Building a sustainable community that avoids group-think and embraces cultural evolution.

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Having thought about the dynamics at play regarding Atheismplus over the weekend, I figured I would try and crystallise my ideas into a general guide for creating as inclusive a community* as possible, one that guards against group-think and facilitates both internal (community) and external (social) cultural evolution. It would be utterly contradictory and hypocritical for me to view this guide as anything other than one person's thoughts, an embryonic seed at best, but it does represent the kind of community I am waiting to emerge before I would consider committing myself again. I can only assume that I am not the only one.

Should those people leading the momentum behind Atheismplus wish to heed any of this advice I'd be more than happy for them to take it. If not, I care not. I do not expect this vision to materialise suddenly in its full form anyhow; I'm not naive enough to think there are not, in all likelihood, several evolutionary steps still to play through before that were to happen. If Atheismplus wants to go a different route, then that is entirely their choice to make. I only hope that emotions cool soon and we can actually get down to some serious inter-community discourse.

First of all I want to share a few structural and cultural components that I believe are necessary to create and maintain a sustainable community. Although I have written this with Atheismplus in mind, I think many, if not all, of the points are likely to be applicable to most communities that eek to be more than simply an interest group. As I've said previously, I hold no political allegiance one way or the other, so I wouldn't be surprised if those who identify as either left or right both find objections or concerns regarding these ideas. After that, I want to share a few ideas for some shared culture that embraces the principles I've laid out, shared culture that does not run the risk of centralising the community or facilitating group-think.

Structural components of a sustainable community:

• The community structure should be as horizontal as possible. Either you could limit this community to being an autonomous part of a wider community, or else seek to found an affiliation, or federation, of groups, individuals and organisations that together strive to cross-promote each others work and collaborate as much as possible. Either way, such cross-promotion should be used to maintain a conscious balance in the diversity of discourse, both in terms of subject and of authorship.
• The functions and duties of positions of authority should be as transparent and, where applicable, as crowd-sourced as possible, across all scales organisation.
• Revolving positions of authority can promote greater diversity, both within the affiliated groups of the community and in any overarching administrative structures, of which their should be as few as possible (a media contact point, promotion and awareness, political lobbying, an open-source arbitration process etc).
• An agreement should exist on the assumption that nobody speaks for anyone else but themselves, unless speaking as a representative with a consensual mandate, on whatever scale. So simple (yet so staggering common in this debate), but just because individual A said X, does not mean that all others who affiliate under the same moniker as A also believe X, nor that it is official policy of the group unless otherwise stated (and even then one should treat it with caution unless there is evidence of a consensus process having been implemented. Individual A could easily be speaking from an emotional state and proclaiming personal, assumed belief and not fact, thereby absolving affiliated others of assumed belief in X).
• Whether crowd-sourced community guidelines are created for the community as a whole or by individual groups and organisations themselves, they are vital to possess along with mechanisms for grievances to be heard (prior to any incident that threatens to get out of hand). My personal preference is for a 90% or so approval benchmark for acceptance of a guideline or procedural process; this represents a strong mandate that even those who get ideas voted down should be able to accept, yet flexible enough to avoid bloc-voting tactics (it would be interesting to see if there were any studies on the levels of voluntary acquiescence to consensus at various levels). It is important to have a set of guidelines with a sufficient enough mandate to act as an objective framework that everyone can have confidence in appealing to. I've had experience in this regard (anecdotal, I admit) and the impression that it was an absolutely crucial component was apparent almost immediately.
• With these guidelines, moderators should have an agreed mandate to use whatever powers they have been given, by consensus, to ensure that guidelines are followed. Some issues may be destined to end in flame war, at least at first; for these, all you need is somewhere to park it, away from the main message boards where with luck it will die a slow death. If not, people are free to ignore it. For persistent offenders you shouldn't be scared to suspend or revoke accounts. It's not a free-speech issue; nobody is stopping them spewing shit on Twitter or anywhere else, its just the consensus-derived authority of a group of people choosing to stop you metaphorically stalking them and screaming in their face 24/7.

Cultural components required for a sustainable community:

• We must all completely flip the way we view critical critique, and those who would offer it, from the instinctively defensive and unconstructive assumption of conflict to an acknowledgement of what is in fact a compliment: someone has deemed your views worthy of time-spent constructing a rebuttal. Obviously this can and is achieved already everyday, though usually with issues that do not have unaddressed ideological belief, however small and subconscious, as their foundations. Those issues remain compartmentalised from our skeptical environment and, it seems to me, from our skeptical way of thinking (I speak here simply from my own experience, and not just about trolls). We need to collectively recognise these unspoken biases and apply the same level of critical thought (and respect) to all issues equally. A lot of lapses and biting of lips will be involved, I'm sure, but there is always “sorry”.
• We need to create a culture that openly celebrates the best Devil's advocates out there. After all, to be a good Devil's advocate one needs to go all out in researching and trying to understand the rationales for what they may personally see as unsavory arguments and beliefs. We can't expect to have constructive debates (either for the inherent advance of knowledge or the for the perception of the audience) with sceptics or fundamentalists who do not share with us an objective framework for debate; a culture that promotes the playing of Devil's advocate in a constructive way is an alternative way to guard against the emergence of group-think.
• The written word has its uses, obviously but it's shit for tackling social issues where advocates are often all to willing to insert whatever tone of voice or choice of interpretation is needed in order to validate pre-existing unexplored or unfounded beliefs. If we revive the Socratic tradition, actually utilise video technology to present crowd-sourced debates and arguments, we could take it to a whole new level. I'm sure that Socrates would be ribbing Plato hard now were they to know about Twitter, but there is no reason that we cannot harness the best bits of both direct debate and text.
• There can be no taboos. I'm serious on this one, but it's gonna be tricky. It might be that some issues are so fresh or vulgar that time would be needed to develop the culture a bit first, get some training in as it were, before it starts to do more good than harm. But ultimately, everything that is out there in this sometimes beautiful, sometimes seemingly FUBAR world is best understood through critical, skeptical thought. It's just something we will need to deal with as it comes, and all try to (for want of a softer, less evocative word) self-police the community.
• On 'self-policing', it would ideally be a natural consequence of the redefinition of how we see criticism, encouraging a culture of challenging each others views. It will mean learning to control instinctive, defensive tendencies at first, given the lack of critical discourse to date within our present communities on social issues. The best way to do this in my view is to have a code of conduct for debate (something we should already be using i.e. awareness of fallacies, respect etc), something we all subscribe, and hold each other, to. Furthermore, this will help us enter into debates and discussions in a constructive manner, under the assumption that everyone is coming from the same place, not in terms of views and issues, but in terms of method.
• This is the central strand that runs through all of this advice: If you wish to have a sustainable community, it must be built through a shared culture of methodology, not a shared culture of content. This is the only way to avoid group-think, facilitate cultural evolution and be seen to be just the most damned reasonable and unobjectionable community the world has ever seen.

Here are some ideas that embody these principles, examples of shared culture that would both bind and challenge us as a community:

1. A wiki for collating scientific evidence on social justice issues – It should be completely open to all, but moderated in the manner described above (very important), with room for debate on each entry. Entries could be tagged for filtering and debate purposes – tags should include, at a minimum, indicators of study quality (whether it is blinded, has a large sample group, area of funding etc), the appearance of objections with further room for debate, and the theme of the study. It wont matter how people approach adding entries, so long as it is sufficiently and effectively moderated by enough users. For the sake of being a user-friendly resource, as well as responsive to cultural evolution, the front page could consist of portals for the top ten or so issues voted up and down on a daily basis (obviously measures would need to be in place to ensure it doesn't become victim to foul play). I don't know if such a resource exists already (I have no time to research this blog as well as write it) but it would be a really useful resource to have to congregate around. It would also be a great media resource, should they find the inclination to actually start quoting evidence. If things get out of hand then folk could always turn to idea number three..

2. Podcast, or preferably video-based production, for promoting diversity and quality debate – One or two regulars artful in the ways of the devils advocate play host to a different group or person each week, providing a constructive counter-balance to controversial and emotive issues. It would need to be meticulous in it's approach, crowd-sourcing opinion in advance of each episode. Evidence likely to be drawn upon for the debate would be compiled by each side in advance and available to the public. In order to act as an exemplar that the wider community would find constructive, it might be useful to mirror the structure of the debates on idea number three..

3. Debate Arena – I've a feeling this sort of thing exists, but building one from scratch would give the element of community ownership and consensual design necessary to gain credibility. It could be cross-referenced with the wiki for contestants to draw upon evidence, with debates advertised in advance for research and audience awareness. Contestants could tag other people into the debate, either sourced in advance or drawn from the audience, should the debate require different expertise to advance. People could vote as the debate goes where they think points or arguments have been won, contribute to visualisations that show which way, and to what extent, a consensus is evolving and have the ability to award kudos points to people who uphold their debating standards under pressure. Participants would begin with their own interpretation of the context of the debate, before embarking on a series of 2 minute rounds (though this should be flexible on agreement, according to requirements). A maximum of one correction of a rebuttal, one rebuttal of your own and one argument to advance the debate allowed per round, to really allow for granular exploration of issues and avoid it simply becoming noise. Victory is declared if the crowd consensus reaches a certain level and remains there for two further rounds (a three strikes and you're out policy). Losers could of course seek a rematch, giving plenty of time to perfect your next material. With such a format, I would hope that over time there would emerge people who elevate this style of debate to an art form, applauded for their succinctness, speed of thought and clarity of communication. Debates would be transcribed using voice recognition, as well as being available for stream and download, with the transcript open to editing should errors be spotted. This would allow for easy citing in blogs and further debate. Personally, I would absolutely love to see any debate, interactive or otherwise, between DJ Grothe and Brian Dunning on whether skepticism is actually applicable to politics. I respect the work of both of them but I cannot ignore the possibility that two such prominent voices seem content, publicly at least, in knowing that they entirely disagree on an issue that should be regarded as a fundamental aspect of what skepticism actually is. That's just my opinion, but I'd be more than happy to debate it.
   
   EDIT: Another idea for how the debate might be won - The synthesis ending. Basically, the audience can participate by buzzing in and proposing a synthesis answer to the debate. Either contestant can opt to agree with the synthesis proposal, and if the proposal gains consensus level within the crowd, the first of the contestants to have agreed wins the battle.

As I said, I'm not telling anyone to do anything, merely presenting my own ideal version of community in the hope that some people might see, understand and adopt some of my ideas. That's even the last I'm going to write on the matter. Between work and the baby, we've got too much on at the present for me to contribute further to the discussion on Atheismplus. Beyond replying to comments here and the odd tweet, I shall remove myself now and wish you all good luck.

* I have used 'community' as shorthand for what Benedict Anderson called the 'imagined community', different to a geographical community (of which I say nothing) in its scope and number.

An attempt at being constructive regarding this whole #FTBullies thing

The purpose of this blog is to try and offer a hopefully new and constructive perspective to the increasingly bitter debate currently ongoing within the skeptical/atheist community. I am a relative newcomer to this issue having only caught up with it over the last few days; I'm hoping my relatively outside view might be of some value to someone. First though, a little context is needed to try and minimise the seemingly inevitable (potentially from both sides), knee-jerk, distinctly un-skeptical responses that may ensue.

I've considered myself a skeptic for many years. I hold to no pre-packaged political viewpoint. I like to think that I take each issue as it comes, listening to logical arguments on both sides and trying to form an opinion for myself based on the evidence available. Yet I know as well as any that not I nor anybody is infallible, and so if you find reason to disagree all that I ask is that you reply with evidence, logic and respect in a manner befitting the term skeptic. Straw is for horses.

This is my first blog for nearly a year. During that time I have been feeling somewhat adrift, for reasons that may colour my perception of what is going on (consider this a disclosure). Last year, in the wake of the rise of Occupy, I sought to debate politics with my fellow skeptics. In return, I got insults, strawmen, prevarications, and the kind of trollish behaviour we usually criticise our opponents of. On the one hand I had Brian Dunning claiming that politics couldn't be assessed skeptically because it was 'value-based', while on the other hand I had DJ Grothe proclaiming the exact opposite. It suddenly occurred to me that all one needed to do to break the skeptical consensus on organised religion was to ditch the metaphysical stuff and call it politics. The realisation that within our community, beyond religion, alternative medicine and claims of the supernatural lay ideologies as deeply entrenched as any that we seek to counter was a shockingly painful one.

