The Things That Keep Us From Interacting With Each Other

A previous post of mine tried to get into a significant part of why we find it so hard now to keep an ongoing, diverse, dialogue with each other; the better to work out a general consensus of what is true and important. That post put a significant part of the blame to both the inherent structural aspects of work life now (creating set groups of special interest via both employment and invested capital), as well as the ingrained sales mentality that will do and say anything to close the deal.

There is, of course, another dynamic going on here related, indirectly to sales. That is one aspect of the way social media is used now to induce eyeballs and brains to be at least in close proximity to various sales pitches. The practical side effect here, as we tweet and Facebook post away in our free time, is that, even when we are together, we are seldom truly in the moment and engaged with each other. What is interesting in this, however, is just how much effort went goes the programming, and page design, to induce an actual form of "addiction."

I mention this now because of the "The Atlantic" article linked below. Bianca Bosker has done an interesting piece on Tristan Harris (someone intimate with addiction by design) that deserves a read.

It seems that such addiction has finally gotten to the point where the former practitioners are realizing that we need to start talking back to the unquestioned application of such design modalities. And to whatever degree this new impetus gains traction it would be a good thing. Something the proponents are to be encouraged and congratulated on. One has to wonder, though, however well intentioned this effort is, at just how much it can be expected to change the underlying force that is at work here for getting people in view of messages to want and buy. Ethical standards to limit clever techniques to keep you doing face time with a screen might have some effect (and something is better than nothing after all), but aren't we still looking at what is, metaphorically, nothing more than trying to keep the Titanic afloat with bailing buckets?

The really discouraging part of what screen mediated "social interaction" entails is that it not only keeps you in the like minded posting channels already labeled as "echo chambers;" but also the fact that it is hardly real interaction at all; you know, human to human, with all of the intricate subtleties of actually engaging face to face.

The bottom line here is simple. If we cannot find a way to make conversation direct, diversified across all demographics, and on a continuous basis, we will continue to fracture into ever more disconnect groups who do not have any common grasp on reality. Not only will this make a unified republic impossible, it will also serve to make any cooperation at all between disparate groups equally impossible. Whereupon you have a bunch of neo Baltic, or neo middle Eastern, states even more at odds with each other, in all aspects of culture, morality, and governance, than the states that gave those terms their name. And from that, if history is any judge at all, all you can really count of from then on is the flow of a lot of blood.

The Binge Breaker

Tristan Harris believes Silicon Valley is addicting us to our phones. He’s determined to make it stop.

• By BIANCA BOSKER
 
•  NOVEMBER 2016 ISSUE

Stupidity And Hatred Have Won The Day

Now there are two possibilities that will have the majority chance of how this plays out. And from my view it's a coin toss as to which it will be.

Either he plays to his worst sensibilities and Congress thwarts him in almost open institutional warfare; whereupon he tries to go around Congress by whatever means he can concoct. Or he tempers his own proclivity towards unbelievable excess and tries to push an agenda only partly crazy. Which will, even if Congress remains only as deadlocked as it is now, still thwart him.

The big question then will be what he does from both the policies he tries to push forward, as well as from outright executive order. One can only hope that reactions from both our own markets, with the rest of the world, as well as outright opposition at home, will serve to put at least some restraint on him. But in the end, who can say? That's the problem with putting your faith into a sociopath who jumps from one whim to another.

As someone who has advocated for real change for a long time it is always tempting to see an agent of chaos as the catalyst of last resort to make what will fail eventually do so sooner rather than later. I can assure you, however, that this is not the means to change that would ever want to see made manifest. Nor would any sane person who understands what the reality of that kind of change would entail; the kinds of violence and suffering that revolutions of collapse have always wrought. The kind of change where having the physical, and mental, wherewithal to effect the institution of something better would become virtually impossible. Which is why I have never given into the "Let it Burn" mentality of those who have come to see our materialistic, polluting, or even sinful if you like, ways as deserving of cataclysmic retribution.

As I have said many times before, deservings got nothing to do with it. All that really matters is what we choose to do, or not do, to give us the best hope of desirable outcomes, even with chance, and the inertia of history, and ingrained institutions.

As we go forward now it will require a lot of work to keep a sense of hope as we wait on the judgement of "time will tell."

Finding A Consensus On Truth...

...Or, as I like to think of it, establishing an ongoing dialogue of what is going on around us so as to keep a dynamic national narrative going; a narrative that gives us a chance for a shared vision of what is real and important.

