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How to talk to President Trump about climate change.

November 27, 2016

A set of hypotheses. There is also the “don’t let him do anything approach” which has its logics…. however this is more based in the idea of talking to people….

1) Do not make climate change a challenge of the form “you cannot do this”. This is not about victory over others. If you do this, he will try to ‘win’ to prove you wrong. Thus if you say “coal is doomed”, or “coal cannot be rescued” he will be obliged to prove you wrong, and it is easy for him to do so.

Any industry can be saved for 4 or 5 years if you are prepared to throw enough tax payers’ money at it, and/or cripple the business opposition by regulations and taxes.

Corollary a:  do not say “renewables cannot be stopped” – yes they can – they could be declared illegal, or made impossible to establish.

Corollary b: Telling him the “science says” seems to set up a situation in which he knows best and will prove it.

Corollary c: it might be better to argue President Trump is running away from climate change, because tackling it is too difficult for him.

2) Not losing money is important – this is how human psychology works, loss seems bigger than gain. Perhaps if the Keystone pipeline is to be closed then investors (such as the president) should be compensated? It could be cheaper than spending endless amounts of money to prove coal is viable.

3) Without engaging in triumphalism, we could keep pointing out that there is lots of money to be made in investing in renewables all over the world.

On the other hand, climate change could result in massive economic losses if we don’t act. Talk to the insurance industry who are losing the continuity of events that allows them to issue insurance and profit.

We could even argue that government regulation of trade is bad, get rid of both fossil fuel subsidies and renewable subsidies.

4) Climate change and the extreme weather it brings, threatens the social order. Sure not much has happened (to wealthy people) so far, but the long term prospects are not good. Revolution, loss of position, loss of wealth, buildings could fall, costs of fixing damage etc. are all things to be dealt with.

5) Be prepared to yield. If the president ‘needs’ to loose windfarms near his golf courses, then it may not be helpful to set up a situation in which he tries to obliterate all wind farms in revenge.

6) Trump positions can change with remarkable rapidity. A few years ago, Vladimir Putin was almost universally agreed to be evil. A few flattering words about Mr Trump and he seems to have become the hero and darling of the alt.right (as you can soon see, if you look). Who would have guessed, that a State which has been an enemy of the US for over 100 years, could be rehabilitated so easily, even when it still appears to be threatening US interests?

Could the same happen with climate change? Could President Trump be flattered into action?

7) It may be useful to suggest that President Trump is smart enough to work out the realities, or not, of climate change if he talks to real climate scientists, and does not allow his advisors to prevent him from doing this.

8) Ultimately you may need to stand firm, fight and win, but going into such a posture at first may not be helpful, and may set up more polarisation, which will delay things as Trump supporters will be bound to try and prove themselves right.

9) Don’t expect the media to do anything for you, such as convey useful information and criticism. They didn’t during the campaign, they won’t now.

Anyway, just some suggestions.

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Corporate society, transition and the Toynbee Cycle

November 24, 2016

[This is an elaboration of some of my comments on the previous article, arguing that economic imperatives supporting change may not be enough]

This blog was extensively rewritten in November 2019

Introduction: The Cycle

When I was arguing that Trump may well seek to ‘over-rule’ apparent economic realities and help produce climate disaster, I was guided by a theory which I will call the ‘Toynbee Cycle’ after the historian Arnold Toynbee. The basic proposition is that Civilisations or societies, if they are to succeed and survive, have to adapt to, or solve, problems in their environment (which includes various ecologies and other societies).

If people succeed in ‘solving the problems’ the society continues (or splits), until it faces the next set of problems, or generates a new set of problems. The cycle represents the alternation of solutions and problems, or the social failure to solve problems. It also points us to the insight that societies are both problem solving, and problem generating, devices.

This cycle is tied in with power relations, as in many cases, social learning and problem solving may involve a challenge to the dominant people, or an alteration of the dominant people and/or the ideologies they embrace, as established dominance tends to be wedded to the old order, which builds hierarchies, ways of knowing, ways of living and so on. The established dominant groups can be supported in this order by other groups as well.

These groups may be economically based classes, but they do not have to be. Their position can be decided by other sources of power: religious, organisational hierarchy, military violence, control of communication, position in the technological system and so on.

Dominant groups may not even know there is a problem, as the groups who deal with the problem directly may be different to them, separated from them, and the problem may not fit with the world views of the dominant groups; it could be declared impossible. For example, they may assume the seas cannot rise significantly, small amounts of CO2 cannot make a huge difference to the weather, God controls everything, humans are passive reactants to the forces of nature, nature is harmonious, or society cannot function without coal.

In short, societies face challenges which the society either overcomes, adapts to, or fails. Facing social problems can become social struggle between different groups, and change society.

A failure, does not necessarily mean the society collapses. For a fortunate society, a failure can be a learning experience and produce better adaptation later on, especially if the previous dominant groups’ hold on the society weakens, or changes its basis, or new people with new understandings and techniques rise up the hierarchy. It is a mistake to think the dominant groups are always unified; some can recognise the problems, and there can be a struggle within the dominant groups, but those with useful solutions may find it difficult to win.

Toynbee’s oft repeated point is that societies which have been successful, do not fail so much as commit suicide. This suicide is usually promoted by the dominant groups not wanting to risk loss of dominance, or not being able to see the world in terms other than those of the tools (conceptual and technological) they use.

In my terms, the order the rulers seek can create the very disorder they fear, especially if the environment/ecology is changing, because then reality may no longer appear to work the way the dominant faction want it to, or demand that it should. Unintended consequences pile up, and social functioning gets more and more difficult.

