(A Free Internet, Smart Use of Technology and Revolution)
“because they trust themselves they have no need to convince others by deception since their confidence has never deteriorated they need not be fearful of others”
- poem by Chogyam Trungpa
“Follow your genius closely enough and it will not fail to offer you a new prospect every hour.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Recent events in the Middle East reminded me of a search I did on Flikr.com in January for photos of Egyptians gathering once again in Tahrir Square revealed vivid, messy, human human moments only that when I found them were only old. Excitement and anxiety unfolded in little moments and gestures that are windows onto aspirations re-surging in a very ancient place. What’s new and what is keeping a kind of evolution of attention alive is this marriage of technology to person and place.
Nevertheless, vehicles are now almost universally available which are increasingly being used in ways that also deeply connect us. You can discover for yourself what else is going on out there in the world. Applications like Instagram, social networks of various kinds, blogs, you name it; there are many ways to discover what is going on and what the world is like. Vivid personal, first person, unfiltered through an editor or organizational structure's purpose -- you can see what delights and what concerns people everywhere.
This freedom to go see what you need to, to direct the course of this discovery needs to be protected. This is why access to the internet should not become bifurcated or effectively segregated by the availability to pay more for better vetted or just a wider variety of information. As people piled into Tahrir Square again, following recent elections, there are people being detained by the military following a year with more military trials than had occurred previously over the course of many years. There is a need to continue the struggle.
Ideologues (and your garden variety totalitarian) and the powerful people and companies they court have held sway for so long. It’s time for the emphasis to be on the individual and their potential and their rights. That notion really got lost over two centuries ago after the Enlightenment. It eroded away so completely that we ended up with horrific world wars and violence against one another on ever increasing scales. We’ve been digging through detritus and rubble for years, centuries, to try to come out shiny and new again -- in an equitable sense anyway. In a way that doesn’t inevitably repress most of us for the privilege of the few. And obviously, we’re not there yet. But that is increasingly the taste in the air. The momentum builds in thought, expression and communication toward that goal -- in the belief that each of us has the right to a certain kind of life.
Ideologues always want us to be divorced from the contexts and complexities of our lives. (Totalitarians probably barely register others’ lives). For me an ideologue is anyone who wants others to be subjected to their absolutes. It has probably always been the case that real happiness and wisdom comes to an individual through the context and complexity of his or her life. But it is now, in this era, to anyone who wants to see it, obvious that it is through this awareness that we as people, and as communities and nations are discovering what we really need. It is from within place and context that we share photos, information, blog, twitter often in real time. We share knowledge outside old structures of communication, share insight that isn’t manipulated and experience that is not stereotyped or diluted. And as challenging as it is for some to grasp, it is an essential shift. Because it is about what is happening now informing what should be. This seems to be the proper order to me.
What happened in Egypt last winter, throughout the Middle East, here in the US over the course of months, in Europe and even in places like Russia where I don’t believe anyone has ever gathered until recently in a free un-coerced way to claim their rights, is miraculous. But I think it has its genesis in this instinctive sense that it is only from within your own particular life that you can discover what you want to do, what you need to do or what will make you happy. This desire propelled so many people onto the streets this past year. So many that Time Magazine named The Protester person of the year. And devoted some very intelligent reporting to this phenomenon.
A recent article in the Guardian highlights this about Putin's network pushing bloggers to write positively about him. It made me ask the question, would this have been news if, as the article points out "The leak comes as Putin faces the greatest challenge to his rule since first coming to power 12 years ago, with mass street demonstrations building momentum before a presidential vote on 4 March that is expected to return him to the presidency after a four-year interlude as prime minister." This demonstration and the ways in which the internet fuelled it provided a substantial enough threat for Putin's regime to create an organization to combat it.
