Understanding OWS: the meta-thread

[vanlose kid]

I love the Occupy movement, but i despair of its naivety. Yes, Wall St is an epicentre of casino capitalism, economic rationalism on coke, and it needs to be stopped dead in its tracks. But that wont solve our problems. Yes, getting corporations (elite wealth) out of politics would be good, and may even resuscitate the decomposing corpse of democracy. But that wont solve our problems either.

This is because our problems are not limited to unequal distribution of the pie, as ugly as that is. The pie itself is the problem - it is literally shrinking, its creation is incredibly violent and radically unsustainable, and there are many new (yellow & brown) people rich enough to demand a bigger piece than those (white/pink) people who were raised to believe they were entitled to a goodly chunk.

Any movement or agenda that doesn't recognise these basic facts renders itself mostly trivial, mere squabbling over seating on the titanic.

Its not an attractive message, which is probably why those involved who know this are not publicising it, same as Green Party people who know it don't talk about it very much. But it is still true and tremendously significant, and no really useful lasting reform can be implemented until people grow up and face it. Until then, OWS is just privilege bargaining between alpha's and beta's.

The exception is for those who physically/materially (not symbolically, as we are now) participate, because they get to experience other ways of being, relating, and co-creating, and those experiences are great practice for the unravelling and reweaving to come.

^^

growth and sustainability don't mix. aye. it's a hard sell, but it's the only game left.

*

[Wombaticus Rex]

The exception is for those who physically/materially (not symbolically, as we are now) participate, because they get to experience other ways of being, relating, and co-creating, and those experiences are great practice for the unravelling and reweaving to come.

It's the biggest treasure trove of experimental data we've had in over a decade, though. Being able to test this out in so many US cities and see such a plurality of responses and tactical successes...I mean, I'm doing both, local GAs and an Internets Sociology and it's just an overdose of data. I am actually in the middle of an "off day" just to go through my backlog of notes and emails and links and try to start processing all this brainfood.

Also, if you think you're appalled at their naivete from a distance, go hit up a GA for some serious moral terror. Very instructive stuff.

[Plutonia]

go hit up a GA for some serious moral terror.

Can you explain?

And just to add: Part of the new data-set IMO, is the thorough debunking of the old saw that people are too comfortable, or too selfish or too scared or stoopid or lazy or apathetic to get off their sofas and do something - turns out that was a sensible aversion to the array of fake engagements that were offered to us as our only choices.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Just being a snobby elitist, you know me.

Then again, that's the biggest appeal of GA format. It's STFU therapy for my omnivorous ego. Watching consensus emerge and get policed is very instructive. Watching wedge and magnet issues unite and divide in real time is even more fascinating.

Hopefully (shorthand for "This will never happen but should") the endless Soros-Obama-Islam astroturf accusations will give the left some sense of how insulting it was to write off the Tea Party as the mirror image of those accusations. From what I've been seeing, 3-5 times a week, "our" side is just as full of incoherent rage and raw emotion as any Tea Party rally. Here in the Land of Hungry Ghosts, we all look pretty stupid when we're faced with a long string of questions and a video camera in our face. Myself included.

I'm on a local teach-in committee and the amount of work we have cut out for us is beyond absurd. It's easy to see how fascism keeps winning.

[Plutonia]

Just being a snobby elitist, you know me.

Then again, that's the biggest appeal of GA format. It's STFU therapy for my omnivorous ego. Watching consensus emerge and get policed is very instructive. Watching wedge and magnet issues unite and divide in real time is even more fascinating.

Hopefully (shorthand for "This will never happen but should") the endless Soros-Obama-Islam astroturf accusations will give the left some sense of how insulting it was to write off the Tea Party as the mirror image of those accusations. From what I've been seeing, 3-5 times a week, "our" side is just as full of incoherent rage and raw emotion as any Tea Party rally. Here in the Land of Hungry Ghosts, we all look pretty stupid when we're faced with a long string of questions and a video camera in our face. Myself included.

I'm on a local teach-in committee and the amount of work we have cut out for us is beyond absurd. It's easy to see how fascism keeps winning.

Ah, I see. Thanks for responding Wombat.

