Oh man, do I hate capitalism. But I also dislike blanket statements. SO HA.
I like paying taxes (I like roads and schools, don’t you?). I like paying devs. I like it when I have a bit of cash to pay a friend to help me sort through my house or a database. I like indicating my intent with money. I like the simplicity of expressing appreciation of effort and ability that money allows. I also like the ease of transfer of time contributions from my community-building and humanitarian response efforts to, say, the roads I get to ride on.
So here’s the thing – if someone is going to benefit from your efforts in this current system, you better be compensated either via that system or in such a way that is still worth your while. Bartering is awesome. References can also be rad (when needed and you’re just starting out).
“You are trading your life for value. Be sure you get the value.”
at Barcamp Seattle session on Shares in Startups (wish I had caught his name)
I love buying books. I love sending money to musicians. I loved paying for my Burning Man ticket (thanks, Mer, for putting it in a bracket I could afford). I love trading fruit snacks to the coffee roasters for a cup of amazing complicated Stumptown. I love making the introductions that legitimize my gifted laptop.
This past week I learned to sit with my own ineptitude. I went to Burning Man, which the best description I’ve heard to date is “This is where you bring your best ideas of the year to burn them, because they are not good enough.”
I finally came to terms with the fact that we don’t know what we’re doing, where we are going as the human race. That we both need to work on our problems and think about what further problems our solutions will cause. We can both sit with and work on our shit. Think of it like an issue of invasive species introduced to solve a very specific problem which then overruns everything.
I saw both the artists who are so proud of what they’ve built and the people who truly appreciate it, to the people who only attend for the weekend under the false pretense that this is about debauchery with no responsibility. It is about debauchery, but about the decadence you achieve when you have next to nothing. We are digital gypsies, unifying around ideals and identities in post geographies of conferences and camps. Splitting up and reuniting around other ideals in other times and places. We flaunt the things we DO have (joy, knowledge, and yes at times even monies) and laugh at what others rely on (certification, consumerism).
The camp I went with greatly influenced my view of Burning Man, of course. A group of people who are radically self reliant, enjoy helping others, no drama, and just enough fun to maybe get caught. A group that understands the gravity of the world (haha, physics joke!) and that it must be worked on, but in order to do so there must be breaks and self care.
<3 to Saturday Morning Cartoons and our 2-story high blanket fort.
Woke up at 0Dark:Thirty Friday morning to be in a cab to TXL by 06:00. Had already packed my bag. <3 to the Hacker Hostel.
Got to the airport. They patted me down. Dumped out my bag. I removed the blade from my boot knife (box cutter ftw) and explained the CCCamp R0ket badge. They put my stuff through again, had me walk through the thing again. Took me to a side room to open up all my electronics and wipe them down with their fancy bomb towels. Sent me through again. At least the lady patting me down was attractive. A bit gruff though.
Customs in London. Passport, ticket, that little piece of paper that says who your contact is and where you’re staying (mine: London Hackerspace, woods).
“How long are you here for?”
“5 days.”
“What are you here for?”
“Conference.”
“About what?”
“Uhh.. how humanity is fucked but the stories we can tell to build better culture”
“..Kay. Who puts it on?”
“Uncivilization / Dark Mountain / New Public Thinking”
“And where are you staying?”
“In a tent.”
*glare*
“In the woods. Somewhere near London. I think. Dunno yet. Internet will tell me.”
“And Monday night?”
“Dunno yet. I think someone is hosting me, likely in my e-mail, I can pull up the info.”
“Are you traveling with anyone?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you have any paperwork? Tickets?”
“Can’t stand the stuff.”
“Do you have your ticket to return home?”
*Show her my flight info as an event on my phone*
“To Berlin. What are you doing there?”
“Staying one more night before going to Burning Man.”
“And before?”
“More camping. That time with hackers.”
“..”
“Between that and this I was working in a flat in some neighborhood I can’t pronounce.”
“Working? You don’t have a work visa.”
“No, telecommuting for work in the US.”
“What do you do?”
“I link up hacker communities to humanitarian organizations.”
