In my recent long-running diary Pie Fight? Prophecy. Las Vegas? Culmination, among many interesting side trips was one suggested by Gaianne when she used the word “heterarchical” in a comment. I was unfamiliar with the term, and finally found it discussed well and clearly in Wikipedia. (Go there. please, if you are not yourself familiar with the idea and want to be able to understand much of what follows here.)
Among the themes of that thread was one that seemed not to give much love to the Little Orange Place. A few posters went a bit over the edge about it, and BooMan finally responded quite testily that, among other things he was “…getting tired of the constant sniping at anything that even hints of the orange place. “
I invited him down to a comment that I had made expanding upon the idea of heterarchy for further discussion of a more constructive nature than what was happening there at the time, but he didn’t show up. I understand how he might not have the time, being in Las Vegas at the YKOS convention and all, but since this idea woke me out of a sound sleep before dawn today I figured I’d just go ahead on and start the discussion by myself. I originally started it as a comment, and…it grew.
As all things must.
So now it’s a diary.
Feel free to chime in.
More below.
MUCH more.
So, BooMan…I guess I can take it from this answer plus your non-appearance below that you do NOT want to discuss heterarchy.
At this moment, at the very least.
OK…
I will try to discuss it here anyway.
Alone, if necessary.
Now.
Because as far as I am concerned…now’s the time.
While Daily Kos is celebrating its “success”.
In Celebration Central.
“What happens here, stays here.” goes the Las Vegas hype.
Yup.
You’d better HOPE not.
Because if the official left of America “stays” in a Las Vegas of the soul…we are doomed.
Bet on it.
Back to the subject at hand.
Heterarchy.
You write:
“Meta Kos diaries are a lot more interesting, even productive, when they are posted at Daily Kos.”
If dKos were not such a rigidly enforced hierarchy, I…and any number of other well meaning, fairly intelligent and committed people…would be ABLE to discuss these points on the blog to which they are directed.
It is not set up that way. Now you might make a point that this fact is the REASON it has been so “successful”, and in the short term, you would be quite correct. But long term…I think not.
If I wanted to be “successful” in this system as it now stands, I would immediately dumb down my act…a musical act, in my case, but this holds true up and down the system…to appeal to the lowest common denominator. (Or at least a substantially lower common denominator than the one at which I aim now.)
I would use a much less heterarchical approach than the classic jazz/latin-jazz model, one where the boss tells the workers what to produce and how to produce it. And pretty soon, given my knowledge of music and my abilities, I would find a place inside this system where I could make some really good money.
I would be “successful” as success is defined within this increasingly less and less successful system. This is an absolute given. It is relatively easy to do. The mainstream media system is hungry for non-challenging content produced at a very high level of expertise…especially by white guys (Witness the success of jazz lite artists like Kenny G, Michael Boublé, Harry Connick…the best of the bunch…and Chris Botti. Witness the literally thousands and thousands of highly talented and fairly anonymous multi-millionaires in the commercial and movie music industries.), and the real challenge of the jazz tradition lies in its highly heterarchical structure.
The definition of “hetererchy” in Wikipedia contains this lovely phrase:
In jazz, the drummer does not NEED to ask the leader if he can change the rhythmic feel in mid-flight once the improvisation begins. The pianist can alter the harmonic content to some degree. The soloist can take it anywhere he damned well pleases. And it WORKS!!! As long as that freedom is understood in a common manner amongst the musicians, the level of musicianship is high, and they are all “in the moment” as the theatrical improvisors like to say.
There are compromises that must be made, and in the highly successful meritocracy model of 100 years of jazz, the leader defines those compromises at the very LEAST by who he or she hires to play the music in the first place. At the HIGHEST level…Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane…said leader gives almost totally free rein to those carefully chosen musicians, and true magic happens. Over decades.
Ideally…and you have done very well in this so far, BooMan…a blog is a similar construct.
