Brainstorm: Nonviolent but Actually Effective Dissent Ideas

[FourthBase]

Right. You got no real answer to that, no way to refute it. Because it's the truth.

[MacCruiskeen]

Answer to what? Refute what? What are you on about?

[FourthBase]

Answer to what? Refute what? What are you on about?

Duly noted.

[FourthBase]

Just in case anyone is too lazy to visit the preceding page, this is what I was on about.

(Spot on, in fact.)

No persons or animals were harmed in the making of this insurrection.

Yeah, uh, real easy way to call bullshit on that. Wanna see?

It's autumn of 2011, Boston. You are one of those hearty souls camped right outside the Federal Reserve, across the street from South Station. You are technically violating some manner of city ordinance, but in a more Constitutional sense you're only exercising your 1st Amendment rights in the only public, 24/7 time, place, and manner you see fit. You are doing good. Then some thugs probably hired by The Man show up, and start wrecking property. Only property. Or, they vandalize the home or small organic restaurant or whatever of a leading Occupier. No persons or animals hurt. Or, were there? Of fucking course there were. QED. Vandalism is, in fact, violence. If you want to define it otherwise, don't forget you're redefining it for them, too. So: Don't.

[Sounder]

Dr. Evil wrote...

On topic, and staying legal, there's been research done showing that a loud minority can dominate and steer the public debate, simply by being loud and persistent. I think the number was 10% or thereabouts.

Is this the goal of Mr. Soros’s?

I think the left has to take a page from the conservative playbook. Stop being so nice and objective. Call them out on every little crazy thing they say, and don't pussyfoot around. If they're lying - call them a liar, if they're being misogynistic, homophobic or racist, call them a misogynist, a homophobe and a racist.

Do they have financial interests in the war on terror? War profiteering.
Is their wife/husband employed by a lobbyist firm or a major bank? Conflict of interest. Possible corruption. Etc. etc.

It might be useful calling people out for ugly behavior, but it would seem that taking shots at individual actors has never done much to address ongoing abusive applications of power.

Our scorn might better be directed at the legitimacy of power itself.

Just an idea.

Sorry for the source link, you know, if it’s dodgy an all.

http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-f ... -hypocrisy

The hypocrisy results found in the previous four experiments emerged only when high-power subjects viewed their power as legitimate. Those who viewed their power as illegitimate actually gave the opposite results, a sort of anti-hypocrisy, which researches dubbed, “hypercrisy.” They were harsher about their own transgressions, and more lenient toward others.

This discovery could be the silver bullet that society has been searching for to put down the werewolf of political corruption. The researches speculate that the vicious cycle of power and hypocrisy could be broken by attacking the legitimacy of power, rather than the power itself. As they write in their conclusion:

A question that lies at the heart of the social sciences is how this status-quo (power inequality) is defended and how the powerless come to accept their disadvantaged position. The typical answer is that the state and its rules, regulations, and monopoly on violence coerce the powerless to do so. But this cannot be the whole answer...

Our last experiment found that the spiral of inequality can be broken, if the illegitimacy of the power-distribution is revealed. One way to undermine the legitimacy of authority is open revolt, but a more subtle way in which the powerless might curb selfenrichment by the powerful is by tainting their reputation, for example by gossiping. If the powerful sense that their unrestrained selfenrichment leads to gossiping, derision, and the undermining of their reputation as conscientious leaders, then they may be inspired to bring their behavior back to their espoused standards. If they fail to do so, they may quickly lose their authority, reputation, and— eventually—their power.

In this series we have seen that those given power are more likely to lie, cheat and steal with impunity while also being harsher in their judgements of others for doing these things. We have seen that those given power feel less compassion for the suffering of others, and are even capable of the torture and murder of innocent people. What’s perhaps most disturbing is that we have seen that these sociopathic tendencies have been fostered in otherwise psychologically healthy people. In other words, the problem is not only that sociopaths are drawn to positions of authority, but that positions of authority draw out the sociopath in everyone. But this final experiment offers some hope that authoritarian sociopathy can not only be stopped, but driven into reverse, not by violence or revolution, but simply by undermining their sense of legitimacy".