Problems of success and new classes

Sometimes, and unfortunately, challenges can arise out of the very factors that have helped to generate the society’s success. Something important to the society’s success generates problems, as when fossil fuels as energy sources produce destruction of fertile areas, displace people, poison the environment, and produce rapid climate change which threatens social stability. Problems generated by success seem particularly hard to address, because the hierarchies, ways of living and so on, are ingrained with that success and heavily defended against challenge. People in those groups may not know how to act differently, and may face massive uncertainty, and even loss of power, if they deal with the problem.

For example, imagine a society in which extreme military proficiency has expanded its landholdings and conquered peoples until the point where the costs, financial and social, of maintaining that success and dominance depletes the ruling society of resources and the capacity to respond to new challenges; either military or otherwise. Not all problems can be solved equally well with violence. Change may be demanded, and yet non-military people may have been suppressed, or they may not have the investigative skills required. Challenge to the military order may most forcibly come from people who don’t have the necessary problem solving skills either, perhaps the dominant people in the main organized religion.

Similarly, problems may arise when a fixed group of people has been able to commandeer the use and propagation of the cosmologies, economics, or technologies etc. of a society, and that group restricts membership and does not allow newcomers. Such a group is likely to resist innovation and change, even if it kills them, because they have little competence or experience in anything other than preservation and conventional problems. Other people may not have the ability to use the technologies or cosmologies effectively as they have been kept ignorant.

Letting in new groups of people, provided they appear talented or qualified is always a good strategy to generate new ideas. There is no guarantee these ideas will be useful, which is one reason the dominant groups may be reluctant to admit new people, or share power. However, restricting entry to kin, and existing group members, is usually harmful and stultifying. [This latter point comes from Pareto’s idea of the ‘cycle of elites’]

Resistance to Change

Some standard ways of dealing with challenge, which seem likely to ensure social collapse, are:

  1. Trying to impose the required and familiar order more rigorously.
  2. Pretending that the signs of disorder are illusionary, irrelevant or passing.
  3. Pretending to be solving the problem, often with a knowing wink to those who benefitted from the old solutions, but to carry on as before.
  4. Attacking those who might be trying to solve the problems (usually as traitors, or radicals).
  5. Emphasising the problems in transition and playing down the problems of staying inert.
  6. Oversimplifying the problems to make them seem manageable.
  7. Stirring up distractions to get people’s attention focused elsewhere, especially if that problem seems solvable by the current order, or
  8. Locating a scapegoat to blame for the problems and arguing everything will be well when that scapegoat is purged.
  9. Punishing people for objecting to the established order and the problems it generates.

In the West, and throughout the world, we largely seem to have a society dominated by corporations. Corporate cosmologies, forms of organisation and economic power seem to be embraced almost everywhere. This mode of ordering has relatively intense control over most social functions, and it has been extended even where it may not be appropriate (as with universities or churches). This kind of ordering, which has intensified over the last 40 years, is most readily known as neoliberalism. It usually involves State talk of free markets, protection of the corporate class, and state hostility towards those of other groups, who might object to the order (workers, artists, dissident intellectuals, scientists, religions focused on the poor and dispossessed etc). This neoliberal order has consequences for social survival. In terms of the Toynbee cycle: it could be the case that not all problems can be solved by talking about free markets, protecting established business, and attacking its opposition. Likewise, established business may be ‘unintendedly’ generating the problems the society faces.

Supporters of neoliberalism appear to be dedicated to all of the defensive techniques named above:

1) The economy is not working very well and most people are not progressing or meeting promised expectations – climate change and ecological destruction does not make this better. However the most promoted solutions often involve imposing more ‘free market’ neoliberal discipline on workers (as a cost cutting exercise), persecuting people on social welfare to force them off, handing more power to the corporate sector, and making sure the wealthy become even more wealthy. The governments in Australia and the US, have promised to encourage more fossil fuel burning and promote fossil fuel exports so that more people can burn them and produce more greenhouse gases. The government in the US seems to be striving to reduce the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and to encourage people to pollute heavily. The aim seems to be, to reimpose conditions which worked in the past to bring power and prosperity, and (incidentally) benefitted wealthy people and corporations; as that seems the best way to solve problems. The problem is that this completely ignores the growing ecological problems, it also ignores the increasing alienation of people from alliances with the dominant business groups, who do not seem interested in their problems. These impositions of old order are unlikely to solve the problems generated by success.

2) Dominant groups, or their representatives, claim that the climate change generated by society’s economy and success is not a problem, is not happening, is some kind of conspiracy, or is beyond human remediation. Climate change is unreal, is a natural process unaffected by human behaviour, will return to normal, and so on.

3) Many dominant groups seem to want to embrace a ‘solution’ to climate change which supports coal burning. Not just new mines, but ‘clean coal’ (often through Carbon capture and storage, which does not seem to work) and fracking for cheap ‘clean’ gas despite the leaks and destruction of land. The Australian government claims it is meeting all commitments, even while its own figures show increasing emissions. As part of this strategy, dominant groups can do the kind of things discussed in the previous post such as, support regulations on possible solutions, offer subsidies to continue the problem causing activities, invent new problems associated with solutions (such as health issues for windmills ignoring health issues for mines), reduce restrictions on existing modes of behaviour (such as lower requirements for clean water and air) and so on. They seem to aim at inhibiting change.

4) Dominant groups encourage attacks and smears of scientists, greens and anti-coal protestors who recognise some of the problems and propose possible solutions. Climate change is called a socialist conspiracy. It is a theory dreamed up by China to weaken the West. It is said that people who recognise climate change as a problem, are elites who want to spread even greater costs onto ordinary people.