IT IS AN OPEN CONVERSATION WITHIN A FAIRLY WELL DEFINED IDIOM. WITH RULES OF CONDUCT THAT ARE AN ANALOGUE OF THE HARMONIC RULES OF JAZZ.
But when those rules of conduct become too simplistic…again, just like jazz…the content suffers.
Enormously.
Now…why HAVE powerful content?
In music OR on a blog.
Really.
What is the point?
Why do what is not easily popular?
This is a VALID point.
A valid question to which all of us must find their own individual answers.
But for most people who post on this blog…and for most people who STARTED posting on left blogtopia some time after the 2000 electoral disaster that brought us BushCo in the first place, and more of us after the invasion of Iraq…the promise of blogs was that they had a good chance of actually CHANGING THINGS AS THEY STOOD AT THE TIME IN AMERICAN SOCIETY.
A society that was rapidly turning towards a more and more rigid hierarchical model.
The decider decides…the people obey.
Dictatorship, in short.
How did they promise this?
In large part, by offering an alternative model.
A more heterarchical model, a functioning meritocracy where nodes connected independently and may the best set of allied nodes win.
The Pie Wars/July 4th massacre on dKos changed all of that.
Trivialized it beyond belief.
And in that trivialization…in that patriarchal model that produced such deathless phrases from TheLeaderKos as:
the seed was sown that has grown in one short year into The Official Blog of Record.
With a big-time. mainstream convention right there in Republican America’s Convention Central.
Las Vegas.
You say:
Well, get used to it, ‘bro. If of course you wish to have Bootrib remain in a relatively heterarchical mode. Which I sincerely hope that you do. I and a number of other fairly perceptive people think that Orange’s success bodes ill for America, given its old-line hierarchical structure.
We are talking symbolism here, as much as anything else.
More from that Wikipedia article:
Big Media money and attention (synonyms, really) have descended upon Little Orange AS A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ITS MOVES TOWARDS HIERARCHICAL PRINCIPLES.
As a reward.
The old structure is encouraging the models of the past, even when those models are not so well suited to the rapidly changing conditions of the present. This is of course to be expected. The old ALWAYS encourages its own continuation.
And it always loses.
Eventually.
“Heterarchy increasingly trumps hierarchy as complexity and rate of change increase.”
I believe this to be true.
I sincerely HOPE it is true, because it points towards the eventual success of a new form of democracy.
DIRECT Democracy.
But that success will be delayed by every bit of power that the old models gain and maintain.
The people who run dKos have quite consciously decided to adopt old-model, hierarchical principles in how they run their scene.
And in doing so…they have gone over to the dark side, as far as I am concerned.
The old side.
No matter WHAT “ideas” they support.
No matter what CANDIDATES they support.
Symbolically…they are now just another smoke-filled room.
A virtual version thereof.
Handing down smoke-poisoned missives from above.
One step forward, two steps back.
So it goes.
I resist this.
With everything I have, no matter how small that “everything” may be.
So THAT goes, too.
Just another vector in the vectorstorm of life.
Be well, BooMan.
I sincerely hope that MY small vector in this matter constructively influences your somewhat larger one.
And that we may all eventually take a giant step forward.
Peace.
AG
Y’pull your right wing out
Y’put your booty thing in
And y’shake it all about.
Sorry…couldn’t resist.
Again…recs and tips appreciated.
I would like to hear more on these matters from y’all.
Feel free to talk among yourselves.
Later…
AG
Good. Diary. In my view, what was lacking, and still lacking, is addressing points and concerns raised, instead of knee-jerk my way or the highway.
??????????????
Be more specific, please.
AG
This one is too deep for me. Sorry. Cant recommend. I am too busy live blogging my navel lint.
Totally dude.
I only read it because I thought it was about sex. You know, heterarchy sounds a little like some kind of term for straight/gay domination or whatever.
But I am definitely looking forward to that navel lint diary.
First time I’ve ever seen anyone get downrated here at BT.
In all seriousness, if we’re gonna start that crap… I’m out. I am so burned out on that shit from my dKos days.