Anyone who believes that the skeptical community possesses a rational quality that puts it above such things as ideology, ignorance and “pointless” schisms, as I once did, are simply being naïve. Don't get me wrong, we are in good company; the vast majority of intellectual thinkers since the enlightenment have made the same, relativistic mistake. But I'm not writing this to point fingers, cast blame and root for one team over another. It isn't constructive in an environment such as this. My area of interest lies in networks and power relations, and their relationship with culture and cultural evolution. So, in order to try and explain this in as objective a manner as possible, I shall try to stick to that framework to briefly explain why I think this situation is for the best.

The basis for any community is shared culture. How that culture is produced, disseminated and consumed determines the social power structures that emerge. At one end of the spectrum we have the cult, a strictly top-down model of cultural creation and dissemination, resulting in a group of individuals bound tightly together by virtue of having consumed an all-but-identical shared culture. At the other end we have something like the skeptical community; a far more networked collection of (often grass-roots) affiliated organisations and individuals. Furthermore, thanks to the internet we have developed this community largely through a democratised meritocracy of cultural production, something that has allowed people of independent minds to create bonds without the need for a centrally-derived shared culture.

However, there is another kind of power dynamic that hasn't been addressed by this unprecedented (in scale and rate of iteration anyhow) model of community. Within any growing community, there will always be a relative disparity of power between those that have risen to positions of authority and influence, often the 'veterans', and those that are either primarily consuming or else simply new to the scene. As the creators of the overwhelming majority of the communities universally shared culture, these influential people. to a large extent, determine the discourse and, as good skeptics should, they primarily discuss that which they know: alternative medicine, religion, pseudoscience etc. However, it is my opinion that as well as being a handy rule to keep in mind when embarking on a debate, limiting oneself in this way can also be used to justify ignoring issues that fall outside of those established within the shared culture, and/or conflict with one's concepts and beliefs derived from other spaces entirely, outside of the skeptical community (family, local 'real-life' community values etc). This creates a naturally emerging, unsystematic top-down element in the creation of our shared culture and, as a result, there is a group-think dynamic at play that is far more ingrained in some than others. This is where the split lies in my view. We have a group of people that can see the elephants in the room, people who's values from other communities cannot be so easily compartmentalised-away and who cannot, for whatever reason, maintain the self-censorship/denial necessary to maintain this veneer of complete unity. And, as with every community that has ever come before us, we also have a group that denigrates such up-starts as trouble-makers and upsetters of the natural order.

Oh the irony.

The important thing is the veneer has been stripped away. Now should be the time for all the major-players to face up to the fact that there are fundamental aspects of skepticism that have yet to be addressed. On this, you would all come to us as equals. It is simply ridiculous to say that politics and social issues are not the realm of skepticism; that may be the desire of those that wish to maintain the illusion, but discourse and method will emerge soon whether you like it or not. Social science may not be as empirical, but that doesn't mean the answer is to simply ignore social issues or, worse yet, to seemingly actively discourage its discussion to a sometimes obsessive degree. Only through the influential people openly discussing these issues sensibly, skeptically (no more ad-hominems, no more strawmen, no more disrespect), and with no taboos, can we hope to sustain this community in a way that can act as an effective force for good. Create and systematise tools to facilitate this communities evolution, or die (metaphorically speaking, of course). This is what must be done if you want to try and keep this movement together, though in my heart-of-hearts I doubt if it is either possible nor even desirable. If one thing has come out of this for me, it is a feeling of confirmation that this movement, like all before it, does not have what it takes to be truly unprecedented. While the wider societies in which we all live continue to propagate radically different, largely segregated cultural concepts, we cannot expect to maintain a community through simply ignoring it. If that's what you want, call it a club.

This has gone on long enough. In my own personal opinion, if you cannot resist partaking in this runaway tit-for-tat behaviour, launching strawmen and ad-hominem attacks, gleefully interpreting emotional and distressed individual statements as representative for an entire group (and this goes to both sides), then you do not deserve to call yourselves skeptics. As you might have guessed, and for the reasons I described in the beginning, I find my sympathies lying with those that want more from a community than possibly the most ironic case of group-think likely to have ever existed, those that cannot separate their skepticism and their social conscience Therefore I offer them some, in my opinion, much needed advice, should they desire it.

• Do not simply make the same mistake again and think for one moment that this time the community is going to be perfect. We are all the product of a shit system, and we all bring issues because from it. Reinforcing an us-versus-them narrative merely takes you along a well-trodden path to a place you don't want to be.
  
  
• If the energy and enthusiasm is genuinely there then you do have an opportunity to create something special. The world of politics in all its forms is crying out for skeptical discourse.
  
  
• This should probably be titled rule number one, two and three: beware your own hidden ideologies and confirmation biases. Actually put in effort at self-reflection, mainstream and systematise it into forums and debates and discourse. Learn about facilitation and conflict-resolution. Skepticism and social issues has a bad track-record; don't be complacent and assume that it won't be you next. 
  
  
• Also importantly, apologise for errors, things said in the heat of the moment, strawmen and the like. Try and develop a shared culture of meticulous debate etiquette: if the group-think and underlying ideologies of those shouting loudest are as deeply held as I suspect, then it isn't them that you are appealing to . It is that majority that primarily consume that are the most reachable. I genuinely think that on the larger issues you guys have the moral high ground. Make sure you act like it.
  
  
• If you want to be truly unprecedented, there is a good rule of thumb to keep in mind (the simplest there is, in my view). Facilitate cultural evolution. This means creating discourse to find ways to systematise checks and balances against group-think and the development of dogma: always actively seek greater diversity; if in a position of high influence, accept the role with humility and act primarily as a facilitator, promoting as many voices as possible whilst ensuring one's own voice is not dominating multiple discourses; create an environment where people can be comfortable playing devils advocate (far more constructive for the neutral reader should the current level of debate out there remain so toxic); actively resist attempts to create an us-versus-them culture, a breeding ground for the development of group-think; and do not be afraid to remind and correct those who share your (at present) beliefs when you feel that they are out-of-line or in need of some self-reflection.
  
  UPDATE: There is a good critique by Massimo Pigliucci, with lively comments, to be found here:
  http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/on-with-comment-about-richard-carriers.html 
  Also,
  http://atheistethicist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/atheism-plus-arguments-and-concerns.html
  ... is a reasoned blog by Alonzo Fyfe addressing some of the flawed responses to #atheismplus as well as a critique of the current circumstance.

An open letter to skeptics.

I have been a skeptic for a number of years now. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe hooked me away from any esoteric leanings I might have had in my youth, and since then I've come to see that the rejection of ideology inherent in the community can itself be a uniting factor in a vanguard for evidence-based change. Now however, I am no longer as sure as I once was.

As skeptics, we try to use a set of evidence-based rules to evaluate information. But what do we use to objectively pick which information to evaluate in the first place? I'm sure many would reply that aim of skepticism's public face is to try and educate others and counter some of the many falsehoods that have the potential to cause suffering. Huge amounts of energy have gone into tackling Power Balance bracelets, anti-vaccers, climate-change deniers, homeopaths... any number of people that abuse reason and science. Well, I put it to you that if you really care about miss-information causing suffering on a massive scale, we have one massive elephant in the room.

The Neoliberal capitalist system the majority of us live under is founded upon false premises that have absolutely no evidence to back them up. Where else would we countenance such power on the scientific basis of a couple of slightly intuitive but evidentially lacking phrases (trickle-down, rising boats etc)? It causes misery to billions. We are real, society is real, the economic system is real... surely that's all we need to be skeptical? Where are the guests at TAM speaking out about the falsehoods inherent in the Neoliberal economic model, or their views on human nature? Is politics off the table, and if so why?

Scientific consensus is adequate to assure that the skeptical community trusts scientists regarding climate change. Why then do we patently ignore the consensus regarding the relative nature of the human mind? Both are conclusions born from complex systems. Both have deniers yet we go for the crack-pot and not the powerful. Have we all lost sight of what is most important in life? How else to explain the silence while a psuedo-scientific ideology structures societies in ways that are completely counter to what the consensus suggests makes humans happy.

Any other pseudo-scientific, profit-driven endeavour that caused this much suffering would be brought up all the time, on multiple podcasts and proportionately represented at TAM. Glancing through The Amazing Meeting line-up from London, I see one person, a blogger Greta Christina, who has politics among their interests. This is just wrong.

I have long thought that the skeptical community will grow and usher in a new age of (actual) rational, ideology-free thought. But the ideology-less taking on the BIG skeptical issue of our times are not the skeptics but the people of the Occupy Movement. Their courage to speak truth to power while rejecting ideology has made me question why the skeptical community seem content to tackle the little fish. As a community we have to discuss this glaring blind-spot and ask, honestly, why it is there. I sincerely hope that it is not to avoid controversy. If you don't feel like me, then all I ask is that the next time someone asks why you do what you do, just consider saying "mainly it's because I don't like the direct affront to the science I care about" instead.

Because people ARE suffering, and if we do not challenge this ideology and reverse this explosion of inequality, the science says it's only going to get worse if nothing is done to reverse this trend toward greater inequality.

I'm struggling to reconcile this now I've thought about it. Would sincerely live to hear your thoughts.

Yours sincerely

Ben King

If you would like to read more on why Neoliberalism is the new organised religion, here's my take on it.

My thoughts on Occupy Norwich and Occupy Together

“The world is beginning to fracture, dissonance is building and if nothing is done by those in power the fault-line will snap.  The world may be talking of an Arab revolution, but History will, I believe, see this as the birth of something bigger: the emergence of the first global identity founded on equality and a rejection of power.”

I wrote those words in February 2011, though I can happily say that I wasn't expecting it for a little while yet. To have a common cause shared between people all over the world used to take decades, if indeed it could be said to have happened at all. Occupy Together took just a few weeks; around 1000 protests in nearly 90 countries, simultaneously expressing a collective subjectivity the like of which has never been seen. Occupy Norwich is a part of that, and it does more for soft diplomacy than the government ever could.

Whether in the name of Occupy or not, change is coming. This is because what Anderson called the 'imagined community', our cultural identity, is closely correlated to communication technology which is itself going through a fairly extraordinary exponential growth. Throughout history, it was a rare place that the 1% of the time did not have near complete monopoly in the production of cultural identity, often utilising the 'other' against the 99% for no reason other than it works. Now such technological advances have progressed to beyond national boundaries, beyond language even, we are seeing the first generation in History able to form an identity that was not of their masters' creation.  And what do they see? They see “others” of their generation around the world cheering each other on, helping each other in the face of arrest or even death, connecting with them far more deeply than they do with their own rulers (who themselves share far more in common with each other than they do with their own citizens). It is no longer justifiable to us to kill, exploit and profiteer from millions of our brothers and sisters away from these shores; the social-contract needs re-writing.

For the first time, people can develop through a cultural milieu not created by this ideology or that, but by thousands of regular folk the world over. This democratised identity, of which Occupy is but one emergent property, comes to radically different conclusions about morality than the closed, institutionalised mindset of capitalism or nationalism. It sees human equality as a given, not a PR weapon. It recognises the value of plurality, the danger of any ideology. From all corners of the globe, we are finally starting to produce the hitherto missing context that is necessary for many to even be aware there is a problem. It is a first step, and it will help.

Right Vs Left? That's what they want you to think.

My wife and I were discussing Ron Paul last night, in light of a friend of hers having taken to campaigning for the guy.  I find him really interesting, if only because he really sets things in a light different to that of the orthodox duopoly of U.S. politics.  Personally, I think the guy is a 50/50 mix of way ahead of his time and utterly deluded.  He is bold enough to say that government is corrupt, that central control of national spheres is insufficiently legitimate, yet blind to the inherently anti-social nature of capitalism and the danger of putting money before people.  That got me thinking.