What you describe there, could that be called "neo-liberal self-regard? Possibly a class (of) exceptionalism within the larger context of American exceptionlism? Have you any sense that an intrusion of "outsider voices" disrupting and/or exposing some people's operant assumptions is part of what is going on there - as with Tunisian's Obama troll this morning, metaphorical barbarians at the gates?

Trying to formulate this exact idea for a writing project ATM.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Yes, we have dealt with IRL trolls, a first for my experience. Mostly at the behest of a local conservative talk radio guy who's made the group into a regular topic on his show. We had some folks from local Tea Party chapters show up but they were not disruptive, just curious and downright respectful observers. Had some great talks with them. The big gap I felt was their fundamental faith in the system - they want to "restore" something which is, to my mind, a consensus hallucination at best.

(I'm hesitant to use the term "troll" since it's an ongoing internal problem for the group -- pretty much any dissenting opinion or critical feedback tends to get blasted as "trolling" which is very embarrassing. While the line between healthy group support dynamics and groupthink can be muddled, I think our local chapter errs on the side of...well, making mistakes. We've lost a lot of potential allies to breathless rhetoric and "infiltrator" paranoia in the past 2 weeks, especially grownups with experience, connections, resources and skills.)

But yes, in the GA context we have repeatedly dealt with disruption, both crude and sophisticated. Sadly, the crude stuff is even more disruptive than smooth operators. People are charged and desperate to have an actual target for all their straw man rage, so GA will quickly devolve into a "bash the Conservative" 2 minutes of hate affair despite blocks and facilitator appeals. People seem quite excited to have proof of their own importance. Like I said, it's good for group cohesion but I think that comes at a heavy, heavy cost.

Overall, I get the sense they really have no idea how much their rhetoric and beliefs alienate the vast majority of the Americans they claim to be speaking and protesting for. I hear the term "sheeple" thrown around all the time and it speaks volumes about the echo chamber they're broadcasting from.

[Plutonia]

Yes, we have dealt with IRL trolls, a first for my experience. Mostly at the behest of a local conservative talk radio guy who's made the group into a regular topic on his show. We had some folks from local Tea Party chapters show up but they were not disruptive, just curious and downright respectful observers. Had some great talks with them. The big gap I felt was their fundamental faith in the system - they want to "restore" something which is, to my mind, a consensus hallucination at best.

(I'm hesitant to use the term "troll" since it's an ongoing internal problem for the group -- pretty much any dissenting opinion or critical feedback tends to get blasted as "trolling" which is very embarrassing. While the line between healthy group support dynamics and groupthink can be muddled, I think our local chapter errs on the side of...well, making mistakes. We've lost a lot of potential allies to breathless rhetoric and "infiltrator" paranoia in the past 2 weeks, especially grownups with experience, connections, resources and skills.)

But yes, in the GA context we have repeatedly dealt with disruption, both crude and sophisticated. Sadly, the crude stuff is even more disruptive than smooth operators. People are charged and desperate to have an actual target for all their straw man rage, so GA will quickly devolve into a "bash the Conservative" 2 minutes of hate affair despite blocks and facilitator appeals. People seem quite excited to have proof of their own importance. Like I said, it's good for group cohesion but I think that comes at a heavy, heavy cost.

Overall, I get the sense they really have no idea how much their rhetoric and beliefs alienate the vast majority of the Americans they claim to be speaking and protesting for. I hear the term "sheeple" thrown around all the time and it speaks volumes about the echo chamber they're broadcasting from.

So the outsider voices are the "crude" disruptors and "Conservative bashers"? Or is it the other way around?

Did you notice that you began by locating yourself inside:

"Yes, we have dealt with IRL trolls ..."

And end by locating yourself outside:

"Overall, I get the sense they really have no idea how much their rhetoric and beliefs alienate the vast majority of the Americans they claim to be speaking and protesting for. I hear the term "sheeple" thrown around all the time and it speaks volumes about the echo chamber they're broadcasting from."

Who are "they" in relation to you, and what do you see of outsider voices attempting to intrude into "their" echo chamber, if I may ask?


And interesting to note that in the Anonymous War on Scientology, this problem:

"People seem quite excited to have proof of their own importance."

