Thinking About the Negatives

Chris -

What I'm about to say is not about words, which words we use - it is an invitation to look at the thoughts and feelings we are using those words to express.
In your post, when you say:

"Fight racism. Fight hatred. And be damned sure you’re looking for the scarier threats that trawl those waters."

I invite us to STOP FIGHTING! fighting and racism and hatred all come from the same place - fear. (just exactly like those "scarier threats")

Imagine: just imagine what would happen if we cleared up the fear just with ourselves, and then lived, uncompromisingly, in that space of being, peace.

That choice of being peace, then, addresses the concerns you go on to express:

"But how? And where? And what will be the way we see this all come to light? That I’m not so sure about, and further, when you think about how one might patrol for such, I think free speech (not hate speech, but the other stuff that will get sucked into the nets) might get caught up, too."

I choose peace, you choose peace, and we choose not to interact with that which is not peace. Honestly - can you imagine? - it can change the world.

Too simplistic? What if we just gave it a try?

Thanks!

@Ian

You make an excellent point. Criticism of the use of free speech is healthy and necessary and a fundamental part of the whole first amendment.

But why do I feel like I'm being lumped in with racists in defending this right? You may not seek to control me, have certainly found an effective way of silencing me.

With so much ugliness in the world, it seems to me that by not speaking out against something that is problematic, it enjoys an apparent endorsement.

I try to keep it positive but I'm human and sometimes the negative comes out.

I _really_ dislike blogs that are consistently negative, whether in jest or not, because as I said in my first sentence, there's so much ugliness in the world...why would I knowingly get near it, I might mess up my shoes.

@Fritz...

Ah.. the false dichotomy. I don't want to control New Yorker or Loren. Far from it. I want to criticize, insult, and harangue anybody who gives umbrage to racists.

Visit message boards of people with non-mainstream views and you'll see that when they are criticized and insulted, they feel it is an attack on their first amendment rights: "you can't tell me not to say what I believe, it is my right to free speech", or "don't tell me not to picket soldiers funerals with 'God Hates Fags' signs - you want to take away my 1st amendment rights".

By portraying disagreement as attempts to control they in turn seek to control their critics. It is a very old trick, that apparently still works.

The NY and Loren have as much right to say what they want as the sane non-racist majority of rational people do to tell them they are jerks and dead wrong. Say what you like, but don't start hiding behind free speech when the backlash comes.

The NY shouldn't have put out that cover. Not because it should have been illegal to, but because it was a stupid shortsighted and possibly cynical thing to do.

Criticism of the use of free speech is in no way the same as criticism of free speech.

Clearly the parody of Obama and his wife wasn't well received (or understood) by all. Clearly it was meant to make a provocative statement. Clearly it can be seen in many ways and on many levels, 'especially' on the level of people who don't actually "get it".

Satire can be argued as both bold as well as cheap, either way, we know it never gives the audience a unanimous message.

So now we add social media to this. A light speed transmission to cause a light wave of reactions. And let's say the message is twisted and outrageous accusations and statements are made. It's dark, people argue, things get messy, but so what? Are we afraid of people being subject to the wrong kinds of messages? What are we afraid of? How is this any different than the past before social media? Info moves faster, more people get involved, but it also disappears quicker as information becomes more fleeting due to the abundance.

Free speech means we have to live with speech we don't like or agree with. The founding guys understood that while you can regulate human behavior, regulating what people think is the first step on the road to facism. Suggestions that we should try to control what people say in social media make me as nervous as when they say we should control it in the physical world...and we've been hearing this again with Jesse Jackson's recent verbal snafu, The New Yorker Obama cover, and Loren Feldman's video.

Should we publically chastise people for using offensive language? Well,better that than throwing them in jail. The essence of satire, however, is to ridicule our foibles by acting them out. Many of our greatest satirists--from Mark Twain to Randy Newman to Dave Chappelle--assume the personas of their satirical targets (see Newman's "Good Old Boys"). To get their point across, they become the thing they hate: a racist, a pompous politician,a cheesy salesman, etc. For this reason, satire will always offend someone.

Because it offends, however, is not a reason to stamp it out.

