The 18th century Dandies – history and literature will tell you, were, amongst other things, very much about cultivating equal parts extravagant fashion, an air of careless richesse (inherited, stolen or simulated), a flair for intellectual jousting, a taste for more or less refined melancholy (often dangerously perching on downright whining) and an Balzacian, self-reproaching, emotional detachment. Being dandy was about being rebellious in style. And one chose whatever “style” said rebellion would be best expressed in. A proper Dandy seemed not to care how many people he offended, but at the same time could not exist without the scandalised crowd – so a sly eye on the effects was vital. The paradox between the two is what allowed the Dandy his substance.

Much like the hipsters of today then, right? The ones we see carefully leading their fixed gear bicycles (no proper hipster would ever try riding it in public – imagine the shame and loss of prestige would it be formally known that said person actually hasn’t understood the physics of it) to the ecologically correct grocery store – certainly by way of just-right-dirty-cafe (of the not-so-franchise-variety) and wearing the Ultimate Ironic T-shirt.

They’re also about fashion, in an unsavoury, unfashion-i-dont-care-way. They’re also about cultivating the detached emotion while outwardly exhibiting “happiness”, or “irony” or some other, easily simulated emotion that in no way has to be explained save the fact that it exists. I’m sure you know the kind. At least if you live in a fairly large city. Large enough to allow bike lanes and several cafes.

How come then that absolutely nothing – a big, dry hollow zero – seems to come out of the Hipster Movement whereas its 18th century counterpart managed to produce a very interesting body of work? No great literature, no amazing poetry, no worthwhile music, no agenda except for the adopted one, no formal stance on the Arts, no material that analyses anything save itself?

Worse still – an intellectual vacuum is created where the modern hipster will leave behind him (or her, though hipster females tend to teeter on the fine edge between salope and chienne thus placing them in another category altogether – that of the unpaid sex worker) – a seemingly endless wake of “ironic” photography portraying their disdain for everyone and everything, huge bar bills, flavourless and egocentric blog posts and just about any other thing that will record how it is to be young and carefree.

Apart from the lack of acumen, there is also one other distinct difference between the dandy of today and of yore: The modern variety suffers from an almost hostile view towards truth and reason. The fake is better than the real, the imagined and invented is valued above the honest. There were tendencies towards this with the 18th century crowd as well – but never due to what I presume are the modern reasons of lack of effort, discipline and perhaps even something more unflattering: the simple fact that, frankly, most modern hipster-dandies have in their lifetimes achieved the sum total of a staggering nothing. No wonder that they prefer the fluffy comfort of imagined, pink clouds. Learning, doing, and achieving things is after all rather hard work. And that is not a modern concept at all.

A Swedish blog, Highbrow (sic!) portrays this beautifully in a (presumably) meta-ironic post. A picture of a typical hipster nobody taken somewhere in a public place (is it a bar?) – along with the caption: “What are you?”, followed by the laconic answer, “I’m young”.

On the money. You’re young. And nothing else. At all. Presumably ever – as young doesn’t really denote an actual age anymore. Though I’d agree that by and large, that’s a good thing – if you’re prepared to look past the sad fact that people are likely to live longer and thus cause far more nuisance that they would had their lives ended sooner.

Aforementioned blog also makes elegantly crude fun of the hipster tendency to associate himself with anything with even the smallest whiff of vintage academia, preferably of Ivy League variety. This is where the real comedy starts for people witnessing the movement and have any kind of decent education: The hollowed out shell of the modern dandy has taken every external attribute and matched it to no form of content except the recycling of one-liners, stolen ideas and a very brief understanding of what someone who in fact has an education should have a grasp of. In other words, purchasing a fixed gear bike and and a (ironic) tweed suit is likely to do a lot for your image – but next to nothing for your education. Yet, in our modern world – they are virtually interchangeable.

At least as long as the impostor is not challenged with having to display the knowledge of the air he pretends. Which, in turn, is not likely to happen since modern dandies are (much like their historical counterparts) a rather unsociable lot and prefer to rub backs with like minded, nay, like-looking, individuals.

