Our world has been taken over by disruptors. This is not altogether surprising; any ecological system will become vulnerable to disruptive and predatory organisms if the conditions are right. A system that is unable to mount an immune reaction to such invaders will succumb and suffer until it either dies, or is able to once again rouse itself into an effective response. The closely cooperative and sharing human world that enabled our ancestors to survive the severe challenges of the last ice age began to change with the advent of the Holocene, when benign climate ushered in an era of plenty. There are a number of theories that address what exactly happened then, and I will leave that for another time. Suffice to say that gradually, perhaps in only a handful of societies at first, a new social order was born. Or perhaps, a new disorder.
In a nutshell: the cooperative human game began to be disrupted in a few places, and the disruption infected other societies and spread over time. I consider it highly likely that our ancestors responded to the new world of plenty with greater tolerance for disruptive personalities, and even welcomed the talents that go along with them. Yet here we are — on the brink of disaster. Isn’t the key issue of the new paradigm to return to playing the cooperative game and to make sure that this time, it remains evolutionarily stable? Recognizing the disruptors is the first order of business when coming to grips with them. Who are these people who undermine trust and cooperation to such an extent that civilized societies appear seriously impaired in their capability to deal with the challenges of the 21st century? Let’s shine a light at them.
Dicks gift us with meanness. They work hard to belittle, diminish and abuse a person. I have waxed eloquent on dickery before; it consists of the endless variations on slugging the person rather than the objectionable belief, idea, behavior, or product. In verbal skirmishes, it had already been recognized by the ancients as the ad hominem: attacking the person rather than their argument. Dicks are oblivious to the damage to people and relationships they leave in their wake. They want to be right. They want to showcase their memes. They want to win.
Trolls relish sowing chaos, deception and confusion within human communities, and have been known to paralyze them. They generate emotions in others while not investing any of their own. Trolls love to yank people’s chains! They feed on the chaotic emotional energy they stir up, and on the attention paid them.
What all trolls have in common is bait: messages intended solely to upset or insult. If people “bite” by getting riled, the troll proceeds to “reel them in” and does his best to wreck the conversation and damage the good will within that community. To this end, trolls apply a wide range of havoc wreaking, noise generating methods with great success. Spurious accusations, previous statements twisted into meanings never intended, demands for proof for any and all statements made, requests for information already provided, willful contradictions, off-topic bunny trails, arbitrary word usage redefinitions, or seizing upon small mistakes to subvert the thrust of the main argument; these are just a sample of the rich trollish repertoire. They cultivate the fine art of missing the point, never answer inconvenient questions, and set people up to argue with each other by using subtly invidious language.
If one tack does not produce the desired discord, the creature will switch to another. When an otherwise peaceable community starts fighting, look for a troll loitering nearby. Still, trolls are not all bad; they can liven up a moribund discussion and interrupt groupthink. And dealing with them can foster a community’s spirit of self-governance. Unfortunately, their positive contributions are far outweighed by the pointless conflict they generate. The troll’s goal is not to win an argument but rather to provoke a futile one that runs forever.
Predators take advantage of others. Most predators are not sociopaths. They are folks whose scruples do not stop them from skimming off or plundering what they did not earn. Some are thieves and embezzlers, some are bankers and financiers. They are mobsters who run protection rackets, and government officials who scheme to bilk the citizens. They are shadowy slavers running sweatshops and brothels, and high placed economic hitmen reducing whole countries to debt peonage.
A rare variety well illustrating their anti-social nature are ‘patent trolls:’ people who sit on patents preventing others from using the invention and coming out of their cave only to sue those who may be “infringing.” They are the free riders on an economic system where restrained, accountable behavior of most of its participants is still prevalent. Predators want to fatten themselves at others’ expense. Some predators specialize in inflicting physical harm.
Aggrandizers are people who exhibit the “triple-A” personality: they are ambitious, acquisitive and aggressive. They played a key role in the shift from the stable, sharing economies of egalitarian tribes toward the increasingly intensifying economies that replaced them in larger and larger areas. These high-energy people endowed with considerable talents tend to rise readily into leadership positions. Aggrandizers promise goodies, and often deliver: they are the tireless organizers of feasts, the forgers of trade alliances, the consummate politicos, the able warriors. They have a knack for finding ways to motivate people to produce more, and using that surplus for previously unavailable benefits for the community. In the short run, they can do a lot of good. In fact, this is how they win people over.
As egalitarians the world over have understood, however, the people most eager for power may not be the best choice to bear its burdens. Non-aggrandizer leaders do not present the same threat, nor do they require constant vigilance. To put it plainly, despite their short-term benefits, aggrandizers are highly dangerous to the well-being of human communities. If their ambition is allowed to go unchecked, they turn anti-social in the long run. Lack of effective limits corrupts them into dicks, trolls and über-predators, and they end up causing massive damage to the societies they once served. They want power, wealth, prestige, and status, and they never have enough.
Disruptors are skilled stage magicians: they distract the cooperative chumps by layers of spectacle, while the real action goes on veiled, camouflaged, unnoticed. Dickery mixes abuse and unscrupulous behavior with “nice” behavior in order to disarm the dupe. Trolling creates maddening swirls of distracting trivia, confusion and strife able to cripple a community. The predators ooze an aura of charm, allure and cunning in order to take advantage. And aggrandizers offer an endlessly gratifying cornucopia of goodies, all the while subtly diverting more and more power and wealth to themselves. The world taken over by the disruptors is a world of spectacle: all the world’s a stage — to keep the chumps spellbound.
