Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Greatly enjoyed "Why I am Not A Pacifist".

I am regularly impressed by a paradox I believe I observe - that the more complex our daily affairs become (as the compounding effects of continuous flows of information created by the Web take hold) the more most of us seek clear, simple answers.

I believe there are few absolute simplicities, and that insisting on the simple requires the closing of many doors and possibilities.

I think that working at dialogue, working hard at it - leads to clarity within a given context.

I also believe that seeking simplicity and seeking clarity are two different activities - neither of which are strengths of mine.

And I keep hoping that the great mess that is the Web is making us more comfortable with ambiguity and with the multiplicity of viewpoints and interests. There are no simple answers on the Web (?)

I'd love to see what we look like two generations from now...

And many in the technology field want the 20-second "what is it and what does it do", or "what's the pain". Not that this is wrong to ask, but asked by rote without sometimes listening to understand the issues blocks many a reasonable start to a dialogue.

In my experience, quite often fixing some "pain" leads, over time, to some other type(s) of pain.

Always have loved your phrase "elevator pitch is on file with the building doorman".

Yeah, two generations on... A professor/researcher at The Technical University of Delft (Wim Veen), accompanied by some graduate students, has been researching for the past three or four years the way the Digital Generation may be changing the way they chunk information, the ways their cognitive processing may be adapting to always-on, always interconected conditions.

He and his students have a number of papers and presentations under the general theme of "From Homo Sapiens to Homo Zappiens" ;-)

Sans any dark hint of snarkiness: your keeping the JOHO *list* alive is an inspiration to me. I keep thinking about the difference between lists and blogs, and the result of this thinking has so far produced merely one small, but irreducible atom of surety: there *is* a difference. I keep thinking I will soon revive the EGR list, and the only real impediment to acting on this thought is that... well, I keep thinking. Small thoughts, only loosely connected; small pieces, you might say, but loosely joined. And for these, blogging does afford more immediate gratification, whereas lists, oh those yes, demand the expansion of at least a portion of the local semantic network (it's *my* semantics, OK, not talking Truth Values here or anything) such that the effect of puzzling together these smaller bits of bloggish joinery is to reach toward, however tentatively, some larger coherence. When it works, this is a marvel that feeds the soul and sustains the people. I am inspired by your listing (however sinister) because I see you have not lost your chops. Write on, dude.

Interesting consideration about the evolution of your own point of view (re: pacifism).

I keep wondering if we've become too concretized in our, er..., belief in nouns?

I mean, it is one thing to not commit acts of violence and not intend to do any, but it is another thing to assign that verb-phrase to a concrete noun that suggests something absolute to which one can identify himself or herself.

I guess in our era of globally conflicting points of view, we cling tighter to abstract absolutes upon which we seek to stake out our identities.

The Jains have the concept of Ahimsa (non-violence), and it's a *practice*, not really a belief. One doesn't believe in non-violence as much as one practices it, day by day. I don't think there are ahimsa-ists.

I think even "religion" originally suggests actions rather than beliefs in ideas. Is mere belief in ideas the ultimate act of oversimplification?

It seems to me completely plausible that someone could practice non-violence without ever formulating it as a belief. In fact, if it were a cultural norm, it might never really rise up to the level of belief. (We don't say "I'm a don't spit in other people's beverages-ist.") And I do agree that over-specifying it and over-concretizing it verges on either magical beliefs or personality disorder. There will always (ALWAYS) be cases where we our belief in the abstract noun Pacifism will cease to be a useful guide to action and may even get in the way. (The same is true for other abstract nouns.) That's more or less what I was trying to say about principles being guidelines at best.

BTW, the practice vs. belief discussion comes up lots in my conversations (as a Jew) with Christians.

Aw shucks, RageBoy!

EGR's been missed. There's nothing like it. Why not send one out? We, your loyal but always slightly scared readers want to hear from you!

I'll second that vote on EGR, and immediately springs to my mind that tag-line for the Poseidon Adventure movie: "Terror beyond imagination ..."

If it helps, one shred of a metaphor comes to mind on the blog/list dichotemy: a blog happens at the author's house, the maillist is at ours. With a blog, we peek in, incrementally checking up on them from our RSS, little bit by little bit, drop a comment maybe, then quietly move along -- the reader is the traveller. On the other hand, the list comes as a knock on the door, taking some time out of the day for a surprise visitor, and the forum? Perhaps a public space, neutral ground, like a pub or the laundrymat ...

That make any sense?

On the subject of Internet and it's sinister effect on our unsuspecting minds, dig H. Interneticus at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/goldhaber/index.html

There's a nice dialogue about the sons-of-Athena having to face up to battling the sons-of-Ares in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html

David...is it possible you are moving not from pacifism to - what - non-pacisfism? buit rather from closed to open.

In a strange kind of way, your acceptance of violence as an option tied to a recognition of complexity produce a more open Weinberger. It's a move perhaps away from notions of orthodoxy?

Pardon me if I'm wandering around in your head uninvited, but your post just triggered that thought with me: as we come to accept complexity, we become more open to all of life, and that includes wrestling with moral absolutes.

Chris, welcome to my head any time you want. Just remember: If you break it, you've bought it.

I know I've moved from pacifism to a pacifistic non-pacifism, in terms of official beliefs. I'd like to believe that over the course of my life I have occasionally succeeded in moving more towards openness than toward closedness, but since when one moves towards closedness it feels like the discovery of truth, it's awfully hard to tell.

I thoroughly enjoyed the post. I think what's really happened is that you've overcome a form of legalistic fundamentalism in your life. Been there. Done that. A fun intellectual exercise is to play with the idea that God is both perfectly just and merciful. Since God/life/spirit is present in each of us, we're at least capable of similar behavior. The problem is that human nature comes with a tendency to view life as either one or the other, and that leads to a whole host of rules and regulations that we use to support our illusions. Legalism is legalism, regardless of one's culture or politics, and where there's legalism, there is no freedom.

Interesting...I think truth lies in the openness direction. It's a big messy world out there. Our attempts to bring some glistening sense of order to it sacrifice much of the truth that actually surrounds us. We mediate constantly, sometimes leading to reductionist positions. When these crack and fall away, the truth appears, same as it ever was (to quote a song).

Thanks for letting me wander in your head...I'm hoping it's still under warranty!