In 1976 this was seen as a dystopian warning.  Beale is mad; totally and utterly lost.  His ‘refreshing’ frankness and hold over the public are ruthlessly exploited by executives chasing after ratings.  Network is a warning about a future where the media manipulates political movements, but there are those however who must have seen the film and thought it to be a blueprint.

Take Glenn Beck (don’t watch it all…you’ll get the impression quickly):

This is a fairly mild version of Beck’s oeuvre, but it is a clear recitation of his principles.  The parrallels with Beale (who Beck says he identifies with) and Network are also clear.  Remembering that Beck is a media commentator with his own 5pm timeslot every week night, and not a political activist being interviewed by the media is hard.   He has developed his own ‘movement’ known as 9/12 project, and deliver regular sermons (and I use this word deliberately) on his show.  A long list of conspiracies have graced his program, including; that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, that the healthcare reform bill includes provision for death panels, and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was creating concetration camps for concervatives.  He was also one of the principle media supporters of the Tax Day “Tea-Bagger” rallies.

The problem with the 9-12 Project, the Tea-Baggers and other followers of these hectoring, overblown ‘personalities’ is that they are inured to critical reflection.  Any criticism, however reasoned, of the host is seen as an attack on the credibility, the faith, the very reality of the hosts admirers.  The criticism is not merely a disagreement over policy or the balance of interests in a community; it is a moral affront, a wholesale attack on ‘our values’ and an attempt to deny self-evident ‘truths’.  The healthcare debate is a prime example – where reasonable disagreement over the best way to provision healthcare to society has disintegrated into claims and counter claims of facism and totalitarianism.  Reasonable debate is lost in a sea of conviction-politics.

And Glenn Beck is at the centre of it.  The quasi-religious nature of the 9-12 political movement becomes obvious once we recognise the symptoms.  The charismatic personality with seemingly radical and persecuted views.  The sermons.  The exhortation to DO something!  The conviction that those opposed to the movement, even merely opposed to its methods if sympathetic to its aims, are unremittingly evil.

The supreme irony of course is that while Beck may compare himself to Beale – he is the polar opposite.  Both simultaneously don the garb of the everyman and the vaudeville entertainer to preach their sermon, but their sermon is very different.  Beale rails against the corporatisation of the media, and Network follows him there.  He is invested in getting people to switch their televisions off…to stop watching the simple soundbites and mindless platitudes of television and engage with their community.

Beck, on the other hand is deeply invested in a highly conservative narrative which holds  economic freedom, cultural conformity and political security to be self-evident truths and totally inviolable rights.  He needs his viewers to keep watching, so that he can deliver the “fusion of entertainment and enlightenment” that they need to take back their country for the socialists and fascists who inhabit the White House.  The oft-implied message is that without Beck his viewers would no longer have a vessel for their anger.

The question of course is what effect Beck will ultimately have.  With a daily viewership of 2.3 million (more than any other cable news show) he is certainly entertaining someone.  The real worry is that he might also ‘enlighten’ them.

• Using GeoSpatial data to display the most accessible government services available to a young mother in Cowra.
• Using social media tools for constituent consultation on a new government proposal or legislative draft.
• A government agency making some of its data publicly accessible, and then working collaboratively with the broader community and industry in preparation for/the midst of an emergency situation. (full article here)

I attended the first of the “Public Sphere” meetings Lundy and Waugh reference in the article, and came home with mixed opinions.   The message that came through was that Gov2.0 shows immense promise for connecting citizens more or less directly to their MPs and beyond to engage in political consultation.  This can be done anywhere from the grass roots level all the way through to the highest level of government, such as Kevin Rudd’s own personal twitter page.

So far, so good.  My problem comes under what is popularly known as the digital divide (DD).  Broadly understood, the DD is a reflection of the difference between the portion of individuals in a community who are competent, current users of digital technologies, and those who aren’t.  This is to be understood not only as people who have access to technology, but those who can use it competently.   How we measure the digital divide is contentious, but the results should be pretty clear from the Wikipedia page, and its associated content– while shrinking rapidly, it is still a problem.

