Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

[c1ue]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Starting from Year Zero: Occupy Wall Street and the Transformations of the Socio-Political

Clearly paragraphs are unnecessary in understanding the OODA, or the New Order, or whatever is filling up several entire pages edge to edge.

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Clearly paragraphs are unnecessary in understanding the OODA, or the New Order, or whatever is filling up several entire pages edge to edge.

Sorry, didn't have time to fix formatting the other day. Post (link below) has now been appropriately formatted.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...438#post221438

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Terrible as journalism and worse as philosophy.

I like difficult texts but there has to be a reward.

I really can't see anything here of value. Just as an example, I love how the whole (admittedly, originally false) modesty of Hegel's "Owl of Minerva" is invoked and then immediately forgotten as the author launches into a really pedestrian comparison of the "attributes" of various Occupy "phenomena."

Why do you think this is worth your time?

To put a finer point on it:

- I think there's enough cognitive dissonance in the world right now to keep philosophes gainfully employed for the next 50 years sorting out how it got this f'ed up. We live in a world where, under the watchful eye of an apparently single, vengeful God (read capitalism) "bankruptcy" can result in you getting a stimulous cheque from the government (US circa 2008), all your national assets sold off (Argentina circa 2002 (?)) and massive unemployment, a continuing career as a banker, despite having destroyed whole government's balance sheets almost singlehandedly, not to mention share-holder-value (hey, it's lonely at the top) etc., etc.

Reading pieces like the one above drive me to distraction. What a waste of effort.

The value is in understanding that we're shifting into a world model based upon Complexity, where social swarms eminate out of nothingness and large events "emerge" from seemlessly minor system pertebations.

[don]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift


Tim and Lily, kissing and standing up against corporate personhood.


Lily & Tim

Tim: I quit my job in Connecticut to be at Occupy. The movement was a platform for people to innocently engage with one another. Everybody was friendly and like-minded and I wanted to make as many friends as possible. I wasn't looking to hook up with anyone.
Lily: Yet every single time I saw Tim before we actually got together, he had a gaggle of women around him! I wasn't down at Occupy to meet anyone either. I was preparing to return home to the UK. I was ready to leave New York. I heard that this thing was happening. I wasn't that compelled to go and check it out at first, but basically the first time I went to Zucotti Park I realised that that was something significant. I'd forgotten that I'd always been an activist. There'd been nothing to inspire that side of me.
Tim: We completely disagree on the first time we met. I remember it very vividly: we were right underneath the red structure in Zucotti Park. The second time we met we went out for Indian food with one other woman. Basically I was in trouble from then on …
Lily: Getting away from everyone was hard. We had to escape to Brooklyn. We met for breakfast really early the next day and ended up spending the entire day together. It was really nice.
Tim: Lily's just amazing. She just has this energy. We seemed to share so much and have some sort of a connection. It was the type of thing that was irresistible. Despite me saying "I don't want to get involved with anybody", I had no choice. It was as Wu Wei would have it: "Action without action".
Lily: I was attracted to Tim very quickly. He was different. I hate to stereotype, but most of the people I've met in New York – men and woman – really struggle to be comfortable with their feelings. They find it hard to love openly. They're very singular, exciting and doing awesome stuff, but when it comes to being OK with loving someone, that's a whole journey that apparently requires anti-depressants and therapy. Tim has absolutely no shame, no struggle with his feelings. They're just out there and it's amazing.


Ravi & Geoff


Ravi and Geoff, both 34. Photograph: Zina Saro-Wiwa

Ravi: I think the moment where we really connected is when Geoff said something completely outrageous in one of our large meetings. There was a very long discussion about race and he said something outrageous. Well, he doesn't think it was outrageous. But I thought, he seems confident and intelligent.
Geoff: I was simply making a counterintuitive argument, a reference to the demographics in various institutions. That's all I'll say!
Ravi: Then that Sunday I was stuck in the office working on something and he walked in. We ended up talking for three hours. And that's when all of this other really interesting stuff about race and culture came out. At that point I'd been at Occupy for over a month, and this was the first really serious political discussion I'd had.
Geoff: We got together sometime after Thanksgiving. The end of November. Is Ravi my usual type? Well I tend to try and stay away from hippies of all types! So yes.
Ravi: Is Geoff my type? Well I don't usually date men! But he's really smart, and that's very attractive, absolutely. So he's my type in that he's smart. I like people I can argue with.
Geoff: I rarely think about the future. The future usually counts for the next two days. You could put in 16-hour days seven days a week in this movement. Sincerely, I put in easily 100 hours a week on this movement, if not more. Ravi has a day job but she often comes down and visits on site and attends after-hours meetings. So when she's not doing her day job she has no personal life.
Ravi: You're my personal life, babe! The movement has changed me in other ways though. I'm busy, I actually have genuinely interesting, exciting, absorbing things to do all day. Also I'm not like "I'm bored I'm going to go out for a fancy meal". To be finally out of that, that's really a profound change.
Geoff: We as a group would like to see a change in society to things that are based less on your involvement in either earning money or spending money. The idea that you can be involved in organisations that do things constructively that don't involve payment or transactions, that's a big narrative for us.


