A brief sociopolitical/psychological tangent, then the good stuff.
I’m of a mind that good fences make good neighbors.
I don’t want a global government or global culture any more than I want a global economy (which is to say, not at all). Many things just work better locally. Beyond that, though, there’s the old thought that if you get any three people in a room, you’ll have four different opinions on any given topic. …or something like that.
People just don’t agree in general; we’re individuals, and we all come at things a bit differently. Trying to make a global government never did make much sense to me. There’s certainly a good place for a baseline of civility, but trying to impose a collective consensus from on high just won’t work out.
Out here in the fringe society of MMO gaming, EVE works as a one-world sort of game, but even there, you have players going places to get away from each other. Low-sec vs. High-sec, mining vs. wormhole exploring. Us crazy humans are just a diverse lot with varied interests, and that’s OK. Even when more technology advances sufficiently to make other solid one-world MMOs, people will still just go off and do their own thing. (Especially us nefarious soloists. Neener neener.)
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Anyway, I’m not really out in tin foil hat land huffing and puffing about the New World Order or the latest Communist Manifesto, as much fun as that could be to prompt some minor flamewars. What’s really important here is that people are inevitably individuals, and expecting to be able to mold people en masse just isn’t realistic. That notion of individual agency has implications for any sort of activity where people are involved and interacting, from gaming to politics to religion or whatever. We all need fences around our own decision making processes, or we’re no better than automatons fit for the Soylent Green Big Brother state dinner, and we need to respect the fences of other people.
As Robert A. Heinlein noted:
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
I’d posit that this division isn’t just political; it’s philosophical, and touches every human activity, at all ages.
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So what? Well, lengthy preamble aside, I do find things like this to be curiously touching:
Pachelbel’s Canon in D… with Beatboxing, Breakdancing and Korean stringed instruments.
I don’t want globalization imposed from on high, but this sort of artist-inspired bizarre mashup of old and young, East and West, high class and street class, elegance and irreverence… well, it gives me hope that people from vastly different backgrounds really do have something to say to each other beside arguing.
That’s what I want out of “globalization”; people sharing and being good to each other, building something that is more than the sum of its parts. Call it “Peace on Earth”, if you will, but that’s my Christmas wish for this year:
May we all find reason to celebrate the other, learning and creating with an eye to cooperation, serving each other because we choose to, not because we’re told to.
Merry Christmas or Happy Whatever It Is You Celebrate This Time of Year! I hope it’s a good one for you and yours.
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Oh, and speaking of Pachelbel and Christmas, I do love these, both hybrids in their own right:
John Schmidt’s Pachelbel Meets U2
TransSiberian Orchestra’s Christmas Canon (and the Rock version is here, if you like that better… it’s a bit more of a hybrid)
…and while we’re talking rock, bonus points for the band OK Go teaming up with Notre Dame’s marching band and kids for a curiously philosophical comment or two:
Maybe it’s dumb, but I can’t help but smile a bit seeing potentially diverse groups like that producing something fun together.
I just wanted to say that you absolutely made my day with OK go video. thank you
“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
This is too simplistic. There are, of course, those who need authoritarian rule and those who cannot abide by any rules at all. But then there’s a vast middle of greys. Most people want other people to be controlled. Personally, I’m fond of pollution laws. More extreme people might want government to abolish oil or some crazy thing like that. Less extreme people want no regulation, but of course they still want police and they want other people to follow the laws.
I caught some flak for saying we must choose our tyrant.
http://trollshaman.blogspot.com/2010/11/whose-revolution-is-it.html
What I meant is that there will always be systems of control. It may be the market, the government, society, anything really. As long as we plan to live within a hundred miles of other people we need rules to regulate interaction, unless of course we want to be constantly in conflict. So given that there always will, and must, be control, it should be our goal to ensure that we control those powers. Basically I was saying I want a representative government with strong regulatory powers, but somehow that got lost. I realize there is constant risk of corruption and tyranny; that means we must struggle constantly to keep the system working.