*blink*
*smile*
*stamp*
20+ hours into travel (LAS->TXL), I watch the sun set over German forests. Two new friends sleep hard in the seats next to me, our luggage tucked under the seats. Cellos in my ears. Camp tomorrow.
…
Sitting in the woods, aircraft from WWII the Cold War (thanks, Skytee!) surrounding us. Chill acoustic music over the quality sound system (likely being played live a short walk away). Mate in hand, disco balls in trees. Every person I have met here is exceptional. Ever talk I have heard has been interesting.
…
As camp closes down, I feel like I’m doing the walk of shame back home from The Future. Unwashed, same clothes as the night before, the people I pass and I smile knowingly at me.
I’ve been walking and walking and walking. Finding tiny pockets of projects I hadn’t yet seen. The crepe robot. The lamayed fighter jet. The ammunitions bunker tiny rave. I haven’t slept yet since last night: there was a flash mob dance party that lasted 6 hours followed by a celebration party for going so long. There was Chinese tea service and stories in the Metalab tent in the wee hours.
I think it must be the sleep dep – people speaking moon language and wandering around in thongs and with bloodied eyes. There are fighter jets whose bombs have been yarn-bombed and a lounge on top of a tank.
But no.. It’s just Camp.
It’s not all party tho. I learned about electronic waste and more about bitcoins. I learned about my new favorite activist group, Telecomix. A lovely gent walked me through how to use sonar to make me brighter as people get closer to my bike. We’ve cooked, we’ve lugged pallets, bridged politics and hacked badges.
Was asked today what I’m taking away from life. Here are my thoughts on it:
Most mornings I wake up and I have to watch Carl Sagan videos on youtube. We’re all monkeys in clothes with language and illusions of grandeur. We have no purpose, but we can give ourselves purpose. I don’t know what answers are, but I can push to empower individuals in such a way that also makes stronger communities. I don’t think the biggest dangers will come in my lifetime, but I can help prepare for them. Shoulders of giants and all that. Ella and I get in fun conversations all the time about fighting for the survival of the species, or fighting for the advancement of the species, or just fighting for the diminishing of suffering while we’re around.
So.. taking something away? I don’t know about that. I’m learning. I’m fucking up. And I’m meeting amazing people who are far smarter and kinder and powerful than I am. And that’s an entirely enjoyable existence.
Something I love about Berlin and the European hacker scene is that there is an assumption of competence AND people tend to be much more politically minded. Of course you know what’s going on. You have an opinion on it. And you take action about it.
Pausing conversations about individuals as mathematical constructs to hop over a bar railing to hug on Sirus.
Getting all the knots in my back worked out by a masseuse at the Paloalto party and then dancing my toes bloody to the Crystal Fucking Method playing Depeche Mode and a slew of other amazing songs. People making a variety of hearts on their phones to wave at Ken and Scott, and them playing too (mine was drawn on a whiteboard program, theirs was scrolling bit hearts).
Talking to Dan outside, drinking beer in the dry heat. Self-care while traveling, the community of distributed Tribe, and geek social responsibility.
Waking up at the castles, wandering out into the main room. Some people are drinking coffee. Some are drinking beer. Some are drinking both. There are people in swimming trunks and people in ties and people trying to find their pants. And a group of hackers sitting around, watching TV. I went over to mock them – the conversations to be had are far too fantastic to be watching TV. Ends up they were watching Modern Marvels on milk. MILK. So I sat down and joined them. It was fascinating. And you know what? They filter milk through a series of tubes.
Walking to the No More Cheap Bugs party after dim sum with the best-damn dressed group in the place. ElevatorCon (fit as many people as possible into an elevator, bounce gently). Balcony pool, Keith on decks, dance dance dance with people who are fast becoming one more Tribe. I am so spoiled.
The time has come to cull my facebook account. This is both a personal decision and a cultural one. Afterall, cultural change is an individual’s responsibility.
I’m tired of people feeling like having a mark on someone, a way of contacting them because they maybe crossed paths at one point, takes care of actually engaging people. I’m sad the drama and shallow exchanges facebook not only permits but, by its very infrastructure, encourages.If you want to take action with me, find me in these places. If you want to actually talk to me, you can find me via text or in person or at an event or during office hours.