Ask anybody, Left or Right, this simple question: "Should people be able to work freely together to determine their own fate in a community that provides for each other?"  Only severe ideologues would say no, right?  So, let us assume that the vast majority of people, on the Left and the Right, would answer the affirmative.  Now let us break down how Left and Right interpret that question and see where things go wrong...

From the Left, many would argue that America is already there; that democracy represents the rule of the people, that people live freely and that tax revenues, since they are administered by the people's representatives, is synonymous with 'providing for each other'.  The threat, as they see it, are the corporations, those that would impinge on our ability to 'determine our own fate' by administering an economic system which keeps the majority in or near poverty, manipulating us as consumers and acting outside of the law.

The Right could make a good case for saying the same thing, though for very different reasons.  Markets and the private sphere represent the most advanced form of working together, communities providing for each other in the most efficient manner.  It is the Government that threatens this self-determination, it alone hampering the freedom of the private sphere with regulations, federal laws and tax (seen here as an illegitimate form of coerced cooperation).

 If either of these descriptions fit the glove that you, dear reader, wear... please ask yourself this: Have you been lied to?  Both interpretations are theoretically true (as in utopian/dangerous if acted upon/actually false), hence it's perfectly understandable how people can be led to believe them.  Look again at the initial question I posed: both Left and Right want that - the great divide we see is nothing more than hyped-up bullshit jointly fed to us by the supposed leading lights of an apparently divided ruling class .  Look at the differences in the two arguments, see how easy it is to join the dots and meet in the middle.  Say it with me:

The government is corrupt.  They do not work for the public good.

Corporations have corrupted it.  They do not work for the public good.

Now, if one of these statements seems false to you, I am sorry.  Nothing I say here will make the slightest bit of difference and I simply take heart that your views are the memetic equivalent of a genetically inbred evolutionary dead-end.  If both these statements ring true, be you Left or Right, please recognise that you in this you share more in common than either do to politicians or CEOs.  While bi-partisan bile continues to rise, the real irony lies in the closeness of state and corporation, our "leaders", GovCorp; collectively getting filthy rich while fuelling this charade of a battle between two "competing" concepts of freedom (the only difference is the method by which they take your money).  They are not competing!  They swap jobs, share lunch, do rich person stuff and quietly ignore the filthy cultural-wash that trails in their wake, dividing us, conquering us.

Wake up people.  Corruption is what ails us all. Corruption is what that can unite us.

An analogy for our body politic

More great stuff as I read my way through The Multitude has inspired this seed of an analogy I'd like to share. I'll make it short and sweet because I have lots to do...

We, society, are one system. Some now regard its borders as having disappeared, but most of us are still partitioned politically according largely to centuries old borders. Either way, the analogy can work at any level due to the self-similar nature of complex systems.

Imagine our system, the political body, as a literal body. Society is broken-down into parts according to people's skills and specialisations, forming the bodies organs and tissue and limbs (armies for its, well, armies). I think it would be fairly bi-partisan of me to say that money is now the lifeblood of society, hence blood for me represents its place in the body.

Unfortunately, in this particular body, the blood seems to be ganging up on the rest, subjugating the brain (politicians) into creating ever more blood that then stubbornly refuses to go anywhere except around and around the main arteries and to two highly-pumped arms whose job it is to beat up on its own legs (the exploited masses). Meanwhile, the rest of the body is suffering, unable to do anything against a brain gone rogue and poisonous blood.

If you are rich, tell me, is this rational? You are part of this body. If we get sick, trust me, you'll get sick too.

So what would be rational? Well, it wouldn't be too radical to suggest that the blood needs to circulate to all parts of the body, in sufficient amounts, to ensure that the whole body can work in unity. The brain needs to attend to those areas that require it, and not to just one organ or function. The arms need to be told to stop beating itself up, and perhaps reach for some painkillers, or else try a bit of massage to ease the pain its been causing. This is a minimum standard, sufficiently rational to be understood by everyone; an idea whose time has come now.

But we can do better than that.

Our collective endeavour in accumulating knowledge is delivering to us an escape, a hand up from the gutter of having to be a rectal muscle your entire life. Every one of us has a brain of our own. We are all qualified to be part of the brain, indeed, a brain only works because of the sheer number of neurons in the system.  Soon, if we can just stop the blood from killing us through our currently tiny brain, we will have the chance to all be part of the brain, infinitely malleable, pure subjectivity giving rise to optimised emergent properties, a global consciousness that does not seek to destroy what has become itself.  The body can be mechanized, automated, intimately controlled by the multitude of the brain for the rational end of optimised sustainability and quality of life. This is what the Venus Project envisions.  People take the piss, but philosophically, historically, sociologically, cognitively, physically... I can see no reason why it cannot come to pass... indeed the opposite: I see it as an inevitability that only the rulers of the top-down identities stand in the way of.

Better that than dying in a puddle of blood, no?

What we need to learn from future robots on Mars... and Bees

On this weeks ever-excellent Skeptics Guide to the Universe, I heard tell of a possible future plan for exploring the surface of Mars. Rather than use a single rover, the idea is to use a swarm of robots that will spread out from the landing spot, search a wide area and then return to upload and share data and presumably recharge. Each robot would have searched for the same list of pre-defined information and used common measuring techniques so that when the data is shared, a consensus can be reached as to the value of each robots findings.  Should a particularly interesting spot have been found, a larger group could go to analyse in more depth, or perhaps nothing of interest was found and the search could continued elsewhere.

The inspiration for the idea came from bees. It is the same process that is involved in looking for a new place to start a hive.  Each bee will scout before reporting its findings back to the hive, which will then come to a collective decision.  In each case, consensus is possible because each individual is part of the same shared reality, which is in turn interpreted the same way, according to the same rules. So what the hell is it that robots and bees have that humans don't?! Well, the question actually needs to read, "What do we humans have that these bees and robots don't?"

Here's a thought experiment (I will use the robots for the comparison, since the concepts are more familiar to us, being tools of our creation, than the inner-workings of a bees brain): Clearly the robots represent a highly simplified model of what our society actually represents.  To make analogy true therefore, we would need robots that were looking for different things, with different measuring devices, and different concepts of what information was of most importance. Furthermore, instead of each robots having an equal voice, a small percentage of the robots spoke for all the others, thereby ensuring that all but a few of the observations were ignored and consensus remains an impossibility.

We humans do not all share the same software; we are not the Borg. Indeed, geographical separation alone has ensured radically different coneptions of what has value and how to measure that value, simply by virtue of the natural environment one inhabits. On top of that, more abstract separations have further undermined the unity of our judgement: Religion, race, sex, gender, wealth, even being ginger for crying out loud; All of these things and a thousand more have ensured that we are far from the robot ideal in terms of reaching consensus. All of these things I have mentioned, together they form culture, the software, our imagined community, our political identity.  It is thousands of years of top-down cultural (bio-political as Micahel Hardt and Antonio Negri call it) production, shaping our identities, passing from generation to generation; religious, nationalistic, commercial. It is what we believe, where we live, what we do... that is what we have that bees and robots do not.  That is what gets in the way of us sharing an understanding our reality, the same shared reality that makes consensus possible in bees and robots. 

Notice above that I blame top-down cultural production for our woes? Top-down production of our identities is, by definition, synonymous with political power, not in the strict 'state' defintion but political in terms of the power to govern peoples lives in any form. This includes the religious and commercial as well. Each time communication structures have progressed, the political structure has been forced to evolve, open-up, in a constant struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. Yet always the oppressors had the power of identity creation, thereby ensuring that whenever the tension did finally break, the oppressed would, like an abused child, know nothing other than retribution-in-kind.  This no longer holds.  The internet is ushering in a new dawn of democratised cultural production, horizontally-derived identity that can, in all but a few countries, ignore all of the boundaries that stop us from reaching consensus (Anonyminity being the extreme conclusion).  Note here the I'm not saying that the Web is some sort of ready-made utpoia; all I am saying is that is can allow you to ignore those boundaries and that, since kids enjoying the internet have in many cases not yet internalised prejudice and ignorance quite yet, it can innoculate the young from the prejudice filled fear-politics used by their apparent elders.  Unfortunately, evolution is slow, condemning the Internets early years to cultural production whose authors were still very much of the top-down identity.

Another criticism would be that I am arguing for us to literally become the Borg, something that is further reinforced by the fact that I'm totally up for transhumanism. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Robots and bees have one primary function.  We do not; we have and should cherish our subjectivity. Consensus need only be reached in political arenas, in areas of societal organisation that has the power to impose identity upon us. We must work toward a complete split of past culture and politics, a counterintuitive notion yet only so to that part of us that has been directly formed from hundreds of years of top-down political identity.  To put it a less counterintuitive way: Do we want the fundamentalist religious, nationalistic or capitalistic ideologies of the few to determine the organisation of all of society? For all of past identity is the creation of the few, ensuring that public policy is determined by religious ideas thousand of years old, 18th Century political philosophy and institutions or wealth grabbing corporations fresh from the 19th century.  The alternative is to allow reality, evidence, to guide us, to recognise our own flaws and the insignificance of the individual, to harness, trust and give equal voice to all of the swarm.  If we were to work toward that then, far from becoming a mindless bee, you would become free in all the other areas of your life to be more than simply an indictrinated robot.  All that is being asked is that in political arenas, where people make decisions that are imposed upon others (whether willingly or not), that those decision makers leave their personal past, their personal judgement, their concept of right or wrong at the door, and allow the evidence to dictate the end results.  This could not fail to be more humanitarian, since all of the evidence points to us all being one system.

None of us should trust our own judgement.  We must all recognise our own pejudices, reflect on the perhaps instinctive rejection of the idea of splitting our known-culture and politics. Even our physiology works against us, showing patterns that aren't there, showing us a limited confabulation of reality. Slowly we are coming to realise these things, something epitomised by the exploding growth of the skeptic movement. Consensus is possible in science, precisely because it understood very early on that culture was an impediment to truth and thus attempted to filter out its effects. It has advanced tremendously, a testament to our ability to work together toward understanding ourselves and our environment. It is by defintion a step-by-step process evolution; but we are beginning to walk the right way.

The Internet, global identity and the overthrow of power.

The world is beginning to fracture, dissonance is building and if nothing is done by those in power the fault-line will snap.  The world may be talking of an Arab revolution, but History will, I believe, see this as the birth of something bigger: the emergence of the first global identity founded on equality and a rejection of power.

Why do I think this? Throughout my writing, one thing stands out as crucial: Morality is correlated with communication technology.  That we empathise with that which we know, that we connect with, has been known a long time yet it's ramifications have yet to be fully understood.  It is clear that the accelerating pace of technological change was responsible for an accelerating pace of emancipation, inclusion into societies moral sphere. Now this advance has progressed beyond national boundaries, we are seeing the first generation in History able to form an identity that was not of their masters creation.  And what do they see? They see others of their generation around the world cheering them on, helping them at risk of arrest, connecting with them far more deeply than they do with their own rulers.

Lets be clear. We are relative beings. Its all very well having lots of material goods, but if your 'advanced' nation has extreme wealth inequality then happiness it will not bring. Every nation on earth is governed by corrupt people who share more in common with each other than they do with their own citizens.  Let me explain why this is so important.

Imagine taking all the people in the world and splitting them into two groups. In the first group, you have all of the people with power: the wealthy, the politicians, the capitalists and all the resources they command.  In the second group we have everybody else: the dispossessed, the relative poor, the oppressesed.  Seems fairly one-sided right? Well you are right... the powerful don't stand a chance.  Here's why.

Imagine these two groups as two circles whose size is proportioned solely to the number of individuals. Now see the people tower over the powerful (at least on paper).  But, those resources I mentioned earlier are also people: the army, the police force, lower ranking officials who decide they don't have enough to risk their own lives... an awful lot of their family and friends may well be on the other side of the divide.  Those not fully indoctrinated, once confronted with a huge fucking circle that aint afraid no one no more, will switch sides, aware of their kingmaker status due to the reliance that power has on them.