We really do have powerful vehicles at our fingertips. They are beginning to help us awaken to the those moments when something is and maybe shouldn’t be beyond your reach. The daydreams and fantasies and illusions we all have access to are available alongside information and exchanges with real substance. And we have a choice. That choice begins to illuminate moments when your attention or desire is placed too far away from you. Put some place beyond your capacity to do or create right now. The more you are pulled away from yourself and who you are and what you need into places those things aren’t understood or taken into account and the more you are told what you need the less free you are. But you can also pay attention to situations and exchanges and ideas that resonate deeply with where you really are right now. If you know how to look, that looking can start to free you. Not everything is out there is an attempt to sell you deodorant. Some things are just beautiful. Some things are just innocent and fun. Some things are just true. Sometimes you smell good.
The April 6 movement inspired me at first because it was palpable just how deeply it was informed by people’s sense of dignity and desire for happiness. It was clear that a sense of love and respect for others kept it afloat. And in effect it was all motivated by love. Because without love you can’t be be happy. When you love -- your spouse, your partner, your parents, your children, your community well, when you really love them you want them to be happy. Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia set himself on fire out of love and the need to provide for his family with dignity. Love is a part of the context and complexity of your life.
There are ideas that need resuscitation in the US. Ideas that have in recent decades been abused or corrupted in thought and speech, terms people did not effectively defend, and which have been tainted: family, values, honor, love, commitment. I had hoped after 9/11 there would be more constructive reexamination of these things. With the election of Barak Obama, I hoped again there would be some renewed commitment to hitting this mark. But it hasn’t really happened yet. And all self help and Oprah moments aside (cultural climates can be so treacly) I had hoped there would be more of a tendency to examine our sources of happiness and dignity. And then perhaps a shared commitment might have evolved to protect those sources. It’s that kind of commitment I think President Obama asks for. as you can explore in this well produced interactive guide the Guardian newspaper posted on his State of the Union address.
The not so subtle thread that binds this blog together is the belief that your/my individual happiness is worthwhile and fruitful not just as an abstract right. And that in this particular moment in human history we have tools and the means to effect things that make much more happiness possible. And that the right to happiness (thank you Jefferson) should inform everything else -- relationships, institutions, organizational goals, how a country is being run. It should exert as much influence as it is itself influenced. Because it is influenced or undermined and impacted by the constructs and man made structures within which we swim every day.
The conflict people perceive between this new connected era and an old structured ordered ostensibly more value driven one is not so clear. Yes there is a speedy, busy, missing the forest for the trees overly trendy and deferential take on social media that is common and can be ridiculous. And yes there is the divisive and overbearing stance of ideologues of many ilk, or that of anyone who persists in posturing, papers in hand at the desk, tie adjusted, in having some kind of expertise. There is no expertise needed more deeply or can offer more wisdom than the basic understanding that all human beings want a dignified and happy life. But it’s beside the point. And when did we all start living our lives immersed in or in reaction to these kinds of attitudes anyway?
Why is it so hard to focus just on the need for a happy, even joyful, dignified and creative ways of being -- the kind I would love to say were average, normal, ordinary?
There’s something almost comical in the choice of the word “occupy” for the movement that developed in the US last year. It’s this, I think. It’s an acknowledgment of all that should occupy our nation’s attention. Not just occupy space, but thought, attention and time. Of course our well being should be kept in mind by investors whose decisions affect our lives, by legislators, broadcasters, elected officials, marketers, CEOs, massive global monopolies. All institutes and individuals with influence should be at least partly occupied with ensuring they don’t make it impossible for us to have decent, happy, healthy lives.
And what about us, what occupies us? It’s something you can reflect on every day. Right now we have more choices, more avenues for communication and expression and creative growth than we ever have. I hope we ensure it stays that way. Because qualitatively speaking I bet we haven’t even skimmed the surface. I hope you consider that, wherever you are reading this, through whatever means.
Spend some time on Instagram It’s no trying to manipulate you. It's just people sharing what and how they see this amazing world we live in all its beauty. And context And complexity.