For most of us, meaningful social relations rest on the default assumption of mutual cooperation, leading us to see others as fellow cooperators even when appearances suggest otherwise. The belief in the universality of this social contract can blind us to the fundamentally uncooperative nature of disruptor behavior. Typically, we waste our energies on arguing with disruptors, nagging them and shaming them, hoping to bring them back into the fold. None of that works. They do what they do for a reason. They disrupt because they find such behavior rewarding. And until we find a way to shift those rewards, they will keep on doing it. Why wouldn’t they? The disruptors do not follow the universal social contract; they take advantage of it. Isn’t it high time for the rest of us, the predominantly cooperative ones, to get savvy and to restore the cooperative human game that has been part of our birthright as a species for most of its existence?
I am not branding the disruptors as the darkling “other,” the evil side of the human community that needs to be eradicated. Scapegoating and witch hunts are disruptor ploys. Cooperators understand that behaviors rather than persons need curtailing or eliminating, and look for strategies arising from working with each other. So how do we deal with individuals who have come to thwart the cooperative game so regularly and so profoundly that dealing with them has become something of an acute emergency for civilized societies? Together we can shift the pattern of rewards. What we feed… will grow. Withhold cooperation from the disruptors. Cooperate with the cooperators.
Leaving Babylon 
September 28, 2010 at 12:37 pm
leavergirl — I am really impressed by your insight into this dark area of our common life. I suspect this is the fruit of hard won experience. As Ben Franklin said, “What hurts, instructs.” Or as Will S. says, “sweet are the uses of adversity.”
You leave us with a sketch of a corrective to deal with these types. But as Jensen asks, will simply refusing to play with them and hanging out with our fellow cooperators be adequate to keep them from detroying the world while we are busy with the lengthy process of becoming fit ourselves to build a better one? Must give us pause….
September 28, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Hey Mike —
Thank you. I endeavor to be a diligent student of game theory that illuminates the systemic patterns of the games we play. 🙂
Recognizing them and putting our energies elsewhere seems to me the core of what needs doing, though it does not paint the entire picture. What do you think? Does it hit the spot? There is no lengthy process needed to turn us into cooperators, btw. We already are. (We are not altogether sane, but that’s a different issue…) The solutions I aim to present in this blog do not depend on some “lengthy process” of preparation. They begin here and now, and are open and available to any and all of us.
September 28, 2010 at 4:41 pm
leaver girl — What you have written does hit the spot as far as dealing with the immediate obvious disruptors. But in terms of birthing a new era of cooperation on whatever scale, what if we carry the seeds of disruption in our own pockets?
My answer to Rodney King’s question is still, “No Rodney, we can’t just get along. We never have in the last thousands of years, and it is going to take some unique and significant work if we are ever going to figure out how to cooperate, share, and love one another in the modern world.”
IMHO it would take lengthy and difficult and uncertain experimentation and work for folks to try to (re)create the imagined (after all we were not there) peaceful lifestyle and culture that may have existed somewhere in the distant past. I took part in some of that experimentation on Maui in the sixties. The problems we encountered were mainly due to our hubris in imagining that we were (already) “the people we were waiting for.” We weren’t, and we proved it in spades.
If folks have so much trouble even getting together for an hour or so each week to share and learn together, in the comfort of their homes, what makes them think that moving into the boonies under difficult conditions is going to magically work out? The history of failures of “Utopian” schemes seems to be telling us something: namely, we don’t know how to do this yet. We cannot at this point say how long it would take to become the kind of people who could achieve true cooperation and work together, but it is going to be a process.
One of the missing ingredients imho in many of previous attempts is the lack of a trans-formative process to give rise to the new human. We just ain’t as together as we want to believe we are. The attempt to make a new world with the same old culturally conditioned egos is not going to do anything but reproduce the same old problems. External arrangements and wonderful dreams are not enough to produce the radically transformed humans who can create a new world. Or so I say….open to correction….
September 28, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Mike, I did not mean to suggest that the life of our egalitarian ancestors was peaceful or non-violent. They were just as un-peaceful and violent as other tribes have been known to be. What they were, however, was radically cooperative — because they had to be. You don’t survive the ice age by letting the disruptors run rampant. And I see the same survival incentive now.
I think perhaps we are talking about the same things here, nevertheless. One task it to create a systemic pattern that advantages cooperation. This is not so hard, really — if bats can do it, surely currently equipped humans can. Another task, concurrent I hope, is to learn yet better ways to cooperate and share power (or to put it another way, to *become* better cooperators). I was not attempting to address the second in my post, but I know this is your own focus, and I think it is just as important.
September 28, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Here’s a disruptor of another kind… http://www.jamessamuel.co.nz/local-food/
This is about connecting growers and eaters in a community in the most efficient manner. It’s about the growing and intersecting communities of interest using the readily available technology and readily available resources, to organise. With a focus on the small, intensive, local growers who use the most natural soil regenerating methods, the Ooooby Box is facilitating the distribution of healthy food for local consumption.
September 28, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Neato, James. I tried leaving a message on your site but it kept blanking out my name and address. 😦
September 28, 2010 at 7:14 pm
leavergirl — I get your point. And we do need to understand and navigate the disruptor’s rapids if we are to reach calmer waters beyond. Again, I am really impressed by your skillful elucidation of that passage. Functioning in small groups can be paralyzed by these types. They need to be “outed” and dealt with adroitly. The greatest harm they can do is damaging trust within a group. And without trust, nothing meaningful or real can happen.
September 29, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Thank you as ever Leavergirl, for pungent and witty accuracy.
I don’t accept trolls in cyberspace any more than I do in real life (others seem to think it is a breach of ‘democracy’ to send comments to the spam box. I figure if they want to spread vomit, they can build their own wordpress site in five minutes, so I am hardly infringing their rights…)
Two thoughts – one to Marvin Harris, materialist anthropologist and author of the wonderful “Cannibals and Kings”. My take-away from it was that indeed, storable surplus can lead to all sorts of dickery, predatory behaviour etc.
Game theory about iterative tit-for-tat as the most adaptive tactic is good, but I wonder, with Mike, how it will cope with massive environmental (and concomitant psycho-social) stress is something that we will have to wait to find out. On the up side, we probably won’t have to wait terribly long!
