Dear cj anb Bcc friends,
My attitude toward cyberjournal has been a bit on the lax side, in terms of
devoting dedicated time to it. Typically I've waited until something
special came across my desk to forward, or until I happened to be in the
mood to put down some ideas or to send out a batch of reader comments.
But I'm now beginning to feel some weight of responsibility with our influx
of new subscribers (now 958), spurred by a promo put out by TipWorld (see
cj#725). Perhaps this is a good time to redefine the "mission" of
cyberjournal, and to redefine my level of dedication in pursuing it. If
950 odd people (:>) are willing to listen or participate (at least on a
trial basis) then I take it as a challenge to make it worth their while.
Let me start by stating my own personal mission.
There is a sufi saying that with knowledge comes responsibility. If you
see a fire that others don't, you have a responsibility to raise the alarm.
With knowledge you lose your innocent-bystander status.
My mission comes from knowledge I have - a danger I can see clearly - and
my mission is to raise the alarm and point out where the firehose is.
Cyberjournal (the list and web site) is an online channel for raising the
alarm, as oldtimers are aware.
What is this knowledge? And how do I "know" it?
Let me address the second question first...
By following a particular methodology of investigation - particular
techniques of analyzing events - I've found that certain patterns come into
unmistakable focus. It's like Copernicus and elliptical orbits - once you
learn how to look at the situation in a certain way, the obvious becomes
inarguable. It's not a matter of believing or being convinced, it's a
matter of being open to looking and seeing and expanding your tools of
perception.
The methodology is not a matter of detailed analysis, nor of deep
theoretical reasoning - it's simply a matter of learning how to see the
obvious, how to trust your own common sense, how to distinguish between
what is primary and what is secondary, how to read between the lines of
media propaganda, and how to see the emperor's naked amibtions.
I've attempted to describe this methodology in a piece below, in the form
of a "WRITER'S RESUME". I'd be happy to discuss that further if interest
is expressed.
In the meantime my intention is to explain what I "see" - to convey in
various ways what I feel to be urgently-needed "knowledge". If this
material resonates with your own inner knowledge and experience, and if it
helps you to see even more and trust yourself even more, then cyberjournal
may be of considerable value to you. Even more important, you may begin to
realize that you are someone with knowledge that must be acted upon,
according to your personal resources.
I'm including a second piece below ("Cover letter to potential publisher")
that concisely summarizes the world view that to me is infinitely obvious.
It's so obvious that my response to rebuttals is not a matter of searching
for arguments - it's a matter of explaining what has been misunderstood.
As to whether my perceptions are valid or not you must be the judge. If
something contradicts your own understanding then say so, and say why, and
one or both of us will learn something in the exchange. Similarly write if
you think I'm not dealing with the most important/useful issues.
---
I'm now working actively on four projects in pursuit of my goals:
1) Book on Globalization (publisher being sought)
2) Film documentary on Globalization and another on Cyberspace
(funding proposals submitted; co-producer being sought)
3) Interactive web-site on Globalization (funding proposal submitted)
4) cyberjournal (ongoing, pro bono)
My intention is to begin work on the book right away, and just keep working
on it while Carolyn and I search systematically for the right publisher.
The book material is also the content-base for the web site, and the book
research is directly applicable to the documentary. Substantive work on
the documentary must await funding: even recruitment of interviewees would
be counter-productive without the credibility brought by signed-up funding
sources.
---
Let's now beam ourselves up one meta level. What's been going on in the
above material is a demonstration of my investigative method. What I
wanted to "see" was the proper agenda for cyberjournal within my work. I
didn't want to "decide" what to do, I wanted to "see" the "right action"
that is inherent in current circumstances.
This isn't the same as "seeing" the world situation, because that's an
outward observational task. Deciding what to do is a creative task - but
again it amounts to observation, albeit internal: observing objectively
what your knowledge of circumstances is, surveying honestly your available
resources, and persisting in the investigation until you "see" the
common-sense solution fall solidly into place.
In this case I see the following solution: I'll post the book outline
(with feedback invited) and then I'll go through the outline, point by
point, posting a series of essays - each essay being an abbreviated first
draft of that part of the book. The essays may be new, or they may be
selections from previously published material, but they'll represent my
best-quality treatment within the size constraint. [Accolades to Carolyn
Ballard for clipping pieces out of previously published articles and
sorting them into the outline structure].
This scheme enables the book to proceed at maximum pace, gives cj the
benefit of first-exposure to the ideas, and provides an opportunity for
discussion and feedback so as to correct, refine, and expand the material
prior to print publication. I think the discussion would be totally
on-topic - in harmony with what we've been talking about all along on cj -
and would be of value to the web-site as well as the book.
