There Is A List

current events No Responses »
Apr 182013
This week, three people in Boston became terrorism’s latest fatalities.  We don’t know yet if the bomber or bombers selected the Massachusetts state holiday Patriots’ Day for the attack in order to send a political message in particular or if it was just a large crowd at a public event that proved irresistible to those responsible.  Was it a statement about American patriotism?  A nod to previous events on this date in past years?  Or, was convenient opportunity — what with a large milling crowd about — to blame?
 
Speculation immediately rushed to the obviously political:  it was a violent Patriots’ Day protest timed, like that for the anniversary of the siege at Waco, because of the bomber’s leanings.  Of course, Timothy McVeigh targeted the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 as a show of solidarity with the Branch Davidians raided in 1993.  Later, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado would go on a shooting spree, and the record they left behind indicated a preoccupation with the events at Waco and Oklahoma City.  Their bloody eruption was similarly slated for mid-April.  Just six years separated the three tragedies, and they have become linked in our public consciousness for their violence, their anger, and deadliness.
 
These previous incidents serve as context for the Boston bombing — infusing it with meaning before there is even any semblance of understanding to be had.  Were it a lone event, it would be met with the confusion and grief of Oklahoma City or the indignation over Waco.  But, there is a past, and having been here before, we have fear and expectations.  We have experience with this grief.
 
Immediate responses acknowledged this history.  The connection in timing with Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado — western tragedy moved east and colored further by the trauma of Fall, 2001 — invariably arose.  On Twitter, in news reports, online, and in conversation, observers cited this historical combine.  It is now a list.  It’s a macabre tally:  here are our relevant deadly massacres.  We can itemize it now, our terror.  It’s a frightful grouping of like horrors.
 
I have carried the Oklahoma City bombing with me for eighteen years now.  It’s become a permanent part of my life.  It changed me.  Being so defining and unique to me, my immediate reaction is resisting the listing.  Others may want to combine these events, but they do not go together for me.  In my experience, there is the One and then there are the others.  It feels belittling to fuse them — to act like they were the same.  No, I think.  In scope, in tone, in perpetration, Oklahoma City still stands alone.  In the crudest of measurements — the body count — it eclipses the others.  In civic devastation and impact on public access and security, it is again the greater.  As an internal attack on our government, it remains unique.
 
I am certain that my resistance to combining these events is defensive too.  I am protective of my sorrow and insulted at attaching it to “lesser” tragedies.  I have a bias, and I know it.  You can’t be fair when it comes to your broken heart — and I don’t believe you ought to be.  Still, after thoughtful consideration, the Murrah bombing must be the greater woe:  it was, tragically, our introduction to an age of terrorism.
Truthfully, as similar as they are in our minds, none of the three are much like the others.  The dark motives behind them differed, as did the targets and tools.  It is a kind of dishonor borne of laziness and convenience to connect them.  It simplifies and, worse, obfuscates, and this is the opposite of knowledge.  We are temporal in nature, though, and the timeline rules our understanding.  We can resist it; our spirits can rage against it; but, the fact of the matter is that we have known these several tragedies in our experience.  We have been wounded by each, and we revisit them annually as dictated by the calendar.  April is heavy with sorrow — large and small, multiple and grotesque.  Unavoidably, there is a list.
 
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To Seek Another's Profit:

American history No Responses »
Jan 292013
The Haole-American Revolution
 
“Instead of your shame you will…inherit a double portion in their land…” Isaiah 61:7
 
 
Whales brought white men to Hawai’i in the late 18th century, and with whaling, disease and missionaries alit.
 
The evangelists consecrated cemeteries that the diseases filled.  Just one quarter of Hawai’ians survived the unintentional germ warfare.
 
Whaling, too, expired in that time;  the south sea fishery gave way to commercial oil fields in Pennsylvania.
 
Whalers left, but white missionaries stayed to convert Christians — then cane, coffee and capitalism.
 
Mission schools taught republicanism and writing.  King Kamehameha III joined them with the Constitution of 1840, forfeiting absolute rule.
 
In 1848, the Great Mahele introduced land rights to compliment the new constitutional monarchy, but plots soon passed from native hands.
 