September 29, 2010 at 3:28 pm
[…] a piece from her latest post, on ‘disruptors‘. Trolls relish sowing chaos, deception and confusion within human communities, and have been […]
September 29, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Stumbled on this that I have on a much-underused wordpress site I ‘run’ called Escape from the Smugosphere. When I have More Time Off (I start a sabbatical in a little under two months) I shall be making it more useful (?)
Anyhow, it’s here
http://escapefromthesmugosphere.wordpress.com/glossary/jacques-camatte-going-gangbusters/
September 29, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Just thought i should check back in quickly (all i seem to “have time for” atm), otherwise i’d technically be a “lurker” of late, another questionable category of participant that i personally am not completely comfortable with, as i like to know who’s in on a given conversation (a very “natural” thing if you think about it). For now to say, OK, great that we’re making progress discussing the utility of certain approaches to “the problem” we all are so stymied by, and as for the ones being laid out here and fed back on…in this case, what about those folks intent on making things harder by attacks and other objections, rather than easier by lending their shoulder to the wheel—Mr. Towers, could you please “in other words” this for me?: “Game theory about iterative tit-for-tat as the most adaptive tactic is good, but I wonder, with Mike, how it will cope with massive environmental (and concomitant psycho-social) stress is something that we will have to wait to find out.” Obviously there’s a lot of perception bound up in that comment that, given the words involved, I’m hard-pressed to be confident that i fully “got”. You got a constructive critique in there for us? I’m wide open to ’em, if well-founded, and i suspect leavergirl is too. Both types of backscatter are needed. And then we get to get out of Babylon, right? 😉
September 30, 2010 at 8:33 am
JayD, thank you for rising to my defense! (Hug.) Nevertheless, I am one of those weird people who actually looks forward to hard feedback. How else are we gonna figure out these pretty complex problems except by not letting the half-baked through? Both Mike and Marc are pushing me to look further; I am grateful.
As for “tit for tat”… Trouble with computer simulations is that they assume equal power between ‘defector’ and ‘cooperator.’ This is rarely the case in real life encounters between disruptors and cooperators. So I am actually not saying that “tit for tat” is the solution. What we need is quite a bit more subtle than that.
I *am* saying that the core of the solution lies in protecting human communities from disruption, and of course, recognizing disruptors is the essential first step to that end. The second step is to give attention to the streams of supportive energy we emit, and where they actually go.
Marc. as I was working on the post, I began to realize that trolls infest face-to-face spaces as much as they do cyberspace. Gadz, I have seen the small group process hijacked by these types before. And now I am even seeing them in politics. Anyways, the belief that penalizing these types to protect a community is somehow undemocratic and un-inclusive is pernicious. It serves them, not us.
Gotta read Cannibals and kings! Libraries in these parts are not carrying him. I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea that storable surplus is the culprit, but I think it’s not. Hoarding is. Nah?
September 30, 2010 at 9:54 am
As I was driving towards the “big city” yesterday, I had a thought: Disruption is in the mind of the disrupted.
When I began practicing Aikido in Hawaii, I began applying what I was learning in the Dojo to my driving. After all, Aikido intends to become a way of life, not merely an art of self-defense. So I began trying to create a we-space on the freeway and elsewhere in traffic. This meant increased awareness of the needs and intentions of others, and intentionally trying to drive so as to maximize the free and easy and safe flow of traffic. Letting others go first, declining to inwardly curse others for their behaviors, not tail-gating, etc.
Now what I became aware of in my recent driving experience was that the generally rushed, pushy, aggressive drivers crowding towards the on-ramp we were heading into, regarded my attempts to slow down, make space, others first, as a disruptive behavior. I could feel them muttering, “Why doesn’t he scrunch up and push for the exit like the rest of us? We can’t figure out what this nut-case is going to do, he just isn’t conforming to the group’s familiar expectations.”
So what I intended as polite, facilitative behavior, my fellow drivers interpreted as disruptive. Being aware of this, I realized that in order to accomplish my intention to be facilitative, I had to in some degree accommodate to the prevailing expectations relative to pushiness, and spacing. It was somewhat the feeling I have had when during a group process, I have offered something meant to help further and deepen our considerations, only to be met with a response indicating that someone found my contribution to be obstructive and disruptive. So maybe obstruction is in the eye of one feeling obstructed? What one person receives as a helpful criticism, another interprets as a vicious attack, worthy of a response in kind. Maybe diplomacy is the art of communicating without raising another’s hackles. But is that always possible? What then? Like it or lump it? I am not responsible for your deficiencies in understanding?
September 30, 2010 at 10:44 am
Hi Jay D, Leavergirl, Mike etc
Sorry, I defo compressed too much there. By iterative tit-for-tat I was referring to the computer simulations of game theory that suggest that the most mutually beneficial pattern is to do what the last guy did to you and then occasionally forgive someone’s transgressions and then see what happens, if they understand that if they step out of line they will be punished.
I’ve skimmed the wikipedia entry, and to my untutored eye it looks like a good basic explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
I didn’t allude to the problem that the simulations assume that everyone is of equal power, leaving that to the wonderful leavergirl.
And as far as I know the games don’t deal with somone who is able to PRETEND to be reciprocating but actually isn’t, is being a clever paasite
The other problem, that I did allude to in my usual overwrought rhetoric is this – in tit for tat there is an assumption that the game will continue indefinitely into the future. But what if resources are going to get scarcer and scarcer – won’t tit for tat co-operatively breakdown, and techniques fit for one environment be unfit in another…
There’s a lurid account of this in William Langweische’s book The Outlaw Sea : A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime of 1994, about how some of the people on the Estonian ferry disaster of 1994 behaved…
Hey Leavergirl
Oh, absolutely. The pathologies in meatspace are equally horrendous, and easier to spot (?) but often harder to deal with. Various phrases I like – “the narcissism of small differences” “the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low.” And people are highly skilled at deploying emotional blackmail, playing various gender and class cards to deflect criticism of their behaviour. (Not to say that white middle-class men don’t use crappy techniques to avoid dealing with their behaviour!!)