A similar concept that I think would be much cooler would be a social network on a plane. This could fairly easily be done but would require a couple things: an internet connection or intranet connection, a computer (many flights have the touch tv's which could work), and some sort of keyboard interface. This social network could be used as a device to network, chat with friends sitting in different seats, or even flirt with the girl sitting in the front of the plane... more of how to start a business like this... www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

Let's put it this way... any form of social media or communication device for that matter can be exploited to spread negative words or commentary to anybody - any race, any color, any religion, whatever. The benefits of these tools and how they've been utilized thus far in the internet world are far more valuable than had they never been created.... www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

Chris, may I point your readers to Charlie Rose's interview of David Remnick? And I might point out, the *comments* here @ Rose's site are far better than Rose's interview:

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/07/16/1/a...

So. Who's going to interview Loren?

Not sure if I am getting your point correctly as I am already in a sleepy mode. With this disclaimer, I think that we cannot ignore a non life threatening major disease just because we have "major threats" like death itself. Thatz how I see these issues. Also, Ian nailed it correctly when it comes to the two 'soft' examples you considered in this article. Just compare these "parodies" with the words/actions of extreme right or certain racist groups. Parodies are fun but I ask "why?" and who determines where we draw a line.

Chris, yes, where I am now is relevant to the comments I made in my previous post ... and has a lot to do with why I haven't gotten my blog online yet.

I'm in Afghanistan. I work as a civilian contractor on the Kandahar Airfield base, a NATO base of more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians. I want to get my blog up and running primarily to let my family and friends know what I'm up to and to record some of my experiences here.

But...

This war, this mission in Afghanistan is controversial, particularly in my country Canada. I have stopped reading the comments sections posted after news articles about Afghanistan. The name calling, the insults, the complete disdain people show for others with a different or opposing point of view hurts my head. And it makes me so very, very frustrated. Why can we not talk about this? I mean REALLY talk and REALLY listen. We won't have a snowball's chance in hell of assisting Afghans when the extent of our national debate is limited to calling each other fascists or Taleban supporters.

So my comments about your post, about Loren's video, aren't specifically about racism. They're about how we talk to one another, particulary when someone expresses an opionion or promotes a lifestyle/idea we find very offensive. For example, say you believe that the Afghan government is a puppet governement for the US, that NATO's mandate to help support Afghanistan is just a cover for a US led land grab and a pipleline to gas. Say you believe that sending troops to Kandahar is akin to murder.

Now say you find my blog. A blog about my experiences working and living on a NATO base in Kandahar province.

How would you 'talk' to me in my comments section? Would you call me a fascist or a murderer? Would you just assume I'm ignorant and treat me with contempt for not knowing any better? Would you try to silence me?

Or would you simply ask why I chose to work there, listen to my answer, and perhaps explain your point of view? And then offer to send me bags of salt & pepper chips? (sorry, I'm really craving salt and pepper chips right now)

Many people are afraid of being called racist. So afraid in fact that debates have died from the mere hint that a point of view could be seen as racist. As a society we do need to be able to define and recognize racism. But then what? Is calling someone racist the answer, the end point? If someone expresses a racist opinion or is racist - is that all he or she is? Is nothing they have to say of value? Do they deserve our disdain?

Do they deserve to be treated as a lesser human?

Could I POSSIBLY ask any more questions???

Thank you for the thought provoking post Chris. I wanted to chat with Ian about the New Yorker cover and satire, but it's past my bedtime here in Afghanistan... even if someone is _wrong_ on the internet. :-)

Amazed and humbled by the depth of your comments. Thank you for your thoughts. This isn't an easy conversation, but you're all giving me things to consider, and, I hope, giving each other a great opportunity to talk and think about it.

Judy- you didn't mention where you are now. Is that relevant in other ways?

Hi Chris – how are you? I am glad that you took the time today to veer off of your main focus and to bring up a sensitive subject for further discussion.

I will state from the outset that before I started using Twitter I had no idea who Loren was and I still have not watched any of his videos, nor do I intend to. Which means I am not judging him or his content…I am only going to let you know about what I have experienced in the past.

First, a question – If one person deems someone’s material or blog post as racist material is it then indeed racist?

I have lived and traveled all over the world, however, most recently I spent five years living in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in the Caribbean. While there I worked for the government and 98% of my office was made up of people from that country.

Many residents of the BVI have a nationalism and pride that walks a very fine racism line and some folks are just blatant racists. Almost every day I was referred to as white boy. Did it bother me? Hell yes! Was it said to me with a racist connotation? Yes, not always, but many times.