Where it gets messy is when you consider those 'old-school' elements of society, potentially numerous, who have been subjected to living an identity constructed by others, be it religion, nationalism or free-market ideals.  These people know no other identity, literally.  They are unable to empathise with the 'other', unaware that all around them their children are coming to identify with them more than their own parents. This largely generational divide has never been more evident than now, the young having evolved beyond the power schemas of their elders, disgusted at the immorality of outdated politics.

Example:

N.b This is very generalised but, since I'm making judgement calls solely on systems theory, I don't feel like I'm being offensive in what is to come.  After all, I'm not actually passing judgement at all here, merely talking History.

America is an interesting memetic sandwich.  Down the coasts it is highly multicultural.  It is here we also find the most liberal, open-minded, largely Democratic individuals.  Through the middle and down south you have a more religious, largely Republican society with little memetic mixing at all.  If one looks at the different memes inherent in these two polarised views, you simply have to come to the conclusion that Democrats represent the most recently emancipated ideas. After-all, Republican dogma is wrapped up in religious ideas whose age is measured in thousands of years.  Their most recent dogma is that of the free-market, an unobtainable ideal decades old, long disproved, that is successful solely because of it's undoubted facilitation of greed.  These are ideas whose time came when communication technology was still limited to a state monopoly!  They may have been moral then, but in the face of an opposition whose ideals extend further they appear ever more selfish and immoral.

The problem is that there has been such limited mixing in many Republican heartlands that identity there is still created with mental tools that are decades old at best, retaining the 'other' of that time. History does not swing back as far as republicans want.  Not without major repression.  They are desperately clinging to certain ways, certain of God, certain of the possibility of the chance of the dream of becoming Rich; indoctrinated to blind subservience and supplied with pre-packaged, logic-defying ammunition with which to insult dissonance away. Group-think, positive and negative bias; a cultural bubble unto themselves where the unknown is riduculed in an unknowing way.  Whatever narrative Fox news says, is.

On the other side, Democrats too are now on the wrong side of History. They share more in common with their Republican counterparts than either party has with the citizens they represent.  Both comprise a Duopoly of corruption self-legitimised by unquestioned capitalist ideals of the primacy of wealth and misguided social Darwinism. Neither talks about the real issues: military spending, corruption, bought-power, a re-evaluation of what it means to be a state in the globalised world, because it is both parties that are guilty of forgetting their place.  The choice of social destination is a sham, a mirage; it is merely whether you take the scenic rout* to repression or the highway.

Yet through it all comes a youth that by human nature seems to grow into technology as if it has always been there (which to them it has).  This ability to adapt is leading millions of youths to plug in, along with like-minded individuals around the world, and witness global events of shared importance.  Images and voices of Tunisia and Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, have seared themselves into minds the world over, especially in the wired-up West, marking the beginning of a global identity that will countenance the universal use of the 'other' by states everywhere.  This breaking free of nationally enclosed, officially-manufactured identity will coalesce into a global moral force that will rally around the one issue that unites people everywhere: Corrupt Power.  Rationality will act as an attractor, and rationality derived from global communication structures will be global in its conclusions: One people, One planet.

When people see freedom, they yearn for it.  The opening up of social spaces into a global communication network will, without doubt, mark the greatest revolution humanity has ever known.  Until now, revolutions have been subject to limited, nationalistic worldviews, the oppressed becoming the oppressor because, like the abused becoming abusers, it was all they ever knew.  Global communication and the explosion of comparative data it brings marks a turning point, the first expressions of global identity no longer bound by the grip of the few.  Here dissonance begets cynicism and the very concept or 'power' begins to go the way of racism; a social ill that will no longer be tolerated.  This is the first generation for whom their moral common denominator is that of humanity as a whole, and that is something that the inherently nationalistic state, a concept born in ignorance of the wider-world, was not built to cope with.  

Read Anonymous's latest statement.  Tell me that social schema isn't way more moral than the racist, wealth-obsessed, real-politik of the status-quo.  That shit's contemporary, that shit's on the right side of History.

* (sic)

A Defense of Capitalism, not that they might see it that way...

Capitalism is shit.  That I feel is the consensus of the majority of the world from my limited viewpoint from on lucky street.  It is also, I would argue, closer to what the majority of the capitalist world itself would proffer compared to its glittering opposite as the contemptuously titled ‘End of History’.   The growing inequality; complete ignorance of what it is to be happy, nay, the frightened denial inherent in wealth’s desire to buy what cannot be bought.  It has the potential to tear us apart as a species, this walling off of homes and minds.  But this article isn’t really about that.  It is about perspective, about how we got where we are and why we can have optimism about where we may be going.  It is also about picking the right target, so that we may endeavour not to marginalise those that might otherwise adept to the zeitgeist.

Humanity has progressed to varying degrees through three main types of imagined identities (as in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities), created by those who monopolised cultural production.  Religion, the State and Commerce emerged one from the other to accommodate the ever-greater complexity that derived from the accumulation of knowledge and technology.  Larger empires, multiple faiths and disparate people... they could only be bound by common memes to the extent communication technology allowed.  This is why a common vernacular in Europe, as brought about through the printing press (commerce), facilitated such fervent nationalism.

Throughout history, power has devolved; and that is reflected in the level of brutality.  Just a few hundred years ago, heads were left on spikes in city streets as warnings. Genocide was commonplace, the wholesale rape, pillage and hand-made destruction of entire cities… who could imagine that in the developed world? From Emperor and Demi-God, King and Aristocracy, CEO and Marketing… Those who create culture, create identity.  That power is now democratising further, toward an information-based identity.  If we identify with the ‘other’ through shared culture then we have done the complete opposite to the dehumanising process that enabled the Holocaust.   Even simple communication is enough, since our shared humanity brings with it common desires, familiar fears, more than enough to make that connection.

This is what capitalism has given us.   It got here through some pretty noble ideas, ideas that the right are loudest to (often blindly) shout but which, compared to what came before (and sometimes now to be fair) are pretty radical.  Individual Freedom?  A lot of the headway with that was from merchants and business.  Free-Markets and movement of capital and labour are very much post-nationalist ideals that resulted in a changed dynamic by the mid-20^th Century.   The consumerism it produced enabled TV’s to be in almost every house, something many would regard as negative when it fact it’s merely primitive.  By the standards of the age however it was a miracle and no one can deny the effect film has had on the global consciousness. In the book Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri sum up this transormational aspect of caiptalism by saying:

"Capital has always been oriented towards the production, reproduction and control of social life... [however], the production of Capital is, ever more clearly and driectly today, the production of social life."

In other words, now that the fuits of capital have enabled the multitude itslef to partake in social production, capital has gone from creating and maintaining virtical social identities (when the form was monopolised by the state) to being the medium of expression of the multitude itself.  Truly this represents the biggest shift in tendency since Marx himself recognised the coming hegenomy that capital represented at a time when agriculture was still hugely dominent.  Now we are tending toward true emancipation of the individual, a reawakening of the notion of network, not centralised discipline.

We have to be careful to remember what Capitalism actually consists of.  We are quick to picture the fat cat corporate exec, lighting his cigar with a fifty-pound note.  Yet the majority of capitalism feeds from the same meme-pool as you or I (assuming you aren’t an actual corporate exec reading this which, if so, please change).  Sure, as you get to the top, the memetic influence becomes restricted to high-powered, institutionalised jargon and dogmatic priorities, an identity that has outsourced its own responsibility to humanity for the sake of shareholders.  But they do not live in a vacuum.  Not like Kings, not even like the four-yearly terms for politicians.  They have customers and they have staff and more so than religion or the state they have more incentive to keep us happy. They know about evolve or die.

In the last hundred and fifty years capitalism has shown considerable amounts of adaptation in the west when it comes to western populations. It’s because we aren’t the ‘other’ anymore, no longer the proles.  We’ve had that outsourced now too.  For decades, multi-nationals have polluted, killed, bribed, betrayed and pillaged their way across the world, every bit the fundamentalist with their own holy book with it’s own commitments.  Number 1, Make money for shareholders. Number 2, Make money for shareholders… I’ve no doubt many are great family people that sincerely believe they do good.  We are relativistic beings, and if you are unknowingly trapped in a wealth induced meme-bubble consisting primarily of positive reinforcement how can you think otherwise?

The co-opting of the political class by corporations combines the two most potent cultural identity producers in the world since the demise of religion in the west.  Listen to a politician.  Now listen to a high-level manager.  They speak the same language.  There is a pretty obvious reason why: it is because of the intricate web of links between business and government, a back-slapping, champagne swilling orgy of congratulatory arse-licking; a web that forms a cocoon. It is this meme-bubble that the global consciousness should seek to expose, using the infrastructure capitalism lays, (as they must to compete) to counter this push from corporations (unlimited funding of politicians in the U.S., the concentration of media conglomerates, the institutionalisation of mainstream media) in an info-war that will grow ever larger as technology continues to explode exponentially. 

But this will take time.  Evolution has to happen in steps.  There are no sky-hooks in biological evolution and there aren’t any here.  Violence can clear a blockage, but it must be an act of last resort on behalf of the majority else, like suicide bombings, they will appear illegitimate to the global consciousness.  It must be rational, targeted violence and only when the right to speak and to listen to contributions to the creation of imagined identity have been fully denied.  Too much, and without rational limits and objectives both stated and kept to, and the chaos produced can have the opposite to the desired effect in the short-medium term leading to greater suffering.

Some predictions for humanities continued progress

 Extrapolating from the Historical Progress of Identity

After reading the inspirational predictions for the next 25 years on the Guardian website, I felt inspired to expand on my theories of the correlation between identity and communication technology and attempt to extrapolate my own predictions from the historical progress of identity and humanities study of the complex system that is society.

Here is the chart I drew up giving a rough outline of the cycles and progression of memetic production (identity), as accelerating advances in communication technology take our complex system to greater scales of connectivity: http://tinyurl.com/2ub9khm

Nb. For the sake of identifying key features, simplification and generalisation are to some extent necessary. Exceptions will always be found since the spread of communication technology (the framework of the complex system) is not universally even.  Indeed, accross the world all stages of identity may be present at any one time until we converge together.

The following identities are based upon the catagorisation of what Anderson termed 'imagined communities', those identities that transcend the local and which bind humans together into large enough groups to constitute emergent properties we know as History.  Emergent properties of complex systems are self-similar, and so we see at each definition of scale self-similar processes and cycles regardless of the actual content of these imagined identities...



Fundamental Imagined Identities

Three fundamental identities have arisen on Earth: Religion, State and Commerce. These identities have found homes within each of us to varying degrees of dominance in what we believe, where we live and what we do, respectively.  Each arose in times of expanded communication technology (language, mathematics, transport, media, digital etc) and became seemingly permanent by attaining a monopoly of memetic production which then suffused cultures with language, symbolism and memes which persisted beyond the control of the monopoly itself, continuing to influence future individuals identities.

As each new identity emerges it goes through a cycle.  Firstly, it identifies itself in relation to the older identity, by definition a necessity since this is the memetic monopoly one has to play with.  Thus States began as theocracies, corporations evolved from National enterprises and individualism is the progeny of the corporately defined 'individual as consumer'.  There have been three fundamental identities thus far, but a fourth is now emerging, that of the autonomous individual. 

Each progression is the result of an increase in knowledge facilitated by a more detailed, diverse and extensive complex system (society).  Each progression of identity represents a new level of emancipation, with greater sharing of power, more feedback, more freedom and importantly greater democratisation of memetic production.  This last point is crucial.  Since identity is produced from culture, the less monopolised memetic-production is the more emancipated individual identity can be.  It represents the opposite of dogma, of ideology.  Democratised memetic production means the elimination of whole-scale identity creation of the many by the few and the exposure of that manipulation through contact with the demonised, mythologised 'other' of which they speak.

