Sadly, I've recognised another promising website to be something I can no longer support. Wikipedia started with the concept of it being the voice of the people. Now, it has been run over by wikipolice.
The first thing that helped me to realise this was that my own work was removed. I edited the page on Rousas Rushdoony as such. After this, for a time, the page had a flag indicating it's neutrality was disputed, and there was some discussion as to the sentence and link that I added. However, the page is no longer disputed, and all mention (including the discussion) is gone. There is no trace of the discussion at all. Now, I wouldn't mind my work being removed too much, but I object to the discuss being erased.
Another instance is that someone tried to add the wikipedia entry, Plaosmos, using many quotations from this blog. I accept that I may well be one of 10 people in the world who know and use the word, and that most of them may not even like it. But why remove it? This is what remains. Plaosmos is considered nonsense. So I clicked the link about nonsense, and the reason they gave for removing the page is: "Content that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irredeemably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to make any sense of it whatsoever" (my emphasis). But why? I've made (at least some) sense of it. Am I not an 'intelligent person'? Am I just a person? Or a deranged one? Or not a person?
And then it struck me. The problem is that wikipedia is based off a myth, and one I cannot support or invest in. Wikipedia wants everything from a 'neutral' viewpoint, but there is no neutral viewpoint. What it ends up getting is everything from a mainstream, majority viewpoint. That is, mainstream of internet users, who are composed of the richer 6th of the world. And wikipedia carries quite a lot of authority, at least for the lay users, meaning that it will (passively) attempt to impose this myth of neutrality onto those who read it. As more and more communities get online, they will be met with this monstrous myth, which comes down to the modernist myth of objectivity. Objectivity, as we have seen, is a deeply oppressive myth that is part of the climate change and poverty problems in the world (at least legitimating many of them, if not more).
The wiki idea is good, the problem is with its size. I'm seeing more and more that big is bad. Small community wiki's can be wonderful, but as soon as a global wiki comes in, it will impose itself on other communities, posing as the (only) one community (have a look at the authors page to see this).
I'm not suggesting, as this site does, that wikipedia has a conscious agenda of oppression. It's agenda isn't conscious, it's not-thought-through and naïve. I'm instead noting the tendency toward homogenisation and problematic mythology, and hopefully, sowing the seed of distrust-for-liberation yet again. Here's a discussion about neutrality, to which I added a comment.
It is with sadness that I realise this tendency and decide to boycott wikipedia. I am starting to think that it should be renamed WERMpedia, because it is the pedia of the Western, English-speaking (even other languages are often the English translated), Rich (computer-literate, educated), predominantly-Males. It was so promising, but I now find its promises to be lies. Sadly, even the Urban Dictionary is policed and I'm beginning to wonder what good on the internet remains.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Coalition Against Technological Development
I'd still like comments on my previous post (Divining), but I'll post this anyway. I found a flyer on a table in Kensington Market, Toronto. Of course, it's ironic that I'm posting this online using software that is in continual development. Anyway, here's what it says:
Technology uses resources and as more technology is used, more resources are used. Actual economic output declines as a larger proportion of resources go into keeping the technology going rather than into actual usable output from the economy. This is going on while the total available resources are fixed or declining. It is no surprise that the expansion and progress of technology is making us poorer.
The economic effects of technological progress:
The current situation in which we are now getting poorer instead of richer as time goes on, is the result of the greater growth of resource use by technology in recent times. Unlike previous technologies, which could only do a limited number of things and which could expand to only a limited extent, computers can keep on replacing more and more human activities and the growth of resource use is accelerating. This creates increasing poverty.
The impact has reached the point that economic output per person is now shrinking. It should be remembered that the amount of economic output is overstated by the commonly quoted Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is greater than the actual economic output because it does not subtract the amount of equipment that is continually being worn out and/or replaced. The actual amount of economic output is the Net Domestic Product (NDP) which is GDP minus Capital Consumption. NDP per person has been decreasing at the same time as GDP per person has been increasing. In fact, GDP overstates the size of the economy by about 15%. The decline in economic conditions and standard of living is clearly shown by the decline in economic output, once the correct measure of economic output, Net Domestic Product, is used.
Technological progress means much greater problems in the near future.
Until recently, we have not faced a condition of long-term economic decline. Since this is a new thing, we should realize how much worse it could get.
Automation is different from other technological changes because it is not limited to shifting some fraction of resources from one use to another, but will continuously absorb ever increasing fractions of available resources and reduce the well being of people on an ongoing basis. This would cause much greater poverty than previous economic declines and the poverty would be for everyone.
Of the greatest concern to environmentalists and people concerned about economic conditions and poverty, should be the expansion of technology that results from advances in computers, as opposed to the unintelligent technologies of the past.