One of the worst experiences of racism I faced was during a development meeting with about 50 people in attendance. During the middle of the meeting the chairman looked directly at me and stated, “I don’t want one more Johnny coming to my country and the ones that are here I want gone now.” Johnny is Caribbean/Jamaican slang for white person.

Fortunately, all of my collective experiences have not made me bitter, in fact, just the opposite has occurred. Subtle, blatant, or just plain in your face, it just makes me wonder where all of this hatred and vitriol comes from?

Please keep up the great work you are doing here!

Thus spoke the Brogan ...

"I’m not judging what Loren did. I’m saying there are even worse threats to consider. If you disagree with that, then you’re welcome to continue fighting with Loren. I’m going to think deeper on what ELSE haters might use social networks to do, and how that will be handled by technology, law, and society."

It's always so much fun to follow deep thinkers, people who can fathom the reaches of the human intellect so much further than even that retard Loren. <== irony. Bye.

Re: What else are flash mobs?

Slightly off-topic from the core of your post, but I feel your question about flash mobs needs answering.

I recently watched a video of Clay Shirky speaking about "Here Comes Everybody" at Google.

(link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgeYWY09LE8)

In other places in the world where things are not as free as here in the U.S. (comparatively), and public gatherings are strictly illegal, flash mobs organized via the internet have turned into significant forms of public protest.

What is a novelty to San Fran and New York hipsters can be a relevant form of social activism and protest elsewhere in the world.

Just a thought!

Hey Chris,

This one had me thinking all day (without interfering with work of course).

Thank you for including all the links to help give us a bigger picture. I found my favourite lines by following your link to David Adewumi's post "To Be Black: Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees":

"I strongly believe that in America, unless someone is visibly infringing upon your right to pursue your own endeavors, dreams, and goals, the best practice is just to let it go.

Let. It. Go."

Wow. Good, solid advice. And so VERY hard to follow.

It’s so easy to become angry. It’s almost as if we’re hardwired for adversity, for conflict. And in a forum where most of the speaker/readers/listeners will never meet face to face, it’s easy to lose that filter that keeps us from blurting out our first response.

“Response” sounds civilized, but in essence when we’re confronted with something shocking on the web, we still fall back into a “fight or flight” response. Of course we’re all safely seated miles away from the shocking content, sipping our coffee with no one breaking down our door, so we feel no need for flight. Fight it is.

Words become our ammunition and even the most peace-loving among us get to open fire. Blowing off steam can be very satisfying, but before we do any permanent damage, we should ask ourselves two questions before we hit “send” when the target is another person:

1. Would I say this if I was sitting face to face with the person who offended me?; and

2. Would I say this if I was sitting face to face with the person who offended me… and his/her mother?

You can substitute “mother” with “father”, “grandmother”, “boyfriend”, “partner”, “daughter”, whatever. You get the idea.

I’m not sure why it works, but I know of at least one occasion where I was prepared to rip some jerk’s head off (in person), but was saved from dealing with a bloody mess when I saw how he talked to his girlfriend. He was nice. He was funny. He was not JUST a jerk. He was human.

(No, I’m not gonna break out into a round of “Kumbaya”)

I re-evaluated the situation and avoided having pre-treat blood stained clothing. In this particular case I chose to Let. It. Go.

I haven’t watched Loren’s video yet. I’m still at work (after hours boss!) and I’m not sure how our network deals with links to TechNi… yeah, never mind. I’ll wait until I’m back at my room to check it out. But I would hope that whatever I think of the video, I’ll manage to express myself without attacking another person.

Damn. I’ve got “Kumbaya” stuck in my head.

Chris, I agree. I don't have cause to fight Loren, his stuff is good, I have no reason to assume he was being malicious, and I can happily believe it was one jerky move.

But I certainly don't agree that he didn't deserve to loose his distribution deal over it.

As for greater threats, what do you mean? It is easy to get into bogeyman territory.

It seems to me that sociopaths use networks for the same reasons that anyone else does: to improve communication, to find new relationships, and to expand the scope for building local active subgroups around an idea.

Did you have in mind a qualitatively different kind of threat?

