Anarchy, Ethics and Idiots

You know, the more time I spend in Second Life, the more I realize that this "escape from reality" isn't. It's all too real, some days.

I bought the guns for a favored role-play environment - but as the only land we can afford is in something of a rough-and ready area with no security, guns with the capacity to punish idiots are a necessity.

More to the point, dealing with the non-fun economic and social necessities has taken a huge chunk out of discretionary funds and discretionary fun, but it has definitely provoked some useful thought as I've been forced to consider things that there's little or no reason to think of in "Real Life." Or at least, we have been told there's little reason to think of them. But the incident that provoked this essay was in fact all too common in reality; a common, garden-variety asshole acting as inept sociopaths always do, as if there could be no legitimate personal consequences to them from actions that are obvious causes for offense.

And at it's most basic level, all civilization derives from answering the schoolyard taunt: "Oh, yeah, whaddya gonna do about it, sissy?"

Yesterday I answered that question myself; confronted with such a situation of offense, I calculated the costs of doing something against the costs of not doing something and decided that it was both honorable and affordable to answer a bully's rhetorical question, along with the other, even more telling one: "Who do you think you are?"

My answer is that I'm someone willing and able to say no. I simply do not tolerate behavior around me that should, in justice, get someone harmed, because if it IS tolerated, there's no predicting who will be harmed or the ultimate extent. On the other hand, the bad behavior of one person and an appropriate response is easily calculated.

And, while you may not be able to teach a sociopath to care about others, or honestly believe they deserve the consequences imposed upon them, you CAN illustrate cause and effect.

So, I liberated my inner Cindy Sheehan; that wonderful person that no political movement seems to understand, because the desire for justice and accountability is in many ways antithetical to the bastard compromises that comprise our US domestic political process.

And in doing so, I realized that somehow during the course of my life - or possibly even earlier, that most of my encounters with our particular form of government involve some degree of, "who do YOU think YOU are" compounded with "And whatcha gonna do about it, sissy?"

We have an arrogant, inefficient, unresponsive and obviously incompetant government, one that makes us as an obvious target of opportunity as the late and unlamented Ottoman Empire.

In hindsight, I find it amusing that Europe preferred to go to war to determine who would impose order, rather than risk any outbreak of anarchy. I think that now, in hindsight, Europeans in general find such concerns rather quaint, and oddly, spend rather less time governing the choices of their citizens in matters irrelevant to functional concerns than we do.

But the problem with anarchy is not Anarchists. It's those what see unprotected individuals, assets, resources and power as their just and due reward for a life of conscious piracy and predation.

In practice, the necessity to spend huge amounts of money and time to "secure the benefits of liberty" is a persuasive argument for the value of wholesale security arrangements. Anyone so unfortunate to live in such a first life society - and there are many - where civilization is fairly much an urban phenomenon and not to be taken for granted even there, the urge to trade a theoretical liberty for some practical security is probably pretty compelling.

But it's generally a false bargain; for those who claim to be the champions of civilization tend to confuse civilized behavior with compliance. The two concepts are not really interchangeable at all, as can be easily discerned by comparing our culture to those where citizens obey laws because they agree with them, rather than out of fear of getting caught.

In Second Life there are very few offenses indeed that bear any greater penalty than having to find a different online context. And in fact - that is not so different from real life, if we do as the Buddha suggests and divest ourselves of attachment to material things. This is the great secret to all of life - ultimately, nobody can make you participate in their reality for their profit. They may extract a price, there may be consequences for not "going along to get along," but ultimately, there is always a choice. Sometimes the choice is very stark indeed, but usually that comes after a long series of unwise donations of liberty and conscience to "the greater good."

But we are raised in this country, nearly from birth, with the idea that without government - and without our particular form of two party government, we would be no better than any other nation.

I find the presumption that we are better than all other nations amusing, since unlike the majority of American citizens, I have actually lived in another nation. We are most assuredly not "better" by definition, and in those particular places where we happen to be better than most or even all, it's due to reasons that have nothing to do with patriotism or propaganda - it's due to good old fashioned hard work and dedication by individual citizens working in and out of government. As often as not, such results come about at cross-purposes with government.