5) Governments play up the problems of renewable energies; they will not keep the lights on, they are intermittent, they are costly, they destroy the view, while they downplay they problems with fossil fuels such poisonous pollution, vulnerable to supply disruption, fall over if powerlines collapse, produce climate change, destroy the land they are taken from, and destroy the view. The coalition government frequently blames power failures on renewables, even when the coal power stations have collapsed, the storms have ripped down power cables, or the payment systems did not work as expected.

6) Living systems are complex, and multiply-interactive. It is fundamentally difficult to understand a living system completely. However, human knowledge systems often take themselves as definitive. These leads to radical simplification of problems, or even to the ignoring of fundamental parts of the problem. Thus supporters of the current system, who recognize problems, may assume they can be fixed by clean fossil fuels, or that the problem can be completely solved by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energies. Renewable energies are useful, and may solve a large number of problems, but they are not a complete solution, they do not solve the problems of over-fishing, deforestation, peak-phosphorous (and other parts of the so called ‘metabolic rift’ in which limited and essential nutrients are flushed into the sea where they are hard to recover), over-grazing and greenhouse emissions from industrial agriculture. The problem is that almost everything contemporary society engages in, in order to be productive seems irreparably destructive of ecologies.

7) Corporate media, tends to distract people by focusing on the lives of celebrities, on murders, imaginary worlds, local scandals, manufactured controversies and so on.

8) Dominant groups can actively blame the relatively powerless (refugees from wars and climate change, illegal immigrants, Muslims and ‘liberals/greenies’) for almost all problems. The Coalition and the Murdoch media blamed Greens for the bush fires, when the Greens do not have the policies claimed, do not have the power to implement them anyway, and fire clearances exceeded the targets set by the Coalition government. The suggestion is that without these people, we would have fewer problems. So they should be removed.

9) If the people protesting against refusal to face the problems can be defined as evil outsiders, then it is easy to increase penalties for protest and political action. Australian governments are criminalizing protests, increasing jail sentences and fines, trying to prohibit people who are charged from associating with other protestors, prohibiting people from boycotting companies who participate in climate change and so on. This can be seen as an attempt to force the issue into silence, where it can be left alone, and the old order proceed unchallenged and undisturbed to continue its past successes – until everything collapses.

All of these moves are attempts to keep the disordering order functional, remove challengers to it, and remove challenges to the behaviour of its supporters from consideration, while making solving the problems, or drawing attention to them, unpleasant.

Mess of information

This kind of situation encourages what I call the ‘mess of information’, because the dominant cultural trend involves an attempt to avoid reality. Official maps of reality do not work in the new situation and this cannot be admitted. Information becomes seen primarily in terms of its ability to persuade others, or force them to act. Information becomes politicised, and simultaneously, truthful but critical information can be dismissed as politics. The mess of information supports ignorant politics, which reinforces the problems, and makes them harder to deal with.

I will write about that mess later, but this is long enough for today…

Conclusion

Recognising the ‘Toynbee cycle’ helps us to draw attention to the importance of problems in social dynamics, and to the ways that dominant groups may attempt to sabotage those who would like to solve potentially society ending problems, because those solutions may threaten established power relations and ways of life.

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Economics, Reality and Renewable Energy

November 22, 2016

I keep reading things like: “In a showdown between political ideology and economic reality … you want to be betting on economic reality,” or other statements implying that capitalism and business will save us.

That makes it seem that people do think that pro-corporate organisations like the Republicans in the US, really do believe in ‘small government’ and ‘free markets’, rather than in using those words as slogans to support action in favour of established corporate power. Republicans have already changed ‘economic reality’ to reflect their position and probably will keep doing so. This is not about respecting reality, rationality or getting the best results for ‘working people’.

The new US government can, for example, encourage companies who provide grid power to charge more for connecting to places/homes with renewable power to prevent ‘freeloading’ on profits. They can tax renewable usage, or put import tariffs on essential materials or parts for renewables. They can decide renewables are dangerous to workers, hazardous to public health (wind farm syndrome, why not a solar power syndrome?), or bad for ‘baseload’, and slap difficult regulations on them. They can put taxes on the use of land for renewables. They can use infrastructure development to subsidise coal mines, fracking and gas leaks. They can use the same monies to build, or sudsidise, new coal power stations as vital to the economy. They can pretend that they already have clean coal, or give billions to research clean coal without checking that money gets spent on research (other than market research). They can remove all anti-pollution enforcement as that hinders the economy. They can decide that protestors against these moves, are more vulnerable to jail, or police beatings, or face increased and bankrupting fines; or they can legislate that protestors are terrorists. They can decide that protest should not occur on private property as that is trespassing, and that all space is private property. I’m sure they are more ingenious than me, so they can find even more reasons to hinder and halt renewables and their supporters.

If they can ignore the reality of climate change, they can skew the economy towards fossil fuels.

In terms of Ken Mcleod’s ‘fourfold’ the mythos of capitalist economics is misleading at best, and this produces misleading understanding and action and a restricted psyche.

Not only does our economics depend on the idea of individuals primarily competing with each other, it tends to make profit the only good, and usually the profit of those who are already profiting. It therefore tends to generate a plutocracy and a ‘selfish personality’ repressing human cooperativeness, or long term interest. It pretends that economic activity is not tied in with State activity and control of the State; however, in reality economics is always a political as well as a business struggle. Hence the likely possibility of Republicans acting against renewable energy, which largely involves newer companies, to support those who have already invested in their party and who already hold power in the State.