Incidentally, I keep an eye on a number of cults and very radicalised Christian sects, and the Obama cover has been making the rounds on their blogs and boards and has been met with unironic glee. It wouldn't surprise me if the same thing hadn't happened with Loren's video among racist networks. Mainstream stuff like this can easily become propaganda for people we'd rather not fuel.

(I realise that telling you that you're dead wrong isn't a great way to say hi, by the way [http://xkcd.com/386/]. I do genuinely love your blog).
Ian.

Hi Ian--

My point is that I'm not judging what Loren did. I'm saying there are even worse threats to consider. If you disagree with that, then you're welcome to continue fighting with Loren. I'm going to think deeper on what ELSE haters might use social networks to do, and how that will be handled by technology, law, and society.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the content of either piece. I'm citing them as easy targets while the hard targets keep doing what they're doing.

First comment. Love the blog Chris.

But I think you're dead wrong here. Saying "there's worse stuff out there" is an old canard to justify wrong. If you look around at what extreme right wing groups are saying about Obama, it is largely consistent with the NY cover.

Similarly, if you look around at what racists write about African Americans it is quite in line with what Loren was doing.

Sure there are some that express violent intent, and advocate political or sociological consequences, but the ridicule and racism is of the same tenor. There isn't bogeyman underground that we should 'really' be worried about.

Both Loren and the NY fail because of Poe's law: that it is impossible to take enough of an extreme position to do good satire, because there will always be people further out than you who agree with what you're saying.

Satirizing extreme beliefs only works if the people holding them are embarrassed by them (it works nicely for Scientologists, for example).

Loren was a jerk in this case, plain and simple. A mea culpa would be better than an attempt at self-justification.

only racists can fight racism .... if you arew beyond it, see only the human race, what is there to fight??

and what can anybody do to anybody else, except be stupid? and stupidity has no race?

your very story is racist, because it is about race.

get over race, these things wont be found.

I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. Granted, I'm Canadian and I live in Europe, but still ...

Until the other day I had no idea who Loren Feldman is and what the TechNigga video was all about. So I went to his Website read a lot and watched ALL of his videos. Feldman is a satiric wise-ass. Some of his parodies are funnier than others but this guy sure as hell isn't a racist, IMO.

I wasn't offended by the TechNigga video although I didn't feel it was particularly amusing. And as supercilious as this might sound, I think one of the reasons it fell a bit flat is because Feldman is a parodist, not an impressionist. If he had nailed the street brother the same way Eddie Murphy nails suburban white dudes, the bit would have been less clunky and taken at face value ... at least that's my impression.

The New Yorker cover is another matter. It's pretty trenchant satire, and quite frankly it's raised my respect for the magazine. These guys can be a little too Bloomsbury at times so it's nice to see 'em with a little dirt under their fingernails. But what was most puzzling to me was Obama's reaction. He was offended?

Obama had a perfect opportunity to spin this to his advantage and he blew it. Why couldn't his camp just have said, "We didn't know Karl Rove could draw," or something along those lines. Now all of the wrong people are going to be drawing all of the wrong conclusions from a magazine cover that is supposed to cater to "sophisticated" readers. Jesus wept.

My European perspective might be slightly different, although I have lived long enough in North America that I can understand, even feel what you mean. And we are experiencing an interesting (frightening) evolution with nationalisms and extreme right thinking in Europe that somehow goes in the same direction as the race issue in the US, I guess (no, not entirely comparable, I know, but to some degree it is because the pressure it pus on society and individuals are similar).

Now will social media, still in its infancy but already unavoidable, help in any way to promote/facilitate free speech?, to increase respect?, to sponsor equal opportunity? This is not a question about what social media IS, it's a question about what social media will DO to our society!

This is all economics at work.

When times are good, people's attitudes towards each other can be generous, can be forgiving, can be gracious.

When times are bad, scapegoats and conspiracies abound. Yesterday's neighbor is today's resource drain, because when times are bad, we revert to zero sum thinking.

Bruce Schneier says it magnificently. The true test of a system is not how well it succeeds, but how gracefully it fails.

As has happened in past troubled times, we'll put our generation to the test and see how gracefully we perform under pressure, how well we can look out for each other even if we ourselves are standing on shaky ground. The question is not whether we will fail, but how well we manage it and how fast we can rebound.

As ugly as things can get, let's aim to bring out the best in each other.

Yes, we can.