True comedy indeed, then: The text book equivalent of the Imbecile (or courtly Fool), walking in the clothes of the Scholar. And it is as (involuntarily) funny, as it is inevitable.

Branding – the branch of marketing concerned with creating an image – is constantly looking for new areas to exploit and new victims on which to re-package and furnish ready-wear and other such, very important consumer trinkets. While certainly healthy for the GNP – assumably highly detrimental to both mind and (actual) academia alike. Point illustrated in one of more misled campaigns of the Swedish advertising year: The (ehum) – rowing race between two of the more expensive Swedish private schools that for lack of actual academic merit shall stay nameless (a state probably constant until the inevitable collapse of the solar system) – sponsored by the Swedish impostor brand: Gant.

True meta-comedy indeed: Two sets of teams, as furnished economically as lacking in talent and wit – sponsored by a brand who’s marketing directors are presumably wetting their chinos by the prospect of upmarketing stale apparel previously favoured by 80-something’s to a younger, more discerning crowd. All neatly coloured in the shades of English rowing teams of former times.

It has, incidentally, previously been argued that Gant’s wear is ideal for older men since the hues in which the clothes are produced are second to none in hiding the consequences of a prostate problem. Spelling it out: Pee yourself in a pair of Gant chinos and your mates are none the wiser.

Though one really can’t blame Gant. With a dying demographic, what is one to do? Apart from trying to peddle the stuff to someone else, of course. And as previously noted; it’s a charm for the Swedish GNP.

And so we come full circle. The market, being the market, catches a trend and fuels the already hollow hipster movement, throwing it a spin or two in the barrel of fashion and in turn producing a second generation of hipster, those that did not catch on in the first place – ending up with an even more colourless gang of sad customers, likely to reproduce the chain reaction even further down the economical food chain.

Brilliant!

I don’t celebrate my own birthdays. And given the choice, I wouldn’t celebrate another’s either. I realise that in general – such a behaviour is considered mean and borderline asocial. But that is a stark under-interpretation of something that on the surface just looks plain old rude to most. Let me try to explain.

Over the years I’ve noticed that someone who refuses, or feels discomfort in joining others in their ceremonies, is often branded with an amateur diagnosis. More often than not – of Asperger or autistic variety. And so I’ve given the situation a lot of thought. After all, I’m not a hermit (even if I often wish I were) as the situation arises fairly often – even in an average life like mine. And more often than not, I tend to be in dead centre of whatever clash is about to take place: A refused wedding invitation, a skipped birthday party – a ceremonious gathering of some sort or other – foregone; to potentially devastating social, or relational effect.

To be able to answer what it is that causes us (me) discomfort, or blankly refuse to take part in a social ceremony, perhaps we need to reverse the question and ask, “What is it that makes us accept it?”.

And what might that be, exactly? A good place as any to start with would be tradition. Ceremonies of many kinds are often rooted in culture. The kind of culture that serves to bond people (or enslave, given your point of view) to one another. The sort that establishes group dynamics and hierarchy. The sort that established an individuals brand value as opposed his fellows, if we’re to speak in modern terms. And we should – because there is no tradition left in the modern world (read that as understood as the northern hemisphere) that has gone unscathed through time. With each new day, the population of Terra states its independence from culture, tradition and heritage alike – as well as whatever historical bonds tie us to our ancestors. I’ve written about why, and how – previously. Have a look if you’re interested (I’d skip it, you don’t need it to follow this text and moreover, its more than vaguely preaching).

So – it seems we have no need of ceremonies from a purely traditional, or cultural standpoint. Yet, the church calendar still rules our time – and it is certainly by far the most popular way to mark the milestones in life. When confronted why irreligious (or just too noncommittal to even “believe”) people opt to marry in church they often state the theatrics as the cause (presumably while trying to make the vicar forgo, “the god part”). The church, putting it simply, still has a monopoly on our grand ceremonies.

There are alternatives. There is the magistrate wedding. Indeed a dreary and administrative affair. Also, we have several – amusing, but utterly ridiculous new age-varieties. Finally there are humanist equivalents to whatever ceremony the church has come up with. Perhaps save the resurrection of Christ. The humanists seem to have taken whatever an actual celebration is and brought it down from the heavens to where they say it belongs – with the individual human.