The ideology of the free market is not interested in recognizing power differentials in the market, or everyone’s survival and cannot be, because that would be to recognize that the ideology does not work in the way it claims to work – which is not to say that reasonably free markets cannot be useful, but that they get corrupted, and that they are not the only good.

If you want renewables you may need to organize, and think about new more constructive  myths and economics.

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Leaving Earth

November 20, 2016

Stephen Hawking has said we are destroying earth and need to leave. This is a real recognition of the Anthropocene. However:

1) It will cost a huge amount to find an inhabitable planet and get there and set up a colony. This is money which could be spent fixing the problems we have here – such as winding back coal burning and other forms of pollution, developing an asteroid defense programme, or getting rid of nuclear weapons.

2) We will probably never be able to transport a couple of billion people off this planet – so the process of leaving involves deciding who will survive, and enforcing that decision. Which elite will survive? Probably the elite that have stuffed the planet in the first place. Who will be left to die? Probably you.

3) As the saying has it: “Wherever you go, there you are”. If we don’t fix up our social systems, the tendency to favour the powerful who are benefitting from the emissions which cause climate change, alter our tendency to say it is everyone else’s fault, or that there is no problem in what is comfortable to us, then some humans will simply all die off in some distant place.

4) If we plan to leave, then our destruction of the earth will accelerate, because if it is going to get destroyed anyway, what is the point in leaving it intact? This will increase the emergency, and probably decrease the chance of making it into space successfully. It will probably mean even more people die earlier than they would have.

http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction

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Australia and Climate Change

November 12, 2016

It is frequently argued that Australia’s CO2 emissions are tiny, and that there is no point in the Australian federal government acting. This is especially the case if the US, under President Trump pretends there is no problem, as their emissions are huge.

Unfortunately the Australian Government is already acting.

By not attempting to ameliorate climate change it is showing that it does not care about climate change, and that it will not object to other bigger polluters continuing to pollute. So it helps make CO2 production normal and produces more climate change.

By encouraging coal mining in Australia our governments (of all persuasions) clearly demonstrate that they care more for the profit of some companies, than they care about the land, people’s health or maintaining a climate balance. By taking this choice, they ally with the commercial and political forces which produce climate change. Saying that stopping mining might cost us money and jobs is irrelevant – virtue can be difficult, and there appear to be more jobs in renewables anyway.

By encouraging Australia to continue to have one of the highest CO2 emissions per head in the world, they are implying that a prosperous life style depends upon destroying climate stability and that destroying that stability should be encouraged.

They are also encouraging short term visions over long term visions, and short term profit over long term expense, which is probably not good for anyone in general.

By being half hearted or indifferent to climate change they provide an exemplar and excuse for other’s behaviour (‘If wealthy countries in the West can’t be bothered, then why should we?’). If they acted to cut emissions and support renewables (or support thorium research, if you prefer) then they would be providing an exemplar of behaviour which also might influence other governments and corporate behaviour.

So let us be clear the government is acting. Just not the way we might think is sensible.

As for things like ocean fertilization or carbon capture and storage, they are likely to help prolong our use of fossil fuels. They are also likely to have weird and unintended effects. They may not even work other than in theory, or only work for a short time. We may need to deploy such methods, but the proper research will take longer than we might have to prevent climate turmoil (transformation is unlikely to be linear or smooth) and we have to move to 100% renewables or non-fossil fuels eventually. Why not start now, and help everyone achieve this, as well as make money for our scientists and companies out of the IP?

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The American Crisis

November 12, 2016

Let us be clear. America is in the crisis it is in today because since the Reagan years the Republican Party has systematically stripped away power from ordinary people and given it to big business. They have done this by pretending that the corporately controlled ‘free market’ always delivers the best results, and that anything which impinges upon big businesses’s liberty to do what it wants is evil.

In the course of this operation they have had to pretend that reality is not real. Hence the attacks on science, and any kind of non pro-corporate knowledge. Hence the pretense that many established businesses are not destroying the world we live in. They have attempted to distract people from the growing realisation that the ‘free market’ system is not delivering its promises, by encouraging hatred of fellow Americans though ‘race pride’ or by curtailing the liberties of ‘minorities’ to act openly. They use anti-abortion and ant-gay rhetoric to win over evangelicals to the worship of Mammon and the destruction of God’s creation. They have systematically opposed any attempts by Democrats to lessen the effects of business dominance, until the Democrats gave up or joined in.

This devotion to corporate power, and ‘free markets’ is why the corporate sector gets so much subsidy, why you pay proportionately more tax than big businesses, why so many jobs went overseas, why illegal immigrants work for crap wages, why inner cities are desolate wastelands, why corporations got bailed out after the financial crisis and what tens of thousands of Americans lost their homes through shonky contracts and pro-business laws.

This is the reality.

Will Trump break with the Republican fantasy? Probably not, as he has benefitted from it.

However, people can remember the origin of the problem and work towards ending the cause.

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Trump and the Magic of Information

November 12, 2016

President Trump’s victory will have massive consequences in the Anthropocene age, and I’ve been suffering a lot of criticism, and dismissal, from friends over the last year or so for predicting a Trump victory. Now it’s all over, I guess it’s time to explain the logic of the prediction, when people might even listen. My basic point is that to understand Trump’s victory, you have to understand how information and knowledge works in contemporary Information Society.

Most of the theory is argued at greater length in Disorder and the Disinformation Society: The social dynamics of information, networks and software. Routledge 2015.