On a less negative note, I’m all for cultural mixing. Hybridizing and fusing and whatever other synonyms you can think of. Have you ever mixed salsa and mozzarella? It makes a pretty good sauce for spaghetti.
‘There must be control’. It always sounds great when you’ve already consented to it.
And ya know, once you’ve written yourself a blank cheque for skipping consent, well hey, suddenly you can start skipping a whole bunch of things….oh, oops, the things the system was supposedly put there to do to begin with.
“It always sounds great when you’ve already consented to it.
And ya know, once you’ve written yourself a blank cheque for skipping consent”
Am I giving consent or is it being skipped? I’m certainly not giving a blank check, if anything it is those who think there can be no power structure who give the blank check, since they often seem the able to notice it growing.
Someone will always be trying to be in charge, no matter how much we don’t want them to, so it’s best to know who that person is and keep an eye on them, and have ways to get rid of them. That’s why we prefer mayors to mob bosses.
One big aspect for me about MMOs has always been that I get to play with people from all over the continent, people I’d never meet in my life otherwise – and the experience how much we can have in common no matter our cultural or social backgrounds, the language we speak et cetera. I agree we need to respect individuality but at the same time I believe that a great deal of these so-called ‘differences’ we’re supposed to have, are rubbish: we all want the same elementary things out of life, a roof over our head, food on the table, a family, some stability. not saying that certain people don’t strive for more, but these are core values that unite most of us and it doesn’t matter where we’re from. it’s a lot of negative propaganda that is trying to divide people and create walls between nations, cultures or social classes.
anyway, I feel like I’m rambling now…in any case your post struck a chord with me in reference to my love for MMOs. this is also a reason why I always chose international/english speaking servers rather than native language alternatives.
I suspect there’s an undercurrent of sociopaths that primarily drive division. Primarily because they are bored and WE are their mmorpg.
That and the instinctual (to what probable purpose, I don’t know) of tribal identification. I mean, we keep up this stupid pretence of ‘races’. A dwarf and a human, those are two seperate races. An asian and a caucasian are about as different as a labrador and a poodle. Were all wolves. Yet for some reason the wolves we are all share the trait of taking a few changes in pysiology and calling that individual somehow starkly different. Heck, you may as well call red heads another race, for as much sense as skin colour or facial structure matter.
Just different breeds of wolf. Wait, wolves are cool. I’ll quote Tim Minchen and say were monkeys wearing shoes… >:)
Syl, I second that motion.
Tribalism is useful in times of shortage for dealing with allocation of resources. It ensures that I get mine by helping my tribe get theirs, at the expense of the other tribe. In times of prosperity, it’s a source of war, and sports teams.
The good fences thing has another side to it:
“He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” ”
It’s often quoted partially. The poem’s narrator was actually against it, and it’s poignant because it goes very well with your point about forced globalization. The forcers see walls as barriers, kind of like Syl’s idea of “so called ‘differences.’” “Something there is, that doesn’t love a wall.”
It’s also poignant to me because you are Mormon, right man? So you know very well about resisting forced globalization. You are always in danger of your own culture being swallowed up.
I don’t agree with Heinlein though, he’s becoming the poor man’s Ayn Rand among conservatives and libertarians, and it’s easy to forget he’s the same person who wrote stranger in a strange land and celebrated grokking.
Indeed, Stranger in a Strange Land is considerably dysfunctional, and that’s a fair warning that Heinlein is to be taken with a grain of salt. Heinlein isn’t a role model of mine by any means, but I think he has the right of it here, and it works with how I’m thinking of fences. There’s a theological basis for it as well, and yes, I’m LDS, but I figured it wasn’t worth starting even more flame wars. I’m not afraid or ashamed of my religion, but neither is it usually a constructive topic of conversation, unfortunately.
For clarity’s sake, though, order isn’t something that can be imposed, methinketh. Yes, order may well be defined by someone with more wisdom than we may have, but it’s ultimately up to each of us as individuals to choose to make that order work. (This, whether it’s societal or religious, whatever your bent. When dealing with politics, though, healthy distrust of those with power is a Good Thing, as no mortal is infallible, especially with power on the table.)