However, the humanist credo doesn’t hold up to anything but a superficial glance. Scratch the surface, do away with the rationale, the (often faulty) logic, the sickening claims to reason (often expressed unreasonably), and you still have the same old proverbial junk, albeit neatly gift wrapped into a shiny new ceremony.

Where does that place us in the search for the answer to the aforementioned question: “What is it that makes you accept an invitation to a social function?”

Whatever hue a ceremony might have – be it humanist, christian or flower power, and whatever purpose of social dynamic –  it is surely there to mark a milestone in the life of a individual. But why accept the formulaic once-a-year pattern? What significance is there to a birthday? What, exactly – makes that one particular day better, or worse, than another – of your own free choice? The answer is nothing at all. It is a convenient way of pigeonholing your years, achievements, ambitions. To, under cover of a birthday cake, make you smaller than the sum of your parts. I have no wish to subject myself to this kind of treatment – and I feel awkward when I have to participate in it for someone else.

Finally, I understood what makes me uncomfortable at social functions. It is a paradox. We’re never so self-effacing as we are at the times when we’re supposed to be celebrated. At your 18th birthday, you’re supposed to receive the key to adulthood (did you?). At 30 you’re supposed to be successful (are you?) and at 40 everyone will want to know why you’re still not married or why you’re just wrapping up your second divorce (and how did that question make you feel?). At 50, your guests will start to sum up your life like it was almost over in spite the fact that it perhaps hardly has begun (which is it?). In a nutshell: The celebrations that are supposed to elevate us in our ego,  or as members of a community – in reality serve no other purpose other than to erase or diminish us as individuals.

Celebrate whatever you wish, whenever you wish, with whoever you wish – and if you’re fortunate and have the means - where ever you wish. If we are to properly break with tradition in the manner suggested by modern society, we should give this careful thought. Not simply lick the shop windows of Christianity by having church weddings or christening children into a faith we have no intention what so ever in following. The latter is, by the way, highly disrespectful of both the self and the entire christian community (whatever you may think of it, that is not the point). Christening a child in a church without faith proves nothing except that your principles are those of an inchworm. Perhaps less, as an inchworm is not likely to invite guests into his charade, forcing them to playact as well. Or worse, an inchworm will not commit its child to a faith the child has not itself chosen. Consider this before you take up the game of social pseudo-traditions on part of your offspring.

In my world, I’d celebrate whatever I wish in the manner suggested above – at times that would be suitable to me and whatever guests would care to join me. Of their own volition, not as a part of a social must – with the threat of labelling by way of diagnosis in the event that they care not to. I’d ask no gifts (and mean it). I’d ask no honorary speeches (such as those painfully endured by wedding guests world wide), or spoken obituaries (as inflated to suit the family of the deceased). I’d ask guests to be what they are and perhaps, if they wish it – to accept me as I, in turn, am. Without the necessity to underscore social function, status, hierarchy or size of current dwelling, bank account – or cock. Simply be there and whatever you are, nothing is expected of you.

A lot is expected of guests in social functions and ceremonies. It may not look it, but break down the details and you will see a planning so careful its stifling. And it is plain wrong.

I’d propose, if it were up to me – that people set their own milestones and act accordingly. Perhaps you’re 18th birthday would occur when you’re 45. Perhaps at 15. Or never. Perhaps your marriage ceremony will take place on a rainy afternoon in Zürich, just after you crossed the lake, hand in hand walking the secret garden with your lover. You stop and give each other a look, perhaps a kiss – and you realise – that both in fact and for all intents and purposes – you just married. And then perhaps your funeral – might never take place. And your name-giving; the product of the first time you did something worth while. Like fell in love. Or saved the life of a cat. Or earned your first million bucks. You choose.

All you need for this is to realise that there are no deadlines, save a final one – and there are no real points of access – save the first one (and even those two are subject to debate from a strictly quantum point of view). Accidents, good or bad – happen – and they are no tragedy and in the end no cause for customary celebration or mourning. They simply happen. They are stateless. Like the light, they just happen.