I feel that donkey’s comment is totally valid. Alot of us really don’t give a shit about Daily Kos. Don’t get me wrong, I read it every day. I basically support the same political agenda as Kos. But in so far as how he chooses to run his blog, I don’t care.
I am sick of posting there because of the metacrap. That’s why I’m here.
It was just a wisecrack.
And apparently a magical one, at that, seeing as how it was posted at a little after noon on Friday and it somehow found a way to stay at the bottom of the thread with all the newbies for over 13 hours.
Donkeytale likes the ironic.
Don’t troll rate him.
Not for THAT, anyway.
Please.
AG
Having been born and raised a female into a 1940’s right wing religious small town hierarchy, having survived to the age of 65 in a society that is still operating on that hierarchal model, I am intimately familiar with how it plays out for the various “levels” of people on this pyramid shaped structure of power and “worth”.
Of course, I am most familiar with the my own experience on it, from the place I was assigned at birth, somewhere near the bottom. (I can tell that this needs to become a diary, for it would be much too long for a comment.)
So I’ll settle here for expresing this opinion. A hierarchal system primarily serves those near the top. Because the top holds most of the power over all the layers below them, it has the power to protect the pyramid against threat, thus preserving the status quo or even increasing the power at the top. It is a competitive, linear,power based model.
There is a simple kids game that illustrates this perfectly. It’s called “King of the Hill.” You cheerfully stepped even on your best friends head to win, if I remember correctly.
This is an excellent discussion topic!
..it doesn’t get all bogged down in trigger points connected to specific personalities or blogs!
you mean like my pungent,accessible, hilarious yet highly timely comedic piece now disappearing on the Recent Diaries list while Gilroy’s incessant blathering about heteroarchy or WTF automatically sils to the top of the charts?
Not that Im jealous of his highness or anything…
I was good friends a couple decades ago with this cat who ran an anarchist zine (got my first work published in there, but that’s another story for another time). He was always saying something along the lines of “it doesn’t matter who says it, but that it gets said.” Meant it, too. As I understood the concept, the whole notion of the speaker’s or writer’s credentials were irrelevant (unlike in a more hierarchical system) but rather what was important was content – does it have truth value? Anarchist systems (no that’s no oxymoron – anarchist collectives tend to be pretty well organized) work to the extent that folks listen to each other, communicate openly, rather than distributing information in a top-down format.
As I’m understanding this heterarchy idea, it strikes me that heterarchies should be less prone to get hung up on the notion of credentials or pedigrees. Some cat who’s become self-taught on a particular issue who has something to add to the discussion should have something of an open forum to be heard.
I do tend towards situations where ideas flow horizontally rather than vertically. How well such situations that are hierarchical and individualistic can do in a culture (US) that is basically vertical (authoritarian) and individualistic is an open question.
Just some quick rambling. Gotta get back to watching the daughters & fixing dinner.
disagree slightly. The hierarchical system also serves people at or near the bottom. They just arent so well served.
Are their any examples in MODERN life of a society which is not hierarchical?
“To Serve Man.”
The punchline of a great Twilight Zone episode, where aliens use the idea to get earthlings to flock to their ships.
Turns out…it’s a cookbook.
YUM!!!
AG
No, there might be pockets of heterarchy but the class nature of modern society really leans towards hierarchy
I fear that doneytale’s reaction is where this thread is going to go.
Too theoretical for most.
So it goes.
Too bad.
The idea of heterarchy has entered my life as few have before. Immediately, with ALL kinds if implications. It explains much about my own personal choices throughout the years, and I most definitely owe Gaianne a night on the town for introducing me to it.
Thank you, Gaianne.
AG
well then send them over to my more accessible vaudevillian masterpiece which makes the same points better but is currently foundering towards the bottom of the “Recent Diary” junk pile down below….you da man, AG!
You send me to the dictionary almost as much as Ducksoup Fatboy does….and I still dont understand what heteroarchy means.