Because - if you take out the attraction of holding power over the lives and choices of other people and dismiss the childish delight of "getting away with things" as being just that, a childish delight - you start to realize that there is as much profit to be had in magnifying the effective liberty of others as there is in controlling them to provide security. Furthermore, it's an open-ended log curve, with residual benefits, rather than a one time gain from a donation of individual freedom.

There is only so much security that can be provided. There are only so many threats to be dealt with, and only so many compromises that can be made in the name of "security" before society ceases to function. But there is no potential end to the number of wise and profitable individual choices that can be made possible, and the more choices there are, the more synergies arise, the more profit is had by all.

Of course, if you are in the business of providing the illusion of security, the numbers may seem different, but then that's true of all frauds and schemes where nothing is made to appear to be something. So let us not speak of fears and panics; let us speak only of concrete realities, such as Visigoths, Viruses and variable interest rates compounded by modified bankruptcy laws; genuine, tangible threats to security and liberty. For, real or metaphorical, the politics of personal liberty are as local as it's possible to get and as easily definable as an axe transecting the skull.

Death is the end of all choice, in this perceptual reality, at least. But it is also impossible to violate the rights of the dead. You cannot exploit the dead in any greatly useful way, and ultimately, any social structure that depended on wholesale death to maintain order, or power has disappeared from history, generally after rather brief spans. For when rulers turn on their people they turn on their own source of power and authority.

Short of death, it seems to me that the fewer choices the typical individual has within a society, the less life there is in that society. The fewer options, the fewer choices there are, whether these deficits are brought by poverty, ignorance, superstition, custom or political oppression, the poorer that society is overall, and the less competitive it is in what is more obviously becoming a global marketplace of competing ideas.

The products, services, policies, wars, conflicts, migrations and social phenomena that follow those ideas are not the causes - they are the effects, to the point where it's becoming more and more practical to look at the world as a whole as neither material, nor economic, nor political, but rather a completely non-physical matrix of potential energy.

I'm not saying that it is, I'm saying that's a useful mental construct, one that helps you see the profit potential in empowering others, rather than in attempting to corner the market in power. The greater profit is in the more ethical direction not because it's "good" to be ethical, but because ethics - the philosophy of maximizing the good outcomes and minimizing the bad outcomes of all human activity - is really the art of minimalistic intervention in the lives of others.

That is to say that in order to avoid blowback, to experience the least personal harm and the greatest personal benefit, to achieve the greatest amount of good in the shortest amount of time, one must first accept one very simple and very personal restriction that is both very simple and the core of every single moral and philosophical system on the planet. "Harm none." Do not impinge upon, take advantage of, exploit, harass, oppress, harm, threaten or kill others for fun or profit. Do not force them to limit their choices simply to frustrate or resist you.

Not so much because it's wrong, but because the more you do that, the more unfavorable outcomes you create, the more compensatory structures you must erect to limit the blowback, the more friction and conflict arises - and sooner or later, you have a complicated mass of conflicting, often delusional agendas, justifications, excuses and lies that become an impediment to coping with a suddenly emergent situation.

Global warming, for an example of an extremely unpleasant reality that will change the face of the globe and every single power structure within society.

Life is like that - the universe has a way of shaking the table every once in a while, and if those running the society for their own enjoyment and profit have wandered away from the path of ethics - those who compose the vast majority of all societies - the apparently powerless - often suddenly realize that there is no personal advantage in putting any more energy into the system and structure than is absolutely needful.

You see, despite the wet-dreams of facists and all others who worship at the altar of order and predictability, life itself is unsustainable without chaos and life-forms (which include planets, governments, families and even religious philosophies) that cannot cope with, adapt to and exploit sudden change have a sharply limited horizon of viability.

Ask any dinosaur.

Or indeed, the human race prior to the near extinction recorded in our mitochondrial DNA.

You see, we are facing a triple crisis - increasingly rapid environmental change, increasingly rapid socio-economic change and a HUGE crisis of imagination.

The first two - well, humanity has dealt with both, and on occasion, both at once with various degrees of success. But it has always been the third that determined whether or not any particular subset of "humanity" - corporate, institutional or particular - survived. And it seems to me that the greatest impediment to comprehending the potentials of a new roll of the dice is having a great deal invested in things as they are.