This is where the really wonderful book “Community Group Dynamics” by Rosemary Randall is so helpful – names some of the problems, the trajectories. I really can’t recommend it enough…
http://communitygroupdynamics.wordpress.com/
September 30, 2010 at 10:49 am
Mike,
that is a very very important insight. I’ve seen people’s helpful attempts misinterpreted (and sometimes WILFULLY misinterpreted). And yeah, there will be so much resistance to attempts to seed new forms of behaviour into a process. It’s scary (and an implicit criticism of what people have been going along with). There’s a mini-storm going on elsewhere in the blogosphere because some guy refused to give details of where he had been when he returned to the States. The level of hatred and vitriol he got from some posters, simply for exercising his Constitutional rights, makes me wonder if they are not jealous of him for having a spine, and turning that jealousy and rage at themselves for their own weakness onto him. Slave morality and all that…
Here’s the post I am talking about.
http://knifetricks.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-am-detained-by-feds-for-not-answering.html
September 30, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Dwight — Thanks for the link to Knifetricks. Amazing. Conformists are deeply threatened by those of us who step out of line, or even opt out of the whole moribund culture. Their defensive maneuvers can become very aggressive and offensive. These go-along-to-get-along types have a whole repertoire of tricks to make you go away and stop compromising their imaginary world of happy, uncomplaining conformity.
September 30, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Ok, so I am going to step onto this treacherous ground. The stuff at Knife Tricks. Disruptors don’t appreciate being disrupted. And if they hold power, they are likely to strike back…
Is it a good idea to mess with them? Or does it simply help them evolve to the next level (I am thinking of that Bill Mollison quote that notes how protesters helped the cops evolve into the storm troopers…).
I tend to think that we are better off to outwardly “give to caesar what is caesar’s,” and create underground alternatives. My heart is with the guy who stood the ground to the customs cops, but my common sense says… I doubt anything useful is being accomplished, and possibly some bad things are. What do you say?
September 30, 2010 at 4:24 pm
leaver girl — Sometimes revolutionary change happens through an unpredictable, illogical combination of seemingly contradictory forces, abetted by the most amazing interventions of “chance.” Think of the amazing changes in South Africa, or the USSR, which no one predicted or even thought remotely possible. Of course after the events, commentators rushed in to “explain” them, but there post mortem theories are widely divergent and inconclusive.
It is for the above reasons that I keep my own mind open to every well meaning vector of positive change, even those I don’t “agree with.” Derrick Jensen, for example fits into that category in my mind. When and if things get really bad fascist-wise, or Mad Max-wise, you never know what may start to make sense, however crazy it seemed in quieter waters.
Let me throw in one of my own crazy thoughts here. What if there was an underground right out in the open? A sort of above ground underground. Like Zen? Meditate on that one for a while….
If the CIA and DARPA and other such mischief makers can think far out thoughts, why not us goodniks? Let’s get together and dream up some really weird shit to mess with the Man….
October 1, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Mike, the amazing changes in Eastern Europe are a lot less amazing if you know what really went on.
Crazy thoughts? Not! Poe already knew that sometimes, the best way of hiding something is in plain sight! 🙂 (viz Purloined Letter)
October 1, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Marc, great stuff. Will read Rosemary. If we want to have a functional group process, we need to get really good at defusing and sidestepping all those traps people throw in our path. Sanity depends on it!
As I understand it, cooperation makes more and more sense, systemically, as resources grow scarcer. People’s survival depends on their close working together, and and on keeping the disruptors from hoarding what is left. The stories of social chaos in disasters are not evidence to the contrary: we do not know yet how to readily switch from domination to cooperation/levelling. It reminds me of Quinn’s saying that once you fall out of a plane, you are not in a position to knit a parachute. That’s why we need to bust our bums now, to get it down pat.
October 1, 2010 at 1:35 pm
leavergirl — Maybe you can enlighten me as to what really went on in Eastern Europe?
What if the letter were opened and pinned to the wall, or better, sent in to the news media?
October 1, 2010 at 1:41 pm
AS far as “busting our buns to get it down pat”, those small learning/training groups better get up and running before the shit really hits. It will be too late to learn many essential lessons when desperation rules the land.
October 1, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I like the Quinn quote – shall track that down!
Mike wrote – AS far as “busting our buns to get it down pat”, those small learning/training groups better get up and running before the shit really hits. It will be too late to learn many essential lessons when desperation rules the land.
Yes yes yes, a thousand thousand times yes.
The Randall stuff is, IMHO, fantastic. I may be trying to do an update during my sabbatical – would make a good project…
Best to you all
October 1, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Mike, the last thing I want is the attention of the disrupter-controlled media.
In a nutshell — and I am sure it’s been covered well elsewhere — the eastern Europeans were tunneled out and piratized (their terms)… the vast wealth that had been held in the public hands privatized by often the very bastards that had run the totality, just wearing new cloaks of the capitalist and democrat. Or sold for 30 silver shekels to westerners. A terrible tragedy, IMO. They were completely naive and unprepared for what hit them.
October 1, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hey Leavergirl,
very succinct! Who was it who sang “met the new boss, same as the old boss.”
I remember having just read Chomsky explaining this nomenklatura power-grab when I took a flight via Moscow. There were three women in fur coats with bags from the expensive Stockholm shops ahead of me in the queue. This was 1994, I think. “Hullo” I thought “I know where you got THAT money.”
Bourne Supremacy sort of deals with this, and the corruption attendant.
“They were completely naive and unprepared for what hit them.”
