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.

Blog by former Ambassador Craig Murray

Taken from http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/08/americas-vassal-acts-decisively-and-illegally/ which is currently down.

UPDATE: Site is now back up it seems, having faced "serious traffic" according to (presumed admin in) comments. 
    
    America’s Vassal Acts Decisively and Illegally

    by craig on August 16, 2012 11:30 am in Uncategorized

    I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.
    
    This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.
    
    The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.
    
    Article 22
    
    1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter
    them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
    2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
    of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
    mission or impairment of its dignity.
    3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
    transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
    
    Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other’s embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail my attempts in the British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to raids and harassment worldwide.
    
    The government’s calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a strong enough power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another symptom of the “might is right” principle in international relations, in the era of the neo-conservative abandonment of the idea of the rule of international law.
    
    The British Government bases its argument on domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.
    
    I hope to have more information soon on the threats used by the US administration. William Hague had been supporting the move against the concerted advice of his own officials; Ken Clarke has been opposing the move against the advice of his. I gather the decision to act has been taken in Number 10.
    
    There appears to have been no input of any kind from the Liberal Democrats. That opens a wider question – there appears to be no “liberal” impact now in any question of coalition policy. It is amazing how government salaries and privileges and ministerial limousines are worth far more than any belief to these people. I cannot now conceive how I was a member of that party for over thirty years, deluded into a genuine belief that they had principles.

Organised Religion Vs Neoliberalism

Please note: I make no judgement on any individual, no matter what their beliefs. It is the systems themselves I criticise, as is my right. Not believing in free will (what we have today is a long way from deserving that term), I cannot condemn any individual that has had to live life through these systems.

I want to ask something of all the skeptics out there regarding religion and Neoliberalism. This is a sincere plea; I am a long-time skeptic and would genuinely be thrilled if anyone can spare the time to explain what I hope I am missing. I just want to know peoples thoughts on why I cannot find a single skeptic speaking out specifically on the issue.

See, there are plenty of discussions about religion in the skeptic community, despite it's rather glaring similarities with the political system the majority of skeptics lives are governed by, my own included.

BOTH are doctrinal ideologies conceived by the few and imposed upon the many. Rather than priests etc we have politicians, economists and CEO's. Having "power" to vote politicians into office does not make a difference, morally, in this analogy; would it have made a difference if the Church chose two candidates and asked you to pick? Nor does the fact we have different political parties make a difference; show me which one does not accept Neoliberalism.

BOTH make claims of salvation/prosperity for all those that participate (to the extent they decree), based not on evidence but on outdated books and ideas of human nature. Apparently a "rising tide raises all ships". I think that's the technical terminology anyway for the justification for deregulation in the 70's and 80's. "Trickle-down effect" was another. Yet no one really seems to care that after 30-40 years, not only is there no evidence to show it's true but it has laid the foundation for the ideology to get even more extreme; it has made a virtue out of extreme wealth and managed to convince many people that Greed is Good. I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence? Corporations are people? Now we are just getting ridiculous...

BOTH believe in trying to attain a utopian fantasy. For Heaven read Free Market, a creed which ignores the role of inheritance, ignores the use of money in securing and retaining power through politics, ignores that for the free market to be theoretically feasible, we would need to start from scratch on a level playing field with complete transparency and a public right to corporate data.

BOTH used their monopolies on cultural production to shape peoples identities. Our culture has become suffused with the messages of Neoliberalism, no less so than religious culture pre-enlightenment. We are assaulted from dawn till dusk, day-in-day-out with aspirational images and messages specifically designed to exploit our lack of free will and to manipulate us into spending money (even when we have none). Live through this culture and the chances are you will not ever question it. That's called indoctrination, same as it ever was.

BOTH are quite capable of inflicting massive amounts of suffering on 'others' not of their ideology. We seem well aware (and happy to remind those who claim religion is needed for morality) of religions involvement in the history of warfare . Well, guess what? Need evidence? Oh Dear... I think the bigger question is why you've not come across any yourself.

BOTH govern with a moral code defined and controlled by those in power, which in turn favours those in power disproportionately. Perhaps if they did a swap, and a CEO of Goldman Sachs turned out to be a child molester and a group of Priests brought down the global economy, then we might see some accountability (at least you would hope so)?

