All We Have to Fear is Manipulation Itself
When you feel fear in a media-driven society, chances are it’s because
someone wants to scare you.
As previously conjectured, fear is usually the product of a media message.
The message is certainly calculated, perhaps cynical. At its most benign, it’s
to sell you a hygiene product to avoid the purgatory of those who smell, look
or taste human. If political, the message is surely cynical: to alarm you over
a non-issue so convincingly that you reward the manipulator of your emotions
with your vote or worse – another of your dwindling freedoms.
There are two kinds of people in a society: those who expect to work for whatever
shows up and those who just know they can get others
to do for them what they cannot or will not do themselves. The latter kind must
manipulate the willing workers to be served as they expect, with fear as the
best tool for the job.
Let’s break that down. In my recent Viet
Nam recollection, I suggested that we pay too much attention to scary but
improbable anecdotes and too little to our real lives and loves. Perhaps our
innocence has been stolen by terrorists, but our energy is being drained by
politicians. They can do it because we're wired that way.
To be fair, the politicians face their own greatest fear: another major attack
will expose their lack of control of this conflict. Their fear, then, is for
their political security and not the security of their fellow citizens. All
they have to sell us sell is the illusion of control over a chaotic world.
We are the Warriors
A war on terrorism is a war of terrorism.
Who are the front line soldiers in a terrorist war? It’s you and me, untrained
guerilla fighters moonlighting on the front lines of a nasty, random conflict.
It’s not our troops who bravely take the conflict to the nations harboring
terrorism.
We are the Continental Army on the barricades of this conflict. As the front
line warriors, perhaps we want some voice about how this battle will be joined.
For instance, we might accept the fact that some of us are going to be killed
and wounded. Not many of us, certainly, and very improbably any one of us, but
some of us. Now if we’re willing to be real patriots and warriors –
to die or bleed for this cause – maybe we want to tell our elected “leaders”
about our preferred terms of engagement. Here’s one view:
Poiticians Terrorism Briefing
- No more grandstanding – Lead, follow, or get out
of the way, but don’t erode our civil rights for political gain or the
appearance of security.
- We’re not secure – We all know that. Don’t
insult our intelligence or courage by pretending you can save us from a threat
you don’t understand and can’t relate to. Join us in taking responsibility
for our actions by being responsible for your own actions.
- Be candid – Tell us and the world that we are an
imperfect nation doing its best to perfect its civil liberties and education
for all its citizens, so we remain a beacon of freedom and possibility for
all the people of the world, as we always have been. Admit that the terrorists
are brave, committed warriors willing to do things so unthinkable that we
are in real danger, and that the outcome is so uncertain that your ability
to manage it is questionable.
- Be intelligent – the least we can expect. Remind
us that we are committed, courageous and caring; that this fight is between
a culture that blindly does what its leaders say and one that seeks to once
again be led by intelligent, thinking strategists: Leaders who understand
the constitution’s limits on powers and who know we’re fighting
for diversity, free speech and due process.
- Listen to US, not your party workers or toadies. Reach
out to the most of us who are able to make fine distinctions between cultural
values; who know that there will be a cost to dissuade the people who know
we're evil. Focus our outrage through intelligent, open discourse so the terrorists
learn they cannot prevail against this alarmed, alert (perhaps, even, as
ESR urges, armed people).
- Above all: Define the Mission
- Are we really fighting for our "style of life"?
- Is our "style of life" worth dying for?
- Does our "style of life" mean being 300 million people living
like 3 billion?
- Does our "style of life" mean reducing real people to consumers
(poor sods who ingest ads in one end and crap cash out the
other)
- How many real Americans would die for those values?
- Define What We Stand For.
- If we're defending freedom, then we're defending diversity. Let's deplore
government policies that limit diversity - even here.
- If we're defending freedom, we're defending free speech. Even the kind that
makes other uncomfortable - even here.
- If we're defending freedom, we're defending freedom of religion - or its
absence - even here.
- Skip this list - just read the Federalist Papers. Why not interpret the
Constitution and Bill of Rights strictly, as Absolute Authority, rather than,
say, the
Bible. Like their fundamentalists.
Get Real, Go Online
Of course I'm dreaming a utopian vision. Politicians won't do this because
they are the worst of the people who excel at getting others to do things for
them. And they've got the best means to do it - subjugation. Only technology
(web applications) can save us from the 226 year slide from a barely governable
oligarchy of propertied, rebellious white guys to a manipulated herd of materialists.
But who's going to build these web applications? We will.
If Mitch Kapor can spend $5 million on the OSAF
PIM, surely we can find a way to build specific, purpose-built global connectors:
The Electoral Collage A web
application to aggregate opinions into votes, in the same way that the open
source community aggregates user preferences into executable code. The opinions
would be developed, of course, by the blogging community and its knowledge
logs.
Moneyware A web application for a P2P economy - people buying
and selling based on proven reputation rather than unsupported hype - among
other things, a way for motivated American women to buy homespun directly
from Afghani and Iraqui women, creating a new and visible female Arab moneyed
class. (In process)
Take it to the Streets A web application with online protocols
for rule-based, sustainable community development, whereby American cities
and towns can directly communicate with and adopt sister villages and pipeline
funds directly into communities, bypassing central graft government.
Howard Bloom points out that confusing times can make
you feel listless. Larry
Lessig wonders why the web community is so passive about copyright. But
why not do what we do best? Let's hack some code, build some shared applications,
get it together. And get all of us together while we're at it.
9:29:36 PM 
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