“because they trust themselves they have no need to convince others by deception since their confidence has never deteriorated they need not be fearful of others”
- poem by Chogyam Trungpa
“Follow your genius closely enough and it will not fail to offer you a new prospect every hour.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Recent events in the Middle East reminded me of a search I did on Flikr.com in January for photos of Egyptians gathering once again in Tahrir Square revealed vivid, messy, human human moments only that when I found them were only old. Excitement and anxiety unfolded in little moments and gestures that are windows onto aspirations re-surging in a very ancient place. What’s new and what is keeping a kind of evolution of attention alive is this marriage of technology to person and place.
Nevertheless, vehicles are now almost universally available which are increasingly being used in ways that also deeply connect us. You can discover for yourself what else is going on out there in the world. Applications like Instagram, social networks of various kinds, blogs, you name it; there are many ways to discover what is going on and what the world is like. Vivid personal, first person, unfiltered through an editor or organizational structure's purpose -- you can see what delights and what concerns people everywhere.
This freedom to go see what you need to, to direct the course of this discovery needs to be protected. This is why access to the internet should not become bifurcated or effectively segregated by the availability to pay more for better vetted or just a wider variety of information. As people piled into Tahrir Square again, following recent elections, there are people being detained by the military following a year with more military trials than had occurred previously over the course of many years. There is a need to continue the struggle.
Ideologues (and your garden variety totalitarian) and the powerful people and companies they court have held sway for so long. It’s time for the emphasis to be on the individual and their potential and their rights. That notion really got lost over two centuries ago after the Enlightenment. It eroded away so completely that we ended up with horrific world wars and violence against one another on ever increasing scales. We’ve been digging through detritus and rubble for years, centuries, to try to come out shiny and new again -- in an equitable sense anyway. In a way that doesn’t inevitably repress most of us for the privilege of the few. And obviously, we’re not there yet. But that is increasingly the taste in the air. The momentum builds in thought, expression and communication toward that goal -- in the belief that each of us has the right to a certain kind of life.
Ideologues always want us to be divorced from the contexts and complexities of our lives. (Totalitarians probably barely register others’ lives). For me an ideologue is anyone who wants others to be subjected to their absolutes. It has probably always been the case that real happiness and wisdom comes to an individual through the context and complexity of his or her life. But it is now, in this era, to anyone who wants to see it, obvious that it is through this awareness that we as people, and as communities and nations are discovering what we really need. It is from within place and context that we share photos, information, blog, twitter often in real time. We share knowledge outside old structures of communication, share insight that isn’t manipulated and experience that is not stereotyped or diluted. And as challenging as it is for some to grasp, it is an essential shift. Because it is about what is happening now informing what should be. This seems to be the proper order to me.
What happened in Egypt last winter, throughout the Middle East, here in the US over the course of months, in Europe and even in places like Russia where I don’t believe anyone has ever gathered until recently in a free un-coerced way to claim their rights, is miraculous. But I think it has its genesis in this instinctive sense that it is only from within your own particular life that you can discover what you want to do, what you need to do or what will make you happy. This desire propelled so many people onto the streets this past year. So many that Time Magazine named The Protester person of the year. And devoted some very intelligent reporting to this phenomenon.
A recent article in the Guardian highlights this about Putin's network pushing bloggers to write positively about him. It made me ask the question, would this have been news if, as the article points out "The leak comes as Putin faces the greatest challenge to his rule since first coming to power 12 years ago, with mass street demonstrations building momentum before a presidential vote on 4 March that is expected to return him to the presidency after a four-year interlude as prime minister." This demonstration and the ways in which the internet fuelled it provided a substantial enough threat for Putin's regime to create an organization to combat it.