As with fences, we need to respect the concepts of order, whether societally agreed upon order or faith-based, while balancing that with the need for agency. We have to make our own choices and allow others the ability to do the same. Of course we should defend ourselves and our family in time of threat, but where possible, we should defend the right of choice, even if, and sometimes especially if, those making choices aren’t choosing the way we would.
When individuals choose to break down walls and fences from their own side, cooperating by choice, that’s one thing. When individuals choose to break down someone else’s wall, that’s quite another, and getting the State to break them down is further trouble. I’m all for the former, and wary of the latter, which is why I linked the videos in question. Those artists chose to eliminate some of their own fences, and things worked out well.
I’m hopeful that people can do so and choose to cooperate for mutual benefit, rather than have Big Brother force that cooperation, which always causes friction. As a species, we don’t react well to constraints unless we choose them for ourselves.
In some ways, it’s a matter of courtesy, a lost art of sorts. Holding one’s tongue is a constraint, a fence, we keep ourselves within in order to keep conversation civil. In doing so, we may shy away from conversational contention points that are someone else’s defensive perimeter. We try to understand those fences so that we don’t cause problems. Those taboos and forsaken ground aren’t worth fighting over, but without knowing where those minefields are and how to avoid them, we might blithely wander about with an extreme sense of libertarian whimsy, and cause a lot of damage.
In other words, when I speak of fences, I speak well of those we build for ourselves (and perhaps, tear down at some point), and eye balefully those that the State or others might impose on us. It seems to me that there’s a world of difference between those constraints, and how and why they are challenged.
I do agree with you, very much. I wish I could share that faith, but usually Big Brother does what it does because it sees itself as moral. Like the poem’s narrator: its not about celebrating culture but bringing light to darkness and smashing hidebound traditions. So the imposers will always be with us.
A strong local culture is an antidote to a lot of things. That’s why I referenced your faith, LDS are quietly building very strong fences for good reasons. Maybe we can be lucky and people will move towards promoting local culture and choice over global.
“As a species, we don’t react well to constraints unless we choose them for ourselves.”
Quite true. I wonder though, in regards to my fences and the State’s fences, are the police my fence or the State’s? I certainly like having them around to discourage (can’t really say prevent) robbery and other crimes that hurt me. But for other people the police are holding them back, harassing them. Then again, criminals are never fans of the cops, so maybe this example doesn’t work. And maybe I’m failing at understanding your idea of fences.
On an unrelated note, does you ever get thrown off by the characters sometimes getting very preachy or pedantic about economics? I’ve not read a lot of his work, but I remember two them one of the characters in each would give some long lesson in the problems with this or that economic system. Maybe I didn’t mind too much since I liked the books overall, but it almost felt like he’d taken a lecture and just rewrote it to make a character say it.
Dblade, local culture is a nice counter to global crisis, too, like the financial problems that are looming. There’s good reason to trust your neighbors and not extend yourself too far.
Klep, I’ve only read a couple of Heinlein’s books, but there’s definitely some of that that I’ve seen. Stranger’s last third was effectively hippie propaganda, too, and it really ruined the book for me. It’s almost like he asks some interesting questions, as good science fiction is wont to do, but only as a way to offer his own answers rather than leave the question hanging. I find I much prefer the questions over the answers.
Oh, and thinking of police, I think those are fences of a sort that we agree on as a society. I do believe that a rule of law is crucial to make a society function, and police are there to keep the “fence of law” solid. They aren’t really a personal fence, more of a societal one that tries to keep us polite, but one that we’ve probably agreed upon more or less as a community. Thieves are definitely against such, but then, they would be against personal rules of property, too… and if enforcement of those rules ultimately fell on individuals, say, armed and ready for unwelcome visitors, thieves might not be all too keen to ply their trade, either. What’s the phrase? “An armed society is a polite society”?