Part of the web-site plan is to make it easy for visitors to send in
comments (and to forward material for inclusion). Rather than starting
with a blank slate, we could pre-load the comment-tree with logs of our
cyberjournal discussions. Existence of live material would probably make
it easier to engineer the necessary html structures. [Accolades to Chris
Thorman for donating world-class web-engineering skills, server resources,
and his services as project manager].
You - dearest cj readers - have the right to remain silent, but whatever
you do say (addressed to cyberjournal) may live forever in some
well-publicised region of cyberspace.
---
Feedback on this plan is invited. Forwarding/cross-posting of this series
will be encouraged (and please include the sig so that contacts can be
developed). And anyone with ideas about funding sources or collaborators
is invited to write in.
rkm
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re/INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGY:
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[WEB PROJECT]
[w/ Chris Thorman as project manager and web engineer]
rkm "WRITER'S RESUME" submitted as part of web-site
funding proposal to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS)
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My background has been in the computer R&D business, designing and
implementing software for each new wave of hardware technology -
mainframes, minicomputers, timesharing, personal computers, multimedia,
etc. While hardware has always trended toward faster, smaller, and
cheaper, software has trended toward bigger, more expensive, and more
complex. Survival in software R&D has called for the ability to
conceptualize and create increasingly complex systems, and, perhaps more
difficult, to be able to comprehend and repair complex systems created by
others.
In this kind of work one develops a sixth sense regarding how systems are
constructed - just by using a piece of software one can intuit how the
system is put together and what kind of stratagems the designer employed.
The deep structure always shows through, in subtle ways, to the surface of
system behavior. A colleague of mine was actually threatened with a
lawsuit because he had figured out details of the Microsoft operating
system that they thought could only be known by looking at their
proprietary code.
A well-developed sensitivity to systems and their underlying mechanisms is
one of the main lessons I took away from my software experience, and it's a
lesson that applies to many other domains. In particular one can look at
the world as a collection of interacting systems - as we all know from
ecology, which looks at the natural world as a system of interacting
species and environments.
One of the systems that most attracted my attention over the years was the
global political system, with its many layers and diverse centers of
influence. I found myself discounting the interpretive aspects of news
reporting, and focusing instead on the raw underlying events being
chronicled.
I began to perceive a degree of consistency in the behavior of governments
and institutions that was far greater than what one would detect from the
interpretations of news reports, pundits, and official statements. I was
beginning to make out the rough contours of underlying strategies and goals
which made seemingly random phenomenon - such as U.S. foreign policy - not
only understandable but frequently predictable.
At the same time, in contrast to my perception of underlying reality, news
reportage itself began to take on a new meaning. Rather than simply being
shallow and biased, which is presumably obvious to any serious observer, I
began to perceive a consistency in the distortions and selectivity of the
media - the rough contours of propaganda/PR strategies began to become
apparent.
So over the years I began to develop my own model of what "the system" was
about - who the various players are, what their relative powers and
relationships are, what their various goals are, what their modus operandi
are, what they want people to believe, etc. Not being in a hurry - this
was a hobby - I was able to refine the model over time, to debug it, if you
will, by testing it against years of unfolding events and an ever-growing
reading diet of histories, biographies, and political analysis.
Eventually I got to the point where I felt that my "findings" were worth
writing about, or otherwise communicating to people who I felt could
benefit from them. I left my career and environment (Silicon Valley),
moved to Ireland, and began to use Internet as a learning channel for
writing and further analysis.
I joined several online discussion forums, launched a few new ones of my
own, and began spending full time debating and learning about political
perspectives from all comers - including historians, political scientists,
and people with all sorts of attitudes and agendas. I further clarified my
analyses/perceptions and learned how to express them cogently. My postings
to Internet evolved into respectable essays, and I began to receive
invitations from print (and online) publishers to turn some of the essays
into articles.
Now some three years into my writing career, I'm more convinced than ever
that I do have something useful to offer, something that isn't being said
by others. The "big picture" of world systems - the overview perspective -
is often attempted (poorly) by simplistic conspiracy theorists and by
establishment- funded think-tank propagandists, but seldom, alas, by
serious independent observers.
I believe there are two primary reasons for this. One has to do with
analytical tools, and the other has to do with academic specialization.
Analytically, most observers simply lack the necessary paradigms of
understanding. If they try to understand the big picture at all - and most
don't - they typically look for models that are too simple - they are still
stuck in nineteenth century science, seeking "Newton's three laws of
motion" as applied to society. They don't understand that complex systems
require a different mode of analysis, one not so narrowly reductionist.
In terms of specialization, there is an academic bias toward "deep
analysis" - devoting an entire erudite book to what could be effectively
established in a short, comprehensible article. One has to read several
deep volumes by Chomsky, for example, before one can begin to make out his
overall world view. He has the right analytical tools, but his brilliant
insights are overly concealed by the specialization-bias of academia.