Driving this emancipation is rationality and cognitive dissonance.  Each new identity succeeds the last because it's embracing amalgamation of more diverse memes results in a closer approximation of reality.  As the anachronisms of prior identities become visible through the advance of knowledge, cognitive dissonance increases also, leading to new generations to come to predominantly new conclusions contrary to the dogma of the established order.  It is precisely because we grow old and die, together with the rebellious, adaptive, open-mindedness of youth, that society is able to progress politically as our technologically driven shifts in identity occur.




The cycle of each fundamental identity

Emergence
As dogma becomes exposed through increased communication, ideas begin to form from the emerging cognitive dissonance.  These ideas are presented as rationalisations within the context and under the regulation of the existing memetic monopoly (as cause-and-effect demands).  As knowledge advances and more of the unknown becomes known (diluting the power of the mythological other), these sporadic rationalisations become untenable and cognitive dissonance spreads with more veracity for it, eventually leading to a paradigm shift in political governance and identity creation.

Co-opted Monopoly
Emerging from the language and culture of the previous fundamental identity comes a new monopoly on memetic production.  Religion is divorced from the state, corporations go from state enterprises to multi-national to supranational.  And yet, despite gaining absolute power, they still feel the need to dress themselves in rationalisations of memetic identities past, co-opting the power of reminiscence .  Hitler draped his genocide in divine garb, corporations practice with 'national interest' and individualism defines itself according, for now, to the corporate plan.  Each subverts the last to saturate our culture with their identity-creating memes common interests: power, wealth and the wilful ignorance of dissonance that may shake their self-serving, manufactured, yet no less sincere rationalisations for maintaining their brief turn at benefiting from inequality.

Peak identity
Our innate nature insists we continue to communicate, the obvious benefits that result maintaining a drive at increasing our communication networks.  Whilst political structures may come about through a domino-like paradigm shift, communication technology keeps accelerating exponentially, telescoping the rate of change dramatically as we get to ever finer definitions of this networked complex system we call society.  As such, there comes a point where dissonance becomes too great for the rationalisations of the ruling elites to make sense any longer. Take the Democratic system.  Founded on the inherently nationalistic doctrine of the social contract, it's usefulness is drastically outdated and unsuited to a globalised world.  It represent a broken network, with nodes that shut themselves off from one another, polluting the system. When communication structures available to the public exceed what is directly manageable by the ruling class, reality will begin to contrast with the official line, creating dissonance and the desire for change.

Decline
As our newly emerging identity (more complex network) forms, it's greater scope and scale of identity emancipation produces far more rational memes than those that came before.  This exposing of anachronisms is most keenly felt in the young, those who have yet to be infected with the dogmatic ideology they have had forced into their brain.  Dogma dies, to be replaced with better dogma, more inclusive dogma, until finally we break the cycle altogether.....


So what happens next?

I think Hegel will be happy to hear that his notion of History being mankind coming to know itself is truer than most gave him credit for.  As communication technology spreads to the masses one step at a time, political structures follow suit by slowly adjusting, sometimes piecemeal, sometimes radical and violent, much as an earthquake does depending on how much tension has arisen.  The Internet is a radical technological invention and its effect on that tension cannot be over-estimated.  The corporate meme-machine as been busy telling us we are individuals, the by-product of which (lets not forget it's central aim is to flatter us into buying stuff) has resulted in a radical notion of the self as an autonomous unit, a self-contained bundle of rights and privileges.

This information age, where the democratisation of memetic production has exploded in a noisy, ill-defined sea of identity bits and bytes, isn't the utopia people make it out to be however.  It's message is better for sure, we are sovereign citizens of our own mass-manufactured castles, walled off mentally and physically in order to capture that essence of individuality, that false veneer of material possession hiding us from ourselves.  This hyper relative individualism, combined with the concept of competition that previous rulers deemed a virtue, plays havoc with peoples minds! The dissonance between the religious, state and corporate  models of perfected form and the reality we as individual live with is vast, resulting in depression, mental health problems and growing neurosis.

These problems, together with the Wests emerging relationship with those that have until now silently shouldered the burden of manufacturing our continued opulence, will expose the anachronisms of the corporate subversion of the state.  The supranational manifestation of wealth production will lose it's facade of greater good once the publics idea of what 'greater' constitutes exceeds that of their former creators.  Religious identities will continue to decline in-line with access to communication technology, with only those shunning the technolgoy itself left to ever-more radical ratioanlisations of their own actions.  The state will follow a similar course, with direct-democracy coming to those who recognise and escape the crip of corporate co-opting. 

The advantages of this progression are vast.  The information age will at last recognise humanity as one complex system, eliminating much of the discrimination and prejudice the exploitation of the 'other' has caused.  The corporate co-opting of the state will be exposed mainstream, with a separation similar to that of church and state (already a publicly stated ideal, it is never-the-less another lie rationalised from above) and the autonomous individual will demand greater power and control over their political lives through the co-opting of corporate ideals of individual freedom from outside forces.  The availability of information will need to adjust to the finer definition of network connections, recognising that democratised memetic production invalidates the rationalisation for such extensive centralised power and access to knowledge.


And beyond that...

Religion will become an ever decreasing force though still visible as memetic echoes of a former age.  States will be udner ever greater pressure to stampt out corruption, open itself to accountablility and allowing the public to govern itslef to ever greater degrees.  Corporations will be under similar pressure, perhaps basing themselves within those states that are most stubborn in embracing progress (since those conditions best for profit also appear to be worst for the public as a whole).  Free from national obligation, they could become even more explicitly dangerous, even to powerful states slow to change, before subsiding themselves into a rather different legacy than they currently envisage in their assumed noble ideals.

I am reminded at this point of an interview in the film Waking Life.  Aklilu Gebrewold talks about humans coming to understand themselves, how our minds work, what and who we waking up to in this new age of hypersubjectivity.  Only when our individual minds fully understand themselves in relation to reality can we then look outside of ourselves anew with a radical objectivity.  The ideas in this essay are in a similar vein, having come from an attempt to work my knowledge of philosophy and cognitive science to the world of the emergent properties of complex human systems (what we call History).  And so it goes with identity.  Once we understand ourselves as part of a complex system, it is a small step to recognise that that system is not closed, the sole dmoain of monosapien. No, we are but one part of a greater system, that of Nature, which in turn is but one insiginficant part of even greater, galactic, universal systems.

This will become the next source of conflict, the recognition of Nature and the environments place within our network.  Although communication structures will encompass all of humanity, we will still need to hear from Nature itself in order to understand our effect on it.  Dwindling resources and growing destruction of habitats and wildlife cannot continue if we are to exist peeacefully.  As such, practices and beliefs that run contrary to this will in turn produce enough dissonance to ensure that after the age of the individual comes the age of Earth itself: An identification with and recognition of this global biosystem and our place in it.  Once we are there, there is no other to be exploited and we will finally be able to live in harmony before amking the jump of understanding our place not simply on this planet, but within our galaxy, our universe.  We are still only at the beginning of that journey.

A new model of poltical debate...

It is time to bring technology to the process of governance and harness the power of the crowd.  Here's my idea about how we can do that...

In the houses of parliament, we need politicians to be working on national issues.  MP's should still be voted on by constituencies but as representatives working on national issues (they can of course still represent their locale, when called upon by councils if necessary).

Each day Mon-Fri, There should be a two-three hour debate on each of the main areas of interest: Economy and Business (inc. Employment), Energy and Environment, Home Affairs (transport, health, housing), Foreign Affairs and Science, Technology and Education (just off the top of my head).  In front of each seat is an ipad-like device, with software that facilitates the debate.

Each member can prepare for the debate in advance, uploading evidence and questions and even debating the questions in forums.  Come the debate, evidence and questions can be dropped into a queue during the government reports to argue or counter the claims made.  This queue is voted upon by MP's and those questions that get the most votes rise to the top to be asked.  If it is particularly pertinent to that precise moment of time, then an urgent flag can be attached and the speed with which the votes are placed contributing to the speed with which the question or evidence is put forward.

With practice, and with a slower oratory, I believe technology is finally at a stage where this can happen in close to real-time (it would take no longer than having to wait for the "rah rah rah' to die down).  Not only that, it can also open the process even further.

Imagine that you then have a pool of people picked for their outstanding knowledge.  Have their peers vote on candidates in journals in various expert disciplines, have NGO's and activist groups vote on experts of Human Rights etc.. Nurses, doctors, architects, lawyers, anyone with expertise and not simply academics.  This pool of people is then split into the five areas of interest for the debates, plus a pool of people that represent the universals.  By this I mean those factors that must be thought about in any given debate.. the environment, human rights, philosophers, historians etc.  This sixth group is included in every debate, alongside the segment that are experts for that particular debate.  MP's have no authority over members of these independent groups.

There could be space, say 20 virtual seats, that are open to public vote over two-yearly terms, subject to acceptance from the person.  Again, I don't care who is voted for.. they will have duties to attend and the possibility of recall if not participating.  A level of commitment is required and, bottom line, they are going to be as human as you or I.  As the only common denominator we all share, that has to be a valid viewpoint.  It would also allow campaigners to argue the case for any academic that may have fallen foul of their peer-group for whatever reasons (and there are good as well as bad...).   The worst case scenario, some kook gets in denying something, would see that person up against the hundred most eminent thinkers in that field and his lack of any sort of support would automatically stop progress of his or her agenda.  He would have to argue his case and if they are a kook, they'll lose.  It will be a totally public airing of their inadequacies as shown by the multimedia smack down they took.  If you feel that's time-wasting, be assured it wouldn't impinge on the debate itself, but in the experts only section.

These two groups (universals and each set of experts) would total a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people strong.  Exclusive software areas enable them to debate the following weeks debate in advance, do research, think of questions etc, which get voted upon by the group as a whole with the top 6-8 automatically guaranteed to be asked.  They then watch the debate live with the software shunting urgent or highly voted real-time questions into the parliamentary software for MP's to judge and vote upon also.  If a question or piece of evidence gains, say, 60% of the vote in the experts section, it would automatically bypass the MP's section and be put forward regardless. 

It would also be conceivable to have a national, open version with the top question voted prior to the debate, and the most voted upon question during the debate, being addressed at the end.  I don't care if it the most trivial or comical or irrelevant question you could imagine.  It could become a national sport to have asked of the prime minister a 'would you rather, or...' question and be good practice at campaigning for anyone willing to put the effort in just for a laugh.  We need to connect to our leaders in a deeper, more human sense as well as connecting to cut out the bullshit.

Everything should be viewable to the public.  Not only would we have hundreds of committed experts both contributing and holding our leaders to account, but the legitimacy would be so much greater.  We would be able to see for ourselves and contribute, the public funneling useful ideas and important evidence to experts, who are able to then pass it on up.

At the moment, we are but numbers in a faceless bureaucracy.. we need to use this technology we have now to create a structure connecting us all, one that we can see working and see when and why it doesn't.  MP's profiles would have to include all previous voting patterns with explanations attached, details of all contributions and interests.

Same too with the experts.  We need complete transparency, including all data.  There are computer wizards out there who are voluntarily inclined to sift through data, mashing it up and creating illuminating displays.  Let's use them!  They would be a great tool for the experts to present their questions and arguments in as concise a way as possible to facilitate practical real-time debate.. Twitter is a good training tool.  It could become an art-form in itself, stream-lined understanding.

To some, this may sound a backward step.  "Complicated things take time to discuss, you cannot present arguments in 140 characters!".  However, when as is the case in politics today, all that we the public hear is 90% corporatese bullshit spun from a yarn of obscurities anyway it might simply help trim the PR from the evidence.  It would be judged upon its merits, and with multimedia technology as it is, the possibilities for mashing evidence together in beautifully clear ways, labeled and linked from to indicate the providence of the evidence, together with a short paragraph outlining the implications, those merits could be substantial and contribute significantly to debate.

This kind of mass conversation in governance hasn't been possible before now.  But we would face such a fight to instigate it.  MP's have far more to lose than to gain in implementing this kind of reform.  The idea of opening themselves up to that level of expertise with the ability to upload implicating or contradictory evidence before everyone's blink of an eye would terrify them!  Yet this is surely the direction that democracy must take at some point in the non-too-distant future; it would be folly to fight it.