The concept of power itself must be delegitimized.

Power is the number one source of callousness.

[justdrew]

I agree more communication is required, but I'm not so sure about 'calling out every crazy utterance' - that is largely done already for one thing. The problem with that is it repeats the bad message, it's often not even seen/heard by the people it needs to reach most.

The best thing I think would be to be out there Selling Ideas, and ignoring the Right to death. Stop repeating their bullshit in order to attack it. It's bullshit, they don't even believe half of what they say (maybe less).

Selling Ideas is going to mean delivering an engaging narrative. That means using all the good methods of story telling, particularly moving people through an emotional journey as the story unfolds. They'll come back for more stories that way.

That's exactly what the right does, but the emotional notes they use consist of fear, anger, victimization, greed-is-good, righteousness, etc.

All sour notes.

Also developing within our narratives, the all important 'hidden protagonist' - this is a feature of Murdock narratives too. It is for the reader/viewer to identify with. It's 'hidden' because it's left to implication and drawn in only a few little phrases here and there. Mostly left for the reader to unconsciously find.

[FourthBase]

Well, if there must be any positions of power, at all, then they should be carefully protected from the ambitions of sociopaths and power-hungry assholes. And those who are deemed to be free of that curse enough to qualify, should be thoroughly inspected every fucking year like clockwork by a large, unclassified, democratic body of investigators to determine whether or not they have been corrupted by power, infected by power's contagion, and if so then disqualified and (randomly, if need be) replaced. The systematical curse of power, as systems have gone since the dawn of civilization and probably even before, is that positions of power are sought most often by those who deserve them least, and conversely those who might otherwise be constitutionally good enough to be entrusted with any power over other people, are usually also the kind of person who would not lust after it enough to take it by any means, who might actually turn down powers available and offered to them. And, the world often labels those good people "losers" and the bad people "winners", not in just history textbooks written by the ruthless evil-game winners after the fact, but in everyday ordinary reflection and conversation among everyday ordinary people, who see only the game, whatever the game's nature, being won and lost. That frame of perceiving is no accident. Evolution itself, is in one large sense an evil game won by the ruthless and cruel. But it is not entirely that. Not even mostly that. It might only be that way at the top, and it might be that one of the problems with modernity is that the umbrella under which we all live has expanded ever and ever outward, become more and more centralized, power accruing more and more to one or a dozen central points. As that happens, the more power is available to the top, the more aggressive and sociopathic one must usually be to gain entrance to the top. A vicious feedback loop. But, a loop that is not necessarily permanently-closed. No, on the contrary, it might be a loop wherein the most powerful and psychotic wind up...eating themselves, lol! It might also be a loop which can be broken like a plastic toy road by a simple twist and snap of the track. An umbrella which can be blown out and ruined (for them) by a mere breath, especially if it is the breath of a multitude breathing in unison. What was that Shetterly pamphlet about, again? Oh right. Conspiring. Is it possible for us, The People, the Systematically Disempowered, to conspire against them? Why...yes, it might just be! But how? Well, certainly not by hiding in a shabby bohemian apartment and secretly plotting with a few buddies. We must all conspire against them, all of us together more or less, in the wide open. And, hey, whaddya know, look: We are, lol!

[DrEvil]

It might be useful calling people out for ugly behavior, but it would seem that taking shots at individual actors has never done much to address ongoing abusive applications of power.

Our scorn might better be directed at the legitimacy of power itself.

Just an idea.

Sorry for the source link, you know, if it’s dodgy an all.

I'll let it slide. This time.

http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-f ... -hypocrisy

...lots of text. Click the link if you're curious...

The concept of power itself must be delegitimized.

Power is the number one source of callousness.

Agreed, but on the other hand, someone needs to be in charge, at least on a local level. Pure anarchy when it comes to decision-making is a pain in the ass. Just look at the free-town Christiania in Copenhagen. It works, sort of, but it's not exactly efficient.