Nei varchi di luce.

One foggy morning in early April, on an ill-advised flight enroute to a grim, joyless and historically laden destination in Russia – an equally ill-advised and foolish decision was taken. That decision, along with the usual chaotic assortment of parameters led to the crash of the presidential airplane. As the plane struck the treetops, and seconds later, the ground – all onboard were killed. The fact quickly made media cover stories all over the world. As condoleances from across the planet steadily drifted into Poland, the country itself seemed to grind to a complete halt. For brief hours, the world indeed seemed to hold its breath as possible causes and victims were debated. Within the span of mere  days however, the world – being the world – quickly forgot the whole ordeal. After all, even in our overexposed, near-global society, nothing is news for long. With about the same speed as the incident lost media coverage across the globe, it gained momentum in Poland.

And to be fair, its understandable. To some extent, at least. A significant number of country officials and government highbrows managed to squeeze their inflated personalities into the same, Russian-made airborne deathtrap, Tupolev. As the Poles rushed to commemorate the grim Katyn-anniversary all caution had been abandoned. Never mind being uninvited and late for the official ceremony (said deceased president not being a great protege of the Russian government that hosted the event).

For any company, anywhere in the world, putting all of its executives into one plane (and of ill-reputed, Russian produce) is unthinkable. Obviously, putting most of the proverbial eggs in the proverbial basket – is not of proverb status in Poland (or didn’t use to be, at least). So, the Poles were faced with the tricky, but far from impossible task of replacing said deceased officials. In time that would happen. Even the Poles seem to have contingency plans for these kinds of crises. But it wouldn’t happen before blooming out into a full-blown, tragic, nationwide spectacle of irrationality.

Personal drama, random, altruistic, kindness toward strangers and grieving families aside: We’re talking about politicians. Historically – hardly an irreplacable lot. In fact, they quite often display a rather interesting Medusa-like quality, at least speaking in terms of survivability. And while certainly a tragedy on a personal level, this was hardly a loss of any thoughtful, intellectual elite (the word “elite”, being unfortunately heavily overused immediately following the crash). Not in the grand scheme of things. These were not the scientists, artists and thinkers that would save us all.

But I digress. Because who the passengers of that unlucky flight actually were is of absolutely no consequence. In any way. They could have been important, they could have been just a bunch of right-wing follies and friends of said follies that for all intents and purposes probably wouldn’t have had (politically) survived the upcoming re-election anyway. No, the nature of the problem is the intepretation that the Poles almost collectively pinned to the event. With that nationwide, disgusting habit of theirs, they immediately forgot all about rationality and attributed the accident to God’s work (or the Russians, but even the most paranoid of Poles soon discarded the idea, thankfully) – and to whatever arcane reason said God might have had. Never mind the fact that some prominent personalities of course saw the accident as a way to immortalise, nay, canonise, a mediocre, daft, impopular president. No, The Poles chose not to see the accident for what it actually is, and for what all accidents to some extent are: a case of bad luck. That, and the fact that few things, if any, had been done to stack the odds in favour of that ominous flight.

Statements made in the press by guests of the president that for some reasons couldn’t attend the ceremony, thus escaping the accident were ridiculous, not to mention outright ignorant of their own faith: “I’m guessing God had other plans for me”, said one. “I escaped the ordeal through the providence of God”, said another. Amazing, in truth. And what an affront to all of those, and families of those to whom this providence of God obviously did not extend. Now, that’s the Catholic spirit for you: “Hooray, I live, praise God, never mind that all of my brethren are dead!”. Do the Poles really not see the existentialist nightmare brewing in statements as those?

Or perhaps, might it be so that as humans, we wish to keep our views of things unaltered, unchallenged and rather than accepting facts that would make us change our view of ourselves and the outside world, we simply tune events to become what we wish them to be. And how can a whole country succumb to this sort of magical thinking?