This is part of my finally establishing personal boundaries on my time. My core group of friends get the vast majority of my time. Maybe this round will even stick. The world is, afterall, full of shiny and awesome people. This is not me saying I don’t care about who you are or what you do – it’s that I no longer have the bandwidth to share it with you so much. I can trust you to take care of your section of the world, yes? And you want me to be happy and focused, even if that doesn’t involve you? Awesome. I’m glad we can agree.
I want it to be ok for people to grow out of a time in their life. I want attention to go to the things immediately around people and their interests, not some trivial game with someone they had one (albeit amazing) conversation with two years ago. Let life be a process, a continuum, let go of the things that are done.
The only thing Facebook has going for it is critical mass. And that won’t change unless we, as individuals, take the detriment to our social currency to choose to interact in better forums. You won’t lose the people you actually care about, promise. Everyone else is just your cognitive heat sync.
Now that I’m done with the first phase of deleting things, I’m left with this weird middle ground – the people I talk to regularly I have culled, as I have better ways of contacting them. The names I don’t recognize are gone. It’s like being in a dream… this weird hodge-podge of “don’t I know you from somewhere?” and “you look so familiar” and “I feel like we went to the same event one time, and had an amazing conversation over beers after.”
Let me rephrase that. I am *furious* at culture. I am pissed off that I can’t go play, that it has so much to do with gender roles, and so little to do with the actual people involved.
First, let me set the stage: most of my interactions are within geek subculture. There are certainly some appalling gender ratios in most geek space, with “Sausage Fest” being a common term. That’s fine. I get along better with people who have been socialized to be outspoken, physical, and crass – ie, more masculine than feminine types. And I’ve talked before about constructing Safe Space. And long ago (so long ago it was on LiveJournal) about being a being in a woman’s body who also happens to be precocious, comfortable in sexuality, and tactile – and the assumptions that go along with that (that assumption being that I Want To Bone You — I don’t). But it’s come up again – the falsely inverse-d relationship between sexuality and respect. Something I said in a recent interview (published soonish, methinks):
I think it’s totally appropriate to find intelligent people attractive, and that the best potential dates ARE your equals. The issue is that there’s this separation of sexualization and respect. They should be completely independent OR have positive correlation, but instead they seem to have a negative correlation in our culture. IE, if someone finds me hot, they are also likely to care less about listening to my ideas. For me, it boils down to consent. If I consent to being hit on by someone I am also attracted to, that’s awesome. If someone continues to hit on my after I have made it clear I’m not interested (either in them, in dating within that social group, or in dating in general), then it’s *not* cool.
What brings this up is being a “free agent” in my social groups has meant that some people have turned their focus on me. And while I’m flattered by the attention, it kind of sucks socially. The attracted people who don’t know me well either discount my ideas in lieu of trying to get into pants, or the idealization of physicality trumps the interest in ideas. Those who know me AND like those ideas tend to play a game, knowingly or not, about declaring intellectual territory via sexual or romantic advances on me. And those who actually like me and my ideas and who don’t play those games I STILL can’t associate with because the social response has to do with the first two sets of people (see me with partner, either discount any brainmeats I have or assume I’m at play in a game).
Respect for people while sexualizing them is only difficult because our culture makes it so. Beauty vs Brains is, clearly, a false dichotomy. But it’s one we still have to deal with while we murderize it. And I have no idea how to live my life in a way that tears down those stigmas while not being (non-consensually) objectified.
Monkeys piss me off. Maybe I shouldn’t listen to Sex At Dawn as I do my dishes and walk around Seattle. Gah!
What I can do right now is work on having more women in geek space. I feel like brute-forcing the problem, to say it in a very awful way. Care to join me?