Yeah, they were used as figleafs for rampant exploitation, cast aside rapidly. Barbel Bohley, ne of the ones who was a thorn in the side of the East Germans has just died – here’s an obit from the FT, and a quote that seems apposite.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/298b8054-c809-11df-ae3a-00144feab49a.html
If Bohley and her companions were reluctant revolutionaries, they were also taken aback by the speed of the changes they helped unleash. Their citizens’ movement was swiftly eclipsed in the negotiations for unification that followed, and Bohley never forgave western politicians who preferred to deal with the communist establishment than the dissidents. She feared she would be “crushed” by the party political machines. “I never joined any party in the east, and I don’t want to do it now,” she said.
October 1, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Ah… when will we ever learn?!
“western politicians who preferred to deal with the communist establishment than the dissidents”
Aggrandizers always want to deal with fellow aggrandizers rather than the rabble.
Thank you, Marc, for the insights from what you saw. I had waited most of my life for communism to fall. And this is what we got instead. F**k.
October 1, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Ugly stuff. Turn over a rock, and there is a power corrupted pol. Is it any wonder that Jensen craves active measures to overthrow these traitors to mankind? But how? And what will take their place? There’s the rub. Must give us pause…..to come up with something better than the old revolutionary changing of the guard. This will not be easy. The answers, methods we need are not yet evident. Forging them will require time, diligence, creativity, cooperation. All this means growth beyond consoling dream solutions. There are real workable answers. We need alembics and crucibles to nourish new possibilities. Small groups dedicated to this essential project. The old ways are inadequate to the modern Hydra we are dealing with. Its tentacles reach into every corner, and snake within the minds of its victims. Lopping off a tentacle here and there will not be sufficient to kill this Dragon once for all.
October 1, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Susan George’s book from about 8 years ago “Another World is Possible” is a good start, at least from a ‘campaigning’ perspective. Lots of accrued wisdom about basic things to do – like giving newcomers a job to keep them involved etc etc.
But the campaigners are, for the most part stuck in the smugsophere. (I mean the ones not dealing with bread and butter issues where feedback is regular and obvious).
October 3, 2010 at 5:24 am
You open a big subject asking how AA works. First, I am not a spokesperson for AA. No one is. Second, I am not promoting AA. That said, I have been associated with AA for fifty years.
The 12 steps and 12 traditions are easily searched online. There is a book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, that goes in more depth as to how these brief sutras are lived.
My interest is in seeding small groups to seek deeper solutions to our escalating world problems. Small means twelve or less. Leaderless, anonymous, confidential, meeting once a week for an extended time, usually lasting one to one and a half hours per session, focused on developing and implementing innovative solutions.
My understanding is that our problems are deeply involved not only in what society has become, but in what we in turn have become. Real solutions must involve ways to transform ourselves, otherwise we bring the seeds of war in our own pockets into the peace meetings we attend. Only better people can make a better world. The history of social and political revolutions, plus my experience of alternative communities in the sixties lead me to this understanding. The unconscious hubris of believing that we (as we are) are the people we have been waiting for has proved an infallible recipe for failure.
Those unwilling to do the work to transform themselves into true instruments of fundamental change, will continue to imagine they are creating a new world, when they are only repainting the walls of their unseen internal prisons. Shortcuts to a new world do not exist. Nevertheless, part of our creative work is to discover and implement methods to accomplish things as quickly as is possible. Time is now truly short.
October 3, 2010 at 6:10 am
Thanks Mike,
that was dead useful! Obviously borne of a lifetime’s doing and reflecting and re-doing!
Best wishes
October 3, 2010 at 7:37 am
Thanks Dwight. I think sometimes important discussions like these on Leaving Babylon die out due to lack of responsiveness. People put their heart into lengthy comments, and don’t hear anything back. They may conclude that nobody gives a shit, or worse, that their ideas must stink. Lets keep talking to each other, it’s an important conversation…..
October 3, 2010 at 12:31 pm
We need more people for the discussions to be more full-bodied, Mike. If you know folks who are interested in these (abstruse) subjects, by all means, invite them.
“Is it any wonder that Jensen craves active measures to overthrow these traitors to mankind?”
That’s the gist of it: attempting to dominate the dominators will only bring about another version of domination. Neat puzzle, no? 🙂
(Oh and keep in mind, generally it’s true across the board that when people are quiet, they more or less agree. It’s when they disagree that they are motivated to raise their voice.)
October 3, 2010 at 1:35 pm
“That’s the gist of it: attempting to dominate the dominators will only bring about another version of domination. Neat puzzle, no?”
or,
“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
(In my defence, I had to google this – I am a normal human being, and have only seen Star Wars about 8 times)
October 3, 2010 at 2:01 pm
So, maybe strike at something more subtle than the gross body. Or somewhere unexpected. David knew better than to put on the armor. Choose another dimension, another way. Ferret out the deeper vulnerabilities of the Adversary. This is the Time. We must not lose this one.
October 3, 2010 at 2:05 pm
If we lose this one, this planet as a home for higher evolution is cooked. This could be our Final Exam.
October 3, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Well, I don’t know about Jedi Knights and their next world. All I know is that we’ve been losing to the dominators for 6,000 years. Could it be because we keep doing over and over what does not work?
Mike, David outdominated the dominator Goliath. Then what happened? He became a dominator-thug himself. Same old same old, nah?
October 3, 2010 at 8:14 pm
It seems to me that there are at least two tracks here. The whole show will not be as simple as hitting some dude between the eyes with a rock. That is just metaphor.
First, we need to put an end to the oligarchs, their goons, their propaganda, etc. There are gross and subtle ways this could happen, and everything in between. For me everything is on the proverbial table; not all of it may be used or if used prove effective. Creative thinking is important here, and conscious experimentation.