Einstein once said that: “God does not play dice”, but that was said as an outside defence to the mounting evidence that not only does God play dice, there are irrefutable facts pointing to the fact that the dice might be the actual God. And that any intelligent design, fate, and the existence of a human, sentient race is a very minor, very interesting circumstance – amounting to nothing but luck. A shot in the dark with ongoing results, the riddle of which has baffled the world of physics for close to fifty years, ever since the human race arrived at a place where we had the actual means and knowledge to pose the question: Are we – or are we not the product of an intelligent, sentient, design (God)? Obviously, there are things we do not yet know. But we understand the universe. And we understand that it all comes down to quantum decisions, made deep inside the atoms. Not an outside God. Still, the Poles hang on to their metaphysical crutch.

To my mind, few things are worse than hanging onto dead concepts. To pray to Gods, long ago departed – who’s ears are no longer here, but who’s judgment certainly still lingers on, causing irrationality: the murky, cumbersone waters where religion breeds.

Meanwhile the current Polish, mediafuelled hysteria has reached such epic proportions that any number of foolish scenarios have become possible, doing away with the most apparent benefit of the accident: the creation of a space where new ideas and new opportunites can take hold.

And its a shame, really. Instead of intepreting things that are best left uninterpreted (no, there is no need for humans to understand tragedies – save one thing and one thing only – they happen. Frequently), the Poles could try a different approach. If, and everything seems to point that way, we’re here by an near-incredible stroke of luck, that also means that we are indeed free to try and win, or lose, at the gigantic roulette of life. You hold the cards and there is no clandestine, opaque plan for you, manipulated by some deaf, galaxy-wielding, borderline retarded God. You’re in control. And you’re responsible.

This fact alone seems to scare people into any submission available to them.

To the obvious benefit of a dominating part.

So.

Cui Bono?

EDIT: May 19th, 2010

Unfortunately, I feel obliged to add something to this piece.

Ever since the crash, the Polish authorities have been trying to lay the blame for the incident on the pilots. The official investigation as to what actually took place concludes  (hints rather) that they (the airmen) repeatedly ignored warnings from the Russian flight control centre. In so many words, it creates very convenient scapegoats. This in spite of the fact that Mr Kaczynski (or is it St. Kaczynski now?) has a troublesome record of interfering with flight regulations by way of enormous, inflated ego. In spite of the fact that he fired a previous pilot for following security procedure and not landing in a hot zone.

The Russians are doing the Poles an enormous favor in keeping the results from the flight recorder, or black box as it is also known, under wraps. Because what almost most likely happened was the fact that the Polish president once more intervened, forcing the pilot to land the plane in bad weather. This time, unlucky for all of those on board – the pilot did in fact yield to his request, with catastrophic result.

Ultimately, one shouldn’t judge the pilot even though in hindsight, he probably should have just told the willful leprechaun to sit down and get stuffed. But the leprechaun also being the president, he might have been fearful for his job. Especially since said leprechaun has a history of persecuting pilots that insist on following proper flight procedure.

In a way, I suppose blaming the pilot is necessary and has its own twisted logic: After having nothing short of canonised aforementioned leprechaun, I suppose that it would make a bad dent in his glorious halo should the world ever find out that he was an evil little, self-centred, prestige-hungry, thoughtless, imbecille bugger. The part of the world which was not privy to the fact already, that is.

For an outsider, it might be hard to understand the wide eyed Swedish, borderline morbid fascination with the more sickening aspects of European WWII and post WWII-issues. More literature of this kind receives accolades in Sweden than in almost any other country in Europe. Steve Sem-Sandberg’s praised account on the persecution of the Jewish population of Łódź and more notably so, the granting of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the mannerised and overly emotional Herta Müller are but two examples of the trend. None of them are particularly interesting in any novel, scientific or cultural way.

Why are Swedes so fascinated by accounts on the suffering of the Baltic States? And why now?

Could it be the latent guilt of not participating (openly) in WWII? Or is it the plain and simple fact that the nature of the Swedish soul, so succinctly captured by Bergman, has isolated them from the heartland of Europe and now, over fifty years later, they’ve finally mustered some infinitesimal strand of courage and opened the door to peer in what the country’s closest neighbors have been laboring with for decades? Guilt is certainly the most Swedish of emotions. Collective guilt is what they excel in. So, what better when things become too hard to bear on their own soil but to project it onto unsuspecting neighboring states?