And nowhere is this more true than in the leadership of any human endeavor. Those in power have the most to gain from the status quo, the most to fear if things do not continue as they are, so no matter how bad things become for most, they always tend to delude themselves that it's better to force things to continue as they are against increasing resistance, rather than simply taking their chips from the table and waiting for a new game to start.

So the question for you and for me is far more radical than whether or not we are Progressives or Liberals or Conservatives, or indeed, whether or not we support a generally libertarian or a generally authoritarian philosophy of governance.

The question is, are we individuals going to remember that ultimately ANY government is merely a means to an end - and that end is brutally simple. It either promotes our own personal and general safety and advantage more than we could ourselves, or it does not. If it does not, indeed, if it actively obstructs us in those ends - it's not at all unreasonable for individuals so affected to ignore it when possible and resist it when not. This is already true in wide swaths of America, particularly poor and black areas. And those swaths are growing - to the point where you can also choose to see that both legitimate and practical influence of government (short of the use of overwhelming force) is narrowing to the point where it's demands on the populace as a whole are unsustainable.

If that comes to pass, it matters little what such people are called by members of that government, for the fact that large numbers of those kept outside of the comforts of a narrowing circle of law, order and comfortable complacency exist at all is a critical failure. That government, that society is doomed, and whatever history says about it and those that supplant it, it IS history.

Meanwhile, individual humans will assert their inarguable right to survive as best they can in arrangements that work as well as they can manage, and they will do this with or without the assent of "Those Anointed By God To Rule."

I, for one, am not waiting for an increasingly irrelevant government to solve problems for me. Not that I'll complain if they do, but I'm not betting on it, nor am I going to be calling their attentions to what are, in my judgment, good solutions for me and mine. Seems to me that post Katrina, post 9/11, there's not a lot to convince me that they have the judgment to be trusted with important things like my precious pink butt.

Quagmire was the plan all along.

As seen in this clip dating from 1994, Vice-President Dick Cheney had a very solid appreciation of the problems inherent in invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussain.

The Cheney tape re-aired for the first time since 1994 on July 11, 2007. But it wasn't until C-SPAN aired the interview again on August 9 (on the same channel, at the same time) that the blogosphere noticed.

As far as we know, the Cheney remarks on Iraq were first noticed by the site Grand Theft Country.

So, we should ask, what changed between 1994 and 2003, and people have asked.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said she was not authorized to comment.

She did, however, direct us to an interview that ABC News conducted with Cheney in February of this year in which Cheney was asked how his views had changed from 1991, when he also spoke of military action in Iraq as a "quagmire."

"Well, I stand by what I said in '91," Cheney told ABC. "But look what's happened since then -- we had 9/11."

But 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, and changed none of the fundamental and obvious calculations that made the invasion of Iraq an obvious, losing proposition. 9/11 was merely an opportunity, a pretext upon which to build a massive edifice of fear, panic, theft, subversion and lies, the apparent point being to create the conditions for another protracted, expensive, bloody conflict such as Vietnam for the twin goals of consolidating power and looting the treasuries of two nations.

Leaving aside the obvious - that Cheney is an evil bastard who has no fundamental objection to mass casualties when it's profitable to him - we need to look at why an effort that was untenable in '94, despite widespread right-wing demands for just such an invasion became profitable enough to go to such lengths to implement. I think we need to back up and look at the larger picture.

Warfare is a magnificent distraction - and in it's own way, a very unpopular war is an even better distraction. If you fundamentally do not care about the opinion of the American People, save as a means of manipulating them, an unpopular war is very useful tool, for it concentrates the minds of the opposition on the obvious. It casts long shadows that one may hide anything within.

So let us look back at the net effects of this administration. The first thing it did, of course, was to squander a budget surplus and start to build the most massive debt in US history, debt that is held in part in the Middle East and in part in China, due to our massive trade imbalances. Laws were passed that gave tax breaks to large corporations moving offshore - taking HUGE tax revenues with them, while monetary and credit policies were pursued that encouraged the middle class to take on unsustainable levels of personal debt. Then, the mousetrap was sprung - completely unconscionable revisions in the Bankruptcy act.