Yes, I know. I know the events I’m putting on are called “hackathons.” Yes. I know they’re actually “apps contests.” As I’ve said before, and will say again (and again and again), hackers are people who tinker with systems other people take as granted. They were the farmers who reappropriated parts from their failing machinery to create things which actually worked for them. They are the traceurs of the world, who play on walls and railings. Yes, they can be people who use a back door to teach an irresponsible company a lesson. And yes, they can be people using new open data to create ways of responding to disaster. Developers are people who build on systems which exist, new ways of interacting with those systems. While the line seems fuzzy at first, and is certainly contextual, it is an important one.
Hackers are therefore the people who are taking responsibility for themselves and their environments, their communities. And that is what gives me hope in this world. While systems are important for efficiency and sharing, those systems should constantly be tested, pushed, bettered. I don’t think we’re so much taking back the word “hacker” as making it into a thing everyone should strive to become. We HAVE to be hacking on things if we are to be engaged and responsible citizens of the world. We HAVE to be testing our friends, our selves, our causes. Through playful testing, we are able to trust one another while creating accesible safe space.
My friend caezar said this in response to me:
In times past, the advancement of humanity happened at a rate that was slow when compared to the individual life experience. That is, people didn’t see evolution happen during their life times. In the information age, we see change at a pace that can only be described as shocking. So when people used to discuss “long” terms, they meant years and decades into the future. Today, long term can mean as little as 18 months. Short term solutions often only apply for weeks or a few months. In this accelerated view of time, short term thinking can be seen for what it is: a waste of energy.
A trail blazer hacks a path through dense jungle. A hacker forges new paths through the tangles of ignorance and complexity, finding and developing the conceptual roads of tomorrow. A hackathon is simply a work party on a new frontier in a village full of idealistic and hard working people. There is no path except what we make. Before big business comes along to designate which roads they think will yield profits, someone must explore the boundaries and find the trails into new territory. Hackers are the scouts of new ideas; they teach us what is possible and afford a hint of the future to those willing to listen. In a world beset on all sides by corruption and suffering, we owe it to ourselves to send out more scouts and to equip them as well as possible to survive outside the plans of our parents.
Random Hacks of Kindness is not unusual at all. It is just a fireside chat, among settlers in a new land, about how to better live each day. We hope to make every life a little better by making a few lives a lot longer.
I made a post to Twitter last night about how I was thinking more and more that Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintencence is a crock of bullshit. Which sucks, because Sirus got me a copy with lovely graphic art on the cover7. While I summed up my response to “but why?!?!!!@” with a <140 character "Main Character Complex", here is the longer explaination.
First, a disclaimer or two: I’m “reading” this via Audible, which I love. I do not have page numbers, but I can get you minute markers. And I have not finished it. One of my greatest joys of no longer being in school is that when a book sucks, I can put it away – I don’t have to finish it. So if he learns some great lesson, or the focus shifts or something, let me know and I’ll actually keep reading.
What at last did me in, so far as not being able to listen to any more: his discourse on Science. About how all science is ineffectual because (as his “ghost” narrative device discovered) so many hypothesis are born as you test the first one, and there’s no way to test them all, so you create this whole set of unknowns. And as science is about creating truths, and you can’t test all of them…
Wait, what? Science is about creating truths? Someone hasn’t been looking at science. Science is about proving things false. Something is considered true (but not a law) until you’re able to disprove it. Laws (like gravity) are so morally independent, so long established (ie, tested against), and so universal that Scientific Law basically equals Taken As Granted.5
This is just one example of the underlying viewpoint that upsets me about this book. “Oh, look at this insight I have. I am so clever. You should examine your world, too. Question things!” Which yes, you should constantly be questioning the things around you, but for fuck’s sake, the “insights” provided are bullshit, and unless you spend as much time (if not more) examining your own assumptions, questioning the world around you just becomes a wank session. And one that ends in loneliness and The Crazy, not what wank sessions should end with, IMHO.
So this brings us closer to my own insight about the book, and the narrator1. He’s a narcissistic piece of shit. Oh sure, he speaks about different methods of inquiry, but his language and approach are seeping with judgements about those methods. His “inquiry into values” is always in relation to his own set of values, and there is always implied (or stated) moral high ground.