The excellent article linked below by Maria Bustillos presents a view of just how challenging that undertaking will be. In getting into the distinctions between information, misinformation, disinformation, and what she's coined as "dismediation" (where so much disinformation is pumped out across a wide spectrum of information channels that we get distrust of all channels through false equivalency), we begin to see just how difficult this will be. Especially with "dismediation" do we see a particularly troubling aspect of media manipulation; made all the more troubling now that nations such as China and Russia put such huge efforts into social media trolling, with millions of fake participant posts touting anything but the truth.

In my opinion, however, for such an effort to have long term success we need to confront two aspects of not only how we interact with each other, but what formulates the predominant basis for communication now; two aspects that are intrinsically woven together by the current economic operating system we live in.

The first aspect is the basic nature of what living in a factory modality of life mandates: That we must necessarily be made to be separated and segmented into either specialized work types, and/or industry groups; necessarily creating specific requirements of interest for economic survival. That this also serves to keep us separated physically on a day to day basis, so that we hardly ever, if at all, interact directly with each other, is no small thing either. The bottom line here being that we start out at the get go with de facto echo chambers of narrowly defined elements for what we would see as important, and thus affect what we view as true.

 The second aspect is what might perhaps be the most insidious, and vile, characteristic of a commercialized, specialist, mass production/consumption form of social organization: The absolute need for there to be the "hard sell;" the sales mentality mandatged to get unquestioned consumption required of a productive machine now amplified by electric experience retrieval. Where the "hard sell" is the utilization of every aspect of our emotional, psychological, and physical being to induce want, and the gratification of that want, by the means of consumption. And included in this is not merely the consumption of a particular service or product, but of "buying into" the myriad of ideas, or practitioners of ideas, that affect the huge interactive environment of not only who pays and who benefits, but of what our nation sets forth as priorities as it acts within the community of nations.

This is, of course, where the other aspect of our economic life comes into play: Money. The problem here, though, is not only that those with large accumulations can have an inordinate impact on how information flows out through all of the many media channels, it also comes into play for one of the very reasons that technology has been made Capitalism obsolete: That, in the age now of electrified information flow, money and information have become the same thing. For that reason, just as capital is played out with the expectation of net gain, so must the flow of information itself be conducted; something expressed both in terms of the proprietary nature of information, but also because knowing certain things, or not knowing them, makes all the difference in whether you will benefit, or you will pay; in either the immediate moment, or ongoing through successive years of events unfolding. And thus do we see why a Democracy depends on an informed electorate.

In order for us to rethink how we can interact with each other more directly on an ongoing basis, as well as to change what information itself has been made to become, we will have to recognize that a fundamental change in how we manage both production, and the way we distribute the output of that production, must be implemented. Finding common ground is hard enough given just our natural tendency towards unique interests, tastes, and way of seeing things. Having a social organization that structurally compounds that to absurd levels of separation, and very different practical aspects of daily life, is just insane. Add to that an information environment that starts out pandering to every aspect of our base selves to both consume for product, or be entertained as a service; creating an ever more pervasive saturation of fiction and fantasy, and you get the kaleidoscopic fantasia that passes for reality now. Finish up then with a little salt on the wound in the form of always working your ass off just to stay in the same place survival wise.

Is it any wonder that people have so little ability, or inclination, to be properly informed? And why being entertained is always so much more desirable? So that even government has become a "reality" TV show?

When Truth Falls Apart

How do we restore consensus in an age so divorced from fact?

By Maria Bustillos

See Also:

Democracies end
when they are too democratic.
And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny.

By ANDREW SULLIVAN

#2 on Trending

Multilevel Marketing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

The Moral Questions of Philanthropy For Longer Lives

The Washington Post article linked below delves into some interesting aspects of what has been a trend for some time now on the money spent by tech billionaires for increased longevity. Not only could a lot of money spent very quickly to do things with our genetic makeup, or have technology interact with our biology in various fashions, have very serious unintended side effects, the mere fact of people living longer would put new strains on an economic model already snapping connective links to pay for existing social programs, let alone find enough jobs to keep the people we have growing up now employed.

Some ethicists, as well as a few of the philanthropy crowd themselves, are wondering whether a good deal more of this money should be spent on pressing medical, and social needs, of a more immediate nature. And that I think is a very healthy thing indeed to be doing.

One would think, however, that it would finally occur to some of these very smart people that another area of social need should be researched as well. That being, of course, the serious investigation into whether the current economic model is still as viable as the money makers would like to think it is, and, if it isn't, what might be a better alternative, and how would society go about bringing a better way to do things into being.

