listen & connect
perhaps what the world needs most right now is a means to listen to 8b voices everyday (missing piece #1: authenticity) .. and use that data to augmenting interconnectedness (missing piece #2: attachment)
listen & connect to undo the listening hierarchy ie: 2 convers as infra
ie: tech as it could be
perhaps we really can have tech w/o judgment
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adding this day (in particular because of phrase ‘listen and convey’ and ‘the normal role of intellectuals, providing a means of communication between struggles’.. and then same day further below phrase ‘“guides” to offer explanations’:
@davidgraeber: e.g., “we knew the administrators running hospitals etc were useless, but now we see them as murderers.” So all the pieces seem to be there for a revolutionary situation, except the normal role of intellectuals, providing a means of communication between struggles, is stymied 11/
perhaps ‘normal role of intellectuals’ providing a means of communication is part of what’s been keeping us from any real revolution.. that listening hierarchy ness
d’s response to this tweet:
@davidgraeber: well I was trying to be generous and say “provide means of communication” to imply we could actually *listen & convey, rather come up with the “correct strategic analysis” and all that sort of disastrous stuff
perhaps we try.. *listen and connect..
and perhaps to do that w/o judgment/commentary/bias/whatever/conveyance.. we could repurpose tech/algos.. so that they do what they do best.. (rather than trying to mech them human like).. input/output.. ie: input: self-talk as data; output: augmenting interconnectedness.. use data to connect locals using their daily curiosities as labels/input to make matches
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above came from this tweet
e.g., “we knew the administrators running hospitals etc were useless, but now we see them as murderers.” So all the pieces seem to be there for a revolutionary situation, except the normal role of intellectuals, providing a means of communication between struggles, is stymied 11/
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1257276705716174850
rest of thread:
@davidgraeber: I think if I start writing something it will focus on what was shaping up before the pandemic, & how it might influence what will happen after. I mean, aside from obvious stuff like the breakneck destruction of the planet 1/
@davidgraeber: first of all, all economists agreed that some sort of economic blow-out was coming, based on unsupportable levels of personal debt & the normal workings of the business cycle. A crash was due & Central Banks were pumping money furiously to slow or soften it 2/
@davidgraeber: 2nd of all, there was an unprecedented wave of popular unrest over late 2019-e2020, much unreported, everywhere from Haiti to Hong Kong to the Gilets Jaunes to Sudan to… someone listed like 40 uprisings, non-violent or otherwise. This was extraordinary 3/
@davidgraeber: it’s perhaps not entirely shocking as it seems to happen every ten years. 1999-2001 was the height of the Alterglobalization movement, worldwide uprising, 2011 of course saw Arab Spring, Squares, OWS… So we were due. But each time, disturbingly, there’s less articulation 4/
do we need better/more articulation? or better/more/simultaneous listening?
both?.. but which would help more.. ie: graeber model law et al
what we need is a means to listen to all the voices/articulations/idio-jargons.. as they are detoxing
[language as control/enclosure et al.. literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism.. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things]
ie: focus on self-talk as data via tech as it could be..
@davidgraeber: Global Justice Movement had no top-down org but it had Indymedia, People’s Global Action, a host of planet-wide institutions to connect struggles; the 2011 movements at least shared ideas and people moved back and forth between them 5/
@davidgraeber: this time half the people involved didn’t even know about most of the others, or have any way to follow them closely (as the mainstream media largely ignored them). The other really significant movement was the #RevoltoftheCaringClasses (forgive the shameless branding attempt) 6/
@davidgraeber: that is, as productivity of the health, education, caring sectors decline owing to administrative bloat, digitisation encourages #bullshitization, more people are hired in these sectors under worse conditions, compensation, so all the strikes are teachers, nurses, care workers 7/
@davidgraeber: now of course those very people who had been rebelling or on the brink of it are the “first line workers” still on the job as the administrators who are their immediate class antagonists hide at home, & most of their potential allies are in lockdown 8/
@davidgraeber: in the UK, after World Wars, the left is swept into power. Why? Because working class people 1. suddenly have experience in socialist organisation & see it works, 2. since upper class people are automatically made officers, they have direct experience of what idiots they are, 9/
@davidgraeber: and of course 3. they come home trained in the use of weapons so the political class can’t just entirely ignore their demands. This is being treated as analogous to a war mobilisation & there are some similarities, especially #2 applies & I keep hearing that 10/
@davidgraeber: e.g., “we knew the administrators running hospitals etc were useless, but now we see them as murderers.” So all the pieces seem to be there for a revolutionary situation, except the normal role of intellectuals, providing a means of communication between struggles, is stymied 11/
perhaps ‘normal role of intellectuals’ providing a means of communication is part of what’s been keeping us from any real revolution.. that listening hierarchy ness
d’s response to this tweet:
@davidgraeber: well I was trying to be generous and say “provide means of communication” to imply we could actually *listen & convey, rather come up with the “correct strategic analysis” and all that sort of disastrous stuff
perhaps we try.. *listen and connect..