BOTH target heretics who dare question their doctrine or authority. Although, to be fair, the lions share of the violence and power in this regard the last few decades hasn't been Religion. Certainly women have been coming under a fair amount of fire regarding reproductive health issues, but religion isn't the one with an intelligence agency employing millions, a police force brutally targeting peaceful protesters, a CIA agency kidnapping people of the streets and detaining them without charge for years in secret prisons, an army that requires further racial-indoctrination so that the soldiers can do as the rulers bid and a national media establishment under it's direct ownership and control. Funnily enough people also get accused of not speaking out because to do so would make their careers, shall we say, difficult? Something to think about.

BOTH prey on the weak, with all the good intention in the world, in order to spread their power. Religion had missionaries; Neoliberalism had the Chicago School of Economics. Graduates moved into the ranks finance ministries of whichever country that found itself on the IMF's agenda. Once there, often by virtue of Neoliberal-backed dictatorships, they would oversee mass-privitisation of state assets (much to the profit of US companies), rocketing unemployment, slashed public spending, and exploding inequality (with all the misery it brings). Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz, among others, have written extensively on this.

So, like organised religion, Neoliberalism is a all-encompassing doctrinal ideology promising salvation it cannot achieve, one that causes immense suffering to others whilst not tolerating any dissention, without any scientific evidence to back it up.

Let me ask you this. We skeptics want a world based on reason and evidence, correct? Then why should politics be excluded? It is based on questions of human nature, and area of study that while particularly contemporary (pre-MRI? Pfft, forget it) is nonetheless now adequate to dismiss these Neoliberal fantasies. How can it be physically possible that an ideology born decades ago could even be remotely accurate?

The one major difference between religion and Neoliberalism is that, in Western democracies at least, religion is responsible for an ever decreasing amount of suffering comparatively speaking. Neoliberalism is the dominant fundamentalist ideology of today; that is what should be skepticism's top priority were we to honestly apply criteria consistently

Change is coming. I don't want people to look back and ask where we were as a community. Don't we pride ourselves on being objective, being consistent? You know what I see in the Occupy movement? The recognition that individuals dont have the answer, that answers only come from evidence and discussion. I see natural skepticism... this movement has emerged around the world with a shared identity already there and it is not the product of an ideological few. It is a crowd-sourced identity, inspired by people around the globe, who have all come to the same conclusions regarding Neoliberalism based on the evidence. It has gotten so bad that they have spontaneously come together in over 900 cities, giving up their lives temporarily to say enough is enough. How have things gotten this far without the matter being given serious attention by the skeptical community?

Imagine if thousands were occupying against the immorality of religions place in the public sector... we would be all over it. I thought I would find support,yet all I hear is cynicism from my peers when I'm merely trying to be consistent, cynicism largely indeterminable from Neoliberal trolls that pester me for having a conscience.

Skepticism isn't just for hard science. It should be for everything that has impact in our public world. Besides, there is data and evidence out there, there is knowledge about how we have evolved and what is good for the mind. Our relative nature is but one piece of evidence not only ignored by Neoliberalism but actively opposed, all for money. Are concerns about empiricism enough to justify not lending our voice against this dangerous ideology?

I can only conclude that were the skeptical community living in the 16th Century, they would ignore the Church and instead focus all their energy on the relatively harmless fortune-teller. A week ago even I would have dismissed this as absurd. I'm not going to go through the possible objections yet because the type of answers I get are integral to the question itself, so I will answer any replies below the line. Also, before you post your reply, just consider 1) what the answer might be were you talking about religion instead of neoliberalism and 2) where the answer comes from and is that the equivilent of taking the Church's word on the matter?. I have found that often sheds light on the matter.

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.

Word Cloud of Anger from Comments on Mayor Quans Facebook Page as of midnight GMT 27/10

actions ashamed assemble chief citizens city condition constitution cops country critical department disgrace disgusting fired force grenade hope injured iraq jean mayor night oakland occupy olsen peaceful please police protesters public quan recall resign resolution rights rubber scott shame support tear veteran video violence war watch whole work world youtube

created at TagCrowd.com

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.