And maybe this wouldn’t bother me so much, but for recent life interactions, and a long-lived pet peeve of mine: Main Character Syndrom. This is my own way of explaining narcissism without bringing up that loaded word. People with this syndrom believe that they are the main character. Anyone they interact with is simply filling a supporting role. Every interaction, every discussion, -everything- has to do with them. Because why else would it be happening? Common symptoms include taking everything personally, being confused when people act “out of character,” or having unreasonable expectations.
A sub category of this is what I lovingly refer to as Narrator Syndrom, where an individual realizes they’re not the Main Character but still imparts their world view on the interactions they have with others. Symptoms include imposing moral values3 and assuming purpose/projecting omnipitence4.
A solution:
Realize everyone is full of stories. Their own. That range from completely —completely— to mostly not about you. At all. Have nothing at all to do with you. An individual – one individual – has lived an entire life of experiences. Their life is just as (if not more) complicated as your own. Each individual is (mostly) internally consistent, has a set of values and goals which are legitimate (to them), given those experiences. Now think about how many other people live in your house, your apartment building, your neighborhood block. So many stories! AND YOU GET TO SHARE WITH THEM. We get to interact, to use that wealth of experience, to build our world. And that is what makes that individual insignificance so phenomenal. We are so much greater than the sum of our parts, as individuals and as a super organism.
1. I accept that the narrator might be the author’s own way of trying to get people to come to the realizations that I speak about here, so far as the meta level, narcissism, and examination. But if that’s what he’s going for, I already get it, and listening to someone experience it just hurts my fucking faith in humanity.
2. (Yes, I know there’s no 2 up there). I also hated Catcher in the Rye. Self-involved bitchfest. Whine whine whine with no constructive action in site.
3. Morals as opposed to ethics, which are malleable and socially based as opposed to dogmatic. One of the few things Freud was not completely bat shit about.
4. The assumption of knowing where the plot is going/all the factors in any interaction, so any other viewpoint is null.
5. I am not at all saying science should not be questioned. That is, after all, what it is for6. It is imperative to question the cultural assumptions which support some scientific analysis. And what we as a culture value of course dictates what we even DO science to.
6. Well, actually it’s for describing things which exist, but whatever.
7. <3 to Sirus, who gave me the disclaimer that he hadn't read it, but liked the art and thought it might be about motorcycles, which I do like.
8. (Yes, another footnote without a reference to it). All the individualism in my last paragraph is not to get postmodern on you. Through SCIENCE (also see above) we are able to know we have a shared reality and that we must interact within it. The point I’m getting at there is that all the individual pieces are separate but interactive. There’s a reason I have “we are the machine” tattoo’d down my back – we are all interconnected, and through that interconnection, our superorganism is self-guided.
And since this post is already so incredibly long, here is a video to make me not be so ranty, which beautifully sums up a lot of that wonder and interconnection. Thanks, melodysheep!
Being involved in education means I’m always in conversations about bullying. Hell, being on the internet means there are always conversations about bullying. My viewpoint is apparently somewhat radical – I don’t think the bullies are the problem that need to be addressed. Here’s why: there will always be assholes in the world. There will always be people who project their own insecurities, or have a need for power, or what have you. Always. You cannot stop them.
What you can do is teach others the how and why of standing up for themselves.
Some background slash an anecdote: my dad wrestled us as children. We were never afraid of having hands laid upon us, the only thing was to figure out how to react. While I was slight of figure and certainly an outcast, I never dealt with bullying. This was not because there were no bullies, but because I was not afraid of a fight. Sure, the other party might win but I would inflict some major damage on my way down (which is, incidentally, how I also play chess).
I could ramble on and on about this. But basically, it boils down to people trying to end bullying are looking at the finger instead of what it’s pointing at.
Oh man, do I hate capitalism. But I also dislike blanket statements. SO HA.
20+ hours into travel (LAS->TXL), I watch the sun set over German forests. Two new friends sleep hard in the seats next to me, our luggage tucked under the seats. Cellos in my ears. Camp tomorrow.
Was asked today what I’m taking away from life. Here are my thoughts on it:
Pausing conversations about individuals as mathematical constructs to hop over a bar railing to hug on Sirus.