Straight people rampaging unlawfully through the streets of Vegas?
“Straight people rampaging unlawfully through the streets of Vegas?”
Yes.
As opposed to what is happening there now.
Straight people rampaging lawfully through the streets of Vegas.
AG
Feel free to link to it yourself, donkeytale.
Otherwise, pele will have to play the blogman version of “Pin the Tale on the Donkey”.
Like I did.
How a good diary can get 63 relatively positive responses…admittedly many of them being your own …and only 4 recs is beyond me.
Have you tried ASKING for them?
AG
Its ok. I like being kept in the basement.
Reminds me if what my dad used to do to me when I was a lad…
AG, please keep up the principled, valiant struggle against the Moneychangers in the Temple…whomever they turn out to be…I am right there with you, just about halfway down the third list from the top.
While the particular term “heterarchy” was new to me, the concept of it has formed much bedrock of my personal reconstruction process (that I undertook long ago, as way of repairing the damage I sustatined by living at my assigned low level station on the power pyramid.) There’s nothing so theroretical about any of this to me..it’s just common sense.
People want to be heard and valued. People want expand and develop their own potential. People thrive and grow, new ideas get born and shared, innovation blooms, and all benefit in any atmosphere of shared power that encourages this.
In a hierarchal, up and down organisationa; structure, it’s the top layer who reserve the right to decide what is acceptable and what is not. The top layer knows what works for them, thus assumes it should work for everyone below them. In fact, it must, for the structure to me maintained.
So it ends up with those on the lower layers being allow to expand, but only so far, and only in certain ways that do not change the original alignment of the pyramid or go against the rules set by hte top layers.
But people who want unlimited expansion for themselves and others ofen object to this kind of control, and even rebel against it. This cannot be allowed, for it could disrupt the status quo.
So various methods are employed by the top layers to get rid of, or silence the troublemakers and all who do not comform to the rules.
(Which is why I am happy as a hell to be retired, and old enough to no longer be under the control of ANY hierarchal organization sturcture.)
I am glad you turned this into a diary – your “ah ha” moment in the original thread was delightful.
Your use of your music and musicians to exemplify “heterarchy” and “community” in another diary have been very helpful to me in understanding. In both examples you have mentioned the role of the “leader.”
This is a very important piece:
As long as that freedom is understood in a common manner amongst the musicians
And the leader? What qualities are needed in a leader?
The leader is usually the one who can borrow a truck big enough to haul everybodys instruments to the next gig.
Really?
In the jazz world?
Patience.
Ability…not necessarily the MOST ability. But enough to be in the mix.
And good taste in sidemen.
Money helps, too.
AG
Arthur, you should have asked me about this. I first came across the concept of heterarchy in the early 70s reading about cybernetics. And although the term isn’t used by Pynchon the concept runs throughout Gravity’s Rainbow. The Counterforce is heterarchical, so is W.A.S.T.E. in the Crying of Lot 49. I see it also in the writings of council communists.
I envy your discovery of this presently, because I remember what a bring-up it was when I first found it.
Unfortunatley my sons 8th grade graduation party beckons.
Maybe later….
Recommended
Yes, yes and yes.
Nothing more to add, AG.
I like the jazz analogy a lot — & much as it works for a maninstream quintet, it applies even more to the more freeform performers, say the way a Cecil Taylor or Art Ensemble piece slowly develops.
I’m more interested in viewing heterarchy as an organizing/activist model (that can apply to blogs as well) which makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how progressive actions/campaigns actually get carried out in the real world.
To follow up on my comment yesterday about the Zapatistas, here’s a snippet from Subcomandante Marcos latest action proposal:
Nodes connecting with like-minded nodes, aware of how they fit into a larger picture of resistance. No one leader, no one way.
One thing to note in their example: while criticism of those ‘above’ is offered, the focus is on ignoring them & acting independently.
I hope that the Stalinist-like opacity of this missive is entirely the work of a bad translator, because if that’s how they are really thinking, you can forget about them right now.