Cablegate highlights that U.S. distain of West Papua is undiminished after 40 years

This disgraceful cable from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, is something I truly hoped I would not see: contemporary documents showing that U.S. indifference to Papua is as strong as ever.  I had to wade through 400 pages of declassified documents for my university dissertation on West Papua; page after page of racist, ignorant, scheming betrayal of an entire people.  To fill people in on the sordid tale, a mere two weeks after gaining independence from the Dutch, West Papua was invaded by Indonesia under the pretext of rescuing them of subversive minorities. It was an invasion sanctioned by a United States desperate to keep hold of a key, non-communist country in a highly volatile area of the world.  The reason? Well, it does kind of look like it's all part of the same place, I mean, it's just one massive archipelago right? Oh, and it has the worlds largest copper mine in the world...

Here are some excerpts from the cable:

"The group's focus on "self-determination" basically makes their efforts a non-starter with the GOI. Moreover, the exiles' almost exclusive focus on Papua's legal status highlights a growing rift with activists inside Papua,who are considerably more moderate."

The Act of Free Choice was the deeply ironic name given to the UN ratified sham election in 1969. 1050 hand-picked (by Indonesia, obviously) Papuans voted unanimously to give up their hard won flag, their fledging independence, and become a province of Indonesia.  The declassified documents make clear that everybody knew this was a sham; that near every Papuan despised the Indonesians that had been subsidised to colonise their land afresh; even that there was a high likelihood of human rights abuses.  Yet they have the temerity to ask for self-determination? Pfff!

"WPNCL spokesperson Paula Makabory asserted to poloff in a recent telephone conversation that numerous Papuans within Indonesia supported the coalition. She added, however, that she could not provide more details out of "fear" for their safety."

Nice quotation marks asshole.

"The new group's grievances are not new."

No shit?

"The WPNCL's approach basically rests on the claim that Indonesia illegally absorbed Papua (then Dutch New Guinea) through the 1969 UN-supervised Act of Free Choice."

Their "claim", as you call it, can be verified by the person you are writing to at the State department if you wish, or you could google it? This though is the killer paragraph...

"WPNCL statements also regurgitate many of the dramatic but vague claims that are the stock in trade of Papuan independence supporters. These include accusations of genocide, gross human rights violations and massive environmental destruction purportedly committed by Indonesians."

Ouch. Don't you just hate hearing the same old stock-in-trade accusations of genocide? It all gets so boring doesn't it? I also like the way that he says, "purportedly committed by Indonesians", as though the companies committing the destruction weren't American and British.

"Ronald Tapilatu, an advisor to Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu,[said] it would... undercut the efforts of both national and provincial leaders to implement Papua's Special Autonomy agreement with Jakarta."

This would be the Special Autonomy Agreement introduced in 2002 that has done next to nothing in nearly 10 years? 

This next I am particularly pissed off about, and not just because it is the Catholic Church standing up for oppressors... again. Here are the thoughts of Budi Hernawan, Director of the Jayapura Diocese Peace and Justice Secretariat (SKP)...

"The WPNCL's activities could hamper the work of human rights advocates in the province. WPNCL public statements combined claims about alleged human rights violations in Papua with demands for political independence. This, according to Hernawan, made it more difficult for human rights defenders to convince Indonesian authorities that they were only concerned with human rights and did not have a position on Papua's political status. "We can only work if we are seen as above politics," he said"

So, Papuans should learn to stop worrying about self-determination, even though it is the only logical response to the human rights abuses, political imprisonment and genocide, just so that the people investigating these crimes can be taken seriously by an oppressive regime that has no interest in listening to them anyway.

These concerns were not for the likes of America back in 1969, and sadly neither are they now.  It has been over 40 years since the Act of Free Choice, 40 years of genocide, abuse, environmental devastation viewable from near space and absolutely no moral evolution for the U.S. government.  They have morally stagnated; no better now than a generation ago, just PR savvy.

Papuans deserve freedom. Someday they shall have it.

A Manifesto for Social Evolution in the UK: Part 2

Welcome to part two of my sociocultural evolutionary manifesto for reforming the UK's institutions.  Today it is the turn of education and housing...