Now, without Gov2.0, bridging the digital divide may be seen as an act that it would be a net good to perform.  But with Gov2.0, it becomes a obligation.  Look at it this way:  from the perspective of most liberal approaches to justice, democratic participation is a strongly protected right.  Moreover, every individual must have the maximum amount of democratic participation conducive to everyone else having the same amount.  That’s pretty Rawlsian, yes, but I’m confident most liberals won’t disagree when it comes to the good of democratic participation.  So, if Gov2.0 wants to make this participation primarily online, people have to have it societally assured.  Everyone given the vote must have the opportunity to exercise it equal to others.  If they don’t choose to, that’s something else entirely.  But to give preference to some (richer people with more access to ICTs) over others strikes a problematic chord.

Of course, the NBN will go a long way to helping this, but hardware access will also be a part.  Smartphones will also play a part, but some of this hardware may well become an obligation to provide, just to participate in the game of democracy.   The famous $100 laptop will also help, but will need serious policy to develop.  ”One laptop, one child” will need to be supplemented with “one vote, one laptop, one citizen of legal voting age.”

In addition, this isn’t necessarily particular to Gov2.0.  But as something that is being touted as a revolution, it should at least seek to debug the problems from the older versions of democracy, rather than just patching new, exciting features over the preexisting flaws.

This is part one of a series of posts I’ll be writing about this topic, adding and changing my views as I go.  It is one that I’ve become progressively more interested in over the last few weeks, and I think there is much to be said in this area.

The Gov2.0 lobby is starting to pick up speed in the west, as more and more countries start to integrate social media, structured information, open source information, collaborative projects to integrate public participation into policy, and more, the word that often gets thrown out there is innovation. Innovation is the key, it seems, to this program—allow individuals the freedom to do, make, and be what and who they want in the context of personal communications and public interaction, and the world will become a better place.  Not only that, but the world will become a better place as people are empowered to make their world and the world of other people a better place.  It sounds great.

The main setback it seems is government itself.  Governments for the most part are conservative organisations that, through prudence involved with antiquated means of dealing with public life with slow response times; the problems of passing policy; and the traditional gambit of traits the make up human self-interest are all hugely problematic for progressive policy planning.  Especially when the call is for opening up the halls of government through unprecedented transparency and community involvement.  And then, the phrase that is born is “there is no innovation without risk.”

So far, this all seems to run together with common sense modern liberal ideas.  But my question is: risk for whom?  The traditional bearers of this risk, it seems the Gov2.0 people are hinting at, is the risk bureaucrats and politicians see for themselves.  In part, this is understandable—few people want their dirty laundry aired against their will.  But that’s more or less the price one pays for politics, at least in an ideal world.

What I plan to do over the next few weeks is discuss some other risks that might come about with this hyperconnected, always-on world.  I don’t plan on being purely critical—after all, cynicism never gets anyone anywhere.  But it would help to talk about the risks involved in this project.  There are solutions, and I plan to talk about these too.  But if we only focus on solutions, we might neglect some solid searching for some very real and important problems.   I might add that gov2.0 is not the only part of this project, and that much of what I will talk about is generally applicable to our rapidly technologised society.

…the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterises the fair terms of social cooperation….a sense of justice also expresses a willingness, if not the desire, to act in relation to others on terms that they also can publicly endorse

Essentially this limits our desire for instituting systems which infringe upon each others liberty…i.e. by allowing power to be concentrated in the hands of a few, or instituting discriminatory practices which leave the worst-off in states of abject poverty for the greater glory of the majority.

The second moral power, is the cacpity to have a conception of the good, or:

…the capacity to form, to revise, and to rationally pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good.

Essentially we can understand how we form these conceptions as the perennial question, commonly asked of young men on the open steppes: “What is best in life?”

In view of Conan’s musings, what are we to say about his fitness as an equal and free person, and the tenability of Rawls’ political liberalism (on the open steppes, or elsewhere)? Certainly Conan has a conception of the good: crushing enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women. Tick for Conan.

But would Conan publicly endorse his concept of the good as being reasonable? Obviosuly he thinks it is perfectly reasonable from his current position in the social order (sitting on that lovely throne of his). It is debatable, however, whether he would be as keen for slaughter if he didn’t know what his position in the social order would be and whether his conception of the good would include the pleasures of pillage. But he might…indeed much like feudal systems of yore, the worst-off in ‘Barbarian’ society might be strongly resigned to the divine justice of a might-makes-right philosophy. The justice of death at the hands of Conan might be reasonable and rational…but probably not.