Meanwhile, the War On Terror was declared, and many steps were taken - almost none of them having any effect on actual terrorism, save to increase the potential for it, while obvious precautions, such as securing ports, rail transport and airline baggage screening were dismissed in favor of purely cosmetic harassment that had the effect of ensuring that the American people became used to being arbitrarily questioned and inconvenienced by barely competent officials of the state, often in conspicuous violation of both the Constitution and personal dignity.

The Patriot act - along with widespread, clandestine and illegal activities, such as arbitrary arrest, suspension of habius corpus and of course the quite deliberate specter of torture as one possible fate for Administration critics became part of the national consciousness, with most of us still believing that, fearful and potentially disastrous as these policies were, the idea was to combat terrorism.

But in hindsight, it's clear that our national policies have taken what was a potential threat - one worth attention and concern, but by no means something to panic about - and turned it into a world-wide emergency situation. The only conclusion I can come to reasonably is that US policy has the direct and probably intentional effect of creating conditions where terrorism will flourish, both abroad and domestically.

How will domestic terror arise as a widespread thing? Well, the first acts will likely be "black operations." But Bush's domestic policies and what appears to be a calculated campaign of focused contempt for the sensibilities and needs of the vast majority of the citizenry can be reliably expected to result in an incident here and there, at least if the pump is primed by an example or two that is suitably publicised.

And what that permits is the imposition of martial law, the suspension of elections and the Constitution itself - "for the duration of the emergency."

It is very difficult to impose a dictatorship on a wealthy, secure nation - which is what we were when President Clinton handed off the Presidency to the Shrub. Now we are a debtor nation, both personally and nationally, with such levels of debts that many of us are effectively slaves to giant corporations that are no longer headquartered in the US, making them far less accountable to US law.

What we are seeing is the engineered collapse of the US economy - and far more critically, it's position of moral and social influence over the world's population.

But I am distinctly concerned that this agenda is one that is broadly advantageous to people of power and influence within and without the Government to a degree that it pushes politics aside. To be blunt - I think it's a pretty obvious agenda by now, that the Democrats are not idiots and that they are, in essence, furthering it by offering token and ineffective resistance.

So, we must shed our illusions that we can assume that anyone in Washington is concerned about our welfare, and go back to the state and local levels to organise, resist and adjust - for the very best possible response to Washington's meddling and interference would be to ignore it.

The individual States still hold enormous economic and political power, and there are cities and metropolitan areas that in themselves wield power that many states - and indeed, many sovereign nations - would envy.

When it's clear that the Federal Government is doing everything it can to disempower citizens, it''s time for the citizens to band together and address the emergent threat - which is not terrorism. It is the Federal Government, and it needs to be reminded of and returned to it's Constitutionally intended status. The Federal Government exists because it is permitted to exist. It governs with the consent of the governed - as do all governments.

So let us be clear - if there are acts of resistance against federal power, against arbitrary federal laws, this is not terrorism, treason or disloyalty. It is the withdrawal of consent by the governed. We all have the inalienable right to say "no," providing we have the courage to face the probable consequences.

But if enough citizens in enough states demand it, there will be habius corpus, there will be safety and security. State laws and existing regional state conferences and associations will serve us as well or better than a Federal Government that has chosen to disregard it's duty.

I would suggest a simple starting point; a general passage of laws and constitutional amendments restricting unsupervised access of federal agents and agencies to anything. That, in other words, by state law, all federal agencies must comply with state oversight, so that there are witnesses. I would suggest that states assert jurisdiction over state communications networks and make wiretapping a state felony, if it is not already.) I would suggest that the various states begin investigations of and prosecutions of federal crimes against state citizens. And recall - the vast majority of the Federal Government - and most particularly, agents and employees tasked with various violations of privacy do not live within Federal preserves. The vast majority are subject to state laws and state sanctions.

Finally - and I think this should be blindingly obvious, but I suppose it needs to be said - the various States need to ensure that they are prepared for all eventualities, to face the possibility of a general collapse of central authority. They need to look to what areas of their budgets are dependent upon federal largess and make some hard choices. They need to call upon their citizens to take up the slack. Perhaps that will mean tax increases, but I would suggest that organized volunteerism in the face of emergency is a reasonable approach. Or in other words, set up a co-ordinated "Phone tree" where, in an emergency, the Governor can communicate with the state as a whole, and everyone in the state has something they are willing to do already on record, whether that be driving trucks, filling sandbags or toting a rifle.