1) The first point is simple. Information is primarily about power and persuasion. It is about shaping the world another person perceives and getting them to see themselves in a particular way, so as to act in a particular way. Information is not primarily about truth, but about magic. Repeated items, from respected sources, become taken as truth and create perceived reality.

More subtly we can conceive communication as operating on a continuum between: a) an attempt to use accuracy as a tool of persuasion and b) an attempt to persuade through deception. Even the most abstract science aims to persuade people of its truth and to change their behaviour accordingly. Persuasion is part of communication. Whether it is relatively accurate or relatively deceptive is not always easy to tell, and depends upon the contest involved. People may be more prone to deception in some circumstances than others. If they think the persuasion is a matter of life and death, or the people they are persuading are beneath them or potentially dangerous, then it probably becomes easier to persuade by deception.

I shall later on in this blog piece, suggest that information is about self-identity and magic. If you can persuade someone of the truth of the matter, then you change their sense of self and change their behaviour. A good persuader is a kind of magician.

2) There is too much information to uncover it all. Consequently need “truth filters”. People filter information by general knowledge (other already accepted information), and by group identity and processes of belonging. Group identity means that people who are perceived as being part of the group, or exemplary in the group are trustworthy. What they say, or information they pass is considered likely to be true – especially if it reinforces group identity. In the Information Age good information is often drowned by easy to process information that meets the requirements of group identity.

3) When Trump got involved the election was never going to be about accuracy, but about magic and his puissance, or his status as a ‘man of power’ able to carry people along with him.

4) Both candidates have a long term media history, which shapes the general knowledge people have to filter (or ‘frame’) information about them, and hence whether they are likely to listen to them or not, and how they evaluate them.

Clinton has been smeared for over 30 years by the mainstream media. Unfounded accusations have been reported and discussed repeatedly. The Republicans have spent millions trying to convict her of anything. In this cause they have made the accusations a public and repeated (and therefore ‘verified’) part of public discourse. She is their number one villain, and the media has played along – in general giving small coverage to her victories, or any of her achievements. You may have to be a fanatical Hilary fan to know anything good about her. Everyone else ‘knows’ she is suspicious, and criminal. At certain levels, the lack of criminal convictions proves that she is a form of superpowered evil, who escapes repeatedly (like Batman’s Joker or Poison Ivy). She is a strong evil woman; she is a witch.

Trump on the other hand has a long-time mainstream media coverage depicting him as a powerful, successful all-American businessman. His very name is promoted as an icon of luxury and success. He can sometimes seem a bit of a buffoon, but that humanises him and makes him a regular guy. In the US, business is generally conceived of as good, with successful business people almost always portrayed as having massive special and inherent talents which set them apart and make them a success – even the ruthless ones are ‘colourful’. In this filtering Trump become superhuman. A veritable god. Everyone who knows a little about Trump will know he is a great success, a triumph of the American Dream. You have to work much harder if you want to uncover the trail of failures, dark deals and privilege – this is usually hidden in the boring business pages, where some form of accuracy actually counts.

At a mythic level, or the level of ‘general knowledge’, the campaign was being fought between crooked Hilary and hero Donald or, if you prefer, an evil woman and an exemplary man. Gender was important.

5) Information is political and forms selves. As said previously, information is filtered by group identity and makes group identity. How people classify themselves, is part of the way people construct their self identity with others and in opposition to others.

In Information Society people tend to form ‘information groups’, which are based upon their identities and general knowledge. The purpose of the information group is to filter and gather information together; this reinforces group cohesion, and group and personal identity. It is a necessary artefact of information society with huge consequences.

The group can, and often does, ‘protect’ people from the information possessed by other groups – it helps shield members and provide arguments to show how evil the outgroups are; to block flow and attempts at communication. These groups may overlap, but they tend to fall into exclusive categories.

The strategy of getting people worked up about how evil the outgroups are, and not letting them hear the views of real outsiders, is a good marketing strategy and is employed by some media outlets to keep and capture their audiences (aiming for profit reinforces lack of accuracy). It makes disloyalty hard. It reinforces group identity, and keeps people fixated on hearing what they want to hear to make sense of the world. Again, it keeps people ‘engaged’ and inhibits them from questioning the reality of what they read or watch.

6) This occurs for both left and right groups. However, the right is much better at manipulating it – and this is the source of their magic.

They rigorously police speech, and make sure people are on target and repeating talking points. It is amazing how quickly the same meme will be everywhere on the right, giving it the appearance of inevitability and truth. They are not frightened of encouraging rage, because that keeps people engaged and unlikely to actually converse with outsiders. They drive out outsiders, or make them scapegoats.

Repetition and reinforcement creates perceived reality. Eventually everyone just knows Clinton is a criminal and should be jailed, even if they are not sure what for, or reiterate that she was responsible for things that she has been cleared of or was never involved in. Her innocence in any one particular disconnected case does not prove she was innocent of all the charges (there are so many). General knowledge becomes personal knowledge.

The Republican party also could run memes in their groups to see which were likely to take off, and they did nothing to correct memes they knew where untrue if that brought them party loyalty, anger against Democrats and votes. They manipulated the system successfully, at the cost of not having policies based on reality – but fantasy has a greater pull (as it often does with sex, for example). The Democrats seemed constrained by an ideal of truth, and ideal of politeness (although this was the rudest election I’ve seen from the left- the relatively closed information group was having an effect, and groups are polarizing or defining themselves by opposition.)