Something tells me, however, that if this image could talk, that is not how it would be expressing itself.
Not by half.
Looks like Afghanistan West, to me…
Or Cuba, v.2
AG
Stalinist? From what I understand about what’s going on down there (& I’m no expert), that’s a badly mis-informed characterization. Though you might get Vincente Fox & Mark Morris to agree.
Ideology aside, what intersts me is the non-hierarchical organizing model. One of the prominent features of the Other Campaign has been creating a public sphere of discourse in the various states where the powerless have a voice. Based on listening.
I really like the idea of an over-arching national organizing structure that designs its own demise, rather than allowing it to gain an institutional status.
No, Arcturus.
I am talking about the syntax, the style of that excerpt, and how it contrasts with everything that I have heard about said movement.
That’s the whole POINT of my comment.
AG
get over it
what about the model?
Get over WHAT, exactly, Arcturus?
AG
the translation & its syntax/grammar
Oh.
OK.
AG
Oh.
OK.
AG
in the spirit of dialogue, I’d note that both the jazz analogy & the Other Campaign model are both rooted in listening & reacting to what’s going on around them
both require an excellent ear
Yeah.
But you see, the song that is being sung in that translation is being so badly sung/resung that that it offends my ear by its out of tune syntax…bad time, bad notes both.
Sorry.
Can’t help myself.
Really.
Gotta walk out of stores where out of tune music is being played, too.
Even if “theoretically” they are selling good merchandise.
And what I have comne to discover is this.
They are not.
On some level.
They are not.
But that’s just this one silly musician talking.
AG
My bad, Arthur. I made the mistake of thinking that you wanted to discuss ideas & concepts.
Go back to bitching about dKos.
O, I see you already have . . .
This IS a concept.
An idea.
The apprehension of truth by ear.
I trust my ear WAY more than my mind, and when I read something that does not resonate right, my caution lights go off. Thus I VERY rarely trust a translation.
ESPECIALLY one as wooden as that one.
What you are saying is that:
1-I do not want to discuss “ideas and concepts” of which you approve.
And
2-Apparently you either disapprove of mine or are so entangled in your own skein of thoughts that you do not even recognize their existence.
As far as your ideas here…I fail to see any. Other than criticizing me for…for what? I’m still not sure.
You posted an almost impenetrably badly written and/or translated few paragraphs ostensibly from Subcomandante Marcos,
I countered by saying that I hoped that this was not an accurate rendition of their rhetoric (And that I doubted it was. Complete with illustration.) You then followed by saying that you liked what was happening there, and that it appeared to you that it was an ongoing attempt at forming a less hierarchical, more heterarchical system.
The attempt at which, if it is actually happening there, is something in which my whole POST is in agreement.
And I answered:
I am talking about the syntax, the style of that excerpt, and how it contrasts with everything that I have heard about said movement.
That’s the whole POINT of my comment.
At which point you told me to “get over it”. And asked about the model. Which was what my WHOLE POST had been about.
So we have been talking at cross purposes.
I occasionally encounter a musician…a good one…with whom I cannot play. We are playing at cross purposes. And I have found that the best way to avoid that problem is to simply not play with them.
To not get up on that particular bandstand at all. Which is what I am going to do now. I have summed up my couple of themes in this last chorus, and am now going to retire to the bar to await further developments.
Best of luck.
AG
Yeah.
But you see, the song that is being sung in that translation is being so badly sung/resung that that it offends my ear by its out of tune syntax…bad time, bad notes both.
Sorry.
Can’t help myself.
Really.
Gotta walk out of stores where out of tune music is being played, too.
Even if “theoretically” they are selling good merchandise.
And what I have comne to discover is this.
They are not.
On some level.
They are not.
But that’s just this one silly musician talking.
AG
How that double post happened is totally beyond me.
Sorry.
AG
Sorry…THOSE double posts.
