Barbelith Underground > Head Shop > Online communities, hegemony, revolution! Will we change the world?

Re: internets as distraction: my view is that as the formats echo desires there are obviously going to be uses that aren't of interest to me. But that same great thing means I get to shape my own internets, so I get a supportive networking tool which educates me as fast as I can learn. I don't find much denial of reality because I prefer and select for attention brought to matters of genuine perplexity. I find a whole host of positive activist people shaping the future and reaching into it and I draw support from knowing the rest of you exist.

Do you think there is a future possibility for a true web-based democratic voting system? I envisage some kind of auto-referendum for any major issues and polls, whose opinion must be ‘implemented’, for the lesser ones. might discussion groups develop into horizontal decision forges?

I haven't thought much about internet direct voting system. My attention's been more on the decision forge aspect. The way I see democracy it's about shared decision making in the widest sense and sharing education. When there's a culture of critical thinking and an interest in what's going on and how to decide it, that's the major part of democracy done. (Did someone already link to some Democracy threads in HeadShop? Here's a recent one.)

As I see it discussion boards reflect the frames and language of the wider subset of people, inevitably: we all learn to speak and write somewhere and our vocabularies are shaped by our contexts. Because learning language is continuous the exchange here means I'm exposed to other ways of thinking and I like the flavour of critical thinking here: it's helping me educate myself. Barbelith discussions are open to anyone to read and with a little more difficulty to join. I'm interested in this board as a example of how discussion about important stuff could go. I think really robust arguments are infectious and I hope that robust analyses synthesized here and elsewhere might leak out into all our conversations in the rest of the world and help bump popular culture along.

I have some similar conversations in face to face spaces, each discussion helps me think in different ways and develop ideas. When I'm tired I sometimes relay what I have heard without subjecting it to any thought but I think even that can turn out useful, though it's a lazy habit I'm trying to clear up.

Writing's a great spur for me to reflect about what I am going to say so that's an advantage to me of this format over verbal conversations as well as the archiving thing I wrote about before. "To extend the metaphor further - because the pub is public, people are constantly coming in who don't understand how to enact revolutionary anti-oppressive behaviour in their words, so there's a burden of education which I guess it is hoped will decline with time, it being possible to refer people to past threads where that labour invested in education has been banked. That's very promising for a cultural revolutionary space, because it makes obvious the advantage of the archived text medium. In face-to-face groups where the conversation is verbal, those conversations have to be actually enacted again, unless new joiners are willing to take a reading list away for self-education before they join the conversation. Here on Barbelith, at least some people do seem willing to read past threads."

My impression is that in the UK already there are plenty of ways to affect decision making and that the lack is at the level of desire and confidence and energy to participate. Loads of empty consultations: but maybe the only problem with that is whether I feel well equipped to object effectively when my contribution is ignored? Maybe we can go from empty "consultations" apparently only for appearances' sake towards a conversation about what makes consultations effective and meaningful and hence towards more useful consultation?

I think there's a contempt for ordinary people in what I know of Parliamentary political and more widely in graduate culture. Maybe that has to be dismantled before democracy can take the next step forward. I think internalised contempt gets in the way of people feeling they have responsibility or ability to shape the future. I want everyone to feel able to take ownership of our future, and feel responsibility towards and power from their connection with the future inhabitants of this planet.

Maybe that impression of lack of confidence to participate's just my own (having experienced a block even at the level of discussion of politics from low confidence about the use of putting any effort in, feeling numbed and apathetic). It's been a struggle to believe that I'm "clever enough" even to talk about politics. I'm interested in how I can behave to encourage myself and my friends and acquaintances to beleive that our voices are worth hearing. I want everyone to know that their opinion matters and that everyone else's opinion matters to a degree, and to be on a path of developing our skills at thinking and communicating and cooperating. I think the current world crisis - climate change and the transition to sustainable human societies - needs the creativity of every one of us.

I think we all have more awareness of the state of the world than we usually bring to consciousness. I think we are all deeply connected into the world and one of the necessary skills for democractic change is the emotional skill of being able to tolerate the painful awareness of what's wrong and allow that pain to pull us through to acting. I think we are rather encouraged to numb ourselves away from what's wrong unless we've trained ourselves to wake up and honour the pain we feel and allow it to lead us to action for a better world. I think the current crisis is in this way as much spiritual as it is political.

How do you guys feel about the creative writing aspect of frequenting Barbileth? Do you consider posting here a creative act, or just a functional one?

Yes, a creative act. I'm very much aware that my words are going out into the world after I type them. I found Barbelith because of this board appearing as a Google result when I was reading up something or other (very common - see the Naming thread in P&H.) So I know that whatever I type it's potentially in the shop window. It means I have some caution about what I post, but also that my writing has a tiny chance of contributing to global change.

Do you feel like you feed from one another’s responses? Do you feel a fondness toward other users, recognising them by the way they shape their words – their writing style?

Yes. See Barbecrush, it's common to be smitten with other posters. I'm delighted when people show evidence of having thought about what they are writing and about the words they choose. (A sure way to make me smile is to use a word I have to look up on oed.com, which has to be one of my all-time favourite sites. I love this vast and various english.)

Is there a sense of competitiveness for accurate grammar?

No, my only motivation for accurate grammar is to learn to be more precise. Truth-telling is a virtue, that is, it's a skill to be developed - writing well is part of it. I hope I never comment on the grammar of others unless to clarify in case of doubt, and I'm glad my own spelling and grammatical errors here have been treated with kindly overlooking.

Do you feel that the structure or artistic content of your posts vary depending on who you’re in conversation with?

Yes, I have the same model for this as for conversations. Maybe it's my lack of consciousness which makes it so, but I think what I say in a conversation is joint property. What I say is shaped by the previous conversations I've had with those people, a product of my choice of words and the sets of references I can take for granted: it's not just something created in me and sent out, the speech that happens is created as a result of the space between speaker and listeners. So the same here: this conversation which is one that interests me but it's happening here because you're making the opportunity, Chris. I'm willing to put the time in to write about stuff I think is important because it might affect the way other people think, it might be a useful frame for them too, or I might discover something that could be improved about the way I'm thinking.