People on the Democrat side, don’t find it easy to be as isolate. They generally, have to have to be involved with at least mildly right wing media, as the corporate sector controls the media, and pays for the media through advertising. Supposedly Left wing media does not have such a ‘closed box effect’  in the same way; it gives light right views, seeks balance etc. This media emitts plenty of pro-corporate right wing material – it seems ‘left’ because, in comparison with the mainstream right media, it’s not completely without a moderate perspective. However, this has also meant that the left have tended to accept the comfortable idea that neoliberalism was ok in principle, and that fighting it was problematic or extreme. The Right, in its more isolated media, managed to both promote corporate dominance and denounce its consequences.

7) Information groups tend to manufacture scapegoats to help form unity

These scapegoats can be blamed for all the ills of the world, and attacked/sacrificed, while keeping group members pure and unified. The scapegoats of a group, exemplify what its members must not be, if they wish to stay members. Treatment of scapegoats often functions as a threat to would be dissenters. You know what happens if you behave like them, or show sympathy to them. Scapegoats are often said to be from information outgroups.

On the right you have a range of choices to suit your placing; blacks, latinos, migrants, commies, liberals, godless liberals, wicked liberal business people, educated liberals, liberal women, femininazis, Hillary Clinton, or the interfering State.

Pro-democrat information groups tend to scapegoat the uneducated, or the really wealthy. In the US, few really believe that wealth is bad, so that position has little appeal, and the first simply proves the right’s point about educated elites. The left has no effective scapegoats to blame or sacrifice, so their groups are less tight, less bonded, less passionate and less integrated.

8) The faults of exemplars appear small

If a person is defined as exemplary of an ingroup, then their faults tend to be ignored or diminished in respect for their apparent virtues. Indeed faults may be seen as ‘things-everyone-does’ even if you don’t know anyone as bad as the exemplar. By becoming presidential candidate Trump, with his supposed business ability, was able to become an exemplar of the ingroup, and his faults excused – even if most Republican men and women would be horrified to meet an ordinary person who contemplated grabbing their daughters, or who appeared unable to tell the truth or make a consistent story. If a person becomes an exemplar of an outgroup (as Clinton did for Republicans, and Trump does for Democrats) then their faults become exaggerated and obscure their virtues – having anything openly to do with them shows massive disloyalty.

Clinton could never get herself defined as an exemplary Democrat, because of the mainstream media’s promoted general knowledge about her, and because many Democrats wanted a more obviously radical candidate – as said previously, you had to work to find Clinton’s positive record. This helped make her faults more visible to everyone, and lowered enthusiasm for her amongst nominal supporters, and this feeds into point 13 below.

9) Falsehood is expected

People in information groups are also not frightened of making up fiction, which sounds plausible or persuasive. If caught out, the groups will either ignore the failure, reiterate their falsehood more strongly, forget it for a while and repeat it later, accuse the revealer of unspeakable crimes, or say that everyone lies and the outgroup members are much worse. Once issued, a pleasing falsehood can separate from its refutation and easily be re-accepted.

People play the game that they know information is likely false. Everyone can say they are suspicious and smart, while accepting ingroup crap. This move effectively reinforces the idea that their opponents lie constantly, but they are clever and can see through this, as well as see through the few lies in their group. This keeps people loyal and on topic.

That Donald Trump made unreliable statements, was secondary to him making pleasing statements for his followers. He was also vague enough for his lies to be justified or ignored, should they ever become a problem. It also appears likely that because his followers did not expect him to tell the truth, they could select out the statements which were pleasing to them as being true and dismiss displeasing ones as strategic lies. Given Trump’s insistence on success, and the media’s promotion of his success, this made Trump an almost blank canvas for fantasies of success whatever the differences in how success might appear to his various audiences.

Being wrong involves a loss of status in this information world. So not admitting being wrong or failure is a mark of strength – of puissance if you like

10) The right pulls together. The left factionalises

The right have been pulling together for years. There should be nothing in common between libertarians and Christian fundamentalists, but they get on to keep power. The Christians have been taught to accept capitalism as part of Christianity. White supremacists can also get on with libertarians and non-racist Christians for the sake of power. There has been an effort to promote solidarity (often through scapegoating marked outgroup members), which is missing on the left. Partly there is no need for consistency in a political ideology. Different points can be wheeled out for different audiences. A party can argue for liberty one day, and authority the next.

Because Trump was centred in right wing media, the general informational and identity group pull would be for those who felt Republican to move towards cementing their loyalty towards the Republican party. Very few Republicans who had anything to lose really disowned Trump, when it came down to it; they joined in with their own side. Despite his lack of religion, Evangelicals supported him because the Republican party is their sole power base, he was not the evil witch and was a man who held the right opinion on abortion. No other issue was allowed to matter. They have a long history on this as well.

Followers of Bernie Sanders appear not to have done the same (I suspect Republican provocateurs stirred up dissension between Clinton and Sanders supporters; certainly there was a lot of rather peculiar fighting going on). Many people on the left could not bring themselves to say “I don’t like Clinton but Trump is so bad I have to vote for her”. Whereas, on the right, “I don’t like Trump but I won’t let Clinton get in”, seems to have been common.

11) Trump’s communication style fits in with this basic paradigm of communication

Trump stays on topic: “Make America Great Again”, “I’m a success. I can solve these problems”, “Things are bad and I’ll fix it”, but he is rarely specific. People can agree with him or think that what he says is good, but he produces few splits amongst his audience by elucidating matters of detail. He does not say what a “Great America” involves, which could cause disputes. He does not say how he will solve problems. He repeats himself frequently, as with “Crooked Hillary”, where he makes the unfounded charge part of her name, part of her out-group identity. This reinforces the ‘general knowledge’ people have, and creates the ‘crookedness’. Similarly dwelling on “success”, as an undefined category when attached to himself, appeals to all audiences who want to absorb their own success from him. He makes himself a ‘man of power’. People talk of his ‘genius,’ – another suitably vague term loaded with meaning.