And while I’m at it…that 12:04:07 PM EST comment of donkeytale’s thatr persistently keeps migrating to the bottom of this thread?
Have we got some bugs happening, here?
AG
Arthur, this is an interesting diary. I have to admit I didn’t find the Wikipedia entry very illuminating — and I’m a pretty theoretical guy. But your jazz example/analogy helped a lot more. I want to explore it a little bit.
It seems to me that if we’re to compare, say, the blogosphere (qua heterarchy) to a jazz performance situation, a better comparison than the one you mention (where there’s a leader who selects the musicians and then sets them losse) would be the classic jam session. (I’m thinking high-level jam sessions as in the K.C. glory days.) Here, there’s no leader selecting the musicians; in principle, anybody with an instrument can sit in. BUT. You’d better know your shit! Otherwise, the other players will let you know — and not politely.
The institution depends on there being more or less clearly defined differences between knowing your shit and not, and on there being a community of acknowledged experts who maintain and enforce those differences and make it clear to those on the wrong side…you need to go back home and do some work, kid.
In short, who plays and who doesn’t is not determined by one leader, but by an informed community whose authority to differentiate between good and bad is recognized by would-be participants.
In a sense, the “leader-driven” model your comparison to Ellington, Coltrane, etc. suggests strikes me as more Kos-like than this model. Odious as I find it to compare Kos to Ellington, Coltrane, Davis, etc. Kos alone (really) determines who knows his/her shit and who doesn’t, who has the stuff to participate in this group and who doesn’t, etc. And those who are let in are free to go (so long as they don’t go “too far out”).
The jam session model seems to me to correspond more closely to the blog heterarchy you envision. But it still requires, as I’ve said, agreed-upon standards of quality and a community of recognized experts who collectively enforce those standards. Without that, you get either “amateur hour” (dragging down those who are really ready to play) or something like the worst of the “loft jazz” days.
How do those things get sustained in a more jam-session-like blog or blogworld?
Is there anything that corresponds to the difference between knowing and not knowing the changes, say, in blogging?
I’d like your thoughts on this, because I’m really intrigued by the ideas presented here and I’m trying to work them out. (Oh, and I hope it’s obvious in the above that I’m not presuming to inform you about jam sessions etc. — just making explicit the features of the model I think are salient to focus the discussion.)
I used to play a pretty mean sax. Now I don’t know if I could even get a bad “honk” out of it, so if I were near group of really good musicians jamming away, no way in hell would I grab my horn, climb up there and sit in.
How would I know they were that good, thus earning the right to determine who plays with them and who doesn’t? By listening to them play. By respecting their skill and the hard work that went into acquiring it.
People tend to forget that respect needs to be earned.
Jam session works too.
But when you get right down TO it, the jazz worlds is and has been one big jam session.
Young players flock to a jazz center like New York. They play. And play and play and play and play. And the whole scene eventually either tells them that yes, they have what it takes or no, get the hell off of the stand.
The genius of great leaders like Duke and Miles is that they consistently…for YEARS…chose the players who were going to rise to the top of the larger scene.
Just as they began to peak.
Basie, too.
As I have advised any NUMBER of young bandleaders over the years…the secret to being a great bandleader is being a great contractor. (Music-ese for people who assemble and hire ensembles on a short-term OR long-term basis.)
Transferred to blogworld…the community is still in its infancy.
As was say “jazz” in the early 1900s, when on the evidence of many of ther early recordings there was a WHOLE lot of faking going on.
A single rhythmic/melodic/emotional genius…Louis Armstrong…arose out of the pack and served as a crystal around which the supersaturated scene assembled in some semblance of order.
And then?
Then it was off to the races…
Blogworld?
We shall see.
AG
P.S. You ask:
“Is there anything that corresponds to the difference between knowing and not knowing the changes, say, in blogging?”
Syntax.
And good ears.
The ability…JUST as in jazz…to one way or another TRANSCEND “the changes.”
Nothing else.
Not so far, anyway.
Not that I can see.