Education

If there were one sector of society that should evolve alongside communication technology it is education.  Knowledge is information, whose transfer directly benefits from technological advance.  Yet here we are in the 21st century with what appear to be factories attempting to force children of all shapes and sizes through the exact same hole, metaphorically speaking.  Education has a duty to embrace the tenets of cultural evolution mainly because they are also the basic tenets of a good education; communication, synthesis of ideas, progression of discourse, adding to human understanding.  They are thus because education as an ideal transcends identity, serving our basic, inherent desire to rationalise the world.  What we need to do is ensure it goes back to these ideals, out of the grip of Government Inc ideology.

First of all, exams are the most pathetic way of making or breaking years of hard graft; they utterly misrepresent any likely future scenario for utilizing these skills. We don't lock ourselves in the bathroom with naught but a pad and pen to complete a report due in 90 minutes, do we? The whole point of the system as it is is to ensure standardisation in evaluation so that grades actually mean something in the context of everyone else's grades.  Yet one person (me, for example) can study tactically and another person can work day and night on the entire course and they often  still come out with the same grade.   Perhaps it was because I am lucky in that I personally don't mind taking exams, but here again is another problem.  We are condemning the unlucky, those that for whatever reason can't handle pressure that is in no way necessary, to potential lifelong negative consequences. Such a simplified, artificial, irrational system as this cannot hold legitimacy in such interconnected, fibre-optic times.  We need virtual systems to track, accumulate and share knowledge we gain through education, borrowing ideas from RPG's.  Teach kids in ways that they understand; the benefits could be far greater than we know).  

Why do we still have textbooks?  They can't move, can't play sound, can only provide maybe a couple of gigs of pre-defined information, cannot join you in learning with kids all over the country, nay, the world.  They can't even be updated for crying out loud, you actually have to buy a whole new set!  Being centrally  controlled by the folks in Westminster, our education system is held hostage, condemned to evolutionary stagnation for all but a few schools, sorry, academies, that were lucky enough to be expensive political photo-ops.  We also need to accept that children come in all varieties, with different skills and interests.  We must find a way to vary methods of learning to fit each child; forcing all the children to fit the same antiquated and counter-intuitive system is absurd, something that particularly impacts boys.  Talking about fitting education to the needs of the child, any child in this case, why don't we start feeding them properly?  Complicated stuff I know. 

Not only do we need radical ideas, cultural evolution always works best when experimentation can happen in multiple, interlinked locations and knowledge shared and synthesised. For this reason we must decentralise power, preferably down to individual school levels, so that teachers are free to teach in ways that suit their students.  Give them the freedom to borrow from other teachers around the world ideas, games and techniques that might actually work; or else continue to do nothing in a system that is cracking at the seams. 

For higher education, I suggest we stop talking about how wonderful interdisciplinary work is and actually take the plunge.  I had to beg to be allowed to take the Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science course, a course that changed my life, simply because it wasn't in the school of humanities.  Putting these artificial walls up helps nobody.  What we need instead is a format whereby students are free to go to any lectures they wish during the first two years, perhaps with a minimum figure per week.  Lectures should be recorded and made available online with forums and chatrooms.  A weekly seminar allows you to present on the best/most interesting lecture you saw last week, or alternately respond to a previous presentation by another student.  The first two years should be about allowing students to take their own path, with the freedom to learn different subjects depending on where their thinking takes them i.e. no exams, no marking.  Come the third year, students would pick two dissertation questions, entirely of their choosing.  For each work, the student chooses three types of professor (e.g, historian, social scientist, cognitive scientist) to convene and mark it as a group.  This way, students are free to go beyond the knowledge of their teachers, force established professors to consider alternative views and break the closed structures of defined disciplines.  

Just because capitalism doesn't care much for History doesn't mean it isn't important, perhaps if they realised that they'd have a better idea of their own intransigence.  Universities must be about knowledge and only knowledge; enough with the GovCorp subversion.  They must be independent, affordable and seek to expand virtually to greater numbers of people.  Which brings me to my last point...