He, and his audience by proxy, engage in magical evocation. He makes his audience passionate, angry, involved, entranced. He attacks the scapegoats he borrows from their information groups. He is the strong man who will protect his audience from the nightmares he evokes. He motivates anyone prepared to respond to his key trigger words. He creates his temporary reality, and carries an audience to their reality in which he becomes central.

His campaign speeches are dislocated, rambling and hypnotic messes. They quite possibly derail any attempt at rational, evaluative or critical thought. They repeat his memes endlessly and vaguely.

On the other hand, Clinton goes on and on, believing in truth, planning and inclusion. Consequently, people in her audience argue about little things with her. They may get the impression they disagree with her a lot, she seems to have no sense of who to blame, or of who her ingroup is, so they don’t know what they are fighting against. So while you can’t altogether trust her, Trump says “a lot that makes sense”.

12) Fictional Demographics generated by information groups

Pro-Democrat people frequently told me that nobody could vote for Trump because he was clearly a manipulative braggart who knew nothing, despite similar facts not stopping people from voting for Bush Jr. twice. However, they could say this because they were in their own information world in which this was impossible. Not in reality. People would say women would not vote for Trump, but pictures from his rallies were full of women. People said that educated people would not vote for Trump, when a few minutes on facebook in right wing groups would have shown them otherwise. Trump’s potential demographic was always bigger than Democrats seemed to suspect, because the people they knew who were not going to vote for Trump anyway, were not going to vote for Trump.

13) Non compulsory voting

If people generally disliked Clinton, for no particular reason, they would not feel compelled to vote for her. However, Trump voters were passionate. They would go out and vote, and organise others to vote. There might be a whole body of people who had never voted who would vote for Trump. This discovery of previous non-voters was incredibly unlikely for Clinton, because of the general knowledge about her. That Clinton had a machine, simply reinforces the idea that she was compelling people to vote, not allowing spontaneity. Without voter enthusiasm, and with the general doubt about Clinton, she risked being lost beneath passion of Trump’s magic.

14) Surveys were undecided

Pro-Democrats would repeatedly point to surveys. However they nearly always forgot to report that sometimes these surveys showed huge levels undecided voters – say in the region of 25%. Unless one candidate is more than 25% ahead of the other, such a survey tells you nothing. If surveys two months out from the election still have huge numbers of undecided voters then that should worry people, but it didn’t – they took their reinforcement from their information group, not the data. People decided not to accept the uncertainty, or work with it, but to resolve that the uncertainty did not matter.

15) Surveys are not accurate anyhow

Old Anthropological issue. Particularly, if people think you are official, they will tell you what they think you want to hear. In general they will not tell you the truth if there is much of a chance they will be blamed or ridiculed for it.

When Clinton had been portrayed as the face of the system, then the likelihood people would lie or misdirect about their intentions towards her is huge. There was a large possibility that most of the undecided people had already decided to vote Trump, or were inclining that way.

16) Conclusion

Trump was a master of informational magic. He may not understand how it works, but it uses it to persuade and involve people, to shape their view of the world, through vague impressive terms, without giving them handholds to criticise him. The effectiveness of this technique is is reinforced by the dynamics of information in Information Society.

Information is primarily about persuasion, making groups, reinforcing views of the world and persuading people to act. It is only about ‘truth’ or accuracy in specific, and often hard to maintain, circumstances. Eventually, false information will cause upset and unintended consequences, but that may well be less important to those using it, than its socially more pleasing and empowering aspects.

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Ecology and Disorder

November 12, 2016
  1. When a complex system such as an ecology, or an economy (and both are linked) is disrupted, so that it begins to move outside of an equilibrium, the results are unpredictable.
  2. The behavior of the system is fundamentally uncertain, and cannot be dealt with by ideas of risk, which suggest numeric and often constant probabilities for events. In these kinds of disrupted systems both events and probabilities are unknown.
  3. We can, however, assume trends. Weather events will almost certainly become more uncertain and more extreme. The anthropologist Hans Baer, has suggested using the term ‘Climate Turmoil’ rather than ‘climate change’ for the simple reason that it is more accurate of what we can expect. Climate change suggests a smooth linear change, not the tumultuous, disorderly change which is likely, and which we need to prepare for and lessen.
  4. Unfortunately, it would appear that socially, we are resistant to accepting fundamental uncertainty. We try and trap reality in our visions of order, and that leads to further chaos. Businesses and governments like to pretend that they can predict the future, so that they can keep their power relations intact and their success coming. Scientists sometimes do the same when they predict that particular places will have particular weather patterns in 20 years.
  5. But unfortunately it is what we have been doing to produce what we have defined as ‘success’ that seems to have caused the problem. Burning coal, for example, has been one factor responsible for the success and dominance of Western civilization and its modes of organisation. It now threatens that civilization’s success. In reality, burning coal threatens nearly everyone on the planet.
  6. We need to radically accept disorder and uncertainty as part of life, and act as if fundamental change is both happening and is being produced by what has produced success in the past. That way we can try something new, and hope to conserve some of what we have.

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Predictions for a Trump Presidency

November 12, 2016

1) He will give tax cuts to his fellow wealthy people.

2) More economic collapse – his only policy is to give more money to wealthy people and try to force US companies to work in the US. Probably he will give up on the second. The first never works.

3) More spending on the military.

