Mass Democracy Has Failed [reposted from Oct 26th, 2008]

..this is a comment I made in a friends LJ..

"I have come to the conclusion that The Great Experiment of Mass Democracy has failed. It has taken me a few decades to be willing to admit such an outcome, but it has been driven home to me over the past half dozen years.

You've known me long enough to be fully aware that Politics to me is like Sports for most American males. I eat, breathe, and sleep the stuff, have done so since I was a kid, and these days I can do that 24/7/365.

But even with that capacity and inclination, modern society and civilization and all of its myriad mechanisms is still too much for even someone like me to keep track of in an effective fashion. The 'average citizen' is then far more lost in, and overwhelmed by, these things, even those who share my inclinations, and there ain't all that many of those.

Joe Bageant's Anonymous Political Consultant said here; “The mastery of the political right over the past thirty years has been primarily to better understand the irrational factors in politics. Conservatives have always understood that when it comes to politics, people rarely act in their rational self-interest but instead on emotion, fears and the perception of their interests.”

Most people do not want to wake up, especially here in The Republic. Too fucking scary. And a fair number of those are in fact constitutionally incapable of waking at all.

Another type of social order is needed. What that new construct might be is now the responsibility of the Aware Individual." ...I ended there, but kept thinking about this...

Participatory democracy does not seem to work when the citizen base gets beyond five or ten thousand. At that point 'political mechanisms' seem to grow almost organically and began to remove the process from the reach of 'the average citizen'. The increase in social complexity creates the Political Specialist. Add Economic and Technological Systems, and 'the average citizen' is finished ...except as a Cipher for Those Who Rule.

However, any discussion of 'qualifying' the Franchise brings howls of rage and, given past performance, rightly so.

But should not the electorate of such a powerful nation as this be required to meet some Standard beyond accident of birth? Should not 'the average citizen' be required to pass something like The Naturalization Test our new citizens must take before being entrusted with a Vote?

It's really not that hard a test...if you have a fucking brain in your head.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath in that matter. But I am pursuing a Course of Action.

In the long term, my own personal belief on where we need to go is to use a version of Heinlein's Federal Service Model as a transition to a society that is some combination of the two cultures Peter Hamilton calls Edenism and Adamism. I suspect we'll get a bit closer to the latter.

The above set of paths are templates I propose for the path of The Temple in this matter. Of course, I know things will shift and change.

One of the most interesting things I've read in the last few years came from William Gibson, Godfather of Cyberpunk. He was amazed that in his very prophetic novel Neuromancer, he had completely overlooked the potential impact of cellphones, totally dropped the ball on the subject.

I take his revelation to heart, both as a writer and as Her Prophet.

For those that dismiss this as mere 'sci-fi thinking', please note you happen to be reading this on The Internet and probably own one of those pesky cellphones, too. Science Fiction is Right Now.

Note on July 30th, 2011: The events of the last three years have utterly confirmed the conclusions I reached above.

Random

~Goddess Fuck, I'm in a foul humor. This LJ bullshit isn't helping, but it's not the cause. There are 'personal matters' that I won't air publicly because they're, well... personal.

But they manifested in Family Rejection Dreams, which always leave me drained, depressed and angry. These were the worst of that variety, where they redesign the Ice Palace – the brownstone in which I grew up – in such a way as to literally physically exclude me from living there.

I wasn't really ready to get up, but that shit made it the better option. Now that I've caffeinated, supplemented, medicated, eaten and ranted, I'll take a nap to 'reset'. *sigh*

I sure the fuck hope that works. I've become far too used to being comfortable in my own skin to sit with this fucking feeling. /ack

Her Prophet Speaks

"As a highly social Predator Species, we are biologically hard wired for Dominance, Submission and Hierarchy. Denial of that state of being is one of the worst and most hypocritical forms of Bourgeois Delusionalism, which is ever about making things Safe and Nice.

Of course, being Humans, we make that paradigm very complex and sophisticated and far more subtle than it is in untrammeled Nature. We hide it in Ritual and Lies so that it becomes 'palatable' to the Masses. But it is there if one looks close and honestly enough at day to day human interaction.

Most urban dwellers never look each other in the eye; such is an implicit challenge. I personally have 'taken control' of many interactions via this simple behavior and without having to establish overt Dominance. Just making steady eye contact often tells the other that I am Strong and Confident, aka Steady and Trustworthy. I have found this to be true even when my Social Status was 'less' than the person I was interacting with. I quite successfully navigated my way through two years of homelessness doing so.

And pointing out that I am a large white male who is attractive, intelligent and articulate merely underscores the power of the paradigm, though many of the techniques I used – such as NLP – are not limited to individuals of that class. And while I did this largely 'on my own', I never did it as a pure Individual. Early on I became a member of a well respected homeless support organization, always cultivated persons of importance within The System and consistently acknowledged that I knew I was operating within said System, covertly with The Dull and overtly with The Aware. I was always part of a Group.

As I said, human Hierarchy is complex, subtle and sophisticated. But have no doubt that it defines us.

I have noted that some of loudest denials of this paradigm come from tenured academics – individuals of Authority and Power in a clearly defined Hierarchy – which I'd say sums up our basic dilemma rather neatly.

And both ends of the cultural and political spectrum are guilty of this deception, though the Left is rather more self deluded in this regard. The Right tends to simply lie about it, which in turn yields the field, at worst, to Fascist Domination and, at best, making the social order prisoner of Modern Corporate Marketing Culture aka The Hologram, which is all about Safe and Nice.

This attitude has been enshrined in The Cult of The Individual, which in turn renders those who internalize said construct ultimately powerless against any Group which seeks Control. The Hive will always defeat The Individual."