This was the concept of the "Milita," way back when - organized LOCAL response plans that could "hold the line" against civil unrest or natural disaster until help arrived. If we have learned nothing else from Katrina and 9/11, it's that deferring to the judgment of federal responders is a very bad idea. The people who are already on the scene are the ones who know best what is needed - and to the greatest extent possible, they should have done as much pre-planning and pre-positioning as possible.

All of this has a very important goal, both long-term and short term. First, in the short-term, it may preempt attempts by the Federal government to take further steps toward restricting individual and state's rights, or even imposing direct dictatorship. In the longer term, it will make our nation more secure and less vulnerable to both terrorism and civil war.

But as much as I would like to see an outcome that sees the United States still united, with it's borders where they are now, my personal view is that we will see the US fragment into several viable nations based on culture, history and economics, and the United States will pass into history much the same way that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did - as the result of manifest centralized ineptitude combined with imperial ambitions that demanded too much of it's citizens.

The entire Administration agenda depends upon several factors, but they all boil down to us, as Citizens, being willing or at least accepting of this Brave New World Order. I think, quite frankly, that is a dangerously foolish assumption, one that only someone who's contacts are restricted to fellow-thinkers and fellow-travelers could or would contemplate. In the end, it is fundimentally unethical and unjust and therefore, as a matter of what might as well be a natural law, it will blow up in catistrophic, chaotic and unpredictable ways.

And as General Petraius has observed in Iraq - there will be no military solution.

A few more good Pokez in the eye.

The Pokez story rolls on.

Off the top, best comment ever:

Also contact a lawyer, because the restaurant's policy is against the ADA by a longfuckingshot.... As part of that, go into the restaurant sometime, and record all the time that nondisabled adults or kids are allowed to take a long time or be outright disruptive. I would bet she's one of those assholes that thinks it's okay to abuse someone because they look autistic -- the fact that we're the ones put through years of psychologically damaging "training" to hide what we are so people like THAT are more comfortable makes me really angry.

And proof that Jay - the father, is WAY cooler than I am:

I'd still be OK with just 3 things from the Pokez owner: a written public apology for David, a statement that the manager was incorrect in his reaction then to support the waitress's abuse , and something (either staff training or personnel changes) to prevent this from happening again. But apparently the restaurant is claiming that we were asked to leave because *we* were rude (LOL.. we were actually reserved and probably the quietest table in the place that night, and I was incredibly polite-but-firm to the manager afterwards), and they are saying that it doesn't matter because David isn't really autistic because he can talk (?!?). Apart from them being utterly incorrect on both counts, even if David was a *neurotypical* child, that still doesn't somehow make it OK for the waitress to grab him and scream in his ear! (scratches head)

I can't think of anything more likely to cause me to commit a physical indiscretion, and way past the point where my "don't hit girls" programming would override my urges.

But this isn't about me and my imperfections and flaws - other than the obvious, that sometimes consequences are direct and other times they catch you flat-footed from behind. In other words, this is about ethics, what they are, why you should have them, and using this unfolding mess as beautifully horrible example of people who believed in their own "spin control."

Allow me to illustrate consequences:

Ducksnorts - dedicated to Padres Baseball, not autism (although there's probably no sport more suited to aspie fandom and autistic perseveration) says:

... I hesitate to mention this because it takes the focus away from baseball and the Padres, but a story on one restaurant’s treatment of an autistic child disgusts me (more here) to the point that I have to say something: I’m recommending against a place called Pokez (hat tip to San Diego Blog).

Who says:

Pokez, (and myspace) the venerable lefty hippy arty cool vegetarian-friendly Mexican restaurant downtown is practically an institution among the hipster set. I myself loved eating there back when I was working downtown.

Well, all is not well in Pokez-land. Here’s an allegation of an autistic customer being assaulted for not ordering fast enough: “Assaulted at dinnertime in SD”

And they got it here: (11 comments so far), and they got it here, (13 comments so far). Figure that LJ isn't a lot different than Blogger, and the odds of a comment are one in a hundred - to pick a number out of the air.