We really do have powerful vehicles at our fingertips. They are beginning to help us awaken to the those moments when something is and maybe shouldn’t be beyond your reach. The daydreams and fantasies and illusions we all have access to are available alongside information and exchanges with real substance. And we have a choice. That choice begins to illuminate moments when your attention or desire is placed too far away from you. Put some place beyond your capacity to do or create right now. The more you are pulled away from yourself and who you are and what you need into places those things aren’t understood or taken into account and the more you are told what you need the less free you are. But you can also pay attention to situations and exchanges and ideas that resonate deeply with where you really are right now. If you know how to look, that looking can start to free you. Not everything is out there is an attempt to sell you deodorant. Some things are just beautiful. Some things are just innocent and fun. Some things are just true. Sometimes you smell good.
The April 6 movement inspired me at first because it was palpable just how deeply it was informed by people’s sense of dignity and desire for happiness. It was clear that a sense of love and respect for others kept it afloat. And in effect it was all motivated by love. Because without love you can’t be be happy. When you love -- your spouse, your partner, your parents, your children, your community well, when you really love them you want them to be happy. Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia set himself on fire out of love and the need to provide for his family with dignity. Love is a part of the context and complexity of your life.
There are ideas that need resuscitation in the US. Ideas that have in recent decades been abused or corrupted in thought and speech, terms people did not effectively defend, and which have been tainted: family, values, honor, love, commitment. I had hoped after 9/11 there would be more constructive reexamination of these things. With the election of Barak Obama, I hoped again there would be some renewed commitment to hitting this mark. But it hasn’t really happened yet. And all self help and Oprah moments aside (cultural climates can be so treacly) I had hoped there would be more of a tendency to examine our sources of happiness and dignity. And then perhaps a shared commitment might have evolved to protect those sources. It’s that kind of commitment I think President Obama asks for. as you can explore in this well produced interactive guide the Guardian newspaper posted on his State of the Union address.
The not so subtle thread that binds this blog together is the belief that your/my individual happiness is worthwhile and fruitful not just as an abstract right. And that in this particular moment in human history we have tools and the means to effect things that make much more happiness possible. And that the right to happiness (thank you Jefferson) should inform everything else -- relationships, institutions, organizational goals, how a country is being run. It should exert as much influence as it is itself influenced. Because it is influenced or undermined and impacted by the constructs and man made structures within which we swim every day.
The conflict people perceive between this new connected era and an old structured ordered ostensibly more value driven one is not so clear. Yes there is a speedy, busy, missing the forest for the trees overly trendy and deferential take on social media that is common and can be ridiculous. And yes there is the divisive and overbearing stance of ideologues of many ilk, or that of anyone who persists in posturing, papers in hand at the desk, tie adjusted, in having some kind of expertise. There is no expertise needed more deeply or can offer more wisdom than the basic understanding that all human beings want a dignified and happy life. But it’s beside the point. And when did we all start living our lives immersed in or in reaction to these kinds of attitudes anyway?
Why is it so hard to focus just on the need for a happy, even joyful, dignified and creative ways of being -- the kind I would love to say were average, normal, ordinary?
There’s something almost comical in the choice of the word “occupy” for the movement that developed in the US last year. It’s this, I think. It’s an acknowledgment of all that should occupy our nation’s attention. Not just occupy space, but thought, attention and time. Of course our well being should be kept in mind by investors whose decisions affect our lives, by legislators, broadcasters, elected officials, marketers, CEOs, massive global monopolies. All institutes and individuals with influence should be at least partly occupied with ensuring they don’t make it impossible for us to have decent, happy, healthy lives.
And what about us, what occupies us? It’s something you can reflect on every day. Right now we have more choices, more avenues for communication and expression and creative growth than we ever have. I hope we ensure it stays that way. Because qualitatively speaking I bet we haven’t even skimmed the surface. I hope you consider that, wherever you are reading this, through whatever means.
Spend some time on Instagram It’s no trying to manipulate you. It's just people sharing what and how they see this amazing world we live in all its beauty. And context And complexity.
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