Second, (these are concurrent, not sequential) We need to change ourselves through creative processes in small groups, and then help others change through the same processes found to be effective. Sound like a big deal? It has to be if it is to work. Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary responses. We are looking for something way outside the usual categories, but not something imaginary and ineffective. Read the Gladwell article in the recent New Yorker about the four young men who ignited the lunch room sit-ins that played a crucial role in desegregation. Four young guys! Talk about the power of a small group! And they met together regularly for six months to hatch their plan and implement it.
The other two articles on Gladwell’s site, Beating Goliath (leaver girl, forget the biblical details, this is about mining for principles and tactics, strategies to use in entirely different contexts) and In The Air, about how to develop creative ideas are rich with suggestive energies for the task we are envisioning.
I’ll just throw in the story of the solo guy who almost killed Hitler with a beer hall bomb. Please don’t tell me that would not have changed the whole direction of Civilization. I know that. It is just to illustrate the taming power of the small. Do I have to drag in the Ewoks or the Vietnamese with there tunnels and pitfalls with sharpened bamboos defeating a “Superpower” with all the high tech weaponry megabucks can buy? It is just to make the point that small things can make big impacts if they are used intelligently.
The constructive changes needed in the revolutionaries themselves are another matter, as is the re-education of significant numbers of the general population. As you rightly point out, leavergirl, this is the key missing element in previous movements. Not easy, but possible.
The two above thrusts will not be working alone to achieve the needed impacts, but will be amplified and furthered by all the other efforts that are being waged even now to sap the power and ultimately dethrone the oligarchs who are a root cause of our troubles — the ultimate abusers of power.
October 4, 2010 at 7:13 am
leaver girl — We need women on this blog! Where are these sensitive, perceptive, creative ladies? How do we scare them up? Don’t they realize their input is desperately needed? I’m thinking of the research on group dynamics that Steve dug up (over on the Orion Jensen blog). I have one married catholic priest who is a long time south of the border activist, and a member of a small intentional community, who is following the comments on the Orion blog. He hasn’t thrown any logs on the fire yet, but I will try to instigate him to do so. Are you reading this John? Come on in, the water’s fine… Come to think, I’ll have to alert him to this blog. He is definitely headed way out of Babylon….
October 4, 2010 at 9:18 am
I beg your pardon, Mike, I am not being clear about dominators. Will have to rethink.
More people here would be lovely. Thank you for letting people know (blog readers, Mike’s last post was intended for Orion’s discussion).
October 4, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Riane Eisler has spent her productive life examining the dominator/cooperator dynamics, and coming up with ways to a cooperative society. The Chalice and the Blade was her first book, examining the existence of partnership societies in the ancient world.
http://www.partnershipway.org/
October 4, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I don’t think I have posted this here (so many essays, so many threads!) but here goes. This piece brings up an important issue for all bloggers — are we really getting anything done? It’s also a powerful argument for face to face small groups: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Let us know what you think?
October 5, 2010 at 7:51 am
leaver girl — Does this Hedges article meet your standards for stating the futility of traditional political action? Of course I realize that he is skating the edge of a performative contradiction: he is speaking out against speaking out. But as the Indian Seers say — sometimes you use a thorn to pluck out a thorn.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/march_to_nowhere_20101005/
October 8, 2010 at 3:03 pm
As far as I can tell, he is speaking against the BS Dems choose to spew.
October 9, 2010 at 10:01 am
I agree,leavergirl, we need more women, but how do we attract them? Its like a microcosm of the larger question: how do we get more people talking, sharing, learning about the ongoing collapse of our culture? We need a massive culture wide re-education project. Women did it in the sixties. Small groups were a key to that sea change in thinking about gender roles and how to change them.
The problems women were living with then were like the proverbial elephant in the living room; they were pervasive, but nobody was talking about them. The collapse of our world is evident all around us, but who is talking about it in a concentrated face to face context that is designed to lead to actions toward positive changes?
Those consciousness raising groups were exciting, energizing, and fun to take part in. Is it too much to ask that we come up with a format that attracts people and also holds their interest. An important feature of such groups is to design them so everyone who comes feels part of the process and is invited to share freely in it. The “talking stick” of Native American usage can facilitate that.
Rotating roles in the group at every meeting is another means to include everyone equally in the process.
If these issues we are facing mean something to you, start a group to talk about them. How else are we going to generate the energy and wisdom we need to change our world for the better? Real changes don’t happen through occasional gestures and wishes. Some minimal form of organization is needed. Small groups can avoid the gridlock and boredom that larger groups often founder over. I am waiting to hear from the first person to try this. I would try to help any way I can. I have been in small groups with varying objectives for fifty years now. I am currently regularly attending four such groups on a weekly basis. I like it. It has become an important part of my life. You might like it too. Try it….
October 9, 2010 at 11:50 am
Hi Mike,
as ever, in awe of your energy and clear-sightedness. And your staying power – you’ve been doing this stuff since before I was born, and I ain’t young anymore.
Couple of things on consciousness raising groups.
One, Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman should be read aloud in its entirety at the beginning of every meeting (think Pledge of Allegiance). Anyone who dissents should be red-buttoned (!).
Second, I think it’s a tricky analogy, because the patriarchy and sexism that were just below the surface were a) pretty easily spotted (That’s NOT to diminish the work and sacrifice of the Tory Haydens, Shulamith Firestones, Brownmiller etc etc) and b) it was very evident that women -especially middle class women – would benefit immediately from a change in society, much of which was relatively straightforward to identify, if not to achieve (again, nothing here is meant to diminish the hard work and danger faced by ‘women’s liberationists’.)
I don’t think that pertains with our dilemmas around peak oil and climate change. People don’t feel the problem viscerally and have readily identifiable examples from their own life (or am I wrong?) and ALSO, it’s hard to for people to see how they will benefit from the short-term changes that are needed (higher gas prices, higher energy prices etc). Feminism was an expansion of human rights and potentialities (I like bell hooks’ definition – “Feminism is a movement to end sexism”. And – crucially could easily be accommodated by those running the show without interrupting their profit-seeking. I don’t think that’s true for our dilemma now.