Certainly there has been an ongoing bit of scholarly effort to criticise the current operating system, but how much of that has been done in an objective effort to determine whether technological change, or whatever other factor, has happened to the point where it simply can't work effectively any more? This as opposed to criticism initiated in an effort to simply reform that operating system. Not very much I think.

This is especially interesting to me precisely because of the fear the ethicists have already indicated that longer lives will adversely impact that operating system; the automatic implication being that technological change has an inherent ability to do it serious damage, if not outright break it.

The ethicists question the longevity money now for reasons of personal hubris in the men and women who have bought their way into a sense of self entitlement; an entitlement that would allow them to think that they have every right to live as long as they damn well please, and to hell with the side effects. You don't have to think very long, however, on why they might not be very incentivised to investigate the very engine that made them rich, and continues to do so. And more is the pity because that bit of self indulgence might be the most important factor in what finally brings this whole house of cards around us down.

THE HUMAN UPGRADE
Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death

For centuries, explorers have searched the world for the fountain of youth. Today’s billionaires believe they can create it, using technology and data.

Story by Ariana Eunjung Cha 

The Money Madness of the Clintons

I have never been a fan of either Bill, or Hillary, Clinton. In my mind Bill's gutting banking regulation in the 90's, as well as pulling the stopper out of keeping jobs here with the open trade treaties he championed, has been one of the biggest factors in the decline of the middle class in this country. When you add that to Hillary's unbelievable lack of judgment with her emails, as well as this penchant they both have for combining philanthropy with feathering their own bed, as we now see with further leaked emails, it's hard not to have a real bad taste in your mouth now (see here, and here) for voting for Hillary for president.

That being said, I still voted for her. I did that because the bottom line here is that, bad as she is, she is still a better choice than that egotistical sociopath who destroyed the Republican party.

The real problem here is that the corruption of money has so woven itself into the fabric of our main social institutions as to be inseparable now. A symbiotic intermingling that makes both dependant on the other. As such the only way we will ever have true reform is to recognize that the economic operating system itself is just no longer capable of allowing humans to live with any kind of balance; balance either between the needs of individuals, with the needs of society as a whole; or the balance between our footprint on this planet, and keeping it a viable ecological system.

Voting for Hillary now is simply an unfortunately necessary expedient. Whatever self serving, and/or incompetent tendencies she may have, she is better than putting a madman in a position of power. The possibility of being able to continue to work constructively towards getting people to understand the need for truly fundamental change is served infinitely better with her than with him. It's just that simple. However much she's earned your distrust, or animosity, voting for her is the only rational choice.

Clinton responds to FBI email announcement

See Also:

The Man at the Center of 'Bill Clinton Inc.'

Doug Band helped everyone get rich in the post-presidential empire, but his re-emergence in the WikiLeaks hack is another headache for Hillary.

By

RUSSELL BERMAN

 OCT 28, 2016

The Black Mirror Waldo Reflection

The Brits started a very well done anthology series several years back called Black Mirror. Done so well, in fact, that NetFlix has picked it up now. You can think of it as a kind of Outer Limits but a good deal more dark. I've been watching it, off and on, for more than a year now. Mostly because it's not something I've ever been able to binge with, needing to take the reflections in measured doses.

I mention this now because of a particular episode that aired originally back in 2013 called "The Waldo Moment." An episode some of you have already made note of as it strikes a particular prescient chord as relates to one Mr. Donald Trump.

To summarize, the premise here is that an animated segment on a political satire show is done with a human operator via realtime facial translation, and movement controls. The human operator is a one time comic that had to turn to this gig because the former wasn't working out so well. The producers started it out as a supposed children's segment to trick politicians into interviews with the animated character. Once on the mark was then subjected to every kind of humiliation that bad language, and grossly rude behavior could conjure up. In spit-balling on where to take the character next, if it had it's own show, they come up with the grand idea of having it run for a local minister's seat in Parliament; not in hopes of actually winning of course, but as a means to insert themselves into the election process so as to provide a grand avenue of further opportunities of ridiculing not only particular politicians, but the entire process as well. Unfortunately, this works so successfully, and the animated character becomes so popular (almost actually winning the contested seat), that the temptation to push the idea out even further becomes irresistible. A development made far worse as an American political operative arrives on the scene to suggest that this "identity brand" was ideal for selling any kind of political interests goals; whereupon it becomes quite clear just how scary such a possibility can become.

As becomes obvious now you can see how a connection might be made to Mr. Trump; mostly with the proposition that Trump is Waldo, and I think that is a bit wide of the mark. In my mind what we have here is more of a reflection than we might want to allow for. Something that starts with the idea that a distinction has to be made.