The California Gold Rush created a luxury market for Hawai’ian sugar, met by white capitalists acquiring native land.
 
The children of missionaries became a planter class, as their religious compounds transitioned to sugar plantations.
 
Workers from Asia and other Pacific locales replenished the agricultural labor supply to serve now-native born whites.
 
By the 1890′s, immigrants would outnumber native Hawai’ians 4:1, but the election of King Kalakaua brought a cultural resurgence first.
 
A new palace replaced grass huts and a wooden ceremonial hall during the renaissance, but the monarchy was made of lesser bricks.
 
Economic power and the rule of law allowed white businessmen a path to oligarchy. The Big Five sugar companies dominated with dollars.
 
The Hawai’ian League — a secret organization of haole (white residents) — formed a militia to supplement that economic power with force.
 
Under duress then, the king signed a “Bayonet Constitution” (1887), disenfranchising Asians and poor Hawai’ians via voting requirements.
 
A new queen replaced the last king; briefly did she reign, her constitutional reformation cut short through occupation by US Marines.
 
Forced to choose between her people’s rights and their blood, Queen Lili’oukalani surrendered her throne to haole with guns.
 
From ‘Iolani Palace, President of the new “republic” Sanford Dole (a missionary’s son) governed, with the queen imprisoned upstairs.
 
It has been 172 years since the father brought the Gospel, and 120 + 1 day since the son, an American Revolution.
 
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Twistory!

Uncategorized No Responses »
Jan 012013

To kick off the new year, I’m doing something a little different.  For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be tweeting a history — posting a new piece each day.  At the end, I’ll put it all together here on the blog.  In the meantime, you can follow it on Twitter, if you use that, or by viewing the tweets on the side widget on the blog home page.  Either way, I hope you enjoy the experiment.

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Hear the Bells

current events No Responses »
Dec 242012
I thought this season we could use the words Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote after his son was wounded in the Civil War, just three years after Longfellow’s wife died from an accidental fire.
 
 
Christmas Bells (1864)
 
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
Til ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The canon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said:
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
 
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!”
 
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Mess With Texas

American history No Responses »
Nov 192012
Hands down, the best political ad of the 2012 election season was Oklahoma 2nd Congressional District candidate Rob Wallace’s, featuring a very thinly veiled threat of armed combat with the State of Texas over water rights.  As Wallace says, some things in life just aren’t negotiable – and enabling thirsty Texans, turning their Lone Star wastelands into tourist-attracting fountains and making that craptastic beer possible is where you have to draw the line.  In case you didn’t get the point, at the end Wallace pulls out his trusty rifle and takes aim at a water jug with a picture of the Buffer State on it.  Take that, Oops Perry!

Those filibusteros are always trying to steal shit.  They stole their damn state from the Spanish, and again from the Mexicans.  Then, there was that time they tried to take over our bridge.  Maybe they just always assume they’ll get their way, but, in the latter case, Governor Alfalfa Bill Murray gave them a lesson in state sovereignty, Oklahoma-style.

Back in the days when our government really was small and didn’t even provide basic infrastructure, geography impeded easy commerce between Texas and Oklahoma.  The Red River divided us, and our conjugation depended on flow and ferries.  Demand dictated the more convenient bridge, and over time an ad hoc supply developed at the hands of a few enterprising local entrepreneurs.  They built bridges in several places across the river and then charged tolls of users to cross them.  Grateful states granted them permits to operate in the public interest.

When the Great Depression hit some years later, putting angry young men with too much time on their hands to work in remote locations seemed wise.  They called it a stimulus and sent them off to build dams and parks and roads very far away from banks and Chambers of Commerce offices.  Luckily, this surplus of labor coincided with the spread of a new belief that the government ought to do something for you – or rather for businesses.  It became the state’s job to foster business development by providing roads and bridges, and suddenly they had just the unemployed workers to do it.

The State of Oklahoma partnered with that self-important republic to the south to build a bridge across the Red River between Denison and Durant (on highway 75), and it would operate without a toll when it opened in July, 1931.  The free ride was a result of the growing public conviction that transportation should be a not-for-profit benefit from the state and a requirement for taking federal money for the project.  The point was to facilitate commerce, not fund Austin and Oklahoma City.