A theory of cultural evolutions relationship with Identity.

A theory of cultural evolutions 
relationship with identity.

Confession: I had, for whatever reason, persisted to write dissidence instead of dissonance when describing the conflict of contradictory ideas for the last week or so!  Thanks for not noticing Chris!  Ironically it means much the same thing, though dissonance, referring as it does to a feeling, is the necessary pre-cursor to what could be called 'cognitive dissidence', or the conscious rationalisation of memetic input to a conclusion that is counter to the 'official' doctrine resulting in the creation and transmission of further dissonance.  For that reason I quite like the term 'cognitive dissidence' as meaning the actions of a politically aware member of the fourth identity transcending the now weakening (at least in developed nations) memetic-monopoly of the ruling elites.

I don't like the idea of a final product.. especially intellectual products. It's only purpose is to monetise it, though at the expense of limiting memetic evolution. In this vain I am committed to both constantly evolving my work and acknowledging the origin of such evolution.  Here is a list of contributors, both those who gave feedback on the piece in its entirety and those who contributed expert knowledge on a specific aspect they wished to comment on.  On my google sites page I highlight the latest changes and additions with each piece of feedback in red.  Thanks for helping!

1. Chris Menning, co-curator of www.knowyourmeme.com and also involved in the online zine www.rocketboom.com.

2. Nathanial white, owner of the co-op Sociocratic Ecological and Economic Development (SEED)

3. Professor Marion Blute, University of Toronto.  Her research interest is in theory, in particular evolutionary epistemology,universal Darwinism or multi-process selection theory.

Before I start, I'd like to talk about terminology. Having read Marion Blutes excellent chapter on memes in her latest book (and seen it for myself in forums), I've come to see that memetics is a bit of a dirty word to some people, with different disciplines using different terminology: information exchange, cultural evolution etc.   I don't mind what you replace it with in your mind (after all, I read Levy's 'signs' as 'memes'), the important aspect is that it represents a second evolutionary process.  Having co-evolved, cultural evolution has taken an ever more dominant part of our identity, something that Dawkins referred to as freeing us from our selfish gene.

I don't know if it is Dawkins himself that triggers such a backlash, or whether it is simply the relative newness of the concept, but people seem to be stuck on such arguments as defining the unit of meme.  Yet the same problems exist for gene, as Blute points out.  I use the terminology of memetics as a general terminology common, according to Blute, in people in a multi-disciplinary environment.   The key is that cultural evolution takes place within the complex system that is human society and that the cultural environment is key in the formation of identity.  If you want to critique memetics, fine.  But do it by critiquing the italicised sentence (the one without the word meme in it).

Introduction

I came to this idea of History through the study of the philosophy of cognitive science. My thoughts on the stream of consciousness turned first into an account of the self, then an understanding of creativity and subjectivity before applying this knowledge on the larger scale of a systems based society. It is this new possibility, for reverse engineering a theory of history from the mind up, rather than the other way around, that has given me these insights.

Major thanks to Kant, Hegel, Dennett, Dawkins, Blackmore, Anderson, Levy et al for either inspiring or confirming (at least, allowing me to fully internalise it/be convinced of it's accuracy) this thesis.

This essay is essentially derived from what I called coined in a previous essay Heterohistoriography, after Dennetts heterophenomonology (a method of studying the self using both phenomenology and objective, measurable, scientific data). It is a combination of both regular notions of historiography and a scientific understanding of the human mind as an individual node of a complex network. Complexity theory, Chaos theory, Memetics... these things apply to us as thermodynamics applies to physics; we simply cannot ignore them when studying the humanities (or anything for that matter). One of the nice things about having internalised this following thesis is that in the end it all boils down to physics: mere cause and effect. Heterohistoriography takes as its starting point the human mind, extrapolating upwards and outwards from simple evolutionary axioms to a theory of all-encompassing simplicity and applicability.

The Formation of the Self: This theory of the self is derived from reading books such as Richard Dawkins “Selfish Gene’, Susan Blackmore’s ‘Meme Machine’ and Daniel Dennetts ‘Consiousness Explained’. It is, in my view, entirely compatible within these frameworks…

At some point in our past, we were animals: pure instinct and emotion.  Then came communication, eating meat, cooking, communal living and cooperation with adequate memory, foresight, theory of mind (awareness of other minds), imitation and creativity to pass a tipping point.  From co-evolving, the two evolutionary processes once again became unbalanced, with cultural evolution taking the fore (Blute).  Memes began to accumulate, being passed and mimicked from mind to mind both down generations (as with genetics) but also horizontally.

Replication and mutation of memes equal a whole new type of evolution: the only known force able to swim against the tide of entropy and create ever more complex structures; something that must apply to culture therefore, as well as life. Whilst some animals are known to also exhibit cultural transmission, such as the use of tools and birdsong, it is only with humans that this exponential growth of memetic

We, as body and mind, are now the product of the interplay between two evolutionary forces: Genetics and Memetics. Broadly speaking, genes and our environment determine our potential and capability, whilst memes determine our conscious identity and are cumulatively built into a dynamic, physiological neural network we know as the self. What we see is the but the surface, a simplified user-interface for the most complex machine in nature and one that can function instinctively in a dynamic environment.  As Professor Marion Blute said via email, "we are a product of the interplay between two evolutionary processes, the biological (genetics) and the sociocultural (what some like to call and I have no objection to calling memetics)".  

The interplay of emotion and reason, gene and meme, creates an emergent 'self' from a complex, chaotic system (giving rise to creativity). Each persons exposure to memes is unique, defined by the continuity of existence in space and time, and held within the memory and subconscious of the individual. This means that each person's data-set for use in the analysis of any new input is unique to that person (creating subjectivity). This model of the individual mind scales-up to the complex, chaotic, systems-based network with emergent properties that we know as society. This scaling up is a crucial feature of natural complex structures, offering different appearances at each level. Until recently, we had been privy to just the emergent phenomena of society that we call History... yet trying to determine the rules of History merely from the narrative is like determining the nature of a bird merely from the overall patterns of the flock. As with any complex system with hard to explain emergent properties, the local nodes (us, in this case) work upon surprisingly simple axioms...

Axioms of human behaviour:

All that is needed for this thesis is three axioms which I think you'll agree make both evolutionary and intuitive sense.

· Fear the unknown

· Do not waste energy fearing the known

· Defer to authority

As with the Hamilton effect (innate favouring of genetic kin), so to do our shared memes create a bond through this acceptance of the known. Just as familiar, every-day surroundings do not generate a flee response, neither should familiarity of mind, it being a mere extension of our environment. Thus, the more memes you share, the more you can relate and empathise with each other and the less there is to fear. The cumulative total of experienced memes within a lifetime is our identity, memes that are both new and very, very old.

Blute, together with my first forays into the basics of this discipline I didn't know existed (Sociocultural evolution), has made me realise an important distinction I need to make here.  Our identity isn't a single entity, it is about as impossibly complex as it can get.  But there are some aspects that are, for the most part, universal through time and space by virtue of our being the same species.  The supposedly 'primitive' cultures described during the enlightenment were shown by early 20th century anthropologists to be just as complex and rich as anyone else, a level of social identity common to us all.  Then, however, there is what Benedict Anderson called the imagined community.  It is this imagined community that I wish to talk about, since it is this element of our identity that has grown together with communication technologies and that exhibits the kind of large scale, historical, phenomena that we learn about today in our classrooms.

When memetic production is held as a monopoly by ruling elites, be it through exclusive literacy and use of force, class-division, censorship and self-censorship etc, then the meme-pool through which individuals travel and construct their identity on is solely the minorities view imposed on the many, a la the Nazi's.  

This vertical transmission of memetic-production from the few at the top to the masses below has been a constant throughout history thus far.

That then is all there is; there is no intrinsic or independent 'good' with which to defend ourselves against such a situation. We are what we think we know (I say 'think, since much of the memetic input remains in the sub-conscious and remains hidden). That which we are conscious of, that which we rationalise our identity with, is both limited and likely-as-not ontologically inaccurate.  The meme producers produce identities: a simple method of creating social bonds in the mold of the most successful memetic producers, our modern day equivalent of the strongest, or fastest, or biggest animal being at the top of the hierarchy.

Those people who do not share memetic similarities, or who are unknown to, represent the 'other' whom those meme-producers in power use to scare people, maintaining the social hierarchy. I am not suggesting a conscious effort to use unfounded fear, not until the arrivals of real-politick anyhow, merely that it would have been the most successful tactic to gain power and so the one most likely to succeed time after time (that’s evolution for you). They do this through degrees of memetic production monopoly which at various points in history created identities which saturated all future cultures to come:

The Three Spheres of Identity: This theory of Identity is beautifully espoused by Pierre Levy in his book ‘Collective Intelligence' in which he presents a model of the historical progress of identity much as I had envisioned it. Combined with the above theory of the self, I here describe how and why such identities arose, expanding Llevy’s idea from observation to universal theory…

Levy observed that there have been three classes of identity through the progress of homosapiens: Cosmos, Territory and Commodity. Each have, at some time, dominated human life to the point of saturating culture, securing an unbroken lineage of existence within language and artifacts which contributed to future generations identities. This was only possible once language evolved and was secured independently to human memory (thankfully for us, thanks Greece) when memes were written down and formed as art. Rather than starting afresh each time, memes could be passed on meaning that identity did not die with the original proponents. Instead it was successively built upon by future generations exposed to the cultural artifacts and replicating them further. This is the basis for what Benedict Anderson describes in ‘imagined communities’, something I read after telling someone about this idea and being pointed in the right direction. The best way to explain this fully is through a historical narrative of identity.

A historical look at the formation of the three spheres of identity In the appendix I have included a matrix of identities with the historical structures associated with each combination. Since I only started to construct it this week and is still pretty speculative, I have put it in the appendix as something I think is interest.

N.b Since I wrote this essay, I have expanded upon the process of historical progression.  See this blogpost for a more in depth look and a table showing our one identity transplants another as a populations dominant imagined identity: http://grimeandreason.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-predictions-for-humanities.html

In the beginning, the bond we feel to the known, and the fear inherent in the unknown, created power structures through the search for, and the proclamation of, divine knowledge (and the fear and respect that such a claim would provide). The world needed explaining to minds that had evolved to rationalise ones own environment, and explaining it derives the authority that we evolved to defer to. Imagine the questions and answers that would arise to explain natural phenomenon such as eclipses or extreme weather events! Thus started the cosmic identity, where preacher and leaders would monopolise 'spiritual' (unknown/unknowable?) knowledge and transmit an identity which, with high fecundity, would infect the many. This would create immense shared memetic structure and an immense bond. This, together with climate fluctuations of 7 degrees Celsius every 100 or so years in Northern Europe, could explain the reason why it is us who survived and not the Neanderthals (bar the trace genes many of us have through interbreeding).

Cosmos (proto-religion) based identity became territorially based when disparate cosmic beliefs were bound together by expanding, conquering states. Through myth and legend, man replaced or served Gods borrowed and reformed from numerous belief systems. Strict authoritarian rule defined this age, as did stagnation of knowledge since doctrine defined identity and so creativity and subjectivity were limited to an extreme. Territory beget commodity as urban areas encouraged specialisation and trade, with individuals traveling through numerous meme-pools collecting data-sets and cognitive dissonance that allowed for independent thinking, hence the Greeks bringing us out of the Bronze age.

At this moment commodity was still a fragile basis of identity and was almost wiped out, were it not for the knowledge it produced being kept alive by the Muslim world. The Dark Ages represented a throw back to that pre-Greek time of cosmos/territory rule (divine kings) until that seed was replanted in Europe through Moorish Spain and the Renaissance. The printing press was invented, we gained common vernaculars and memetic evolution went nuts. This generated enough cognitive dissonance from both the religious (reformation) and the commodity (science) spheres of identity that Church and State split to be replaced by the seeds of a new tyranny, that of the marriage between territory and commodity. Today we call it capitalism, and it's increasingly nearing a similar fate to that of the divine Kings...