This is what happens when assholes insist on being assholes in the New World Disorder. People notice, and each person tells all their friends... and it can reach critical mass in hours, in exactly the same way as a nuclear reaction going critical. You just have to piss off one, wee tiny insignificant little neutron enough...

Well, the world-wide-web has made it impossible for "responsible authorities" to choose what you insignificant neutrons should or should not get radioactive about. And that has implications in the land of practical ethics and the situational morality of getting caught with your pants around your ankles.

Since nobody - not Dick Cheney and certainly not some waitress at Pokez can predict which neutron will choose to go feral, cannot control all the communications of everyone, everywhere, it's now getting to be very difficult to casually lie your way out of trouble, now that the group mind has a permanent, accessible and indexed memory that anyone can feed.

Now, as karma and consequence are sometimes distressingly imprecise, it's even more strategic to be careful, not just about your own actions, your own ethics - but those you happen to be around a lot. This appears to be what other Pokez people bitching about right now; how "unfair it is that they have to bear the consequences of the actions of people they supported at the time.

And you know how much complaints of that sort are worth.

Therefore, we all have a great interest in what ethics are in a practical sense. That's what I write about, most often, and I could not ask for a better illustration of the consequences of operating (as Pokez seems to) outside of the bounds of accepted ethical standards. Or in the words of one
Yelp review:

"Good For Kids: No"

Shame on them. Their snotty service and bad attitudes from the servers went TOO FAR and look what they got themselves into.

I hope Cynthia, the waitress in question, resigns immediately.

Ethics are all about behaving rightly in all situations. It's more than morality. Morality is about proper behavior in particular, common situations, and while morals should also be ethical, it's not wise to bet on that if you value your karmic balance. If you prefer to go without any mystical component; people expect a certain ethical standard of certain places and certain people in particular situations, and if those expectations are violated badly enough, there might just be hell to pay. If you make a habit of being unethical, sooner or later, "might" becomes "will."

Most often, ethical consequences are not as easily visible as this. For instance, for every time a customer is treated rudely, there are probably ten people exposed to that scene, and clearly silence does not imply approval. Check out the reviews from before the alleged assault. You will find a lot of disgruntled folks supplying details that make this incident seem entirely plausible, and certainly not an "isolated incident."

Here's one ethical statement I use a lot: "My right to make a fist ends at the tip of your nose."

I've spent a great deal of time working on my ethics, because like many people on the autistic spectrum, I have no other recourse; I have found that going back to the very basics is the only way to figure out how to act for myself, and how to figure out where I stand when neurotypicals have what are to me inexplicable fits of drama while loudly proclaiming their right to not be held accountable for nose/fists interactions. As in, well, this case.

And being "counterculture" is no excuse. Indeed, it means there's far less excuse.

In many countercultures, and particularly alt-sexual countercultures, "Straight" morals are rejected and the violation of "straight" conventions is a given, but part of pulling that off with style and grace is realizing that those morals and conventions are being rejected for a good reason; because of their soul-destroying hypocrisy and ethical vacuity. It is not a license to be a dick, it's a statement that you aren't going to hide behind convention.

Here we have some little hipster wannabe Republicans, going by the very Down South "my house, my rules, if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" paradigm. It's' so very Blue Collar Comedy.

Oddly enough, I have no issue with that, so long as they don't have any problems with not whining about the potential problems of being petty authoritarian dicks, and post the policy clearly in the window. Go ahead, BE a "soup nazi." But it's a high wire act. If you fall off, no whining.

I can't think of anything more uncool, less punk, more totally ungoth than pissing in someones cornflakes for fun - and claiming the right to get away with it.

I mean, seriously. Even worse, I have the feeling that if I been there in my silks and my leathers, with my AS kid, it would not have happened. Why? Because I am counterculture, I look like an elegant punk, (when I go out) and I can clearly and wordlessly communicate that I have no trouble whatsoever turning some twink wanker into a whimpering pretzel, and would rather enjoy doing so. Therefore, I suspect I would get excellent food and excellent service at Pokez. Indeed, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one of those little tramp-stamped packages of attitude called me "Sir." And that pisses me off, because it tells me that they don't actually respect anyone, and most of all they don't even respect themselves; they merely disrespect others to the extent they think they can get away with.