Most importantly of all, particularly in light of the fees hike, is the need for recognition of people's ability to educate themselves.  I resent the fact that in order to get jobs for which I am perfectly capable, I am required to get massively in debt so that I can own a piece of paper from someone assuring employers that I do actually hold information in my head.  Almost every person in this country now has access to a previously unimaginable wealth of knowledge and educational resources, factors greater than the entire education system could have provided just 20 years ago.  We cannot continue as if the only education that matters is the one granted official status by the state.  Not only does it mean a reliance an out-dated, nationalist-centred syllabus, but it also discriminates against those who cannot afford to go to university.  Giving individuals direct access to nationally recognised qualifications, to be completed in their own way, at their own pace, is long overdue and could radically empower those who feel excluded.    

 

Housing

Well, this is a pretty simple one.  Not much cultural evolution has to say on this one, unless you want to talk about architectural styles.  Or we could take about historical accidents?

Apparently, because I was unlucky enough to have come of age after the housing boom, I am now forced to pay one of the thousands of already wealthy people who bought up every cheap house going, split them in half, and rented them out. As with every other under-30 who doesn't have rich elders, my wife and I have absolutely no hope of owning our own home despite both having jobs.  Norfolk, where I live, has seen house prices treble and quadruple in the last 15 years, mainly as second (or third, or fourth) homes for greedy people.  The UK has one of the smallest average house sizes of the developed world, with rent accounting for an ever increasing portion of people's salaries. How can we as a generation take authority seriously when we see them doing nothing to tackle this gross injustice, while they sit on multiple homes, often paid for at our expense, earning inordinate amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing?!

Where are the new builds? Where is the investment in new home technology?  Where is the protection for those priced out of living near their family because of the artificial prices created by self-imposed mega-salaries of financial industries gone mad?  Is our construction industry so healthy that they don't need the work?

How does government, or the public for that matter, expect the young to have an inherent respect for property when they themselves blindly hoard it to the exclusion of a whole generation?  Where is the sense of shame or duty to rectify this betrayal?  It is the same place it has always been, throughout History, for property owning classes: nowhere.  It has ever been thus that ownership of land and property has acted as a barrier to sharing identity and moral concern; it shouldn't surprise us that by merely increasing that number to a large part of the older generation shouldn't change that dynamic.  Now it's become a generational divide, wonderfully illustrated in the book Jilted Generation, rather than serf and lord.  By denying us this opportunity, authority is satisfied to see us as cash-cows for the already wealthy, accepting huge chunks of our meagre minimum wages each month because we have no other choice. 

In the long run, I expect such greed to be seen as deeply immoral.  But, since evolution is a step-by-step process, reform must first come through affirmative government action: investment in new builds and investment in providing affordable mortgages to first time buyers.  Eventually, the issue of hoarding property will have to be tackled, perhaps through having upper limits on the number of properties you may own with the excess being offered to tenants with rent, back-dated, going toward payment of ownership.  The owner gets paid, the tenant feels they are not being fleeced, house ownership goes up and society gets a bit more equal.

Previously: Part 1: Police and Justice 

Coming soon: The Media and the Internet.

A Manifesto for Social Evolution in the UK: Part 1.

 

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

What Kennedy meant to say...

I had wanted to write about the punitive sentencing that occurred in the wake of the riots, yet the more I thought about it, the more depressed I became.  The issues were so clear to the non-ideologically bound that they had already all been said.  So, in an attempt to get ahead of the curve, I figured someone had better make a start putting forward some solutions...  

This is not about left and right. This is not about socialist or capitalist.  This, a manifesto for reform for the institutions of the UK, is an attempt to derive solutions to our growing malaise from the philosophy of cultural evolution and complex systems.  Over the coming two weeks I will review, using a framework derived from cultural evolution, each of our public institutions and sectors of society that I see as being in need of urgent evolution, lest they lose all significance and authority to the new generation: the police, the justice system, education, housing, employment, the economy, foreign policy and state governance.  Often the foundations upon which they are based centuries old, using misguided concepts often much older still.  In a time of globalisation and exponentially growing communication technology, we must bring them up to date if we are to expect them to remain relevant to 21st century identities.  If they are not, they risk losing all authority and right of representation, with potentially disastrous consequences if resisted.  