Okay, your analogy to the early days helps, as does your reminder that this medium is still in its infancy.
I worry about the Louis Armstrong comparison, because it suggests (at least from what you say here) the need for a single visionary to emerge (shades of Heidegger’s “charismatic leader”) rather than a process by which standards organically emerge through the interactions of members of a community. But perhaps you didn’t mean the analogy to be pushed that far. I’m guessing the picture is something like this: some individual or individuals come to stand out as exemplifying “how it should be done” — although why this is how it should be done, why this should be (or these should be) the standards, may not be explicable or justifiable in terms of antecedently accepted standards (except very rudimentary and open-ended ones). A community organizes around this, and through iterations of the process (Armstrong, Duke, Bird), becomes increasingly sophisticated. This may require “great individuals,” but it’s still heterarchical, not hierarchical, since those individuals do not go about asserting that this is how it is to be done and trying to enforce their vision. Rather, their way of doing it just strikes people as right, as the way to go, and that’s how they come to be authoritative.
Is that the picture, more or less?
i cannot predict how this one will evolve.
Only how what has already happened came about.
AG
Understood.
Not looking for predictions or prophecies; just trying to understand the model.
In the earlier days at dKos, there was much more of that open feel. Scoop came along, and increasingly it became less a community as front pagers and other chosen folks started using Scoop’s functions to bully and manufacture consent, all in the service of upping Kos’ stature and influence in the party. Sadly, nearly all the people chosen for this role are center right, and many of them “former” Republicans, especially Armando, Delaware Dem and DHinMI. Dissenting voices from the accepted narrative were silenced through bannings or troll rating, and more and more it resembles Red State. It’s basically become run by Rockefellar Republicans who don’t identify with the current Republican Party. I see looking back that this is where Kos was headed all along. A rigid class heirarchy was promoted, and voices like mine and many, many others who tried to maintain the heterarchical (LOVE that word) structure that dKos had in its early days.
There are vast swaths of the population who’s needs and perspectives aren’t being heard, and now the “leading” supposedly “liberal” blog is helping our shitty gov’t and shitty media to insure that they continue to be unheard. It’s criminal. Read the overviews by Ana Marie Cox in Time and Michael Scherer in Salon. The idea that WINNING matters more than ANYTHING is being pushed really hard. Even if that were true, given the current leadership of the Democratic Party, all that would be accomplished is locking in the worst aspects of Republicanism, just as the fucker Clinton did.
As far as I’m concerned, since they started using bannings the way they did, kos is fair game the way the NY Times or WaPo are. They used it to silence dissent, and thus became no different from the current media.
Precisely.
AG
GIVE. ME. A. BREAK.
“It’s basically become run by Rockefellar Republicans who don’t identify with the current Republican Party.”
That is the biggest load of BS I’ve heard in a while, and I’m normally a fan of your work.
I don’t understand how you people think that DailyKos could’ve become the influence that it is now through this heterarchy… When this happens, meaningful action seems last on the list of things to do, and intense, thoughtful philosphizing about various viewpoints and ideas becomes first – Politics moves too quickly for us to sit around thinking about every little detail, we need to make the best effort we can with good intentions, QUICKLY or we lose, time and time and time again.
A.G.,
This is one of your best ever. You are really onto something here.
Other analogies could be drawn as well.
The free interactions you describe are at the heart of why a free market (before it becomes controlled by the wealth- and power-hungry) is such an engine of innovation and wealth generation, versus an economy where a limited powerful few try to manage all the decisions to be made.
The multi-node types of free interaction describe how nature works – not just in obvious cases, like an ecology or the weather, but (as we are coming to understand, as our tools and insights improve) in all the sciences.
This is the real world. Anyone – from a ruler to a blog host – who thinks they individually can control things better than the group develops on their own is living in a dreamworld, and heading for a cliff of their own creation.
It’s called hubris, and it creates its own nemesis to restore balance to the world. The ancient Greeks knew it, and so did the Chinese: the Tao te Ching is full of that mode of thought. The best emperor is one who, when a project is done, has a people who say “we did it, all by ourselves.”