Those are the values of James Dobson and Pat Roberson. It's Focus on the Family values. It's Godhatesfags.com values. In other words - Red State values. Values any self-respecting counterculture member rebelled against starting in sixth grade when they shoved a safety pin through their My Little Pony's nose.

Counterculture is not about pulling crap and getting away with it. It's about questioning authority and poking it until it goes away or gives you a sensible answer. It's mocking it when it tries to make contemptibly stupid unenforceable rules - and proving that you can live outside those rules without bursting into flame or being struck down by Jehovah's lightning bolts. It's about rigging your OWN parachute, thank you very much.

You own your own shit; compost or wallow as you choose.

The lamest thing of all is to hide behind the slack-ass San Diego police, or cower behind stupid lies. That's contemptible.

Cynthia, go back to the 'burbs and live in mommies basement, because clearly, a couple of tats and an attitude does not bring that elusive quality known as "street smarts."

Watch that happens, exponentially, as those others chime in, people who are, or could be punk, or goth or otherwise counterculture because their wetware just is not designed to live in the suburbs and go to the Church of God with the other sheep. And a lot of them are incredibly protective of children who seem rather like themselves. We wetware-driven "freaks" are the core of many countercultures. Believe it or don't, I'm not about to hand pointers to voyeurs as proof. Collectively every day, in every way, we are reminded of the many small advantages and comforts we have abandoned as the price of our dignity and our liberty.

Is it worth it? Hell, yes. But there is a price to pay, and one of them is self-awareness, self-discipline (in a somewhat elastic but very real sense). People who live outside the lines better damn take care of their own and correct one another with "grandmotherly kindness" BEFORE shit like this happens, because when the straights come in, it's either to do nothing, or it's the Stonewall riots.

Meanwhile people like Lenny Schaefer will be raking in the bucks by using this as an example of what can happen when you don't torture your children into maintaining an acceptable facade of normalcy. Yep, for people like Lennie Schaefer, it is always the fault of the child for attracting the attention of bullies, always the fault of the parents for not teaching their child how to suck up and take it, to accept the truism that "shit rolls downhill" instead of wondering aloud what sort of damn fool would play "king of the hill" on a crap volcano.

Me, I much prefer telling bullies and social game-players how very painful it will be for them if they continue to expect me to play their games of status and dominance. Five gets you ten that's what this was; Cynthia was trying to impress someone kewl at David's expense. If you ever watched Tool Time, you KNOW how this ends. So if you know, don't go. Because really, saying no will hurt a lot less.

One of my very favorite moments in life was standing up to four bullies, each twice my size, who surrounded me at my locker in front of the Principal's office to tell me they were going to beat me up after school, and I was required to attend. I wrapped my hand around my big brass combo lock and informed the Four Stooges that it was right here, right now, if they wanted to go that route, I was gonna eff-bomb-kill one of them.

This was in the early seventies, when a good F-bomb was worth a fuck of a lot more than it is today! Hell, I kinda recall it freezing the entire first floor, but memory probably exaggerates. However, Authorities who were mysteriously absent before (despite having a clear line of sight through plate glass windows) appeared as if by magic!

Oddly enough, I was expelled as a "troublemaker." See above reference to "stooges." But what I didn't get was beat up. Not ever again.

Here's another ethic for you: "An it harm none, do as ye will." The part before the comma is not optional.

tag: Unintended Consequences, lenny schaefer, autism, autistic, assault, san diego,

The Death Throes of the Hierarchy

A great explanation in 30 seconds, with implications.



And the implications ARE:

Simple: No one group, person, class or creed can determine "what's important" any more than they can choose what people "ought to be protected from." And that's just ONE implication - uncomfortable to Conservatives.

Information is education. It's now accessible to anyone, anywhere, at a price that's a lot lower than libraries. Once a person has "learned how to learn," they don't NEED a university to become educated. That's an implication sure to be uncomfortable to Liberals.

Yep, XML is not just a powerful tool, it's a powerful idea; the idea that information can (and should) be separable from presentation bias.

We are looking at a fundamental change in how we relate as human beings, how we communicate, indeed, this will affect how we think.