Was routed around by the group's internet operational platforms and internal policing against namefaggotry and so on.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Outsider voices = people who don't show up to General Assembly to participate in good faith. I have a few Libertarian/reformist friends who are definitely engaged more subtle forms of trolling - they enjoy proposing divisive questions in order to draw out rhetoric like "We're not trying to work with the system, we're trying to tear the system down."

Of course, I'm not there as a true believer myself, I'm there to watch and listen. I'm still very curious and confused as to what the Higher Consensus really is, so I'm open to the possibility that I'm seeing it right in front of my face, and processing it through bad conditioning. Mostly, though, I just see the same too-human failures that have crippled pretty much any other group I've been a part of, from bands to political movements to sexual relationships.

(Also, I do notice my own language patterns, yes. I even understand why they're there, on occasion.)

"People seem quite excited to have proof of their own importance." - after the police eviction and the subsequent shock waves of conflict and drama it generated, I have a newfound appreciation for the utility value of police provocation. This microcosm is reflected nationally in Oakland tonight, as the classic conversation about "property damage as violence" becomes situational ethics with a Whole Foods full of customers.

Reminds me of Saint Marshall: "Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful."

[Wombaticus Rex]

Speaking of Higher Consensus, a great semblance of a map:



Zoomable version: http://zoom.it/MFXB#full

[Plutonia]

Outsider voices = people who don't show up to General Assembly to participate in good faith.

Ah! Brilliant! That's it isn't it, the pivotal nub that transforms outsiders into insiders.

It's just what Raimond Gaita has said about "spin" - which presumes an undeclared agenda ie bad faith:

In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates makes a similar point about the political role of orators (read ''masters of spin'') who boasted that they had great power because they could manipulate people to believe whatever they wanted them to believe. At one stage, Socrates tells a young orator, Polus, that he (Polus) is good at oratory but bad at conversation.

Conversation (or dialogue) is, Socrates believed, a condition of sober judgment, because real conversation - the kind that someone celebrates when she exclaims joyfully, ''At last, someone to talk to!'' - presupposes the possibility that one might call one's partner in conversation to seriousness and that she will respond authentically to that call. ''Come now, can you mean this? Do you take me for a fool? Why do you so constantly resort to cliche? Why do you yield so often to your sentimentality?'' And so on. These are calls to a kind of sobriety that cannot survive inauthentic forms.

Socrates believed that oratory was not a morally neutral skill that can be directed at good, bad or indifferent ends, but intrinsically rotten because it betrays the trust necessary for genuine conversation and, in so doing, erodes the conditions of political (and other forms of) judgment. We should think the same about spin.

Thinking here: If I apply that insight to the Tunisians who trolled Obama today, I would say that they did what they did in the spirit of "good faith" .. yes, I think so .. which in effect hardballs ousider status back at Obama. Hmm. He can only respond with spin of course and he can't control both sides of the dialogue anymore, so he's pooched. Except that he has a shit-load of power. Extrapolating to face-to-face encounters with embedded disinfoneers on the streets, I'd say, most effective response would be to turn away and instead seek out those who are there in good faith? IOW, don't feed the trolls! Ha!

And it's actually pretty easy to tell if someone is being not "in good faith" I think, no matter what words are coming out of their mouths. The genesis of a great pro-tip there?

And this:
"the kind that someone celebrates when she exclaims joyfully, ''At last, someone to talk to!'
I've being seeing in a lot of people faces lately - a kind of irrepressible surprised delight. Like here:


So, that's something not the same-old-same-old at least.

"People seem quite excited to have proof of their own importance." - after the police eviction and the subsequent shock waves of conflict and drama it generated, I have a newfound appreciation for the utility value of police provocation. This microcosm is reflected nationally in Oakland tonight, as the classic conversation about "property damage as violence" becomes situational ethics with a Whole Foods full of customers.

Agreed. Actually if you invert Girard's theory of sacrificial violence, what you get is a psycho-social mechanism that disrupts social order (rather than maintains it) though violent sacrifice of the "wrong" kind ie the sacrifice of an innocent (Jesus/ Mohamed Bouazizi/ Khaled Said), a victim, rather than an offender (Oedipus/ Bin Laden/ etc). That's one big reason to adhere to a strategy of non-violence. The other is that violence (according to Girard, if not MM) is contagious, just like courage. We don't want a blood bath. At least I don't.