In any case, Conan the Barbarian shouldn’t be acting as our representative when formulating the social order – atleast if we want Rawls’s version of it. In fact putting Conan in a position of any political power would be an act of collective madness. Only a society so enamoured with the reflected glow of the powerful that it wishes for and actively encourages the accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of a small minority would conceive of such a scheme….

Thought I’d not rant about how the health care saga continue to turn into bizarro world, but rather on something that comes from a place rather closer to my heart.

Maybe the article is stating that D&D is once again Satan’s game. I don’t believe so, I believe it is stating that this person had it as a causal contributor to some pretty horrific stuff. I approach it with the same level of interest that I do science, football and philosophy being causal factors in terrible things. But that’s the mens rea. That’s what it is all about.

Discuss.

The pamphlet is distributed by a lobby group, LaRouche Political Action Comittee. LaRouche has cited that the US health system reforms proposed by Obama and his cabinet are akin to the eugenics programs of the Nazi Party in the lead up to and druing the second world war. Their justification (based on my understanding of this video)

1. The German eugenics program pre-world war two involved a panel of experts to decide who was clinically unfit to foster the German people.  Obama’s new healthcare will be streamlined and rationing decisions will be made by a panel of experts (because of limited resources and a large distribution problems).  The existence of this panel of experts, much like the panel of experts in Hitler’s regime means Obama is evidently a facist.
2. The creation of an independent board of experts to oversee health reforms is beyond congressional oversight, and thus is the sign of a dictator.

So, I am in the Netherlands, the oft claimed home of drugs and hookers, and was sitting in my room, reading this article from the UK Times about ‘love shyness‘. In essence, this is supposedly an emergent phenomenon (very very weak epistemological emergence, if you could even call it emergence) whereby a bunch of lonely adult males piss and moan about the fact that they were ten years old when had their last girlfriend. Observe:

John has been in love. “Probably just the once. When I was 10 there was this girl I really liked. She was younger than me, so when I went to secondary school I lost contact with her and never saw her again.” He has an enduring memory of playing outside with the girl, and of the sun slowly going down, and never feeling happier. In fantasy he often takes the memory further and, imagining himself as a child again, he kisses her.

Now, this is clearly indicative of some deep seated emotional abnormality, and I don’t mean to be cold hearted and lacking empathy when thinking about this – clearly I read this article for a reason, and if I am in a culture renowned for its liberal approach social norms yet sitting inside and reading newspaper articles, I think it safe to say that I am not the most successful pants-man who strode the earth. But then I read this section, and my humour and cynicism and bitterness returned:

Seb says the first step to getting better is recognising that something is wrong and the label helps with that. “I believe LS can be overcome,” he says, “but it’s a long, hard road.”

There are drugs to treat shyness, mainstream antidepressants such as Paxil. But the many possible side-effects include sweating, nausea, lowered libido and suicidal tendencies

Nice. You want to treat a problem that has depression and sexual relations central to it, by application of medications known to lower libido and increase suicidal tendencies? And make the people sweaty and nauseous while on dates? Nice thinking, arse-clown. Maybe just force these guys to smoke Ice and give them a handgun. Might solve their problems, sure it might also have some negative side effects, but hey, as long as we’re helping these people, who cares what happens to them.

Which brings me to the vague point of these ramblings – that labelling of socially non-standard behaviour dances easily to the music of medicalization, which as i’m sure we all know is perhaps not the best solution to a given set of problems: I’m lonely, cold inside and my last girlfriend was an eight year-old, twenty-two years ago. Clearly I need drugs to find love.

The words ‘parasite’ and ‘exploitation’ seem to bounce around in my head for some strange reason.

]]> http://cappepg.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/i-love-drugs/feed/ 2 xingbot http://cappepg.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/us-and-health-care-reform-wtf/ http://cappepg.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/us-and-health-care-reform-wtf/#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:27:00 +0000 Nick http://cappepg.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/us-and-health-care-reform-wtf ]]>
Speaking of health care reform, and failing empires, and following Nick’s lead, I am going to post some link to a tv show that expresses myself for me.