Quote of The Day

"Just for the sake of argument, there is gone, and there is dead, and there is dead and gone, but there is also dead and not gone: I spent all day with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who’s been dead for more than seventy years, but is less “gone,” in terms of affect, than me or almost anybody likely to be reading this paragraph.

That’s one reason for writing, or having children, or scrawling your name on something that will outlast you, like a wet new sidewalk or the Declaration of Independence.

Similarly, there are 6.93 billion people on this planet who are less real to me than old Scott. They’re not “gone,” but they’re not “here.”" ~Joe Haldeman

I commented: "And after posting this as a Quote of The Day on three different platforms, it occurred to me that some will get their knickers in a twist over this fairly straight forward observation and accuse you of sixteen various types of evil 'isms'. After all, We Are The World and all that conscience salving marketing noise."

Nebs Sez

"This is a very Middle Class world view, that things are naturally Stable and Balanced, that humans are not inherently violent, but need to be 'violentized', a nonsensical Academic phrase if there ever was one. That process is simply one of breaking down the social conditioning to 'behave and know your place' in the greater social order.

But Nature is not Stable and Balanced; it is Dynamic and Violent. The Rich and The Poor understand this. That is how The Rich stay on top and The Poor survive from day to day. And the denial of that reality is at the core of why The Middle Class are now being destroyed.

One can see how that social conditioning – a product of our innate need for Hierarchy by the way – manifests in Stanley Milgram's work. And how we can so easily slip into violence in Phillip Zimbardo's work.

Again, I'm not saying that Females are 'gentle and sweet'. Only that they are generally and collectively less violent than Males and for different reasons. I have pointed out that paradigm using serial killers. Males outnumber their Female counterparts by a factor of ten to one. Males kill out of a need to sexually dominate, a distortion of their primal drive. Females kill for almost exclusively financial reasons, again a distortion of their primal drive.

Even Aileen Wornos, the most notorious Female serial killer, followed that pattern. Her first kill was out of survival and was almost certainly a serial killer himself, a classic 'whore hunter'. But while driven by her anger, the rest of her kills were basically about acquiring material goods to further a romantic relationship.

That we as a species are naturally Violent and Hierarchical is of course an anathema to 'modern liberal sensibilities', which are predominantly Middle Class. That thinking is the main reason the Radical Right has come to dominate politics in this era. They believe it, though their tendency is to take that to its self destructive extreme, which will be their undoing.

But by then The Middle Class will be largely extinct, though they hopefully will have served their purpose as a transitional class.

What I proclaim is that our choice as a species is either between the triumph of an essentially fascist Global Corporate Combine – which is pure Patriarchy – a path to near extinction as a species at best or total extinction at worst. Or the New Matriarchy as proposed by my Spirit Guide. That there are other paths is certainly possible, but none of them seem at all likely, especially as they all seem informed by nonsense such as the above conceit that we humans can ever be 'nice'." ..a comment on Layo's post

Life in The Desert - Fourth of July Edition

~The day started off pretty much the same as the preceding days; cool in the early morning and hotter and hotter toward afternoon, reaching 105ish by 4pm. But around that time I could start hearing some 'rumbling'. I was watching Breaking Bad Season Two and ignoring the little pool party next door, so I didn't pay it no never mind.

But a summer shower started at around ten after four, which did get my attention. And it came down hard, even causing a brief flicker in the electricity. As I expected, it started to fade after fifteen minutes or so. That is their usual cycle.

Not this one however. After fading to light rain for a few, the sky then opened up and the metaphor is apt; the rain and wind turned monsoonal, lashing at the earth with a fury, gusts to sixty MPH. And within a minute or two, hail was added to the mix.

That racket woke Le-Le up. Freaked out the cats, too. They all ran in her room. She got up and came out onto the porch to watch it with me. The power went out again this time and stayed out.

The wind was such that the porch was largely dry. So we tucked ourselves into the corner by the door and just watched its fury, which continued unabated for a good half an hour. The sky was solid gray, lit up by lighting and shaken by thunder. It was a hell of a show. Our little street was flooded nearly edge to edge, with all manner of debris rushing by.

By five it slacked off, but a fairly good rain kept going for another half hour. And the power remained out until nearly seven. As it was 'close' in the house, we just sat out on the porch until then.

The whole thing kinda tuckered me out, so once we had fans and AC again, I was back in the rack. Got up at 11ish because I was hungry and needed to supplement and medicate. Le-Le said she was pretty tired too, which she thought strange as thunder storms usually invigorate her.

But this one was so furious and violent I think it drained us instead. She went to bed around one and I followed soon after. I was up at 9ish, but she's still sleeping.

We stayed sealed up all night with the AC on. As it cycled intermittently, I kept the fans going in my window. It never fully cooled off and, as you might expect, was very humid. We'll see what today brings as more thunderstorms are predicted.

And that is just about that...

Random

~I've come to the conclusion that my depression [aka 'helpless anger'] is getting worse. And that there is no real 'clinical solution' for this as it is not coming from my Inner State. Truth is, shit is really IS pretty fucking depressing, socially, politically, economically and so on. And no amount of psych-drugs are going to change that. Heroin might, but I'm not going there either.

I know that some might accuse me of Big Picture Alcoholism, but I'm not using this as an excuse to 'pick up'. The opposite in fact. I'm sticking firmly to the small dosage of Lexapro [10mg per dium] that I've been on for nearly eight years now. I am eschewing any 'chemical optimism'.

And I'm not giving up. I'll keep working on The Explanation and will keep following my Path. Honestly, that is just about the only thing that gets me out of bed each day. [and yes, having Le-Le and the weasels helps with that too]

This seems like a Passage where my Stubbornness is going to serve me far better than my Faith. And I can be a very stubborn mother fucker....