal observation). Is that the kind of world we want to live in? A world filled with impatient people who are incapable of thinking deeply?

Think about it.... if you still can.

Attention Contention

Publishers and editors seem to suffer from what appears to be adult ADHD (Disclaimer: I am not a psych doctor, so I can't make this diagnosis for real).  They press new writers to maintain constant tension for their potential readers; keep the pressure on, keep them turning pages; in other words, don't bore them with anything that might strain their weak, failing, meager attention spans.

It won't be long that novels will have to be the length of short stories and short stories will have to be one word that captures the entire emotional and psychological life of a character: e.g. Jesus wept.

I contend that we, as humans, as readers, as writers, have the responsibility to rebel against the publishers and editors, for the sake of our children and their children.  Attention spans are quickly becoming endangered and if something drastic is not done, will follow the Dodo into extinction.

Reading Genius

"The genius of our brain's construction is not that it contains 

a lot of hardwiring but that it doesn't." 

- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 31.

It's not bad enough that television kicked our attention spans' collective asses, but it prepared the way for an all out annihilation to it, which has come in the form of the internet.  Email, social media, IM: these all play a part in distracting our minds from whatever productive task we have on our TO DO lists.  Cory Doctorow, as quoted by Carr, writes that "leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant 'DISTRACT ME' sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world."  When I think of the telephone ringing, the doorbell sounding, the dogs barking at something only they can hear, the thought of having another potential distraction is more than irksome.

I'm going to say that Carr, in The Shallows, makes some rather sobering points regarding the internet's changing of the human brain.  And, as he passingly mentions, the answer is obviously not to stop using the internet at all costs.  Luddites have a difficult time uniting, with their lack of technology, which is the reason their way of thinking is an exception to actual social acceptance of the  technology they fear and loathe. But I, for one, don't want my brain to be changed in such a way that I am unable to read long, difficult works of literature, and I hope you don't want that for your brain, either.

A good idea, then, is to follow the Buddha; i.e. follow the middle path.  Use the internet to skim information, to grasp the main points of knowledge and to share our own knowledge with others; but, use books and other less distraction prone media for developing depth.  Old fashioned books for depth; new fangled internet for breadth.

Otherwise subsequent generations' attention spans won't be as long as their eye-blinks.

LINKS: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

300 is not about 300

“... for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
~ William Shakespeare Hamlet 2.2.251

The movie 300, as well as the graphic novel upon which it was based, is not necessarily a historically accurate portrayal of the events they represent.  That is not the point.

The point is plain now that Frank Miller has been candid in a recent blog post.  300 is about the colonizer, the big government, the oppressor—fill in the blank with whatever strong-over-the-weak, rich-over-the-poor, or my-political-agenda-over-yours ideology that you want—gaining their objective.

Sadly, I think most people interpreted the movie, whether deliberately or unintentionally, as the fight of right against wrong, or good against evil (which is of course one way Miller meant it to be interpreted; his idea being that the Persians represent Islam and Islam is wrong, right?).  That’s how I initially read it (minus the Islam is the enemy idea): the small Spartan army of 300 men went bravely to stand against the massive army of the oppressor Xerxes.  Yeah, I know many did read it as being about America against the rise of, as Miller calls it, “Islamicism” (which I’m pretty sure isn’t even a word, but nevermind …).

In a previous post, Miller wrote, “We only complain about propaganda when we don’t agree with it.”  Of course.  Why would we complain about something that promotes our own agenda?  Why would be try to shoot down something that makes sense to our worldview?  So, anyway, we know that Miller is writing/drawing propaganda because he says he is.  Which is fine, because that is what many people are doing, in their own way.  Propaganda is closely linked with agenda: so the mainstream media who are owned and operated by large corporations; the marketing departments of the large corporations, and their advertising—it all is propaganda for each of their respective ideas or products--the things that will fulfill their agenda(s).

Now, we have occupiers who are using the latest and greatest technology, which is developed and sold by large corporations.  Some blatant examples: Apple, Facebook, Twitter.  I am not singling these corporations out from personal malice, they are simply the ones that come to mind, being used by people who I know are involved in OWS.  The occupiers are focusing on the banks and financial institutions.  Why?  Without their having bought the latest gadget, there would be no finance to worry about.  They are overlooking the objects in their hands; they are overlooking the clothes on their backs, the shoes on the their feet.  They want things to change, but they want things to stay the same.  It seems that they want to eat the cake they didn't bake.  They are at once using and condemning the very things they would not want to be without.  This is what confuses me about it.  It reminds me of the Russian revolution, when women who left their villages to work in the cities did not want to return to their villages without having purchased a particular type of coat, called a sak (a status symbol).¹  Today, it is the latest iWhatever that is that coat....  This is contradictory and contrapurposive to the entire ideology being propagated by OWS, right?

It seems that OWS is calling for socialism, or maybe even its extreme form communism.  While many others want something closer to fascism.  I know the labels for these ideas are getting tossed around ad nauseam these days (along with Nazi), and that most who use them are not really solid on what they are saying.  Others are trying for anarchy.  Still others would have the US continue to focus huge amounts of resources into the war against terrorism—which is about as successful as the war on drugs, right?²

I’m not an anarchist, a communist, a socialist or a fascist.  Hell, I barely even register on a political ideological scale at all.  This ramble is not to promote one form of political idea over another; this ramble is my way of working through all this shit and trying to make some kind of sense of it.  I’m not jumping into any of these ideologies, because none of them make sense to me. 

Yes, equality would be nice.  But, are we willing to let the government have the power necessary to maintain that kind of equality?  Privacy would be nice, but are we willing to let those who mean us harm free and open access to us, so that they might then bring a new form of inequality and oppression?  I don't think we really know what we want, and until we do, our united-ness will continue to polarize until the US is no longer recognizable.  Wait!  That shit is already happening, isn't it?

I guess my thinking is swayed by Buddhist thought, i.e. looking for the middle path.  But, I’m not a Buddhist, either….

---

^1.

"Women saved because you could not live without a sak. Those who did not have a sak felt they were deprived of their full rights, not fully valued, on the slide. There were endless conversations among the women workers about buying a sak. And if they bought one, they wrote to the village at once, to tell everyone that teh long-desired sak had been purchased." Mikhail Isakovskii, quoted in S. A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History, 94.
MY NOTE: it seems that this, along with what I've written above speaks of a sense of entitlement which is prevalent in our time.

^2.