A sustainable economy will stop the economic decline
A sustainable economy, which means a stable economy, is an improvement over the declining economy we have now and are expecting in the future. An economy in which output is not shrinking is the solution to current and even greater future poverty.
Less use of technology and less development of new technology will be a major component of a stable, non-shrinking economy and an environment which is not endangered.
Solutions are low tech
Environmental solutions that are low tech will be preferable. Environmentalists should attempt to create a sense of achieving a condition in which there are not increasing technological impacts on nature and on the economy.
Advancing Technology Causes
Scarcity, Poverty and Environmental Damage
We are now seeing the negative economic consequences of environmental damage and resources running dry. The result is that people are falling towards and into poverty. Advanced technology has become unproductive and is creating this condition of economic decline.Scarcity, Poverty and Environmental Damage
Technology uses resources and as more technology is used, more resources are used. Actual economic output declines as a larger proportion of resources go into keeping the technology going rather than into actual usable output from the economy. This is going on while the total available resources are fixed or declining. It is no surprise that the expansion and progress of technology is making us poorer.
The economic effects of technological progress:
- 10% of electricity is now used to run computers.
- The energy of .9 kg of coal is used to generate and transmit 10 megabytes of data.
- The use of computers is doubling every 8 years.
- The use of computers is growing at such a rate because computers are increasingly becoming able to do any type of job.
- Productivity stopped increasing in 1976 and has now started to decline.
- Decreasing incomes, in particular low paying jobs, are becoming the norm.
The current situation in which we are now getting poorer instead of richer as time goes on, is the result of the greater growth of resource use by technology in recent times. Unlike previous technologies, which could only do a limited number of things and which could expand to only a limited extent, computers can keep on replacing more and more human activities and the growth of resource use is accelerating. This creates increasing poverty.
The impact has reached the point that economic output per person is now shrinking. It should be remembered that the amount of economic output is overstated by the commonly quoted Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is greater than the actual economic output because it does not subtract the amount of equipment that is continually being worn out and/or replaced. The actual amount of economic output is the Net Domestic Product (NDP) which is GDP minus Capital Consumption. NDP per person has been decreasing at the same time as GDP per person has been increasing. In fact, GDP overstates the size of the economy by about 15%. The decline in economic conditions and standard of living is clearly shown by the decline in economic output, once the correct measure of economic output, Net Domestic Product, is used.
Technological progress means much greater problems in the near future.
Until recently, we have not faced a condition of long-term economic decline. Since this is a new thing, we should realize how much worse it could get.
Automation is different from other technological changes because it is not limited to shifting some fraction of resources from one use to another, but will continuously absorb ever increasing fractions of available resources and reduce the well being of people on an ongoing basis. This would cause much greater poverty than previous economic declines and the poverty would be for everyone.
Of the greatest concern to environmentalists and people concerned about economic conditions and poverty, should be the expansion of technology that results from advances in computers, as opposed to the unintelligent technologies of the past.
A sustainable economy will stop the economic decline
A sustainable economy, which means a stable economy, is an improvement over the declining economy we have now and are expecting in the future. An economy in which output is not shrinking is the solution to current and even greater future poverty.
Less use of technology and less development of new technology will be a major component of a stable, non-shrinking economy and an environment which is not endangered.
Solutions are low tech
Environmental solutions that are low tech will be preferable. Environmentalists should attempt to create a sense of achieving a condition in which there are not increasing technological impacts on nature and on the economy.
- Support the natural world and propose environmental solutions that do not involve high tech.
- Criticize the diversion of resources into research and development of technology.
- Some of the most advanced developments in technology, especially further advances in computer technology, should be seen as very negative for people and the environment.
Coalition Against Technological Development
Contact: Stuart, and if you want the details I'll give them out if I trust you.
Contact: Stuart, and if you want the details I'll give them out if I trust you.
NOTE: This post was edited to change its title from "War on Science, 2" on 2013-11-04 to more accurately describe its content.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Divining
My thesis: God is a verb (to divine), and should not be a noun. (This may well be my next paper, so comments are appreciated.)
This is something that has increasingly come out my readings of Catherine Keller and John Robinson, although neither of them say it as such. The premise is that we just don't think any more of a God in a theistic sense; that we think of this as being not only silly and naïve, but also dangerous and oppressive (see much liberation theology or eco-feminist work as to why), and yet, that there is something more than flat and dead, mechanical, secular humanism (to use Robinson's description).
There's several ways that I've come to this. Thinking about the Trinity, and interpreting it in a narrative (rather than an ontological) sense, we have the time of the 'Father' (theism), then the time of the 'Son' (Jesus), and then those who follow Jesus as radical, political liberator (in the 'Spirit'). Jesus, then, "dared to accept the role of sonship, of standing in God's stead.” (The Human Face of God, 217-8) “Put the other way round, henceforth 'God' is to be represented no longer simply as a personified being over man's head, but in and by man and his responsibility.” (218) “'God' now means, for us... that by which he is represented, his surrogate – the power of a love that lives and suffers for others.” (218-9) In short, Jesus showed that God isn't an 'other', a being, but God is only ever perceived (and therefore, is only) in action.