Haywood & Christine


Haywood, 29, and Christine, 23, originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Zina Saro-Wiwa/The Guardian

Christine: We were together before Occupy but we had broken up last August so we weren't together when Occupy started. We had both worked on political campaigns, that's our background. But Hayward wasn't really sure what he was in it for anymore and he was deeply frustrated and depressed and that had a negative impact on our relationship. He knew he needed to move some place bigger with some more opportunities for his own well-being.
Haywood: I hitched a ride from North Carolina to Zucotti Park. I had mainly been involved in electoral politics and campaigns. But when Occupy Wall Street came up I knew I had to come here. This is what I should have been doing the whole time.
Christine: Although Hayward and I had split up we were still friends. So he went up there and was calling me and talking about it being wonderful and beautiful. I hadn't seen him so excited about anything political in years. I thought it was worth taking a look. I showed up and immediately I got sucked into it. I was working at the info table and then I was sleeping under the info table. Then I was getting arrested, and then I was living in New York.
Haywood: I remember watching her march up to Goldman Sachs arm-in-arm with 18 other people knowing that the cops were going to arrest them. It took coming up to Occupy and seeing each other passionate about something else to remember why we were so passionate about one another. But also, Jesus, she's beautiful. She's the most beautiful person I can think of.
Christine: Haywood was funny and smart and encouraged other people. Wherever he was needed, whether it was helping sanitation sweep or staying up from midnight to 6am on community watch, he stepped up and took a leadership role. I saw that and thought: "That's the sort of person I want to be with". I also feel like Occupy, as a result of all our meetings, has made me learn truly honest, open communication. I feel like I've become more patient and more open.
Haywood: I feel our relationship is entirely independent of Occupy. It's not a love that came out of it, it was a love that was made stronger because of it.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...valentines-day

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Clearly paragraphs are unnecessary in understanding the OODA, or the New Order, or whatever is filling up several entire pages edge to edge.

What's so ironic about the arrogance and flippancy inherent in this trite post, is that the auother of the reference article does indeed recognize the shifting of social models, where societal changes occur more quickly due to the breakdowns in institutional structure and borders. This is, in fact, a recognition of the acceleration of societal OODA loops, where the public has less time to react due to accelerating swarms of information, propaganda, and attitudinal flows. This is not accidential, and is consistent with a system seeking a structure governed by power laws. Glad to see that at least "some" arerecognizing the major shifts and their potential impacts, albeit, they might not be aware of the long developing science behind them. Further, I'm pleased to see that not all uses these disucssions as an opportunity to "mock" them.

[oddlots]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Nice find Don. Missed it.

This is exactly what is needed IMHO.

[c1ue]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

What's so ironic about the arrogance and flippancy inherent in this trite post, is that the auother of the reference article does indeed recognize the shifting of social models, where societal changes occur more quickly due to the breakdowns in institutional structure and borders. This is, in fact, a recognition of the acceleration of societal OODA loops, where the public has less time to react due to accelerating swarms of information, propaganda, and attitudinal flows. This is not accidential, and is consistent with a system seeking a structure governed by power laws. Glad to see that at least "some" arerecognizing the major shifts and their potential impacts, albeit, they might not be aware of the long developing science behind them. Further, I'm pleased to see that not all uses these disucssions as an opportunity to "mock" them.

Your comments would be a lot more credible if the ongoing bankster takeover wasn't a situation literally millenia old.

Whether it be Pharisees or the Vampire Squid, the techniques and results are identical.

Thus all your hue and cry over OODA seems completely pointless since the means, goals, and results have been unchanged.

[Southernguy]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Well, Don, being a militant of social causes has to have some upside; doesn´t it?

[don]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Well, Don, being a militant of social causes has to have some upside; doesn´t it?

Babes appear to be drawn to social causes. (MEGA take note)

[oddlots]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Hey DS,

Missed this first time around... wonder how one should interpret the real meaning of "more replies below current depth" eh? Actually I think that's just become one of my favourite pregnant phrases... So many possible interpretations. Could be "my" (oddlots) current depth, the forum's, the administrator's. Sort of disappointed that hadn't occurred to me sooner.