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Publications (1994 to present): [most on cyberjournal web site]
New Dawn (magazine)
Common Sense and the New World Order
Human Rights and the New World Order
Doublespeak and the New World Order
The Fateful Dance of Capitalism and Democracy
America and the New World Order
China vs. Globalization - the Final War and the
Dark Millennium
The Information Society - An International Journal
Cyberspace Inc. and the Robber Baron Age
Toward Freedom (magazine)
Closing the Information Highway
talk at Teeside University (to be published by Teeside)
Democracy and Cyberspace
enneagram monthly (magazine)
Physics and the Enneagram
The Life-Cycle of Creative Endeavors
Inventing Enneagrams - the dramatic story and two-
force analysis
oii SPECTRUM (journal)
Bento - a container for electronic documents
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re/THE "KNOWLEDGE":
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[BOOK PROJECT]
[w/ Carolyn Ballard as co-author and editor]
Proposed title: "Globalization and the New World Order
-- democracy at a crossroads"
Cover letter to potential publisher
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If one thinks back these days to the Cold War era, one cannot avoid a
certain nostalgia for an interval of relative stability and security - even
if one didn't appreciate it as such at the time. Since the
Reagan-Thatcher-Friedman- neoliberal revolution, and especially since the
Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union, we seem to have been caught up
in a whole maelstrom of rapid societal changes on a global scale and over a
wide spectrum of domains.
We've seen a general decline in Western economies and qualities of life, a
tightening of the screws on Third-World peoples, the systematic
disempowerment and looting of governments, a vaguely defined and ominous
"new world order" in international relations, a reckless plunge into
laissez-faire economics, a declining respect for traditional
liberal/democratic institutions, and frustrating increases in the problems
of personal isolation, crime, drugs, and terrorism.
Things, to put it simply, seem to be very largely out of control - or
perhaps in control of a Frankenstein's-Monster version of market forces -
but in any case out of "our" control. It's as if a wave has crashed over a
sand-castle world and we can't be sure yet just how much is going to be
washed away, and we don't know how the new world is going to be
architected.
This book - drawing on the past two centuries for historical perspective -
seeks to demonstrate that globalization (properly understood) is in fact a
coherent, conscious, and radical re-invention of global society: the
overthrow of the sovereign nation-state system and the breaking of the
implicit social contract between capitalism and First-World populations.
The conclusion seems to us
inescapable that democracy itself is being dismantled by globalization, to
be replaced by something resembling feudalism, with corporations in the
role of medieval royalty.
Globalization bodes to be the next significant re-organization of the
global system's power arrangements - in the same league with the fall of
Rome, the Treaty of Westphalia, and the Enlightenment. The authors believe
that making this case for a "coherent globalist scheme" turns out to be
rather straightforward. Indeed, most pieces of the argument/investigation
have been published already by many worthy scholars. But the overall
pattern is in need of well-documented articulation, and that is the mission
of this book. In the hopes of leading the reader to a personal sense of
involvement and responsibility, the authors have endeavored to make the
story intriguing and meaningful to even the moderately literate "layman",
provided only that he or she has an open mind (and maybe even if they
don't).
What is presented is simply a common-sense review of history and current
events, accompanied by a straightforward identfication of the obvious
parallels and consequences, based on clear historical precedents. The
authors feel a kinship with Thomas Paine - not unforutunately in eloquence
- but in the shared objective of explaining what seems complex in terms
that would make sense in any village square, as it were.
Paine sought to widely popularize radical Enlightenment ideas, and the
primary barrier was overcoming the conditioning people had endured
regarding the legitimacy and necessity of the monarchial paradigm. The
conditioning had to be cleared away so that the situation could be seen
with fresh eyes, and the (rather straightforward) Enlightenment vision
could then be presented. In the case of globalization, it is the whole
mind-control conditioning of the mass-media that needs to be cleared away -
the conditioning that calls social suicide "reform" and defines democratic
government as "waste".
The technique used to overcome this conditioning is to step way back from
the trees, historically speaking, so that the forest can finally be seen,
and then to zoom in ever so carefully on various details of the scene,
returning frequently to the "forest view" to consolidate perspective. As
the cobwebs of media conditioning are gradually cleared, the reader
naturally begins to see media doublespeak for what it is - the arrogant
attempt to distract most of the people all of the time while they're being
robbed blind in broad daylight on Main Street.
Opposing the onrushing tide of globalization will require critical thinking
and radical political activism -- goals which <publisher> strives to
inspire in its readers. These are the very same objectives which the
authors aspire to with the publication of this work.
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - PO Box 26 Wexford, Ireland
http://www.iol.ie/~rkmoore/cyberjournal (USA Citizen)
* Non-commercial republication encouraged - Please include this sig *
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