and perhaps to do that w/o judgment/commentary/bias/whatever/conveyance.. we could repurpose tech/algos.. so that they do what they do best.. (rather than trying to mech them human like).. input/output.. ie: input: self-talk as data; output: augmenting interconnectedness.. use data to connect locals using their daily curiosities as labels/input to make matches (simultaneous ness matters.. lags in time are what make us start thinking we need to train others/selves.. tragedy of the non common et al)
[someone else’s comment on d’s last tweet]:
@inside_lemon: The latter is why I don’t trust no intellectuals, besides they exist largely separate from our daily existence. The image of an intellectual in my mind is of some profman, part of the liberal elite, rather than a learned, wise comrade who happens to have more info.
[and d’s response to inside_lemon]:
@davidgraeber: well yes, I think of myself as coming from a family of working class intellectuals, since they had working class jobs but filled the house with books. I guess “intelligensia” is a class term, more, people who are paid for abstract knowledge work of some kind.
thinking.. who wouldn’t do that if they could (if we were all free enough).. ie: fill house w books.. or some access to deep dives to indulge daily curiosities
@davidgraeber: the word “academic” is almost only used as a bad word, implying someone who identifies more with the institutional structures than with the thought itself. To me “intellectual” at least referring to thinking.
@davidgraeber: we need something like indymedia again. All our means of communication are now corporate – twitter included.
[The Independent Media Center (also known as Indymedia or IMC) is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues.]
or maybe we need to (and now have a chance to) revolutionize communication itself.. ie: less reporting/publishing.. more listening to 8b voices.. everyday.. using that data to augment our interconnectedness
d’s response to this tweet:
@davidgraeber: well that was the idea of Indymedia; it was huge during the Global Justice Movement, and then suddenly everyone switched to facebook and twitter etc and I for one was horrified
the switching to fb/twitter.. perhaps attempts to hear more voices as well.. but if we just hear more and not all.. then we get ie: tragedy of the non common ness
@davidgraeber: how can the working classes recompose (to use the Post-Workerist terminology) around caring labour, what is the role of the communicative classes (if we can call them that) if they’re all confined to their houses? 12/
@davidgraeber: I keep getting back to the poll last week that said only 9% of Brits want to go back to “normal” – but for 50 years not only our imaginations but our ability to talk to each other across class lines has been brutally attacked. How to undo this? 13/
undo the listening hierarchy.. ie: 2 convers as infra
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same day(from comments in jordan’s post: ‘In Complicated systems, sense then analyze, then respond. In Complex systems, probe, then sense, then respond. In Chaotic systems, *act* then sense then respond. Covid has all at once blown us from a complicated system struggling with complexity into a chaotic system.’):
Daniel Joseph MezickErnesto Eduardo Dobarganes yes:
“The ratio of what can be known to what is known is almost infinite.” -Ray Dalio
Humans have an innate need to know, especially when we are confused and anxious. In response, other humans self-authorize as “guides” and offer explanations in the form of coherent stories. These coherent tales may or may not be true, and quite frequently they are are not. Example: social reality always fits in one of 5 neat categories.
Knowing the story is almost always a great comfort. Even when that story is highly inaccurate, misleading etc.
Which may help explain what bill gates is now doing in the public square, every chance he gets: coherently interpreting reality for all of the now-fully-liminal initiates:
need a mech to listen & connect in the much needed entropy
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be you. 