I read the above and your "Inventing the Enemy" piece. It's helpful to have the on-again off-again collusion between imperial powers and Islamists laid out and much of it is news to me. But where you see some kind of ideological whole all I see is non-ideological, improvisational mess with the only common thread being an - often barely achieved - desire to control: my enemy's enemy is my friend... until he's not. As an example, it's not surprising to me that the British supported the Muslim Brotherhood in it's early days. Divide and rule. But that doesn't in itself make them any more or less "authentic" a voice ~ 60 years hence (a period where the same group has been repressed by, some would say, a Western client-state such as Egypt post-Nasser.)

I just don't see justification for a statement like this:

The MB continues to be an important means for the U.S. and UK to attempt to control Muslims and deflect them away from democratic movements that would truly challenge Western domination into reactionary religious movements.

This just strikes me as extremely over-determined. You seem to start from the premise that there are in existence "democratic movements" in the ME or Egypt, as an example, whose failure can only be explained by some "exogenous shock," that their victory has somehow been stolen, in some sense. If you further tar religious movements with the reactionary label and then give the purported "democratic movements" the heroic quest of challenging "Western domination" then you've pretty much sewn the whole thing up.

How do you know it's true? Or false?

As was widely reported, Sen. John Kerry, heard of the Senate Foreign relations Committee, met with representatives of the MB on 12/10/11. According to Haaretz (4.06.09), President Obama met privately with members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. earlier in 2009--that is, long before the Arab Spring.

This sounds sinister but could be interpreted any number of ways, with the most obvious being: the Muslim Brotherhood, being the likely victor by a wide margin in the elections, now has to somehow figure out how to deliver on its mandate while keeping the vast subsidies from the the Egyptian state is dependant on flowing. That seems less like a US operative visiting his mole and more like a new Roman governor being sent to remind an unruly protectorate who's in charge. Or perhaps it's the moment where the MB has to transform itself from the eternal opposition into a political actor, with all the soul-sapping consequences that this requires, not the least of which being their dependance on US support.

None of this should come as a surprise. The U.S. has been working hand in glove with political Islam for more than half a century, ever since the U.S. embraced the extreme conservative Salafist rulers of Saudi Arabia.

What is political Islam? I can see that it is something that your argument requires, but beyond that I'm stumped. Is it Sunni or Shiite? Can it be both at the same time? How can the US coherently support a Sunni uprising - broadly speking - in Syria while ignoring a Shiite uprising - again, broadly speaking - in Bahrain while working "hand and glove" with "political Islam," a term that apparently overarches both.

Or is it simply whatever movement or uprising that serves to destabilise a given regime viewed as hostile to US interests at a given moment. Honestly this seems a far more robust, less demanding theory, no? And makes the "blowback" a lot less hard to explain.

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Your comments would be a lot more credible if the ongoing bankster takeover wasn't a situation literally millenia old. Whether it be Pharisees or the Vampire Squid, the techniques and results are identical. Thus all your hue and cry over OODA seems completely pointless since the means, goals, and results have been unchanged.

How can you even make such an argument when you don't even know what the current techniques are, let alone understand them when I try to introduce the concepts. Hence, how can you even be the judge of what's "credible" or not? Further, the techniques in play now do not remotely resemble anything this world has seen before, at least not produced by man. Finally, if I were take your view, that the techniques are no different, then why discuss technique at all?

[c1ue]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

How can you even make such an argument when you don't even know what the current techniques are, let alone understand them when I try to introduce the concepts. Hence, how can you even be the judge of what's "credible" or not? Further, the techniques in play now do not remotely resemble anything this world has seen before, at least not produced by man. Finally, if I were take your view, that the techniques are no different, then why discuss technique at all?

If something is different, you first have to demonstrate difference.

Pharisees+moneylending = corrupted religion
Government+campaign donations/revolving door = corrupted government

Just because the term du jour involves OODA or whatever, doesn't mean that what is occurring is necessarily new.

[don]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

DeGraw updates OWS . . . .

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

If something is different, you first have to demonstrate difference.

Pharisees+moneylending = corrupted religion
Government+campaign donations/revolving door = corrupted government

Just because the term du jour involves OODA or whatever, doesn't mean that what is occurring is necessarily new.

Elimination of Societal Institutions + Ruleless Public + Technologically based Interconnectedness = Chaotic society that performs in accordance with Power Laws, AND can be managed through predictive Complexity models.

Please tell me where in history we've witnessed such technique globally deployed?

“I think the next century will be the century of complexity.”
Stephen Hawking (Complexity Digest 2001/10, 5 March 2001.)

On Edit (append) What's so "great" about OWS is that it's such an overt example of swarming theory being executed on a global basis.

[don]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Technology drops into left field . . .

Vanguard Party (Lenin) transmogrifies into Great Man rule (Stalinism) calcifies into Politburo stasis which crumbles.

Western capitalism continues to concentrate leading to current state of global financial monopoly.

Technology allows and facilitates global broad-based democratic movement of the "99%".