4) Trump companies will benefit from government contracts and policies, as will Trump family members.

5) US debt will soar.

6) He will use the courts and the FBI etc to pursue people who disagree with him or challenge him. In practice free and critical speech will decline. Critics are traitors.

7) Life for minority members (such as women 🙂 will become more awkward and fraught. As his policies fail he will likely allow increase persecution of minorities as a distraction.

8) Climate change and wild weather will get worse, but he will not admit this. He will allow the Keystone pipeline through as he has money invested in it.

9) As the US will not be regarded as a reliable ally, China will increase in power and influence. Putin will be largely free of constraint.

10) Major war within the first term because Trump escalates and threatens continually, and it acts as a distraction from his failures. Plunder is good too.

11) He will start Trump news or state propaganda if he does not get unrelentingly positive coverage. It will get special benefits. Rupert Murdoch will be annoyed at his potential loss of market. In the old days this would mean Trump would be subject to a constant barrage of attacks and wilt (Trump cannot cope with not winning). Murdoch is now less involved, so who knows what will happen here.

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Fragility of knowledge

November 8, 2016

Some weeks ago I attended a lecture organised by Kenneth McLeod and the Anthropocene Project, and this raised some thoughts about the role of knowledge in society.

Despite their differences the two speakers both seemed to assume knowledge was true, cumulative, not lost and relatively easily distributed. This may arise from the shortness of presentations but, whatever the case, I’m not sure about this position. I particularly want to focus on the first speaker and suggest:

1) Knowledge is inherently limited and inaccurate.

2) As knowledge is learnt behaviour, it can be forgotten, lost, or hidden.

3) The spread, distribution and innovation of knowledge, depends on its social, political and group identity base. It is not independent of social patterns. Social survival trumps accuracy.

4) Attempts to impose socially driven orders upon the world often require a social unconsciousness about that world, and often further disorganise that world.

David Christian, who has a well known TED talk, is a professor of ‘big history’ gave the first talk. His idea seems to be that the anthropocene is the result of human evolution and that the last five hundred years have changed the world, in a ‘hockey stick’ fashion, of increasing human impacts.

This approach seems to lead to ignoring anything other than crude differences between societies. He seemed to reduce varieties of societies to a) hunting and gathering, b) agricultural, and c) industrial. This diminishes the vast differences between societies with those kinds of technologies. This of course may be an artefact of the time available for the lecture, but it may not be as he has published a book giving a history of humanity in less than 100 pages.

He also argued that knowledge accumulates. That ‘later generations’ of humans had more information and understanding of their environment. As humans moved across the globe into new niches in the early migrations, they had to learn new things. This is obviously optimistic.

However, this increase is only partially true. Knowledge is also forgotten as people move into new niches. He more or less acknowledged this by saying that indigenous people may have knowledges about ecological living that ‘we’ don’t have, but this seemed a kind of footnote/addenda not strongly incorporated into his schema.

In reality, knowledge is not a fixed thing. What counts as ‘knowledge’ is also influenced by living in a particular society. Society, and your place in it, is an ecological niche in which you have to live. Surviving in that social niche is vital; belonging is important to humans, as it is hard to live without others. This surviving is more important than any accuracy of knowing. We are given knowledge by those around us; we judge knowledge by the opinions of those around us, or those we hear of, and the opinions of those to whom we give high status. People we give high status to seem more reliable. What we call ‘knowledge’ primarily acts as justification for action and identification.

Identification is influenced by the boundaries between groups – your social sense of ingroup and outgroup, and of people’s status within a group. Even your sense of being a passionately, independent individual can come through identification with another group of people who identify as passionate and independent individuals.

The relationship between social groups is inherently political, and consequently knowledge is always caught in political disputes and dynamics. Societies, as a whole, can abandon some kinds of knowledge because it appears incompatible with power structures, group identities, morality, or other forms of ‘more important’ knowledge. This should be obvious; different political factions often have different ideas about relevant knowledge.

This seems relatively well documented as well. It is often stated, that both China and the Islamic world, were centres of knowledge, innovation and exploration, but retreated from this into a kind of social fossilisation and stagnation that benefitted certain groups and group based patterns of power. Difficult knowledge became suspect.

The same is probably happening in the capitalist world, when faced with the failure of ‘free markets’ to deliver on their official promises or to handle the challenge of climate change.

The value of free markets, the overriding capacity of business to solve all problems, and the falsity of climate change become heavily promoted by people allied with the current patterns of power and activity. These knowledges (or perhaps anti-knowledges) become parts of group belonging, acceptance and survival, irrespective of their destructiveness. Accurate knowledge (and acting on that knowledge), becomes undesirable, and partially impossible (as is discussion) given the dynamics of group belonging.

Education cannot solve this issue, because education intending greater accuracy can easily become seen as political and defunded, banned or cut back, when it challenges power relations.

What counts as ‘knowledge’ adapts to satisfy the victors of social power struggles.

Consequently, what is required to deal with the anthropocene is to recognise that knowledge does not inevitably increase, to investigate understanding of how knowledge works in society, and the nature of the ‘class based’ politics that promote more, or less, accurate knowledge. It also requires knowledge of particular societies and their social functioning, not vague general knowledge which seems to render human impact in inevitabilist evolutionary terms.

We could ask ‘What kind of social patterns can be encouraged so that knowledge and action can work?’

It is in eveyone’s interest not to pollute beyond the capacity of the Earth’s ecologies to absorb, just as it is sensible not to keep shitting in your bedroom, or blame people in general for the problem of your shit.

Making it socially possible for the fragility of knowledge to be clear is a good first step.

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