society

Genetic Rot And Controlled Demolition

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Watching the Tories flail in Britain has been a bizarre thing. The party, vaguely the “British Republicans” hasn’t been doing well, and PM Rishi Sunak is shockingly clueless. This is a man who’s bizarre “send immigrants to Rwanda no matter where they’re from” plan got torn apart on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. Sunak, who I must remind you, is the PM of Britan, left D-day events early I don’t always pay attention to British politics, but Sunak has made it hard to ignore, even if no one’s dragging out any lettuce.

As I was swept into the vortex of Sunak’s incompetence, it seems like nearly every policy he choses is some strange cravenly obvious pandering. He then does stupid things and makes weird excuses. The Tories impress me as being somehow poisoned, as if they as a party are damaged on what we might call a genetic level, organizationally. They can’t do things that, I dunno, are effective, and instead resort to “look at me I am so trying to pander to you, yoo-hoo!”

Which isn’t working as people discuss the future death-rebirth of the party.

As I watch Sunak spin down the toilet of his own mind (there’s a phrase I need to save), I also think about the rot-com economy, as Ed Zitron calls it.. You know the growth-at-any-cost approach that has infiltrated too much tech. It’s why people put “AI” into things that don’t need it and why so many new things don’t seem to be things we want.

Zitron is worth following, every post or podcast is a treasure. Listening to his thoughts has led me to wonder if if the tech world is terminally poisoned, if the bad policies and so forth are, again, “genetic.” There’s something wrong on a fundamental level and the tech world, like the Tories, will probably face a reckoning – something else Zitron predicts often (specifically that one of the Big Tech companies is going to hurt BADLY).

How many organizations, parties, businesses, are now just basic bullshit-slinging, pander-at-all cost structures that can’t do anything else because that’s what they are. It’s in their structural and cultural DNA and it’s not going to change without the organization dying out or “mutating” due to strong external pressures.

Which is a scary question to ask when you look at the state of the world, climate, banks, and . . . well most everything. People fear Hapsburg AI, but I’m wondering if we have Hapsburg social structures, too damaged and too inbred they can’t recover. Are we ready for them to collapse?

Well, probably not. I mean yes, it sounds like the Tories are going to get crushed, but I imagine they’ll try to go out with a bang and their fall may make room for something worse. Sure it seems any number of tech companies may be facing legal if not technical and financial failure – but imagine the economic shop of a Big Boy falling apart.

Yeah, it’s not pleasant.

I’ve come to realize that, despite my love of fixing organization and process, we need to be able to declare political parties, businesses, etc. nonviable. There’s a point where they’re brain-dead, too genetically damaged to function, and moreso a danger to others. We need a way to shut them down, a controlled demolition, or whatever metaphor you want to throw into the metaphor gumbo I’m making here.

For that matter we also need to ask how to found, maintain, and improve healthy government, business, and social structures. But that’s for a different column – a column to be written in the shadow of collapsing organizations.

Steven Savage

Twitter, Social Media, And Tribes

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The sale of Twitter to Elon Musk (which isn’t done due to the usual process) made me think, “yeah, time to rethink my social media use.”  I’ll share my thoughts, but first, a lesson about myself – and perhaps yourself.

I’m not leaving Twitter (yet), but I decided it was time to look at my social media use and other “microblogging options.”  So I went to open accounts at a mastodon site and counter.social, and found I already had accounts from five years ago.  Suddenly memories streamed back – I had planned this earlier.

I remember being concerned about Twitter and Facebook being the end-all-be-all of social media and had begun investigating other options.  How well did that go?  Well, I’m looking at five-year-old accounts I used for a few posts, so the answer is poorly.  Face it, Twitter was just easier (and we were glued to it during the last terrible administration)

I had been here before, so my first lesson is – never become so dependent on one social media site again.

Now onward to some more thoughts.

Steve’s Thoughts on Social Media Use

Humans work in tribes, but humans also like to build big things – like societies.  A healthy society comprises many interlinked “tribes” to both support each other and keep any one group from taking over.  A healthy society is linked together, communicates, and has people active in maintaining it.

My goal is to find, make, and link my tribes while playing a role in the larger society.  So next up, here’s the social media I’m thinking of:

Have A Website: Get a domain and use it.  Have a blog, a website, whatever.  Direct it to LinkedIn or to your Linktr.ee (very useful tool).  You want someplace people can find you, a home base, something – there are tools to set these things up easily.  It’s a place for your tribe to find you.

A Blog:  You may want a blog, which is easy to set up with WordPress.  Blogs are good ways to post things and you can set up an RSS feed for people to use.

Use an RSS Reader:  RSS may not be as big a deal as it was, but it’s invaluable to integrate information among sites.  I use www.NewsBlur.com not just for news but also friends blogs, etc.  It’s a way to be informed and keep up with my people.

Newsletters:  Newsletters are very underrated ways to stay in touch and build a tribe.  They give you a mailing list of people, they give you a way to stay in touch, and they allow for links, documents, and other useful info.  Learn how to send one (I started one for friends and family 16 years ago).  If you’re a writer or artist they’re invaluable.  Plus you may have ones for different “tribes.”

Video Chat: Zoom, Webex, whatever these things are great.  You can schedule regular meetups with people easily, share data, and so on.  I strongly recommend picking a platform or two – I even pay for Zoom for myself.

Chat: Chat programs are great ways to stay in touch and have a more regular “tribe.”  Discord, Slack, etc. are really good for that.  Way back when AOL shut down, my friends and I moved to Discord, and it was great.  You may or may not need them, but consider them if you maintain some active social groups.

Microblogging:  Even if Twitter has an unsure future, “microblogging” like this seems useful for people.  I don’t think it’s needed for everyone, but it may be useful for authors, people trying to reach others, etc.  I’d consider one of the various Mastodon instances, Counter.social – and don’t write off Twitter yet.