Now…onward and upward.
Howe do we ensure that this model has a chance of working in a “Day Of The Living Dead”, clomp-clomp-clomping world?
So far…beats me!!!
AG
There’s a similar concept in Hinduism, “Indra’s Net.” (I’d give a description but I’d rather send people to look it up as I would probably get most of the details and implications wrong. There’s a stub at Wikipedia.)
It’s a model with which I am not especially familiar except that when I ran across it, it struck me as a beautifully realized description of a totally obvious concept – which wasn’t obvious until something pointed me at it.
Anyway this is an interesting concept and discussion, so far, and I’m going to resume sitting out here and reading as it goes by.
Thanks.
“This is the real world. Anyone – from a ruler to a blog host – who thinks they individually can control things better than the group develops on their own is living in a dreamworld, and heading for a cliff of their own creation.
It’s called hubris, and it creates its own nemesis to restore balance to the world. The ancient Greeks knew it, and so did the Chinese: the Tao te Ching is full of that mode of thought. The best emperor is one who, when a project is done, has a people who say “we did it, all by ourselves.”
Yeah, the damned place freaks me out. A couple years ago, I thought I’d found “home”. Silly me.
The thought police are always ready to squash anything they see as coloring outside the lines. I don’t like lines, never have. I prefer dips and curves, mandala shapes.
My father was an arranger/conductor for an orchestra during the forties. I was a road kid. Changed schools every three months. That kind of life taught me this: You gotta catch on quick, be ahead of the pack or forever be the new kid in the class.
Intuition, observation and the ability at a very young age to spot bullshit from a mile away has served me well.
I’ve never been a “joiner upper”…the moment I try it, I become suffocated by it, no matter the cause.
I see the world/people without “filters”. No blinders. A blessing and a curse.
Thanks AG, for a wonderful piece of work.
You’re welcome.
What orchestra?
AG
I haven’t been here in almost a year and we’re still doing “these” types of diaries…
I see this place is stuck in this circle, back to the orange hellfire I go…
This is one big thread of everyone agreeing with eachother that they are better than the ‘others.’
This will lead to nothing if not the same thing that has happened on Kos. Sitting around lauding this fellow for having a good idea or writing well is how Kos became what it is; this will result in nothing different.
Loki…
You came at a time when this is the topic du jour.
Generally, dKos is not much in the mix here.
From what you say above, you do not believe that the idea of heterarchy is able to produce a system that can move quickly enough.
You may be right.
More likely a compromise between hierarchy and heterarchy is the key.
However, as with all compromises, the secret lies in the balance.
In the eyes of many…although it is not often put exactly this way…dKos has LOST that balance.
If you think otherwise…by all means, back to your orange hell you can go.
We are all looking for balance.
How and where that balance lies…that’s what makes horseraces.
“AND THEY’RE OFF…!!!“
Later…
AG
Do you not think that your efforts are futile? At least in the current climate? Do you not think it would be better to seek the “more inclusive” group, or will you shun all groupings b/c they do not provide enough “balance?”
While you think about this, the world is burning… take your time.
(My sarcasm is not meant to be rude, merely to illustrate a point).
Thanks for responding.
I am noit shunning all groupings.
Ia m here, aren’t I?
And on My Left Wing as well.
Do I thinkj my efforts are futile?
No.
I believe in the idea of politics as being governed by vectors.
EVERYBODY in a democracy pushes and pulls as they must, and the body politic moves accordingly. Some vectors are strong by dint of sheer numbers. Others, because they are strong in their truth.
My own vector…which is generated by my beliefs, which in turn are generated by my long and thoroughly lived life in the very heart of the real American culture…has whatever power it has. I can do no more than I am doing. If it’s not enough…so be it. I gave it a try.
But futile?
No.
I will have to have THAT proven to me.
At the point of a gun, if necessary.
AG