Is Trump Waldo? Perhaps the more correct way to think of it is see it as a kind of mirror reversal; as in Waldo was a caricature with a man running it, while Trump is a man with a caricature running him. If that is the case, however, what does that say about us, and what we've allowed social discourse in general, as well as political discourse, to become? If you think about this at all you might well come to the conclusion that "caricature running people" and not "people running caricature" has become a way of life for us (another episode of Black Mirror entitled "NoseDive," where the scoring of social media becomes a way of life suggests another aspect of this).

The question then is why?

For me it involves how selling and entertainment have become so fused in modern society. A fact that is all the more damning precisely because "The Hard Sell" (a thing I see as immoral in my philosophy) is now the bottom line in getting your identity, or your agenda, or your market superiority, to carry the day.

So, with this being a quite probable case, how could our political process not be not only caught up in it, but also so thoroughly saturated and corrupted as well. A kind of corruption a bit different than that of money's influence, but one which certainly goes hand in hand with it.

This, of course, is bad enough, but when you then add in what has become of entertainment, ever more high fidelity, ever more all pervasive, as it mixes with the wish fulfilment, and needs creation of marketing, we begin to see why, or ought to begin to see why, the borders between nominal reality and fantasy become ever more blurred. As a result then we have "Reality TV," as well as government as "Reality TV."

Is there any wonder then about "who" might actually be talking, let alone what they're "talking" about? Andy wonder why every message is suspect precisely for that reason?

One of the takeaways from discerning Trump's popularity is that there were actual aspects of some of his talking points that formed the foundation of why people would begin to listen to him in the first place. Whether he believed in them or not is irrelevant. And also quite apart from all of his lies. Things that spoke to the power imbalance in the nation. The fact that trade deals have taken jobs away from here. And the idea that anything out of our nation's capital is not to be believed.

Part of the problem, certainly, is that so few of us take the time, or are able to take the time, to be truly informed about issues, but as already stated, that's becoming an ever more difficult proposition if more of everything you can be informed with is made suspect. We also have to recognize here that, if you are caught up on the usual economic treadmill of life today, just keeping your feet under you is a full time job; the uncertainties, the dislocations and turmoil of both natural, and manmade disasters. All inside a storm environment of information that roils with all of the cross currents already discussed. It is madness pure and simple and it is growing.

For my part it seems difficult in the extreme to begin trying to establish meaningful dialogue if we don't also recognize that a fundamental part of the problem is the economic operating system that has brought us to this juncture in the first place. An operating system where the "hard sell" is fused inseparably from everyday life. And where, because of electrification, that aspect has been mutated beyond all imagination. In this it is not only that human skill as a commodity is no longer viable, but where, if we are to regain control of the process that negotiates the social narrative, where what is real, and fact, can be found as a true consensus, then we must also recognize that everything as commodity, and everything as a sales transaction, must also be seen as no longer viable. This means finding a completely new way of conducting how a society not only formulates the means of production, but how it goes about distributing it equitably; all while balancing individual liberty with the concerns for the greater good.

It seems to me that the mirror we reflect in is going to become a great deal more dark if we do not come to terms with this new understanding.

Black Mirror: Donald Trump is Waldo

See Also:

Hacked Memo Reinforces Worst Perception of the Clintons

by CHUCK TODD, MARK MURRAY and CARRIE DANN

This Expanding Desert Has To Matter To Us...

...If for no other reason than enlightened self interest.

When you are talking about how the world's most populated nation is losing ground to desertification at the rate indicated here, the rest of the world, and us in particular, needs to take notice. And we must do this for more than the obvious reason that it is another indication of climate change.

Just consider: If you think displaced peoples from coast lines via rising sea levels is going to be a problem, consider what will happen if more than nearly a billion and a half people start getting crowded in an ever shrinking living space. And if you think China is acting more reactionary as regards to resources now, just wait.

What is especially worrying in this is that we will fall to the usual confrontational response to what will result from this challenges to China. And we will do this simply because it has become so reflexive.

What is need here, instead, is to see this as a way to engage with China; not in some smug form of superiority, but as equals trying to work partnerships in solving shared problems. And in this I can think of nothing better than an energy development program that would result in a fuel whose consumption would create useable water; as in hydrogen.

Producing liquid hydrogen at sea, and sharing in the output would be a very direct, and practical way of starting the process of replacing suspicion and mistrust inherent in an adversarial relationship concerning resources. And make no mistake. If we don't start looking for, and implementing, creative programs that seek to lessen that adversarial relationship, we risk lighting the world up with a kind of climate change that includes mushroom clouds.

Living in China’sExpanding Deserts