I just want to finish my introduction with this:  I do not see it as my job to describe a utopia before demanding people adhere to it.  If that's your impression, then you've misunderstood.  Evolution happens a step at a time, by definition.  I'm just aiming to point out the bleeding obvious to those that are blinded by walled identities in the here and now... it's for tomorrows generation to pick up the ball and keep heading in the right direction.  All we have to do is leave the world slightly better than we found it.

First up, law and order.

The Police

Firstly, I'd just like to say that I once seriously considered becoming a police officer (and still would, should they significantly change).  There is something noble in principle about protecting people... so long as by 'people' you mean 'everyone', equally.  The list of grievances justifiably held against the police grows by the day; deaths, cover-ups, obfuscation, lie after lie.  The fact that most coppers are probably honest, hard-working people is simply not a satisfactory defence.

The police represent one of the most closed institutional systems in the country.  Their shared language, uniform, privileged position of power, procedures etc, combine with the situational pressures of conflict to bond the group together (much like the army).   As such, it has always been seen as a virtue to stick up for your colleagues no matter what; conversely, the conflict inherent in grassing on a fellow cop has been staple diet for cops shows to the point of cliche.   This level of tribalism might have been sustainable once, but no longer.  It is simply not possible to maintain that level of corruption, that many deaths in custody with seeming immunity, the brazen politicisation... not when every citizen has a camera in their pocket.  Such a closed system evolves slowly, if at all.  The police may be independent in name, but their remit is determined by government, not the people*.  As such, it is the poor who represent the police's 'other', those who transgress capitalism's norms, be it in their dress, their disdain for greed or their misfortune to have been born into a class forgot.  While it remains this way, there will always be incidents that continue to decay what little remains of a reputation they have

In such a situation, assuming the majority of police officers are honest people, we should expect to see officers speaking up, denouncing those shown to have defiled their position in the name of the people.  I'd certainly like to think that at least one of them had got to know some of these youths to the point of empathy, and then on to questioning their own actions publicly.  That this hasn't happened is telling, and in a large way makes each and every one of them an enabler.  This is why I couldn't be a police officer; at the very best I would never get promoted, at worst who knows?

They need opening up.  All data must be on-line.  Civil rights groups, lawyers and the public should be the ones to hold the police to account, people whose identity allows them to do the job that needs to be done.  Clearly the IPCC is far too close to be considered impartial; certainly their record is pretty pathetic.  The anger felt by thousands when they think of the name Ian Tomlinson, to cite but one person, simply cannot be undone.  It is there in the cynicism greeting each report of a new death at the hands of the police, in the resigned sorrow for the latest family to get lied to and dicked about after losing a loved one.  The public must be allowed to video police actions and record conversations if they so wish (not least because technology will soon be doing that for some 24/7 anyway).  I would go further and consider helmet-cams for armed response units that upload to independent servers... the first public inquiry avoided would ensure they pay for themselves pretty quick.  If the police don't like the idea, perhaps they should stop routinely covering shit up?

The police must be seen to be about more than simply stopping criminality.  Combine probation and front-line duties, let those on the street get to know these kids in deeper and more constructive contexts than stop-and-searches.  Government must give police greater support by increasing investment in youth clubs and groups who do great work like Connexions instead of seeing youth related services as an easy target for slashing budgets.

And the most painful thing?  When officers and politicians admit the police were corrupt once and yet insist that things have changed.  As if they would even know.

The Justice System

An activist awaits trial.  They know, their friends know and their lawyers know that whether they get off or get sent down depends largely on whether Judge A or Judge B is appointed to the case.  If you think this is an exaggeration then congratulations to you; you are lucky (or submissive) enough to have not experienced the pleasure of finding out the limitations of 'universal' law.  This alone says all that needs to be said about the problem inherent in our justice system: that power is too  to ensure objective, consistent application of law.  It is also too concentrated in it's identity (rich, largely male, largely white); an identity far too exclusively intertwined with other rich white guys in the police, the government and business boardrooms to ensure equal representation for the whole population. 

A dangerous number of people now view the justice system, correctly as it happens, as representing the power of wealth; a number that is only going to rise as communication technologies advance.  This is because of the inherent contradiction between the underlying capitalist assumptions of national courts and the multinational, globalised culture we now inhabit.  Do not preach to us about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only to throw those who embody it's spirit in jail for having the temerity to disrupt a British company turning a profit.  