When the completion date neared, the Red River Bridge Company of Texas, which owned the existing toll bridge nearby, ran to the federal district court in Houston and got an injunction to prevent the free-way from opening.  It seems that in order to deter political opposition there the Texas Highway Commission had promised to buy out the bridge company – since the new free span would drive it out of business – but it hadn’t actually done so.  The federal court ordered Texas not to open the bridge until the matter could be heard, and state employees put up barricades to comply in the meantime.

Only, they didn’t know who they were messing with.  Reformed Texan, outspoken white-supremacist, and country lawyer, Alfalfa Bill Murray wasn’t going to take that nonsense.  He was a militant with a penchant for declaring martial law to keep order and to monitor sales of OU football game tickets.  Of course he wasn’t going to take some court order lying down.

Based on his legal expertise, Murray concluded that treaties pertaining to the Louisiana Purchase actually granted the State of Oklahoma the territory up to the south bank of the Red River, so the bridge was technically in our state and under Alfalfa Bill’s control.  Further, he determined that though the bridge was a joint project, the shares ran north and south.  Texas might not be able to operate its side because of the federal injunction, but Oklahoma wasn’t bound by that (even when the federal court in Muskogee issued an injunction against us too).  Highway crews from our state marched right across the bridge and tore down the barricades.  Governor Sterling of Texas had them rebuilt and sent some Rangers to stand guard.

In response, Ol’ Alfalfa Bill went inexplicably Amazonian on him:  bizarrely suggesting that an “army” of women from Oklahoma and Texas rise up and occupy the bridge – for a quilting bee, of course – and he assured that his men would be glad to open the way for them, out of chivalry.  Sterling issued a statement huffing and puffing about law and order and Texas’ profound respect for womanhood and its support for opening the bridge, if only the court would allow it.  Murray cut to the chase.  He declared martial law, and the papers called it a “bridge war.”  The governor personally led the troops, stationed on the northern side of the “war zone,” in his signature white suit, with his outdated revolver in hand.  Of course, those chicken-shit Rangers backed down when facing the mustachioed old man and his antique firearm.  Oklahoma guardsmen crossed the bridge and Texans fretted about the “invasion.”  The Texas legislature, meanwhile, called a special session to approve a bill to let the Red River Bridge Company sue the state for its promised funds.  The toll bridge operators would get their money, and in August, Murray recalled the troops – he needed them to enforce the martial law he had then declared in the Oklahoma oil fields – but not before the story made TIME and Life magazines.

Funny thing is, the old man was right about the border.  He may have been a crazy fascist, but he was a good lawyer.  He was an expert on the territorial dispute – and outrageous enough in his actions to attract press from across the country to it.  Later, Alfalfa Bill tried to ride that national notoriety into the White House, but he couldn’t woo delegates from other states.  Maybe that’s because one of his plans to cut spending was to offer pardons to prisoners who would move out of state.  You know some of them went to Texas.

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Founding Pessimism — Part II

American history No Responses »
Nov 042012

We Hate The Governed

 

Halloween has past, and that means the Christmas shopping season has begun here in the States.  As is usual, Thanksgiving is mostly overlooked in anticipation of the most significant commercial activity of our year.  Christmas music pipes through the malls now, holiday decor already sits out, and the war on Christmas 2012 has surely begun.  This means the traditional kvetching of evangelical pastors is near at hand as well.  Cue their endless efforts to reframe Christmas as a Christian holiday.  God love them, they fight the good fight — but in the US, Christianity is a false cover for the worship of Mammon.

Mammonism is the basis of our civics and culture.  As outlined in our Constitution, the main purpose of our federal government is to promote and protect our economy.  The heart of our political system is commerce;  the economics and the politics are inseparable.  This is the source of our dollar diplomacy and the justification to stand our ground.  It’s no wonder the Supreme Court has determined that corporations are people in our country, because personhood here means “property owner.”  Our Founders were influenced by John Locke’s political theory, in which property was fundamental and ownership a natural right.  Commercial activity rather than the Soul defines the political being then.  True citizenship comes with the standing to make a binding contract.  When you can sign for a loan, they let you vote.  We aren’t the citizenry; we’re the “private sector.”