Now, this is NOT to say you aren’t right – consciousness raising groups would be immensely helpful, and if we’d been doing it for the last 22 years, since 1988 when we were warned, then we certainly would not be in the depth of shit we are now in.
Interested in your thoughts….
October 9, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Well, I been sitting on top of that Hedges screed (link below, March to Nowhere) for a week now, half-brain dead, and so I am gonna say a few things to get it out of my system. Mike, he does seem to grasp, at least partially the futility of politics as usual.
What struck me as strange was his vituperation against tea partiers and assorted riff-raff. Can one foment hatemongering against hatemongers and remain in good faith?
But what really caught my attention is a certain “hall of crooked mirrors” effect. Hedges is at pains to target “anti-democratic movements.”
So… lessee. On one hand we have a phony “protest rally” organized by the Dems, top-down, and offering nothing but propaganda and platitudes. Speakers are well worn, craven party hacks with nothing to say. Being close to the trough, last thing they want to do is bite the hand that feeds them and address, as Hedges wishes, “societal collapse, the corporate coup d’etat, or point to the rotting hull of the Democratic party” and other urgent matters.
On the other hand, we have a broad array of the tea partiers. They rose abruptly and spontaneously from the grassroots in response to the looting of America via the bailouts and ongoing securities fraud. These groups are everywhere it seems, each quite different from others, but mincing no words about the Second Great Depression, the financial depredations or the gutting of the Constitution, organizing study groups, and promising to pull the Republican Party up by the roots if it does not reform itself within the next two years. The local groups jealously maintain their independence, staying in touch through several loosely organized coordinating groups. There is no boss, there is no hierarchy. Radical decentralization and open source politics are their bywords. Neither are they waiting for some magical restoration of “the political process mechanisms by which ordinary citizens can be heard” that Hedges pines for. They are using the new media, and they know they are being heard.
So…. who the heck are the anti-democrats here?!
Couple of informative links on the tea partiers can be found at
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/ — just scroll down a bit.
October 9, 2010 at 3:26 pm
leavergirl — Does anger always equate to hate? I don’t see any hate in Hedges’ essay.
Chris is afraid of the possibility of an open fascism in America. Admittedly we are up to our armpits in it already, but it could get a lot worse. It is chilling to learn of the millions our corporate overlords are pumping into this show. The racism that is being manifested by these folks is not a promising development either. That’s always a key element in fascism.
Joe Bageant says the tea party is just a put on show to make the disenfranchised class think they have a voice. I sure don’t put any hope on this bunch adding anything but another useless distraction from a serious concern with our real problem: corporate power. Interesting how the manipulators of this spluttering energy have managed to focus it on the government instead of the real rulers…
October 9, 2010 at 4:13 pm
He calls them repugnant (without explaining) and brings up proto-fascists. Unless you make an argument, and pretty carefully, aren’t you hatemongering? Heck, he even drags in Satan, for crying out loud.
I don’t know that much about the partiers, but I do understand that the so called progressives hate their guts and will do anything to discredit them. Because there are showing signs of life, and there is nothing but rot in their camp. There have been two stories going by of Dem candidates masquerading as tea party. Racism? Why is it that when the TT movement, basically a lily-white bunch who periodically genuflect in the direction of inclusivity, when they speak of relocalization, that’s all fine and dandy, but when tea partiers do the same thing, it’s just a code word for racism? I don’t buy it. Neither do I buy the astroturfing charge. Astroturf has been bought up in its entirety by the two official parties. I think it would behoove us to find out for ourselves…
As I understand it, they are essentially reformers, but they also understand as we doomers do, that changing the culture toward growing awareness and self-reliance is the path ahead.
The Greens used to say. we are neither Right nor Left, but ahead. Then they got coopted. What would happen if we flat out refused to goose-step to the Left-Right labels? What if we begin to think of each other as We the People who are in this mess together? At the very least we’d confuse the crap out of the bastards… 😉
P.S. Joe Bageant is wrong on this one. Betting 10 bucks against a nice red potato that he is going with the party line.
October 9, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for the feedback, leaver girl. Glad to see you have strong political opinions. Maybe if we are lucky we can get Sarah Palin for president! 🙂
October 9, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Heh.
But consider this. If you think of bringing a person around…. which distance is longer: pissed off, aware, though misled, partiers, or clueless sheeple out on shopping sprees or laid out in front of reality TV?
October 9, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Touche’ But you will have to prise them away from Sarah to get them. And just being pissed off only gets you so far. Inchoate rage is hard to bottle, but easy to misdirect.
October 9, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Well, in this area they are publishing a paper and organizing constitutional study groups. And I believe are behind 3 of the propositions on the ballot. Does not sound like mere inchoate rage at all.
October 9, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Where is the leavergirl who maintained that the political process was not an answer to anything? Born again tea partier? Tell me it ain’t so…. Of all the broken institutions of our society, the political process is the most corrupt, although it is hard to choose worst amongst ’em. And these folks are going to fix it?? Surely you jest.
What has become of our hard line political skeptic?
October 10, 2010 at 9:39 am
Mike, sometimes I think you cultivate the fine art of missing the point. I merely contrasted the partiers with the moribund progressives, and asked, legitimately I think…. who are the real anti-democrats? The top-down elitist bullshiteers, or the localized would-be rebels organized acephalously, non-hierarchically?
I don’t have any faith in the political process, and no, I don’t think tea partiers will fix it. But I am not going the swallow the lies the political machines puts out about them either.
Why does it irk you? Would you rather I slam everyone I don’t like with the label proto-fascist, and get to feel smug, like Hedges?