[Canadian_watcher]

And it's actually pretty easy to tell if someone is being not "in good faith" I think, no matter what words are coming out of their mouths.

Is it? For an aspie, I mean. Isn't it the whole hallmark of Aspergers that one with the condition cannot read faces/emotions? How have you learned to cope? For example, how can you tell through the fog of Aspergers just when someone is in good faith - especially when the person is represented on video?

I think most people can be manipulated into thinking someone is being sincere when s/he is not, and vice versa. or maybe not even manipulated but just... make a mistake.

[Hammer of Los]

Not only is absolute non-violence a must, everyone at demonstrations needs to be aware of the need to isolate, make visible, and neutralise provocateurs or other troublemakers.

The whole purpose of the exercise is to air the grievances and let the public see, the 99%. They are the one's we are talking to, not the 1%. The need to maintain public sympathy and support is paramount.

I want to speak with the 99% about how to make the 1% irrelevant. I am sure it can be done.

The spark has been lit. The infinite potential of this moment, the fluidity of it, this historic moment, all these crowd my mind. These events are extremely significant.

I'm quite giddy!

One day I shall write a lengthy analysis. Maybe!

Perhaps, just perhaps, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the System of Mammon.

Next thing you know, we shall have a heaven on earth!

[MacCruiskeen]

Perhaps, just perhaps, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the System of Mammon.

Next thing you know, we shall have a heaven on earth!

[smiths]

do you know how you can printble copies of that map from the NY occupation

that is a great document of its times

[MacCruiskeen]

Not only is absolute non-violence a must

Well, that depends on what you mean by "violence", HoL. It is a terrible weasel-word. We have to distinguish between injury to humans and damage to property, because the media certainly won't: they'll call it all "violence", indiscriminately, and disapprove of it sanctimoniously while yelling for the cops. Property is sacrosanct, just as corporations are persons.

When the students trashed Tory Party HQ in London last summer, it was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Not a single human being was hurt in the process. That didn't stop the "liberal" media from whingeing about what they insisted on calling "violence", all the while ignoring the brutal and calculated structural violence of depriving an entire generation of higher education or else condemning them to lifelong crippling debt (and therefore craven conformity).

Some windows, at the very least, are going to have to be smashed. Best not to be too apologetic about it in advance, or even afterwards.

From the life of the creator of Los:

In London in the 1790s, like in London today, it was commonplace to see a woman being beaten up in the street, and equally common for embarrassed or irritated bystanders to pass by on the other side. William Blake had a short temper and often lost it. Walking in the St Giles area, and seeing a woman attacked, he launched himself on the scene with such ferocity that the assailant 'recoiled and collapsed'. When the abuser recovered, he told a bystander that he thought he had been attacked by the 'devil himself'. At around the same time Blake was standing at his window looking over the yard of his neighbour when he saw a boy 'hobbling along with a log tied to his foot'. Immediately he stormed across and demanded [/b] in the most violent terms[/b] that the boy should be freed. The neighbour replied hotly that Blake was trespassing and had no business interfering in other people's property (which included, of course, other people's child labour). The furious argument which followed was only resolved when the boy was released.

Some years later, in 1803, Blake was living in a country cottage in Sussex when he came across a soldier lounging in his garden. Blake greeted the soldier with a volley of abuse, and frogmarched him to the local pub where he was billeted. The soldier later testified that as they went, Blake muttered repeatedly, 'Damn the King. The soldiers are all slaves.' In the south of England in 1803, when soldiers were billeted in every village for fear of a Napoleonic invasion, such a statement was criminal treachery. The soldier promptly sneaked to his superiors. Blake was tried for sedition, and escaped deportation and even possibly a death sentence largely because the soldier made a mess of his evidence and because no one in court knew anything about Blake's revolutionary views which had been openly expressed ten years previously. He was found not guilty, and went on writing for another 23 years until his death. He never once swerved from his intense loathing of king, soldiers and slavery.

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj71/blake.htm