When Alexander Hamilton was drafting his plan to create a financial program for this country (one that privileged the elite investor class), this view of citizen-contractors infused it.  Hamilton recognized that the key to creating wealth was spurring labor.  It was essential to get Staters to produce for the market in order to develop manufacturing and commerce (and to provide investment opportunities for those “best men” and financiers).  Self-sufficiency led only to sufficiency.  Excess — profit — required more.  Hamilton’s concern, then, was to encourage citizens to engage in market activity, and against that action stood anti-materialism, laziness, and the ideal of the proud independent yeoman.  The anti-Federalists had insisted on checking the government’s power over the people, so how could Hamilton and his cronies compel them to pursue commerce?  Perhaps Congress’ most fundamental and unquestioned power was to tax, and therein lay the answer.

Taxes would drive production by necessity.  Citizens would have to obtain some means to pay their taxes — bartering, which worked within their local communities, would not suffice to meet this burden.  (Gone were the feudal and post-feudal European practices of paying one’s lord in kind; accordingly, the merchant became the essential third party who offered credit and converted goods to coin for the Treasury.)  Staters would have to engage in some commerce to pay their obligations, and the greater the liability, the more they would need to produce to earn the means to pay.  Further, Hamilton counted on natural greed to compel market activity.  When one was inclined to a certain standard of living and the government reduced one’s take through taxation, only additional production would return one to the level desired.  Rather than punishing one for hard work, taxation here drives it.  Hence, Hamilton advocated funding the national debt — or working out a perpetual payment system on federal obligations so that interest payments were met but the principle was never paid in full.  Thus, there would always be an obligation requiring taxation and a burden that forced market activity on the citizenry.  Continued debt and productivity would create wealth for the state and for the investor class obtaining the profits.

Clearly, this view of the people was neither noble nor generous.  It relied on the worst of human beings — greed — to overcome the other vices of laziness and pride.  The system was built to pit immorality against iniquity.  In no sense did the ideology rely on the goodness of humankind or attempt to leverage good against evil or encourage  righteousness.  In this way, the anti-Federalists’ hatred of government was matched by the Federalists/pre-capitalists’ disdain for the people — only the small government forces meant to apply the rein, while the statists wanted the whip.  Between the two parties, there was loathing for both the members of our confederacy and the mechanism of that body politic.  It would seem, then, that the pessimism of our Founders drove them to create this great commercial system, this imperial market, this model of plenty.  Had they any goodwill toward humankind, it might all be different, and we might have escaped the service of Mammon.

“They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to hell in peace.” — Job 21:13

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Founding Pessimism — Part I

American history No Responses »
Sep 102012

We Hate Government

 

Our nation was founded on hate.  It’s a sad truth.  Rebellious English colonists hated the way they were treated by the mother country, and by extension, its crown head (king and country being one under the monarchy, acts by the government were ascribable to His Majesty — though the monarch’s power was no longer absolute even in those days).  They despised the government that took from them privileges to which they felt entitled.  That last bit is important because that was the crux of the issue.  Under the rule of the king, citizens had no rights of their own.  Liberties were strictly privileges granted by the king’s permission.  In England, a powerful noble class had developed upon which the king relied — for money, support, and military might — and he was forced to make concessions in order to keep its allegiance.  These concessions were outlined in the Magna Carta (1215), which required the Crown to forfeit some of its rights and subject itself to the law (the law no longer being whatever the king declared).  A constitutional monarchy slowly developed, wherein His Majesty’s whims were limited and then replaced by the power of a republican parliament which codified entitlements and responsibilities — an effort at regulated and durable jurisprudence.  In 1689, this parliamentary arrangement was formalized in writing in the English Bill of Rights.  As for the colonies, the distance between North America and Great Britain allowed for a good deal of self-direction and initially, the colonies were largely left to their own devices.  The colonists developed a number of their own traditions then — based on necessity and theoretical shifts resulting from their experience in self-governance — and their attachment to these prompted their resistance to efforts to bring them under greater English control later.  They resented the change, and eventually enough of them grew to hate it so badly that actual insurrection by arms resulted.