In Exploration into God, Robinson writes, "[the Bible] describes reality much more readily in terms of verbs than substantives." (p.35 ...and if God is 'ultimate reality' as Paul Tillich claims...) Robinson goes on, "The reality [of God... is seen] in action, in suffering, rather than in words." (55, my emphasis) He pulls from Thomas Aquinas (of all people) and writes, "there are common nouns and proper nouns - and 'God' seems to fall into neither category," (58) - so is God not a noun?
Here's a paragraph from my recent paper From Ground to Ocean: (Ful)filling the Abyss. (The 'tehom' refers to the Hebrew word in Genesis 1, which Keller associates with 'deep' and 'ocean of infinite possibility'.)
This is something that has increasingly come out my readings of Catherine Keller and John Robinson, although neither of them say it as such. The premise is that we just don't think any more of a God in a theistic sense; that we think of this as being not only silly and naïve, but also dangerous and oppressive (see much liberation theology or eco-feminist work as to why), and yet, that there is something more than flat and dead, mechanical, secular humanism (to use Robinson's description).
There's several ways that I've come to this. Thinking about the Trinity, and interpreting it in a narrative (rather than an ontological) sense, we have the time of the 'Father' (theism), then the time of the 'Son' (Jesus), and then those who follow Jesus as radical, political liberator (in the 'Spirit'). Jesus, then, "dared to accept the role of sonship, of standing in God's stead.” (The Human Face of God, 217-8) “Put the other way round, henceforth 'God' is to be represented no longer simply as a personified being over man's head, but in and by man and his responsibility.” (218) “'God' now means, for us... that by which he is represented, his surrogate – the power of a love that lives and suffers for others.” (218-9) In short, Jesus showed that God isn't an 'other', a being, but God is only ever perceived (and therefore, is only) in action.
In Exploration into God, Robinson writes, "[the Bible] describes reality much more readily in terms of verbs than substantives." (p.35 ...and if God is 'ultimate reality' as Paul Tillich claims...) Robinson goes on, "The reality [of God... is seen] in action, in suffering, rather than in words." (55, my emphasis) He pulls from Thomas Aquinas (of all people) and writes, "there are common nouns and proper nouns - and 'God' seems to fall into neither category," (58) - so is God not a noun?
Here's a paragraph from my recent paper From Ground to Ocean: (Ful)filling the Abyss. (The 'tehom' refers to the Hebrew word in Genesis 1, which Keller associates with 'deep' and 'ocean of infinite possibility'.)
But we must remember our question: Is the tehom God? And how does the creature/creator, the divine/cosmic, relate to tehom? The short answer to the second of these questions is 'creativity'. In the bottomless tehom, the infinite potential, there is nothing and everything. 'God' is the differentiating, the distinguishing of these potentials. “'[E]verything' in a state of potentiality is no thing,” (Face of the Deep, 180) and so this 'chaotic buzz' needs a decision to be made, a decision which eliminates some possibilities while selecting others to be created. To help describe this Keller uses 'divine' as a verb: “[A] primal Other not separate from but within God – différance in precisely the sense of the originary non-origin... this radical genesis divines the potentiality of the tehom. Its creativity does not create by itself. By itself it makes no difference... The great cosmic decision has been traditionally, with justice, named the creation; its agency, the creator.” (180) The tehom by itself, the potential everything, is no thing – it makes no difference because within it no difference is determined, or rather, divined. God, then, is the process of actualising/ realising/ differentiating/ choosing/ divining the tehom, in an interconnectivity where God is nothing without the potential to be (the tehom), and the tehom is no thing when it is merely potentially everything – without the divine, without being divined. “If the godhead, or rather the godness, 'in' whom unfolds the universe can be theologised as Tehom, the ocean of divinity, the divinity who unfolds 'in' the all is called by such biblical names as Elohim, Sophia, Logos, Christ. ... [T]he names Tehom and Elohim may henceforth designate, if not 'persons', two capacities of an infinite becoming.” (219) Is Tehom divine? Yes, but not by itself, for Tehom as mere (only/oceanic) potential is no thing without Elohim. And is Tehom God? No. For while “Tehom has taken on the names and aura of a certain godness, [it] has never been identified with 'God', nor with the All; it 'is' not pan or theos. It signifies rather their relation... The relations, the waves of our possibility, comprise the real potentiality from which we emerge. So tehom, metonym of the divine womb, remains neither God nor not-God but the depth of 'God'.” (227) Finally we reach a place where we can divine the highly nuanced difference between Tillich and Keller.
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