I don't think we can remove "power" completely, but it needs some serious constraints.
Taking some inspiration from shipping could be useful. The captain is in charge and has absolute power, but he also has absolute responsibility.
The latter should go hand in hand with the former, always. There should be no such thing as power without personal responsibility.
And it should be the same with privacy. The more power you have over my life, the more I should be allowed to look over your shoulder.

justdrew wrote:
The best thing I think would be to be out there Selling Ideas, and ignoring the Right to death. Stop repeating their bullshit in order to attack it. It's bullshit, they don't even believe half of what they say (maybe less).

Selling Ideas is going to mean delivering an engaging narrative. That means using all the good methods of story telling, particularly moving people through an emotional journey as the story unfolds. They'll come back for more stories that way.

That's exactly what the right does, but the emotional notes they use consist of fear, anger, victimization, greed-is-good, righteousness, etc.

All sour notes.

I like this idea. Take the basic idea of being loud and persistent, but change all the negative fear-based crap into something a bit more optimistic. Get people enthusiastic instead of deathly afraid. More big dreams and less petty backstabbing basically. Just look at the enthusiasm Obama whipped up with his hope and change rhetoric. It worked well enough to put him in office and give him a frickin' Nobel prize ( ).

[FourthBase]

There should be no such thing as power without personal responsibility.

"Skin in the game", pretty much the core of the ethics Taleb is trying to promote.

http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Thing ... 1400067820

[Sounder]

justdrew wrote…

people often go along with "social norms" because they think everyone else agrees, and only they have a little question about the justifiability of that norm, and that they will be ostracized if they go against it. The point of dissent is to break this often incorrect thought, showing people they are free to disagree.

Well many people have probably more than little questions about the justifiability any given norm, but they seem to go mute before they are willing to chance being ostracized. From my personal experience, this is not an incorrect thought. Disagreement is never free.

FourthBase wrote,,,

Holy cow, Sounder, thank you. Mind, eyes: Opened!

Thanks FourthBase, it’s nice to be able to think that at least some of my words have penetration value where some useful substance can be recognized.

Dr. Evil wrote…

Agreed, but on the other hand, someone needs to be in charge, at least on a local level.

What about in Brussels? Do we need someone in ‘charge’ there also?

Pure anarchy when it comes to decision-making is a pain in the ass. Just look at the free-town Christiania in Copenhagen. It works, sort of, but it's not exactly efficient.

I don’t look to anarchy for solutions. While ‘power’ expressed within a vertical authority distribution system is bound to be abusive, that same power might be expressed quite differently within a horizontal authority distribution system.

[coffin_dodger]

On June 8, 1978, Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, author of the "The Gulag Archepalego," was addressing an audience at Harvard University:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security Operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur-- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

[FourthBase]

On June 8, 1978, Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, author of the "The Gulag Archepalego," was addressing an audience at Harvard University:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security Operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur-- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

WHAT IN THE SHIT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THIS THREAD?

Are you suggesting we all live in that dire a condition and have nothing to lose?
Are you suggesting we should kill people, ambush them with tools, crack skulls?

No, no, no. Do not answer. They were rhetorical questions.
Because: Your post has nothing to do with thread. Nothing.
Because: We, those of us in the civilized world, posting on the net, are not in such dire straits.*
Because: Doing anything of the sort suggested in your quote, in our world, would be evil, criminal.

So fucking sick and fucking tired of this fucking shit. Of people's stupid doom fantasies.

*NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE

[FourthBase]

Just in case anyone is too lazy to visit the preceding page, this is what I was on about.

(Spot on, in fact.)

No persons or animals were harmed in the making of this insurrection.

Yeah, uh, real easy way to call bullshit on that. Wanna see?

It's autumn of 2011, Boston. You are one of those hearty souls camped right outside the Federal Reserve, across the street from South Station. You are technically violating some manner of city ordinance, but in a more Constitutional sense you're only exercising your 1st Amendment rights in the only public, 24/7 time, place, and manner you see fit. You are doing good. Then some thugs probably hired by The Man show up, and start wrecking property. Only property. Or, they vandalize the home or small organic restaurant or whatever of a leading Occupier. No persons or animals hurt. Or, were there? Of fucking course there were. QED. Vandalism is, in fact, violence. If you want to define it otherwise, don't forget you're redefining it for them, too. So: Don't.