What I wouldn't encourage is a radical overhaul.  For all it's faults, our system in the UK has built within it mechanisms that allow for evolution of law.  It may be slow to do so, often to the point of exasperation (see: Drug Reform), but there is much that can be done without risk of evolutionary over-reach (otherwise known as revolution).  As with all institutions, transparency, open data and an acceptance of new communication technologies must be a basic starting point, including easily searchable and mashable data records from individual judges to national statistics.  Law cannot remain cloaked in legalese and expect people to feel represented.  Activists must be allowed to speak their cause when in court for non-violent direct action and, if shown to adhere to international humanitarian law, they must trump issues of purely economic or political interest.  How else do we avoid another Diego Garcia or West Papua?

Finally, the one thing you absolutely must not do, under any circumstances, is allow criminal minds to congregate in a culturally closed system, away from society, for any length of time.

Oh.

Seriously, of all the flaws in our institutions, none compare to the prison system for sheer misguidedness.  If you were to look at humans as they truly are, a complex system governed by cultural evolution, then prison is the complete opposite of what is needed.  At the heart of this misunderstanding is an immature concept of justice as retribution, of responsibility lying absolutely in Judeo-Christian notions of the soul and free will.  Instead, it is simply a mechanism for providing feedback to the system, issuing formalised judgements of  collective will in order to influence the community as a whole.  By shutting these people away, we are merely hiding from ourselves evidence of our collective failure, or, more likely given its power, the failure of authority.  
Restorative justice is exactly what cultural evolution demands, offenders being made to see the damage they have done and, where possible, meet the victims themselves.  It would take a much bigger budget than such measures have now, but it must be considerably cheaper than housing them in criminal finishing schools and tarring them with further non-constructive social stigma? We need a serious reappraisal of the fundamental nature of law and justice; who it represents, it's necessary limitations and most importantly of all its need to be grounded in universality and objective fact.  Do not hope for progress while bankers, arms dealers and corrupt officials act with seeming impunity while thousands are criminalised for smoking a natural substance often less harmful (certainly to others) than the champagne they so lovingly hold as a mark of sophistication.


On Monday: Education and Housing...


* No, they are not the same thing. See: Government, coming soon

So many long words to say such a stupid thing...

I accidentally 'liked' someone's comment on Anne-Marie Slaughter's post on the UK riots in The Atlantic (disclaimer: yes, she mentioned my post, and yes, I'm happy for that, but no, this isn't an excuse to link to it) because, were you to switch the first 'homogeneous' for 'diverse', I could totally see it as a valid point of view that is seldom mentioned...  Jean c Rien: "I grew up in an ethnically homogenous, economically diverse neighborhood. It was crime free, and there was great community. I now live in an ethnically diverse, economically homogenous neighborhood. People are rude and/or hostile to each other. I'm going back to the 'hood." Artist impression of Jean c Rien Pissed about the liking of the comment that I couldn't undo, I spent the next half hour writing a a slightly pissy reply, hence why I thought I'd post it on here to compensate for the dirty of having fed a troll.... again. "I used to live in an ethnically diverse, economically homogeneous area, and it was the best place I've ever lived, never known so many people in one place. Instead of falling back on your own circumstance as being representative of the greater whole (which, when you think about it, is pretty arrogant), why don't you look at the stats, the actual data, that show a clear correlation between wealth inequality and quality of life. If you did manage to find an area that was ethnically homogeneous and yet had wealthy people kicking it with the poor folks, please don't hesitate to tell us where... seriously, it could hold the key to you..., what? Proving racism is good? It's natural? Our identity is not determined solely by our genes; cultural identity acquired through one's life has slowly come to dominate in humankind, as civilisation accumulated and thought evolved. That is to say it is malleable, evolving through the interaction of billions of minds in a complex system... if all races have equal access to cultural production, then within a couple of generations only hardcore fundamentalists would be left. Will your kids be one of those?" Or we could learn from old Jean here how rich and poor can live in unequal harmony together... so long as they have the same amount of melatonin in their skin organ.