So it was, a nation was born of hatred of government.  Only, then, the rebels found they needed a government.  They’d justified the split with Great Britain by arguing that human beings are not dependent on any regime for their liberties;  certain privileges are actually rights and they are due to everyone by virtue of their birth.  If it is the case that all citizens (or, white men) are individual sovereigns, what does government do but encroach upon their rights?  It does just this, so it requires careful restriction to keep it from inserting itself too much and into areas in which it does not belong.  Thus, our Founders drafted a Constitution to guide us that would limit government to the least intrusions necessary: conducting international diplomacy, providing for military defense, settling disputes between citizen-sovereigns and various governments, establishing uniform naturalization requirements and copyright/patent protections, and regulating and facilitating commerce.  This is it.  That is, boiled down, the full power of the federal government under the Constitution.  To the administrative branch went diplomacy and defense; to the judiciary, the weighing of suits and review.  What was left was essentially economic power, and it went to the Congress.

The representational legislature was to fund the activities of the other branches and organize them at the outset.  It was to establish those uniform rules that would remove disparities between the states for citizenship and bankruptcies and protect the ownership rights of creative and inventive citizens — who would, of course, then be empowered by the force of law to benefit financially from their products.  This leads to the main of the congressional duties: enabling commerce.  The Founders did not charge the Congress with protecting citizens from domestic dangers or ensuring justice or promoting virtuousness.  Rather, the Founders were mainly interested a federal system that would promote trade (those other duties fell to state and local governments or individuals), and they recognized that the economy required the assistance of government to succeed.  This was no free market ideology.  Theirs was a government whose only legitimate purpose was to aid the public in making money — it was necessarily a patron to the rich, then (as well as, to a lesser degree, others).  Beyond this, governmental intrusion would be tyrannical and oppressive.

Government is evil, then, unless it promotes the pursuit of wealth (that is, the key to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).  It must secure the nation from attack and promote its interests abroad — and to a good extent these are economic — and facilitate commerce.  Good government is really just a tool for promoting a market economy in this view.  That is its proper purpose, and when it strays from that it becomes monstrous and oppressive and must be opposed.  This negative view of government and it’s narrow value says much about our Founders and the motive behind their anti-government sensibilities.  More so, it belies any claim to a nobler national purpose. This is no City on a Hill, but a storefront in a commercial zone.

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil…” 1 Timothy 6:10

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No More Deals

current events No Responses »
Aug 262012
Generally, I am of the opinion that people don’t learn from history, but I may have to adjust my belief on that one.  I was reading a piece by David Woolner on Salon (read here) comparing the governmental response to the economic crisis today to that in the 1930′s, and I had sort of an epiphany on the subject.  Woolner’s position is that in the 1930′s there was a strong hero in FDR who recognized the economic catastrophe facing the country and moved aggressively to deal with that emergency.  Statesmen from both parties in Congress responded positively for the good of the country.  What we are missing today, Woolner laments, are political leaders who will act appropriately to remedy our current economic crisis.  Woolner places the blame on an inactive Congress, whose failure to pass responsive legislation fuels the continuing decline of the middle class.
 
A couple of factual points sprung to mind as I was reading:  Firstly, Congress didn’t act immediately in the face of the Depression as Woolner suggests.  FDR got a lot of political goodwill to work with precisely because the suffering public struggled through a couple of years of economic crisis without much aid and was by then so angry at his do-nothing predecessor, Herbert Hoover, whose actions more resemble that of Congress today, that they went for FDR in a landslide.  It was the paltry response (largely driven by ideology) of Hoover’s Republican administration that drove popular support for FDR’s efforts at more aggressive remedies.  The public was then demanding action by its leadership.  It’s tempting to conclude from this that the Republicans of today are acting just as they did in the past — only there was a Democratic sweep in the 1930′s that left Republican opposition unable to block many of FDR’s efforts, enabling New Deal success.  However, I think it’s a mistake to presume that opposition back then failed utterly — which brings me to Woolner’s assertion that bipartisan cooperation led Congress to act in the 1930′s in ways they don’t now.  Conservatives didn’t have sufficient numbers in Congress to block New Deal legislation completely, but they didn’t just roll over and play dead (or join the president’s efforts).  They found other ways to take on the president’s agenda too.  I am reminded, for example, of the fight leading to the “court-packing” fiasco.  When the conservative Supreme Court shot down his programs as unconstitutional, FDR threatened to rework the Court and fill it with his appointees.  FDR lost some political capital in that fight and the Supreme Court did as well.  It was a kind of lose-lose situation that helped temper recovery programs thereafter (and reigned in both sides somewhat).  Still, the economy limped along; it did not fully bounce back until war expenditures brought a boom.  Thus, Woolner’s suggestion that governmental action saved the middle class is misleading as well.
 