It might be that the answer is laughably simple, as most answers regarding human behavior usually are. Simpler still than being about guilt: Swedes discover other countries by way of mouth and groin. What can be eaten (or screwed), can also be adopted and loved. The sheer number of Thai restaurants in the country closely follows the pattern of vacationing Swedes in Thailand (in excess of 350 000 Swedes make their way there each year – a staggering number considering a population total of just above 9 million inhabitants). Similarly, Swedes discovered Estonia because they could go there for a budget vacation, at convenient boat cruise length. And much like in the case of Thailand, for the cheap and moral-free sex (even so accepted as to being culturally parodied). Because after all, what you don’t soil in your own back yard, according to prevailing human morals, you don’t soil at all.

There is no inherent shame in this; it’s just how things work. Consider The Germans, and the incessant drive to dominate and invade things – whether financially or by force. The Americans share a similar enthusiasm, but for other reasons. The Swedes eat and screw their way through the world (which, incidentally, I personally consider a rather innocent, almost childish motive).

It is with no small amusement that one watches the present Swedish society marvel at the horrors of the Second World War, where almost all of Europe toiled and suffered – and then watch them take up a humanitarian and moral stand to it considering why they got interested in the facts to begin with. Now stories need to be told, social trials need to be played out in public and common guilt needs to be accepted by one and all. Amusement borders on tragedy however when prominent culture critics such as Mr. Eklund hail the mediocre, formulaic works of say, Oksanen – while almost entirely foregoing the vast body of work already written on the subject.

Why the insightful, hard to read (and hard to bear), difficult work of Aleksander Wat (the biographical novel, “My Century”, in particular) is never mentioned can only be a testament to the modern sloth where prerequisite knowledge is almost totally subjugated in favor of cheap emotion-ridden ready-to-feel literature. Say that of Oksanen.

Wat was there. In the middle of the internment camps, in the middle of communist Russia. He lived for it and he died from it. It is an affront to intelligence to have to bear the presence of postindustrial, gothrocking Lydia Lunch-lookalikes and the hacks who hail them. Say Mr. Eklund, to name but one – though he is nowhere near alone in his limitless, borderline moronic adoration for Oksanen.

Another factor in play might be the fact that Swedes, while well versed in their ancient, Viking heritage, are almost totally oblivious to their own contemporary history of the last 50-60 years. They live in a housing system they do not understand and complain about it incessantly (mention “Gunnar Sträng” to the common Swede and he will look at you dumbly). They live in an undeserved economy that was founded from the ground up via the Marshall Plan. Money routed to Sweden that was turned down by the Soviet Union. Funds that were supposed to re-build war-ravaged countries in Europe. Not miniscule, unnotable nations of an absolutely war-spared North! The economic aid that was destined for Poland and many of the Baltic States that Swedes now so openly, and laughably, lament – was used to build this very nation’s economy. Again, ask the man on the street and he will, once again, be oblivious to this fact.

It’s a bit late to cowardly dodge the war, steal the victim’s money and now, over fifty years post-fact start some sort of population-wide guilt campaign where they lovingly rediscover the horrible heritage of neighboring countries that they’ve blatantly ignored for an equally long term, if not for longer. And rediscovered it by way of sex-tourism, no less (although this point can be argued at length – I’ve certainly simplified things for the sake of argument). Pathetic, transparent and typically Nordic, behavior.

I shiver to think of the hug-to-death-sessions that might take place when most Swedes, and their cultural prophets, will discover the atrocities made in far less years than those fifty during the second world war. What of the bloody revolution in Poland in the beginning of the 1980’s? While that war-torn land was fighting it’s way out of communism – Sweden didn’t even cast a second glance (actually, some in fact did – but they go on uncheered and unacknowledged to this day). But boy, they were – like totally – there – for the celebrations when the Berlin wall actually fell. You’d think they pushed the damned thing down themselves. I suppose that in those days of freedom frenzy, no one noticed a couple of uninvited Swedish bystanders in the cheering crowd.