Those who thought that Armageddon was coming at the millennium were correct in a sense. It has. Those who still await the Messiah while staring at their screens are blind.

"In the beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Now, lest you accuse me of committing heresy, I suggest I'm only committing an observation. My personal faith is not dependent upon the end of the world as we know it. In my lifetime, that's already happened several times, and a couple times each in my parents and grandparents lives. But this is significantly different from even such a fundamental shift as the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. This is a quantum leap in the ability of human beings to communicate, to learn, to understand and - possibly the most practical difference - to do business without intermediaries or recourse to the offices of government.

Of course, we had to be ready for such a change, and I'm astonished to say, it appears that the preceding social and scientific upheavals have prepared us for that.

Despite all appearances and local anomalies, the world as a whole has become surprisingly more decent, livable and civilized over just my lifetime. We are now outraged at what would have been commonplaces for our parents and unquestionable, doctrinal realities for our grandparents.

George Bush - one of those anomalies - has tried to return the world to an older, more comfortable place for him and his ilk, where the common folk are but pawns and profit centers; electronically chained serfs to the New World Order.

It's a tried and true formula. A little more than a century ago, during the reign of the Robber Barons here in the US, it worked perfectly - until their sheer greed led them to folly, and yet they still managed to retain enough power to set up conditions for the Great Depression in '29.

There was not just one foreign war during that time - there were several, with appalling loss of life, losses that continue to affect many countries to this day.

It has taken a bare six years to go from applause to outrage here in the US. The fact that we get little or no credit for that speaks well, I think, of what the world expects of us - and the far higher standards they expect of themselves. Even fifty years ago, the general world reaction to the use of torture by the US would be, and I quote, "so?"

At that time it was a commonplace, a routine thing, both foreign and domestic. Now, it is still depressingly common as a form of governance, but it's becoming a guilty secret; a thing to be ashamed of; something definitive of lesser peoples and futile powers.

The difference is awareness - and the ability to communicate effectively to organize in opposition to, or in avoidance of coercive force.

And therein begins the seeds of peace; not from altruism, but from the realization that the use of naked force to control a population that can easily learn to create it's own counterforce is both terribly expensive and futile in the fairly short term.

The above link leads to a firm that markets new and used vehicles developed for the South African Defense Forces during the long struggle to end apartheid. These are arguably some of the very best such vehicles on the market. Our troops SHOULD be using vehicles this capable in Iraq.

And yet - there is no apartheid in South Africa, the long struggle to maintain control ended, not so much with a bang as a whimper of utter exhaustion, and I doubt you will find all that many Southern Africans pining for the Good Old Days, a grim, paranoid fortress state that in its way was as much of a prison for those it deemed worthy of it's "protection" as those it more honestly and ruthlessly oppressed.

As beautifully designed and brilliantly engineered as these marvelous sculptures of war are, they are symptomatic of a problem that is far better addressed by the means of Gandhi and Desmond Tutu than by the Sjambok and the testicle crushers of previous Administrations.

All of these things are the fruits and symptoms of the chaos Alvin Toffler predicted,
but he also missed the mark in his seminal work of the 70's, Future Shock. He saw chaos as dangerous and completely alien to the human psyche, a stance that while considerably better founded in the scientific consensus of the day, is essentially no different than the anti-science Dominionist Theocrats of the far and winged Right.

In fact, we seem to be adapting well to an increasingly chaotic world, and possibly this is due to the fact that all organic systems - us included - are chaotic systems.

But it does require letting go of Newtonian, deterministic and behaviorist approaches to the economy, to governance and, indeed, to all levels of human governance. We must adapt to the idea that it's impossible to "see the big picture" without changing the picture simply by looking at it. One abandons aiming for particular outcomes and instead navigates into a range of favorable possibilities.

When you start realizing that large chunks of immutable order are clamped into place and kept in rigid alignment to one another, the result is paradoxically a great deal of chaotic friction leading to far less than perfect order, you start realizing that Order, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.

tag: libertarian, web 2.0, , YouTube, video, antiauthoritarian, minarchy, infoarchy, chaotic systems, patriarchy, oligarchy, tyrrany, opression, armageddon, information armageddon, Alvin Toffler,