Facebook (sigh):  I am regrettably on it for reasons.  I don’t consider it necessary, it may not be for you, so I’ll leave it up to you.  However if money is an option, Facebook is free and has many of the above features.  Just remember you are the product.

Blog sites:  Twitter’s travails seem to be reviving Tumblr, and Pillowfort.social seems to show promise if growing slowly.  I think there’s a place for these for community building and information sharing, but you are dependent on another platform.  However you use these, remember to “back up your tribe” and find other ways to stay in touch with your community.

What I’m trying to do (read: revive my ideas of five years ago) is optimize how I use each of the above.  What tribe matters?  What purpose does each media serve?  How do I avoid over-dependence on any one?

You can guess you’ll probably read about it here.  Or five years from now if I fail again.

But before I finish up . . .

Engaging in Activism

I want you to find at least one form of activism to get involved in.  Donate, call, raise money, get out the vote, something that gets you involved.  It has several benefits.

  • First, you are able to do good.
  • Secondly, you build a tribe around things that matter – or find one you want to belong to.
  • Third, you learn how the world works (trust me, you don’t).
  • Fourth, you use the social media skills you developed above.
  • Fifth, you learn how tribes matter.

This is another subject to post on, but get involved.  It’s not easy (indeed, I could do it better), but it’s worth it.

Steven Savage

On Truth, Connection, and Disconnection

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

In an age of propaganda and post-truth politics, we face people believing outlandish falsehoods and obvious propaganda and acting upon it.  How do people become so disconnected from reality?  Disconnection is the appropriate term, because some people seek to cut the strands of knowledge that helps us find truths – and some cut their own strands deliberately.

I’ve heard it said that we’re in a post-truth era in 2016, where the idea of truth is irrelevant to many.  It’s clear that enough people believe falsehoods, and many are happy to believe blatant lies and fantasies if it fits their agendas. Many propagandists and opportunists are glad to provide these lies to their audience. This is feared rightly by sane and rational people because this disconnection is enough to get people killed – and in modern times, technology allows that to be a great number of people.

We wish to oppose this “celebration of falsehood” for the as we’d rather not die or have other people die because of other someone’s chosen foolishness and those providing that foolishness.  To deal with this we need to deal with the nature of Truth.

The best way I have found to define Truth – which will always have a subjective component – is connection.  Something is True (or at least “truer” than other things) because it can be explained in multiple ways, because its validity is confirmed multiple ways, and the “true thing” relates to other data, concepts, and experiences.  One may look at the effect of a drug, find studies done by reliable researchers who in turn base their work on other validated research, talk to their doctor, evaluate their own experiences and have  a decent idea of the truth of that drugs effectiveness.

Truth is a web of connections. Truth does not exist outside of context.

In understanding the Truth of something, there will be flaws in data, mistakes, errors, even outright falsehoods.  The whole of the Truth stands together despite flaws in parts of it.  It is at worst, “true enough” to work with – connected enough to sources of information and validity that it’ll do the job.  At best, the Truth even incorporates its own flaws, with margins of error, exceptions, or contingencies.

In a connected age, which we live in at least at the time of this writing, one would think we would have more truth, and not be battling falsehoods.  I’d say we actually have both more truth and more falsehood – more useful and valid knowledge, but also more post-truth lies and propaganda.  Why is this?

This is because there are people who profit from untruth, motivated by everything from money to self-esteem.  These people can use our modern media and technology for their own gain with relative ease.  With this technology they do what dictators and liars always do – they attack the connections that form the truth.  They attack the knowledgeable, the advocates, the educators, and the informed – breaking the social and cultural connections needed for some kind of truth and common ground.

The attacks made by the propagandists break both social and personal connections, sowing mistrust and disregard not to increase truth by questioning, but to decrease it destroying credibility of ideas, institutions, and people.  These attacks don’t always offer a replacement truth outright.  Instead these attacks are passive-aggressive ways to say “believe me” by focusing on saying others are not trustworthy.  When someone believes the attacks on people, they will more easily believe the attacker.

No this is not sane, not rational, and is very dangerous.

Our modern times gives us people gladly following and sharing falsehoods and placing themselves in narrow social bubbles with modern technology.  These two experiences, of falsehoods and of echo chambers, are really two sides of the same phenomena.  Media companies cut the ties of truth with their lies, and out of them form echo chambers.  Others obsessed with believing untruths make online communities build echo chambers and then cut ties to a larger shared Truth.  The results are the same – and overlapping.

People are cut off from the “larger picture” of what is true, believe only certain things, and then reinforce these beliefs with each other. They may feel connected  but ultimately are not, their only connections are to someone feeding them lies, to a closed community, or both.

This is cult like behavior; separating people from community, convention, and connection.  We have people acting as cult leaders who are news figures and media figures, severing the ties that maintain our truth with lies.  We have people willing to act as their own cult leaders, isolating themselves deliberately among specific communities that share their views and untruths. Either way we end up with people separated from the rest of the world – yet trying to influence it because of the falsehoods they believe.

It’s disturbing to think in this modern world there are people so disconnected from reality that they deny large parts of how the world runs and works.  These people cannot keep a functioning society running at best; at worst they part of dysfunctions in society.

It is the duty of any citizen to maintain and increase the connections that we rely on for Truth. We should actively introduce people to knowledge.  We should support and expand knowledge systems such as schools, publishers, and magazines.  Perhaps maintaining these truths was once unconscious or assumed; today it must be a conscious and committed effort.

The more we maintain and improve the social and informational connections that give us some Truth, the less we have to deal with the pathologies.  We must create and maintain a healthy social and cultural system that can resist propaganda, lies, and delusion.  Our survival depends on it.

– Steve