It occurred to me as I was thinking about all this, though, that the Republicans may be acting the way they are today because they did actually learn something from the political wranglings of the Depression.  (I’d like to say both sides have learned, but I think the Democrats are still afraid of unbridled stimulus spending, which is the lesson liberals suggest was to be taken from the 1930′s:  we didn’t pump enough deficit spending into the economy to bring real recovery.  So, apparently, they share their predecessor’s fear on this point and experience has not led them to increased comfort with balls to the wall Keynesianism.)  Republicans remain bitter at the success of FDR’s programs — they resent the massive growth of the federal bureaucracy under that president and demands for smaller government have become a constant refrain from them since (although this was one of their positions before — it gained steam in the wake of FDR’s “statism”).  From experience, they learned that they could not undo all of what FDR and the Democrats instituted.  Once programs are implemented, it’s very hard to eliminate them — particularly when they provide welcome services to the public (think: unemployment benefits, minimum wage).  The expansion of the federal government under FDR has stuck in the Republican’s craw, then, ever since.
 
I think they learned from that, and their conclusion is that their predecessors didn’t fight FDR (who, in all fairness, was much more popular with the public than Obama — which gives them an opening) hard enough.  Perhaps, also, they saw in the limited wins at the Supreme Court against FDR a blueprint for taking on the current president’s agenda.  So, I think it’s fair to conclude that the obstructionist Congress we have today is a result of the history (or Republican experience of it) of the Depression.  The Republicans are determined not to make the mistakes of the past, which left them with a much more powerful federal government and, incidentally, also secured Democratic control over the White House for an extended number of years.  Ideologically and politically, for them, history teaches that success requires absolute obstructionism, and this time, they benefit from different public sentiment as well.  Their PR campaign taps into that and is packaged much better — with broader appeal — than the one fielded during the Depression.  Thus, it appears that the Republicans are eager not to let history repeat itself.  I stand corrected.
 
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Bringing Back the Pamphlet for the 21st Century!

Uncategorized No Responses »
Jun 102012

I’ve compiled some older entries together and published them as e-pamphs for the Kindle through Amazon.  Both are part of my “American Conspiracy Series” on how our historiography functions as propaganda (especially in public schools).  One is on patriotism and the myths of the Founding Fathers, and the other is about the development of capitalism in the US.  The essays are irreverent, sarcastic, and fun (but pointed).  It was a neat little project putting them together in a digital pamphlet.

Also, then, I now have a “Store” page — with links to the e-pamphs on Amazon for the curious.

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But Some Are Selfish Dicks

Uncategorized No Responses »
May 082012
To be gifted is to gift to the world of your gifts.  If you live in a capitalist country, you will receive the lowest compensation the market will tolerate for said gifts.  If you live in a non-capitalist country, I really have no idea what your life is like, and I don’t let myself dream about how a world that does not revolve around profit functions.  Anymore.
 
If you are anti-capitalist, the pay floor for your talents will make you bitter.  If you are anti-capitalist and idealistic, you really do make gifts of your gifts — or at least find ways to funnel them through non-profits.  Straight-edge means you don’t drown your bitterness with drugs, and hardcore means you don’t put advertising on your site/blog/messages.
 
See, when you have talent — and that talent has no military or especially commercial application — there’s lots of talk about what you owe to the world of your talents…unless you expect a living wage for that, in which case the world doesn’t owe you anything per Mark Twain.  That’s how it works.  Gifted people owe the world their work but no one owes them any reward or just compensation in return.  Seriously, try opting out of this arrangement.  You will be shunned.
 
