I recently stumbled upon Michelle Malkin, someone I had no clue existed but who is apparently quite popular with the far right of the United States. I found myself gritting my teeth as I read attack piece after attack piece, each one held together by questionable links and even more questionable reasoning, and as I continued to read, I tried to figure out what it was about Malkin’s “journalism” that made it so distasteful. After all, my last post was an undisguised bashing of Rahim Jaffer, a politician I find particularly loathsome.
So, what’s the difference between someone like Malkin and someone like me? I fear that the truth is: not much. Both of us believe that we’re one of the good guys and that whoever or whatever we attack constitutes the bad. Our arguments seem rock solid to us and hopelessly contrived to each other.
This isn’t anything new, of course. We’ve all complained about how polarized debate is becoming at one time or another in the last decade. It’s almost as much fun to complain about polarization as it is to be polarized. And as we become more and more aware of this polarization, it’s tempting to blame it on the rise of the Internet – and the rise of blogging, in particular. After all, if we didn’t have all these “amateurs” out there editorializing everything to the point that facts are considered secondary to the narrative they’re trying to convey – and instead left it all to “real journalists” to deliver informed, well researched news – wouldn’t we be better off?
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When I was in high school, I had an English teacher that was very much against the use of “I” in writing. Perhaps because he seemed so sure of himself and I was so unsure of myself, that advice sort of stuck in my head, and I suppose it’s good advice when you’re writing high school essays. In hindsight, I think another high school English teacher gave me something much more valuable when he taught me to hate clichés. Sometimes I still use them because, overused or not, they’re the best say something, but I still hate them and agonize over them. But the “I” thing did a little more harm than good. It instilled this Catholic-like guilt in me, admonishing me to take myself out of my writing in order for it to be more persuasive. It’s also a very journalistic way of looking at the world. Journalists feel they are doing their job better by taking themselves out of the story. The problem is, it’s never true. No matter how objective a piece of writing sounds, it is always written by someone. I think that’s why I like Hunter S. Thompson so much. He saw through all that and decided to go out of his way to be in the news he was reporting. (more…)
A friend of mine used to do street art, sometimes outdoors and sometimes in a studio. I ran into a street artist today on Twitter with some really cool stuff that reminded me of my friend’s work. My friend has since moved onto other things, which I think is a shame, because some of his stuff was really good. Check out The Me Nobody Knows on his site for some great examples of street art. You can also see some of his stuff on flickr. Here are a couple of things I really like about this artist. 1. His message. From his ebay page, I found this, which I find inspiring as a fellow artist: “To you I may be nobody. Okay, then undeterred and unaffected, I say to you – Nobody did it! (and so can YOU.)” It’s so easy to lose faith in yourself as an artist, to feel that you are just one in a crowded room of many hopefuls. Stuff like this to me is like the desiderata for artists, and I’m feeling better already after just reading it. 2. The thought he puts into his pieces. The picture above that I’m linking, for example, is based on the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp. It makes me wish that every graffiti artist left a description so I could understand why he did what he did and it ought to make you stop and think a little more before you write something off as pure vandalism. And here’s another thought that seeing TMNK’s stuff provoked: street art was the original blog. Now that we have the internet, even with no technical expertise, we can sign up to a blogging site for free and have a small corner of the world where we can share our thoughts with absolutely everyone. We kind of take that for granted. Looking at TMNK’s stuff reminded me that you used to have to fight a lot harder for a space in the public dialog. You used to have to take to the streets with a can of spray paint and risk arrest. You had to believe in yourself enough to take that risk, one which didn’t provide any sort of monetary gain, only the satisfaction of being heard. And, of course, some still do have to do it that way, for whatever reason. Those of us who feel we have a legal voice, let’s be thankful for that and realize how new it actually is for almost anyone (barring those in more repressive areas of the world) to be able to broadcast to the public without fear.
…or dumber. According to James Surowiecki, the jury’s still out on whether or not the Internet will improve us via collective intelligence or seduce us into conformity. Check out his fascinating talk about the wisdom of crowds on TED.
Highlights:
Each blog post, each blog commentary may not, in and of itself, be exactly what we’re looking for, but collectively, the judgment of those people posting, those people linking, more often than not, is going to give you a very interesting and enormously valuable picture of what’s going on.
The more tightly linked we become to each other, the harder it is for each of us to remain independent… One of the fundamental characteristics of a network is that once you are linked in the network, the network starts to shape your views and starts to shape your interactions with everybody else… Groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is sort of the paradox of the wisdom of crowds or the paradox of collective intelligence… Networks make it harder for people to do that because they drive attention to the things that the network values…
There’s this notion that Alan Watts brings up about Buddhism that I think applies very appropriately to the twenty-first century. Watts suggests that when the Buddha says things like “renounce all desire,” really all he’s trying to do is start a conversation. The conversation will start on false premises. It’s impossible to renounce desire because if you really care to do so, it means you have to stop desiring to stop desiring, and that kind of thinking can drive you mad. But the idea behind this approach is that there is a central truth to it all and that this truth is not something you can communicate with words. You have to circle around the truth until you get close enough for that sudden enlightenment that we’re all looking for. I didn’t know why I reserved spiraltruth.com at first, and for years the domain just acted as a catchall for various projects. But I like this idea of truth as a spiral rather than a single point. You never really get there, but you can get closer, and that’s really what matters. This is blog for bohemians. It will most likely end up unapologetically left leaning and eclectic, something that will showcase the things I find interesting and beautiful in the world, and it will hopefully appeal to most of the fine folks I like to hang around with. What it will not be is a personal diary. Please send me hate mail immediately if I break this rule. It’s not that I’m not fascinated by reading about the various dramas that go on in other peoples’ lives – it’s just that I think that there’s already enough of that on the web, and I don’t need to add to it here. Now that that’s done, let’s see where this goes…