Breaking Memetic Monopolies: Reason and Cognitive Dissonance: This section was influenced by a TED talk I watched very recently as it happens, all about 'patternicity'.

What is reason? I suggest it is the conscious rationalization of the memetic world, directly akin to how genetic created a brain to rationalize our sensory environment. Our brain is a pattern-finding machine of awesome power. The input that our brain is constantly dealing with is roughly equivalent to the entire global Internet network of today. All the while, it is confabulating what we perceive to be a seamless reality when the truth is that much of it is inferred (we only actually ‘see’ a 3 degree arc, we are unaware that our eyes constantly flicker around, retaining information into a collage-like whole). I see no reason to think that we do otherwise with memes.


Our memetic world is highly subjective however. Whereas everyone basically shares the same systems for ‘rationalising’ vision, audio etc (yes, I know about the philosophical zombie argument but for the sake of sanity we will take our universal physiology as proof enough), everyones' memetic make-up is entirely unique. This results in greater and lesser data-sets being used in the rationalization of the memetic world. I use the term data-sets because, as with any inference or rationalization of inputs, the greater the data-set, the more accurate the final synthesis of information will be. Someone may have encyclopedic knowledge of all things divine and be a grand-master of religious rationalizing, but that would represent but one, tightly defined area of the greatest possible data-set. This would screw up the results of any experiment, be it in your head or in the lab.


We have evolved to see danger, to be able to infer cause and effect and to see patterns. Yet memetically we can only make judgments and find patterns using our own sum of knowledge, our own memetic make-up. If monopolies gain control of memetic production then they shape the very identity of those subjected to it, so that the only memes available are those that directly favour the meme-producers. This, as with any bias data-set, can only be rationalized toward a false conclusion.


However, due to the nature of humanity’s spread across this planet, no one monopoly was ever large enough to dominate all of mankind. For this reason, memes were always able to eventually seep into areas of memetic monopoly. What happens when you get a data-point outside of your usual area? Well, one meme (or data point) might be rationalized away by a brain intent on patterns and accustomed to the known.. maybe even a few. After a while however the rationalizations have to become ever more stretched, ever more unlikely in the face of this new, emerging set of data until there comes a time when the conclusions have to shift in order to seem rational. Evidence of this is seen in the generational divides apparent the world over where the young, not as invested and indoctrinated as their parents generation, allow these new data points to form a part of their identity as well.


Interestingly, recent research has shown that we are better pattern recognisers when we feel more in control and inversely are much worse (leading to conspiracy theories, pseudo-sciences etc) when we feel we have no control. It has also been linked to dopamine, explaining the creativity found in a lot of dopamine enhancing drugs. It also, I propose, explains why identities shifted from cosmos to territory to commodity at all. Imagine, the cumulative build-up of knowledge derived from the onset of language, writing etc would have slowly increased humanity’s capacity to rationalize for themselves. This would have created a feedback loop whereby our increasing knowledge led us to more ontologically true rationalizations, which would have made us feel more in control whilst also increasing our knowledge. It makes sense when you think of the villager in Medieval England resigned to the fates of the Gods… why even look for patterns when people are explaining for you why the crops failed, or why the plague swept through. How does one see patterns and make connections memetically when your data-set consists of nothing but evil spirits and witches? The difference in the sense of control of our world between us and that peasant is, I think, one of the greatest difference between humans of our age and that.


Globalisation has taken communication and made it global, beyond borders or geographical cultures. It is democratising memetic production and in doing so democratising our identities. As individuals, particularly in the west, we now have the opportunity to develop with global memetic influence, not simply from the few to the many. As this sea of memes begins to grow, it comes up against the nationalistic nature of 'official' memes, as traditionally espoused the state, and the profit driven nature of the memes produced by the commodity sphere. Yet, despite the power and influence both of these meme-producers wield (now increasingly of the same voice as illustrated by the shared, ever-shallower sounding vocabulary they each use), their monopoly is breaking.


The broader our collective knowledge, the better we become at perceiving patterns, the greater the cognitive dissonance between the ‘truth’ and the doctrine of the ruling elite. Thus we get Hegel’s thesis/antithesis/synthesis, a self-fuelling cycle propelled along by the cumulative and untamable nature of memetic transmission. Now that our identities consist of global memetic influence, our moral sphere is growing: as we come to know the previous 'other' better, the unkown becoming the known, we come to empathise with it. 

Capitalism, the marriage of territory and commodity into one minority memetic monopoly, is killing itself as it seeks to connect the world for increased profit. Since the only reason it managed to keep going and avoid Marx's predictions was by outsourcing the exploitation and thus staving off cognitive dissonance, it required the kind of memetic control (through education systems and official media) that is necessary for any such unjust system to continue. As global identities begin to form, the exploitation becomes known and so becomes unsustainable through ever increasing cognitive dissonance. Now that the monopoly has broken, cognitive dissonance will increase as the actions of the few become to seem ever more egregious in the now visible light of the impact it has on our now fellow humans.


The New Fourth Identity and Linked Data: This is derived largely through Levy and Ray Kurzweil.  Linked data was introduced to me by Tim Berners-Lee's TED talk (a man who, in my opinion, will one day be celebrated as the giver of the greatest gift to humanity).  It was also my own inevitable conclusions from what has come before.


The answer? Religion represents one hope (at least in giving us time to progress), in that it can wield its’ still influential assets in identity to act as a balance toward the other, merging, two. At best I feel, it may mitigate any further damage by leading a call for the separation of business and state, much as they themselves were subjected to and give time for the new hope: the emergence of a new form of identity formed not by what we believe, where we live or what we do, but by what we know. It's important to note here that I am not advocating a Freidman wet-dream of unregulated capitalism. Quite the opposite. With capitalisms vested interest in communication technology, such a situation would lead naturally to the complete monopoly of memetic production by the commodity identity, a fate far worse than the current status-quo (especially for us in the west, since the exploitation is already apparent in the developing world through our simply buying the leaders). No, what I mean is that the three identities must keep each other at bay in a system of moral and regulatory checks and balances between church, state and business. Whilst the few of each identity still hold the majority of memetic production in their grasp (priest, politician, CEO), the fact that they have to compromise denies them the self-fuelling, destructive cycle of being able to dictate the terms of discourse and their own identity. The Bush administration showed the danger of that in the vocabulary of the War on Terror during the grab for memetic monopoly by the military-industrial complex. Look at that phrase... it might as well read territory-commodity identity complex. By providing balance, it gives the greatest possible freedom for synthesis and new knowledge to occur since ideology, that bastion of close-mindedness, is held at bay.  We need more of this.


The information identity is the ultimate in universal identities since it does not purport to be based on the subjective, but the objective. It does not impose imagined communities vertically, from the few to the many, but horizontally, just as with our real communities. It recognizes the multitude of other people with whom they are intimately connected through the shared creation of memes, the shared creation of each others’ very identity. When peoples identities form through the collective influence of global proportions, then our empathy and moral sphere will encompass all humans, possibly all life, as our identities are democratised and made for the people, by the people. This is crucial, since this idea of identity answers the question post-modernism asked: is objectivity possible if it is relative? The answer? If, through technology, identities came to be composed of equal and democratic influences, directly from people the world over (note that does not mean the same, quite the opposite: it means the greatest possible diversity), then the large average spread of data-points would create a world of people for whom their imagined identity is not Christian, not British, not shop-keeper but human. Once we identify ourselves first and foremost as that common denominator we all share, we will all have a subjectivity relative to humanity as a whole, resulting in a practical objectivity derived through a complete understanding of and concern for all others. I know it's hard to envisage such a utopia. It's been a fundamental task of the democratic system to ridicule such notions or to fear them. Does it not seem the strangest thing to be scared of, someone speaking of peace and understanding? Yet that is the status-quo, and it is the jobs of our politicians to maintain it.


Instead, choose to merely look at the trend. For Millennia, our leaders have used us against each other in order to scare us and control us. Now they just do it to get your vote. That in itself is progress of sorts, but it is still capable of annihilating this planet (and nearly did). How many people could today be fooled that 500'000 'communists' deserve to be killed by a vicious dictator in Indonesia using U.S and U.K weaponry and support? Communication technology allows us now to both explicitly, and unconsciously implicitly, come to know that these 'communists' are simply repressed poor people in thw way and that it is real-politick that is the true enemy. We are on the right trend, and what's more that shit was only in the 1960's. Our moral sphere is growing exponentially alongside the exponential growth of technology. This is only going to continue with the new emergence of 'temes' (technological memes independent of humans: Blackmore) and is going to radically change our world.


The imagined community of the fourth identity will be qualitatively different to any before.  Rather than vertically imposed identities maintaining the status-quo of the ruling elite, we have to ability to forge our own on a scale that outstrips even the most dominant of power structures.  The infrastructure this identity is built on, the web of communication technology, is about to get hectic.  An example of this is the concept of a semantic web, web 3.0.  Tim Berners-Lee spoke about 'linked data' in a TED talk a couple of years back.  He envisions a semantic web capable of answering questions never before answered, through the large scale linking of online data.  From a memetic point of view, this is a massive revolution in the creation of new knowledge.  In the past, we have had to rely on fate imparting knowledge of A, B, and C into the hands of one individual, be it directly or indirectly.  With the semantic web, this reliance on fate is disposed of: if different people individually know A, B, and C, then AI will be able to link and present them together, at once.  All we will need to do is think the question and if the knowledge is out there we will get the answer.  Heaven knows what the consequences will be in terms of cognitive dissonance, or the attempts at control our former memetic masters might try to employ.  This is just one example, though a significant one, of the ways in which technology will change humanity utterly.


The struggle between Corporations and the New Fourth Identity.  This section is the subject of the latest revision.  Having decided to start reading into the history of corporations (only fair since I'm hardly their greatest fan in this essay), I came across the excellent book by Joel Bakan called 'The Corporation'...


Here I want to make a distinction. The villains in our story thus far are those ruling meme-producers that shape the identity of the masses. When it comes to the ruling commodity elite, I want to make clear that I mean those elements of capitalism that have co-opted or simply corrupted the authority of the state and the mainstream media: the corporation. As for the rest of capitalism, well that’s just us if we think about it. We are all, in the west, a part of this system. It’s in our memes. That’s why capitalism has a chance to change, indeed has changed dramatically in the west in the last 200 years though only through the outsourcing of the worst of the exploitation to the 'other'.  We were lucky, as early recipients of technologies power, in that we could grow and bond and fight for our rights visibly, waves of dissonance recorded and replayed, creating lasting changes.  For those at the top however, they have not changed at all.  They take on fully the identity of the corporation and whilst they occupy that role they are duty bound to act on behalf of this psychopathic 'person', legally bound to abide by nothing but the bottom line.  They are still in the monopoly of their own making, and all the more crazy sounding and dangerous because of it.


Joel Bakan clearly gets it.  Here are a couple of quotes I found that I could have written myself...


From Page 1 (!)...


Talking about corporations... "They determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do.  We are inescapably surrounded by their culture, iconography and ideology. And, like the Church and Monarchy in other times, they posture as infallible and omnipotent, glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate displays.  Increasingly, corporations dictate the decisions of their supposed overseers in government and control domains of society once firmly embedded within the public sphere"


From Page 134...


"The corporation has essentially replaced the Church in terms of who you are," says Edison Schools financier Michael Moe.  It wants the same thing as the Church, he says: "obedient constituents that... pay [their] dues and follow the rules."  Human nature is neither static nor universal.  It tends to reflect the social orders people inhabit.  Throughout history, dominant institutions have established roles and identities for their subjects that meshed with their own institutional natures, needs and interests: God-fearing subjects for the Church, lords and serfs for feudal orders, citizens for democratic governments.


And now passive consumers who don't care about sweatshop workers in India, or even New York City where over half of all clothing factories are sweatshops, many employing children on a $1 or 2 an hour.  Bakan is simply the latest to have identified corporations as the continuation of religious and political identity creators, a triptych of manipulative wealth hoarders we now have the chance to break free from. 


