It used to be about avoiding physical labor. The lazy person could nap or have a cup of tea while others got hot and sweaty and exhausted. Part of the reason society frowns on the lazy is that this behavior means more work for the rest of us.
When it came time to carry the canoe over the portage, I was always hard to find. The effort and the pain gave me two good reasons to be lazy.
But the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you're not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you're not avoiding it because you need physical rest. You're hiding out because you're afraid of expending emotional labor.
This is great news, because it's much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an eighty pound canoe.
Phi Beta Iota: This point of view from Seth Godin appears to us to have special applicability to all those who receive a government salary and choose not to vote or agitate for reform. It's easy to “go along” with trying to do the wrong thing, just more of it. It is much, much harder and more painful to persist at suggesting that we do the right thing instead. If you cannot bring yourself to agitate for reform Of, By, and For We the People, at least be tolerant of those who do….they're the good guys, whether you want to admit it or not.
Phi Beta Iota: Ben Gilad, one of the top commercial intelligence analysts around, has a point, but he forgets that the modern looting of the USA began in 1981 and reached a cresendo with the Phil Gramm (R-TX) deregulation of the financial “services” industry. For the most recent and most superb story on the axis of crime from Wall Street to the two political parties sharing the power of the public purse, see Matt Taibbi's book, Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
Barcelona is known as one of Spain's most vibrant cities, but when Pope Benedict XVI touches down there Sunday, he'll be greeted with something extra colorful: a massive “queer kissing flashmob.”
According to the event's Facebook page, organizers have invited same-sex couples from all over Spain to congregate in front of the city's cathedral Nov. 7 and start kissing as soon as the pope emerges from the building at 10 a.m. Organizers say that though the event will last for a mere two minutes, over 300 people are planning to attend.
Europe is seeing some of the largest demonstrations since World War II, with labor agitation being the major trademark. The reasons for this labor unrest are easy to see. Let’s look at several facts, starting with unemployment. Europe has always had lower unemployment than the United States. No longer. Since 1982, unemployment (as an average of the EU-15) has been higher in the European Union than in the United States. Actually, unemployment had already started to rise in Europe by the late 1970s, coinciding with the first steps by the EU-15 countries to construct what they later called the European Union. One consequence of forming this Union was higher unemployment, and from that time, unemployment has increased, eventually exceeding that in the United States.
There’s an election Tuesday, and you’re probably going to vote – whether your vote is meaningful or not. Some call voting a “ritual,” which is not at all to say that it’s not meaningful – rituals do have meaning. But the word is that it’s a symbolic rather than functional, practical event. The actual eddies and currents of power feel little or no impact from your single vote.
Where can you have a real impact? Doc Searls and colleagues working through Project VRM and the Internet Identity Workshop are catalyzing a redefinition of the computer-mediated vendor/consumer relationship, with the potential to transform power relationships in markets rather than in the political sphere. However market experiences dominate so much of our daily commitment of attention and thinking, a redefinition of marketplace relationships could be a redefinition of relationship and power more broadly. If we assume symmetry in vendor/consumer relationshiops, we will also assume that the relationship of an elected official to her constituents will be more symmetrical.
I’m reading Doc Searls’ “The Data Bubble II,” which includes a lot of homework – links to other articles and posts I might read to get deeper into the subjects of online identity and relationship as they pertain to marketing and the redefinition of vendor/consumer relationships. Doc quotes John Battelle, who discusses how emerging conversational media inspired an economic model he calls conversational marketing, “simply the tip of a very large iceberg, representative of a sea change in how all businesses converse with their constituents – be they customers, partners, or employees.” Battelle calls it “The Conversation Economy,” for which Doc says “we’re going to need individuals who are independent and self-empowered.”
Back to voting: the vote is symbolic of your share as a citizen within a power structure that is supposedly of, for, and by the people, though it’s increasingly obvious that votes and voters are manipulable and nodes within power structures are corruptible. In arguing for a more participatory or democratic set of structures, it’s important to know that supposed majorities are also corruptible and can be crazy as hell. We need structures that empower and that also include checks and balances on those empowered. We want to build sanity into the architecture of power, and ease dependence on the ethics and logic of mere mortals. If we build such structures for markets, they will have an impact on governance as well.
(Also interesting: Doc refers to David Siegel on “The Social Networking Bubble.” Siegel says “We’ve overstated and overemphasized the utility of social networking and are now in a marketer’s ‘greater fool’ territory.”)
Phi Beta Iota: Jim Turner coined the term “buycott.” Thomas Jefferson and James Madison understood that an informed public was a nation's best defense against enemies both domestic and foreign. Brother Lebrowsky was a contributing editor to Extreme Democracy, and lives on the bleeding edge where democracy, information, and public minds converge.
This year, fewer than 40% of voting age Americans will actually vote.
A serious glitch in self-marketing, I think.
If you don't vote because you're trying to teach politicians a lesson, you're tragically misguided in your strategy. The very politicians you're trying to send a message to don't want you to vote. Since 1960, voting turnouts in mid-term elections are down significantly, and there's one reason: because of TV advertising.
Political TV advertising is designed to do only one thing: suppress the turnout of the opponent's supporters. If the TV ads can turn you off enough not to vote (“they're all bums”) then their strategy has succeeded.
The astonishing thing is that voters haven't figured this out. As the scumminess and nastiness of campaigning and governing has escalated and the flakiness of candidates appears to have escalated as well, we've largely abdicated the high ground and permitted selfish partisans on both sides to hijack the system.
Voting is free. It's fairly fast. It doesn't make you responsible for the outcome, but it sure has an impact on what we have to live with going forward. The only thing that would make it better is free snacks.
Even if you're disgusted, vote. Vote for your least unfavorite choice. But go vote.
Phi Beta Iota: In the Presidential election year, 54.6% or so voted, meaning that the majority within that number that barely elected the incumbent President represented 30% of the eligible voters. Incumbents are now the clear majority non-party in the USA, but because of decades of “bi-partisan” criminal conspiracy against the public, open ballot access, instant run-off, and liberal absentee ballot use by the poor that cannot juggle work, buses, and voting, have been denied–there are nine specific things that must be done in the way of Electoral Reform. That is the public challenge between now and 2012.
Phi Beta Iota: The Editorial Board reviewed this. This site is strictly non-partisan; political propaganda is pointed out not to endorse it, but to highlight the depth of what one author calls Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. This short film demonizes the Democratic incumbent majority while avoiding any reference to the Republican era in which the economy was destroyed (1981 forward), elective wars were started, Dick Cheney performed 23 unnatural impeachable acts and led the telling of 935 lies to the public, and the Wall Street bail-out was foisted on the public, first by the Republicans then by their look-alike lite Democratic partners in crime. BOTH parties are antithetical to the public interest; BOTH parties must be “put down” by an informed public as NEITHER party has the integrity to represent the public interest.