Last October, Mark Pilgrim (a software developer and author of multiple books and a blog about programming) committed infosuicide.  The digital version of offing yourself involves not just closing your means of connection to the online world, but also removing your work from the web too.  It’s an intentional act of rescission of your gifts to the community.  Pilgrim had been that idealistic sort in that he advocated for open source work (free for all to use and improve) and he offered his insights to others at no cost.  The common assumption after his infosuicide was that Pilgrim no longer wished to connect online because he sought greater privacy.  If that was all he wanted though, he need not have scrubbed his work.  He clearly wanted to do more than just opt out of digital involvement — he took his work with him so that others would no longer have it.  This is an absolute rejection of the community — not just of your role in it, but in having contributed to it at all.  Pilgrim didn’t just want to leave; he didn’t want to leave a legacy either.
 
Reactions were swift and of two kinds:  some were immediately concerned that he might be literally suicidal or mentally ill with a potential to be a threat to himself or others.  Someone called the police.  Word came out that Pilgrim was fine and annoyed at being bothered.  Tellingly, he did not issue a reassuring statement or even post a demand for others to back off  – such was his seriousness about leaving his digital life.  The second response to Pilgrim’s abrupt online end was anger.  A poster on one article summarized the fury:  You are a selfish dick if you don’t leave your work out there for others to use even if you want to leave.  Tech savvy users lambasted Pilgrim’s actions and asserted vehemently that he had violated his social obligation to the community in “taking his ball and going home.”  Since that time, others have worked diligently to undermine Pilgrim’s retreat.  They have put up sites that “mirror” the work contained on his old sites so that even though his are no longer there, his work is available through other sources.  They will force from him what Pilgrim no longer wishes to gift them, and yet, no one considers that stealing (as he is attributed).  No one cares that he is free to do what he wishes with his own work, including destroying it.
 
And then there is this example:  In 2005, historian Alwyn Ruddock passed away.  She had been working for years on research regarding English maritime exploration of the new world and had promised to show that before Columbus came along, the English had already begun tapping the resources of North America.  She died without publishing her research.  Ruddock, like Pilgrim, elected not to leave her work behind for the benefit of others.  She ordered her research destroyed and it was shredded before the academic community acted to salvage it.  Thereafter, Dr. Evan Jones of the University of Bristol undertook a project to recreate Ruddock’s work by retracing her steps.  Thus, Jones too refused to respect Ruddock’s ownership of her own work.  Like the online sources who reposted Pilgrim’s writings, Jones and his co-workers will force Ruddock’s knowledge from obscurity.  They have had some success.  Just this last week, information emerged that scholars have confirmed the discovery of evidence regarding loans made by Italian financiers to English mariners (specifically, John Cabot) for voyages to “the” new found land prior to 1492.  Still, of Ruddock’s actions, Jones stated:  ”I have an enormous respect for Alwyn Ruddock as a scholar. But I can’t respect her decision to destroy all her work. She did what is the antithesis of everything that historical research is about — she sought to destroy all her findings. I can’t and don’t accept that.” (See Ruddock article here.)  In other words, Jones thinks Ruddock was a selfish dick for refusing to leave it for others.
 
I wonder if there really is any social obligation in writing or scholarship — or in just being gifted.  I suppose this topic is near and dear to my heart of late, as I have committed a sort of partial infosuicide recently.  Ironically, what brought me back was an interest in being productive and sharing that work with others.  I want to reach the community.  However much I shy away from being out there personally, I like being in it productively.  Still, I’m not sure that I owe humankind any gifts — particularly as it doesn’t seem much appreciative of them for the most part.  I can’t help but think that notions of a social contract are just a way to force gifts from others;  is it just stealing through socialization?
 
Maybe Pilgrim’s and Ruddock’s actions were ultimately signs of humility.  Perhaps both knew that with the clues at hand, others would resurrect or recreate their work and there would be no lasting blow to the betterment of mankind in the end.  They just didn’t need credit for it themselves.  Or, maybe neither person cared about the community at large anymore — they grew to despise it enough to withhold their gifts from it absolutely.  Who can know if it’s a profound hate or incredible modesty at work here.  But, that is a judgment about motives and the outside world clearly cares little about that.  It only wants what it can use from you.  Thankless or not, it will have it, and if you resist, there will be work-arounds.  Then, you will have infamy instead of honor;  history will not release you regardless.  You will be remembered, you selfish dicks.
 
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