The rest of Europe has moved on since the war. There are new troubles and there are new areas to explore. The Swedes, historically at least, stand in the same muddy cesspool that most of their closest neighbors have left long ago. They keep sending one-eyed, crying explorers into the Baltic backwaters of Europe, or their confused senior relatives of Eastern Europe – without a rudimentary understanding of how, why, what, when. Anything that would anchor an understanding to their statements. Then they go on to write politically correct accounts of the historical suffering without the benefit of first-hand experience. Adding insult to injury, the cultural so called elite of this nation goes on to praise campy and stilted authors, such as say, Oksanen.

Here’s a tip. Europe doesn’t need your Swedish guilt or your naive, child-like investigations. Participate – for real, or get the hell out of dodge. In literature, or elsewhere.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Terre des Hommes (1939).

Crowdsourcing, or crowding, is the popular term for creating things together, usually with the net as hub. The process is mediated by the vast amount of collaborate, sociodynamically instituted tools available to the general public. Of late, we’re being led to believe that this process is the panaceum for all of those pesky creative ills we’ve all been waiting for.

And arguably, it really does have its uses. In the related world of open source software, for instance. Or fundraisning. Or any activitity with an altrustic motive or where distribution is concerned, it can perform wonders. I say open source software, because it is evident that the construction of software by means of working together and licensing the work to the general public has both yielded results that push the evolution forward where economy and intellectual property rights are concerned. Put simply, open source software works as a business model.

Another key aspect of the open source culture is the example of an independent project that finds completion of the missing pieces via the OS-framework; without necessarily sharing the entire contents of the whole thing. OS-communities are extremely useful for finding specialists that are willing to work towards a common goal, if set up in a way to flatter their resumé. Or need of pride of creation (for the participants and project owners alike). This relief from the restraint of deadlines, budgets or other organisational pitfalls are a bounty that exceeds any doubt towards of waiving the intellectual rights to the community. Thus follows that any sharing done with the community is done not out of an altruistic motive but rather out of an ego-driven need to accomplish a personal goal (whether that goal is to preserve the culture of the open source movement or simply tap the community for solutions makes no matter – it is still an egodriven process!).

The omenous signs begin collecting like dark clouds only when the open source process permutates into other fields than those of software engineering. It is a dangerous derivative because while the process of creating something collectively can at its best be wonderful in terms of project management, distribution and leadership, its downright abhorrent on a personal level. Thoughts belong to people on an individual level and function only inasmuch as one person can transmit this to another. The thought that sparks the action is the result of an individual process (even if it usually influenced by others). The process of transmission in a social collaborative has not only set aside but rather replaced the actual process of thinking.

The term open source is native to anyone below thirty. It is the natural, digital ecosystem of a public used to sharing playlists, random gossip (a petty process called “blogging”), participating in online scrapbooks (no names) or even more criminally vulgar matters of manipulating the scientific truth to suit personal needs and or tastes on Wikipedia. The open sourced crowd, paradoxically striving for an individual expression, loses any actual individuality when they hand over the concept of propriety to the general public. In short and in sharp contrary to popular belief, there is nothing personal in being public. The vast digital landscape becomes an endless real estate to be shared, repainted, remixed, re-told and re-sold – but never colonised. The cynic in me  is sure that Marx is laughing his pox-ridden ass off somewhere in a remote corner of Dantes Hell; because within all this seemingly gracious and utterly democratic landscape lies the ruin to any real creation. Even if the speed of distribution and sharing of ideas and thoughts has increased, these thoughts and processes still stem from one mind at a time. And the more selective and thorough this mind is, the better will the result be.

There is nothing wrong in asking for input (via any means, social or not) – but as we’ve seen online, there is seldom anything good to be said for letting strangers create it, haphazardly. The amount of work needed to control the crowd into creating anything useful might as well be put into the actual creation of it. The lack of decent content to match the outstanding technology of today is downright daunting. And it is that way because creating something truly individual is hard – but painting over a fleeting thought, publishing it online, adding photos to it and letting others comment it – is not: A bucket of crap, emptied in public will remain a bucket of crap, regardless of how many times it is re-shared, or remixed.

There is no escaping the fact that somewhere, at some point – some one will have to do some serious thinking.