October 10, 2010 at 10:16 am
As to when the shit will hit the fan, it’s a little like Einstein’s relativity; where you are standing relative to the fan will determine when a major blast comes your way. For many, that time is now, this very moment. Thousands of lives are being crushed by the dysfunctions of civilization every minute. Survivalists seek a safer place to (temporarily) avoid the juggernaut.
How rapidly the apocalypse will unfold, and engulf everything, is a matter of conjecture. Everything from 2012 to the slow motion collapse of J.M. Greer (the Archdruid Report) is on the table. No one knows for sure, and that adds to the anxiety and lack of trust in a secure future. Just as the ongoing financial debacle makes money an insecure resource, the unknown severity of the forecasted collapse makes even survivalist planning uncertain and problematic.
I often tell myself: others have been through this and worse throughout our long history; this is part of the essential reality of the development of (somewhat) more intelligent life on this planet. That I have been (so far) spared the very worst consequences of our really bad historic karma is an undeserved blessing for which I am grateful.
The question arises, how to live in these times? Saying this, I recall the inspiring words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run With the Wolves) in her Letter to a Young Activist (available on the web). My own answer is, have courage, do what you can to help others, develop an inner life of peace, love, and awareness of a Higher Power (however you may conceive That) and seize the day!
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, it is still a beautiful world.
Strive to be happy. (Disiderata)
October 10, 2010 at 10:18 am
leaver girl — Moi, irked? Pas du tout! 🙂 But seriously, our style in communication is more important than we usually are aware of. How often have I seen someone accused of being angry, when they have simply disagreed with someone? Another trope in discussions is passion being labeled as inappropriate, as in, “why are you shouting?”, when someone has elevated their voice slightly as an expression of their real concern or whatever. Maybe we should wait until someone has clearly signaled anger, and then ask them if they are angry? After all, anger is not always something to admonish as “negative.” Not that you are doing that, I just slopped over a bit in my thinking on expression of feelings in a discussion context. How many folks drop out of groups or discussions because of feelings that are stirred up in them? If we truly are to learn to get along with, or even love one another, isn’t it important to look at the role of emotions in our relationships? Isn’t tolerance of emotions and important area of tolerance? Leavergirl, please don’t think I am criticizing you. I am as guilty as anyone in this whole area of emotions. Thanks for providing a forum where I can think out loud about it. There are two groups I am involved in where this issue is currently “hot” and I really needed to think more clearly about it.
October 10, 2010 at 10:56 am
Mike, I am confused. Nothing you say seems as a response to my last comment (well, except the Frenchie part! 😉
What intolerance of emotions are you referring to?
October 10, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Leaver girl — You wrote that I was irked. The rest of my comment is a meditation on false attributions of emotion. No biggie, no blame.
October 10, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Hoisted by my own petard. Shoulda asked if you were irked. I was actually far more interested if you are willing to consider the partiers as our neighbors, potential allies, and in any case, part of We the People who are trying to rouse themselves after a long slumber, and look beyond the caricature the media are painting of them.
October 10, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Actually I admire these folks for at least standing up and screaming. You are right on about the midclass sheeple being sound asleep. And who knows where people who sniff new possibilities beyond the conventional may spring up, like overnight mushrooms the fairies plant. All are welcome to our house of questions and maybes…..
November 17, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I see this thread has drifted far from it’s original theme which is Disrupters.
I would like to add one more catagory to disrupter type personalities.
That would be the Slacker.
I’m not talking about being lazy, you can negotiate with people that are lazy or are going through a lazy period in their life. Heck, I have even gone through lazy periods myself. Well actually I have gone through them almost every working day of my life. They would start upon waking and fade away as I got into the rhythm of the work.
What I’m talking about is SLACKERS. People that won’t work period. There are ordinary slackers and there are advanced slackers.
Ordinary slackers on can have jobs, but their real job is making sure that they don’t work. One that I was around was tied in with important person in the union and a couple were bosses sons. It was easier to cover for them than to deal with them. Besides that you didn’t want to be around them anyway.
The advanced slackers are the real pains in the ass. They are very similar to trolls. They always look busy, but actually they are just dumping their workload on others. My brother the bureaucrat says that he can spot all the advanced slackers in a large office in a half an hour.
I realize that this thread is probably dead, but I had real need to express myself. I feel better now.
Cheers
November 17, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Thank you, thank you, Glenn! I actually thought of it… then I assumed perhaps too blithely that they would be subsumed under Predators. But since I wrote the stuff with the eye toward helping communities recognize problem people, and these uber-slackers can unravel a community…
Here’s a quote from a wonderful book Utopia by Tod and Wheeler, speaking of the Tolstoyan communities in England at the turn of the century: “… a group went to Whiteways, near Stroud in Gloucestershire. For three years they tried to practice complete communism and to farm the land together, but they found that the more committed and energetic members were doing the work of everyone else. Moreover, the members who left tended to do so with the best clothes and any remaining money.”
Glad you took the time. I have run into two advanced slackers myself. I really could not believe anyone would be so brazen, but they were. One got away with it… the other got fired eventually… but only because he could not bring himself to work during his trial period! 🙂
November 18, 2010 at 8:11 am
Thanks Glenn,
spot on – and I like the difference between lazy (occasionally) and basic and advanced slackers. In the absence of any transparent mechanisms of accountability, and a willingness on the part of the busy people to ‘take the conflict’ (and thereby risk being accused of setting up a hierarchy, being ‘fascist’ etc), then slackers can destroy a group’s work ethic, make it impossible to get anything DONE.
November 18, 2010 at 11:41 am
Hey, and let’s not forget busy people acting as enablers… carrying on when they should hand the stuff back… there was a great article in the last Communities mag about some guy carrying it all for his cohousing group, and he got a lot of abuse for it while he kept saying, well, please take over… but when they dragged their feet, he was always there to pick up the pieces… so he got both the work, and the dissing for doing the work. A lose/lose deal.
March 7, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Late read; but a great read. Thanks, Vera. sandy