However misguided the ideology, I still believe that some of the rationalizations for capitalism are correct, namely that it is better than it was before (for us), it is freer, and through the empowerment of the majority of the population has greatly advanced knowledge. There is nothing inherently bad about the notions of free markets and personal choice, it's just that we are coming to realize that that isn’t actually what we have got. Imagined communities have battled over these utopian ideals of free-markets and it's supposed alternatives without ever realising that it has to be gradual, that’s the nature of evolution. It is a bit like a chicken and egg scenario whereby you need sufficient contradictory memes to create cognitive dissonance whilst needing cognitive dissonance to create contradictory memes. Hence why it happens slowly, over generations. Revolutions are like earthquakes that erupt into violence when the tension builds too high which, given that such a chicken-egg like scenario would lend itself to exponential growth, makes perfect sense when you consider the containment measures imposed by authorities in order to maintain their power. 


It is the ownership structure of capitalism, the emergence of amoral corporations and the memetic production it monopolises with wealth that is the problem. Capitalism, more so than religion or state,  has the capacity to change since it is infused with the notion of individuality and is free from a centralised power base and dogma.  Through breaking the assymytries between consumer and producer by giving people meaningful political and moral controls in an integrated and symmetric feed-back loop, there is no reason why just commerce and trade within a monetary system should be impossible.  It would however mean trusting in the view that humanity as a whole, equal, can be a force for good... something those at the top are indoctrinated firmly against.  Their  resulting arrogance in rejecting this view will place them firmly in the firing line.


Imagine if you were to split up every chain into business of not more than 3 stores. The pyramid structure of power and wealth would be flattened and broadened immeasurably, the wealth gap between rich and poor would be vastly reduced, our relative happiness greatly increased. Make everything a sociocratic co-op overnight and you create a much better world without changing the monetary system itself. There are too many myths about capitalism, be it about the need for competition, growth and the ludicrous trickle-down effect. We need to remember it is ownership that is at issue here. We need to be in the game together and not at the mercy of the big-kids who own the game and can tell you to go home if you don't like the arbitrary rule-changes only they get to make.


Memetic 'Apps'


One of the important things inherent within the fourth identity is an emphasis on personal experience and evidence.  When we identify ourselves according to information, we are eschewing the ideologies and doctrines of the previous memetic monopolies.  The involves coming to understand our own selves as social constructs and, from there, learning to take control of that construction.  An important way of doing this is through the use of what I call 'memetic apps'.  As with an app on a smart phone, memetic apps are tools which, once 'downloaded', can be used to process incoming data (memes) in order to make best use of it.


For example,  logical fallacies have been known about for some time.  A good working knowledge of all the logical fallacies represents something more than your average meme.  Once learned, they can then be used to evaluate all future memetic input, with emphasis on treating all input to the same critical criteria.  Because it attempts to objectify ones judgement through the use of logic, it gives two advantages.  One, the conclusions you draw from memetic input will be less effected by ideology and subjectivity.  Two, it means that one can listen to arguments from both sides of a debate with equal logical objectivity by catagorising logical errors.  These 'apps' result in a far more rational synthesis of arguments, with consensus at least possible due to the recourse to shared reality and evidence.


Philosophical Implications


Hegel was right when he said that History is the narrative of mankind becoming aware of himself. Where he and other enlightenment thinkers went wrong was in assuming that their own insight was a glimpse of some pure reason that was attainable by anyone. Rather, they were fortunate to have a life not dissimilar to what is possible today, lots of study from wide range of memetic influences. Rather than a concept of pure reason, we are heading toward a universal reason, the reason of the many influencing the many, creating wide-ranging data-sets in each individual for interpreting new data. This means a more objective, universally inclusive reason that holds as it's judge universal values, not the doctrinal subjective view of the few.


Marx was also right in saying capitalism was unsustainable. What he didn't appreciate was the link between memetic production and the formation of identity and the lack of cognitive dissonance due to the outsourcing of exploitation through colonialisation and then globalisation. He will have the last laugh however, as we come to know that which has been presented as the fearsome unknown. When we are all connected, when technology allows the whole world to seemlessly communicate... who will those in power be left with to present as the unknown? That's simple.. the new information generation. They represent the threat to the status-quo, those who do not identify themselves in the language of the meme-producers, that of socio-economic status or what car you drive. These people identify themselves with people, all people, and since capitalism in it's current form works upon the exploitation of people, it can either tighten it's grip until the dissonance explodes or it can evolve alongside it.


To my mind, the most significant conclusion is what this essay says about the age we are currently entering.  For tens of thousand of years, humanity as been culturally evolving.  As technology developed, imagined communities grew ever larger, enabling the kind of historical events we are lucky enough to study.  Yet for all the revolutions, for all the 'progress' that we have apparently made, the mode of memetic transmission in creating an imagined community as been vertical, from the one or few to the many.  This imposed identity has been abused by those in power, with the quietly growing 'unofficial imagined community' providing enough dissonance to create Hegel's thesis/antithesis/synthesis progress of the imagined community.  I like the thought that this is analogous to a non-linear equation, with the result being fed back into the beginning of an equation, leading to complexity and chaotic, unpredictable consequences, rather like history itself. 

Recent update:

I have just read Mark Ward's book Universality, 2001. It is a great book, the title of which does not purport to encomapass everything, merely that within certain complex systems this feature of universal connectiveness emerges, extending to the system as a whole.  It is a feature that can give rise to chaos if too much input is fed into the system and one that can dissapate, along with it's potentials, if input is decreased.  It is apparant in the myriad of fractal patterns and beats that nature has discovered in order to reach complexity from the greatest simplicity. It shows how we as a species may have benefited from evolving to the edge of order, reaping the emergent benefits of collective intelligence, a historical dialectic of push and pull, power and curiosity, maintaining the complex system of cultural evolution as the safety net of communication infrastrusture drove spikes of recorded, cumulative knowledge into the high-water marks of the historical swash.

This book came at a good time for me.  Since the death of Mandelbrot last week, I have been pondering fractals often, sure that they, along with other phenomena such as chaos and synchronicity, were fundamental to the very fabric of reality.  Not simply on an arbitrary scale such as the plank length of the diameter of the universe, but on all scales at once, a Metaphysical Theory of Everything.  This book is a call to arms not just to the scientific community but also a clarion call for arm-chair philosophers like me.  It gives motivation in the thought that the aacademic world, though filled with great minds, is driven to speciality and expertise in narrow fields.  Universality shows that in studying small pieces of the canvas, many people are unable to see the big picture staring them in the face.  The internet is driving like-minded individuals in all disciplines to act on the very simple premise that maximised communication, larger conceptual data-sets, are the key to success. Whilst they are still realising that, you and I are free to use this wonderful invention to wallow in a multitude of specialities, see connections the experts cannot; all from the comfort of your sitting room, or on a bus, or walking in the countryside. It really is an exciting time, this whole new digital generation soon to be snapping at the heals of the established ways.

But I digress. The reason that it can help explain, at least philosophically for the time being, reality at any scale is because complex systems exist at all scales and complex systems share the same emergent characteristics.  By focusing on this emergent dynamic, instead of the particulars of any one scale, we can gain a very complete picture of the forces directing us both as individuals, as societies and as a tiny speck of dust in the cosmic carpet.  It is part and parcel of coming to understand ourselves as human beings, as Hegel said.  Many of the worlds ills: organised religion, fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, all sorts of 'isms', they all share  what seems to be a group-think inspired gross ignorance of their own flaws or how humans actually function.  It is apparant every time some Republican tells us that bombing them is the only way to stop them bombing us.

Now we face a revolution like no other before it.  Until recently, horizontal memetic transmission had only been possible at a local level, the result being the kind of community identity common the all of mankind.  Our imagined community has always been vertically derived, one-way and passive.  Now, with the internet and the democratisation of memetic production (which will stand alone in history as the most significant democratisation in all of history), we are witnessing the emergence of what Seth Godin on TED calls 'Tribes': Autonomously derived, horizontally transmitted imagined communities which are interactive rather than passive.  This is an entirely new development, an inflationary event for 'unofficial' memetic production which will, if allowed to continue, undermine the role of religion, state and commerce in creating our imagined community.  At some point, the imagined community they espouse will come to seem anachronistic and morally wrong since it will represent the view of the few, trapped in a wealthy meme-bubble, desperate to maintain the status-quo.  This was highly evident in Mubaraks seemingly complete disconnect with the Egyptian protestors. The rest of us will be busy democratising our identities and getting to know each other, only to realise that we are much the same if only we are allowed to realise it for ourselves.

N.b For a more complete description of the power of horizontal networks in creating new identities, see this blog post on the role of wikileaks and twitter in the recent Arab uprisings: http://grimeandreason.blogspot.com/2011/01/cultural-evolutionary-function-of.html


It also seems the Buddhists have had it largely right all this time. We are individual parts of a greater whole, that of the memosphere. The self is an illusion, a surface, emergent trick that evolution found useful. Old measures of cosmic identity have secured in the West a deep notion of a separate soul and this has caused untold cognitive dissonance. We use it to cling to free will in order to apply responsibility onto the individual. Yet this is both immoral and wrong! It ignores our part in creating other minds and societies role in producing the opportunity for criminal and scarred minds to come to pass. If society were to function according to these principles, it would look a hell of a lot different. Our prison system is the utter opposite of what this theory says is needed. Education from textbooks is completely anathema to the reality of our evolution. The sooner we can come to realise our responsibility to each other, the sooner the injustice of the selfish individual as a self-sustained being can be relinquished, to the betterment of all.


Having started to watch Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy, I was immediately struck by how their culture has instituionalised and habitualised a system of democratic memetic production.  In monestries, all of the monks partake in creative arts and debate equally, submersing themselves in a culture of extreme memetic evolution.  OK, so it's just men but it is fully democratic within the closed structure of the monestry.  Rather than enduring thousands of years of top-down, few-to-many memetic doctrine, Buddhism has experienced thousands of years of many-to-many memetic transmission aided by a recognition of it's purpose.   By this I mean that Buddhism does not reject the fourth identity, that of objective knowledge, the natural product of many-to-many memetic transmission as value and validity become both important and relevant.


The combination of western science and eastern philosohpy is, I feel, on the verge of a fruitful synthesis. Both have come to a consensus that the self is an illusion. Understanding who and what we are took a great leap with post-modernism, but I really feel that it had to wait for science to catch up and start to tell us what we could only previously speculate. This thesis represents such a radical shift from the status-quo of pandering to false intuition, such a universal theory that I believe that it can shed light on any human-centered subject, from any angle. It is an immensely powerful tool that, I believe, represents the next great multi-disciplinary revolution. Not only that, through internalising it I have found the kind of contentment that Buddhists speak of. I believe it to be one and the same.


I've thought about this everyday for three years, analysed all incoming data according to this framework and everything fits. All the time I hear common-sense sayings, contemporary research, exciting hints that other people are getting it. Everything seems to either expand or confirm what I think. This lack of cognitive dissonance and the contentment I feel is, I think, qualitatively similar to the buddhist concept of enlightenment... though kudos to them, they do it primarily through introspection. How can we deny their long held belief of the illusory self.. when we in the west spend no time actually introspecting on our experience?!


As an appendix, I have tried to map the different identities memetic power structures to determine the links between the emergent, large-scale behaviours of human civilisaiton. I haven't included it here as yet since it's still fresh in my mind and may need adjusting and amending. Comments are of course encouraged!

Appendix

Matrix of identities of minority rule
This matrix shows the emergent properties of the various imagined identities when they combine or assume dominion other the others.  Obviously this is a mere simplification and created as an illustrative guide.  Takehome lesson?  Any one identity gaining dominion is terrible, two together, either explicitly or co-optingly, pretty bad.  The ideal scenario is checks and balances between all three. 

Evolution of power structure's identity, correlate with communication technolgy (i.e exponentially evolving)   
This is a table showing the progression of the dominant power structures as they move through time, and therefore through the evolution of the three historical imagined identities.  It also attempts to extrapolate into the future to predict humanities progress.  The essay it was written to accompany can be found here.