Sometimes I feel that the problems we have with fascism everywhere (sadly I feel like I need to read Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-Fascism every year, now) are somewhat related to our disdain for politics when we were young. The Cold War was on and we thought ideologies were stupid, and Communism and Capitalism and all the other -isms were stupid, we felt that people cared about concrete things, objective things, down to earth topics. And so we didn’t get into politics and we didn’t connect with similar minded people and we didn’t *organize*.
Without knowing it, we had become part of Neoliberalism. The individual was the thing. We wanted to work as much or as little as we wanted. We wanted to be paid for what we delivered and we thought that seniority was stupid. Also, we thought we were very smart since so many other people had obviously stupid ideas.
Oh well, and then time passed and we’re still not ruling the world and today I read an essay that I felt I should have read twenty years ago.
So you want to reform democracy has many good points.
So you want to reform democracy
For myself, I think talking about politics in my circle of friends and at work in a joking way, simply demonstrating that politics is important, that we should all work hard at making good decisions when we do got to vote, and facilitating activities that bring people together, be it role-playing gamers or bloggers, that in itself is something that improves society, makes it more resilient, increases the number of friends we have. It’s not much but it’s something I know how to do.
#Politics
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Is There Any Point to Protesting? by Nathan Heller, about Zeynep Tufekci’s “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest”: «Democratizing technology may now give the voiceless a means to cry in the streets, but real results come to those with the same old privileges—time, money, infrastructure, an ability to call in favors—that shape mainline politics.»
Is There Any Point to Protesting?
– Alex Schroeder 2020-10-07 20:31 UTC
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@22 linked this, talking about the strange confirmation bias Noble laureates have.
It’s interesting when consensus-breaking moments happen. There’ve been a couple this pandemic, which is fascinating to watch as a sociology person. It’s almost like groupthink at a societal level. Everybody kind of knows this isn’t really what we should be doing to prepare, but nobody’s going out and saying it. – A Journalist of the Plague Year Zeynep Tüfekçi, interviewed by Antonio García Martínez
A Journalist of the Plague Year Zeynep Tüfekçi, interviewed by Antonio García Martínez
From Arab spring to Obama, crowd sourcing, Facebook, privacy expectations, COVID, institutional failings, to when to stop writing. So good.
What 22 was getting at, however, is the question at the end. When to stop?
Nobel disease is a hypothesized affliction that results in certain Nobel Prize winners embracing strange or scientifically unsound ideas, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise combined with a tendency for Nobel winners to be the kinds of scientists who think in unconventional ways. – Nobel disease, on Wikipedia
Interesting. The list is so long, and the ideas are so terrible. 😭
– Alex 2021-08-06 15:06 UTC