READ, AGAIN.

[FourthBase]

Well, if there must be any positions of power, at all, then they should be carefully protected from the ambitions of sociopaths and power-hungry assholes. And those who are deemed to be free of that curse enough to qualify, should be thoroughly inspected every fucking year like clockwork by a large, unclassified, democratic body of investigators to determine whether or not they have been corrupted by power, infected by power's contagion, and if so then disqualified and (randomly, if need be) replaced. The systematical curse of power, as systems have gone since the dawn of civilization and probably even before, is that positions of power are sought most often by those who deserve them least, and conversely those who might otherwise be constitutionally good enough to be entrusted with any power over other people, are usually also the kind of person who would not lust after it enough to take it by any means, who might actually turn down powers available and offered to them. And, the world often labels those good people "losers" and the bad people "winners", not in just history textbooks written by the ruthless evil-game winners after the fact, but in everyday ordinary reflection and conversation among everyday ordinary people, who see only the game, whatever the game's nature, being won and lost. That frame of perceiving is no accident. Evolution itself, is in one large sense an evil game won by the ruthless and cruel. But it is not entirely that. Not even mostly that. It might only be that way at the top, and it might be that one of the problems with modernity is that the umbrella under which we all live has expanded ever and ever outward, become more and more centralized, power accruing more and more to one or a dozen central points. As that happens, the more power is available to the top, the more aggressive and sociopathic one must usually be to gain entrance to the top. A vicious feedback loop. But, a loop that is not necessarily permanently-closed. No, on the contrary, it might be a loop wherein the most powerful and psychotic wind up...eating themselves, lol! It might also be a loop which can be broken like a plastic toy road by a simple twist and snap of the track. An umbrella which can be blown out and ruined (for them) by a mere breath, especially if it is the breath of a multitude breathing in unison. What was that Shetterly pamphlet about, again? Oh right. Conspiring. Is it possible for us, The People, the Systematically Disempowered, to conspire against them? Why...yes, it might just be! But how? Well, certainly not by hiding in a shabby bohemian apartment and secretly plotting with a few buddies. We must all conspire against them, all of us together more or less, in the wide open. And, hey, whaddya know, look: We are, lol!

READ, AGAIN.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/search.php?keywords=shetterly+embrace

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/31/3521

[jcivil]

Artistic counterfeiting (exact glorifies the devil)

Process hundreds of pounds of ricin, go to a high place when winds are right, threaten millions of deaths if demands not met. Have awesome list. Four freedoms etc... End rape of planet, commercial fishing, logging, oil, crap manufacture, and when THEY fail, release half the powder.

Super fine grain confectioners sugar would be good.

Now if one released and many were hurt in the fleeing would that be violence? (Don't worry, this Lee lawyer says it would be constitutional.)

Spend your fake money only on organic real things. (No need to be crazy, but as much as possible.)

Carry grease pen to write CLASS WAR on fancy car windows and permanent markers to write on ATM machines etc... also incl websites like RI or hotfatbikinilads.orgy or fknnewz.com too right ya or submedia.tv or growapair.org Who is Ken Saro Wiwa on Shell petrol pumps etc etc...

End the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Have frequent loving sex with the sleepers and turn them into suicide bombers (Non-violent on my part, am I right?)

Make a show like South Park and pull the rug out from under the dominant paradigms toes.

Be fabulous.

Put your undies and shorts on opposite leg at a time. Brush with opposite hand. Wipe... See how everything turns out differently.

Trust people, but check them out. Deep background. If you find an infiltrator, just flip them or use them for disinfo, jamming.

Love, uninhibited unafraid unapologetic laugh in the face of the pain mongers and love everyone and everything and fight for that true dream.

Arrest all the living presidents and their staffs for crimes against humanity and try them in open freedom fries courts.

Be anarchist. Jesus is anarchist. Its fun, its cool, the lays are better. Join the joinless now!