(thanks to K.P)

In the very same manner, people that respond to being called “intellectual” very often seem to lack just that very thing. Intellect. An intellectual is someone who has failed in his aspiration towards intellect and thus covered his or hers shortcoming by simply adopting the title. There is no inherent evil in so doing, it is probably a part of human biology. We simply cannot help ourselves. It only becomes evil coupled with aspirations towards power and control. Perhaps – the one follows the other.

Expanding the thought towards anyone referring to themselves as experts is not hard to do, either. A self-promoted expert has no, or at least should have no, credibility. Knowledge is subtle and by its very nature questing. And questioning. The old proverb of the more you know the less you know certainly seems to do the assertion justice.

Mistrust intellectuals and mistrust self-proclaimed experts. Look for knowledge where none is seemingly to be found and question the knowledge that you have aquired. It would seem that the attitude of at least admitting the possibility of not knowing best is the most rewarding in the long run.

After all, people who turn out to be right most of the time seldom find any real satisfaction from it.

(Right about here, I hear the whitewashed chamber choir of social media savvies cry out against the word “manipulate”, however, scrutinising the process; it remains the main objective – pretty manifestos, social media camps and other exotic highbrowery notwithstanding).

The infinite amount of status updates, tweets-retweets, largely unfounded and undigested flow of uninterrupted information poses three main problems. One, since every social media entry is by definition egodriven, then recycled – it will be hard to create any lasting credibility as the information goes through the replication process (losing value by every egodriven retweet). Two, as argued by CUCUMATZ, whenever a corporation creates an online persona, it fails to use the inherent power of its own preexisting networks – diluting the brand image in the process (thus following the target audience deviation trajectory of any successful brand). Three, the modern father of nonsensical information transfer, Jeff Koons, will (presumably) be proud to know that social media messages largely follow the aesthetics of transfer, aswell. Meaning: the way in which the message is relayed seems to be superior in importance to the actual content of that same message.

Whenever one or several of the above problems occur on their own or combined, the end result of communication relayed via the social scene creates a form a digital scar tissue that not only threatens to overthrow the message itself but also adds to the problem of controlling the credibility of content, a major issue for any brand or corporation. Modern gurus will tell you that it is an inherent factor of the social game and beyond any real circumstance save the fact that it “probably will occur”. In other words, internet professionals are trying to magick their customers into thinking that flawed communication using the social scene is better than letting the scene construct its own reality – tweet by tweet eroding away at the single remaning tool of any brand aspiring towards longevity and profit – credibility.

The organisational infostream is to reduced to a near-alchemical process where input gets stuffed into the leaden jar at one end and coming out as discolored confetti in the other. I’m not saying that organisations should stay out of engaging into online conversations. Quite the contrary. Make sure you actually have something to say, then say it using your own existing network.

There are however further problems with communicating in social media fashion. As Paul Virilio argued, the (modern) speed with which we communicate induces a state of confusion. And as classical philosophy puts it (dispensing with the ideal state of Plato), we exist in the manner of us being here and now, Hic et nunc. That might very well have worked for nearly two thousand years. Our current here and now however is split in so many facets and can via status updates, online presences and other digital tracks set us in so many here’s and now’s that the classical notion of existing becomes not only flawed but borderline ridiculous. You are your tweet and your status update. Or are you the comment on your status update? Or are you the construct path of your cellular phone record? And just what were you when the two lanes of information intersected?

The same notion of accelerating confusion will apply to any brand or corporation entering the social media circus. Further disambiguation follows loss of control and credibility. Who is the corporation hijacked on the information slipstream? Tweet with care, fellow brands – perhaps it will turn out that the best medicine against a digital motion sickness is slowing things down in order to evaluate what actually needs to be said and what value this will add to the community, if any.

A circus is so easily transformed into a freakshow.

The quotation: “You come to, amongst the wreckage of your own making (…)”, suggests that most humans aren’t able to autocorrect faults but need this lengthy self-educative process. But how many feelings are hurt this way and how much could we have saved our loved ones if we were to step up on the ladder of realisation every now and then.

Much younger, I wrote the sentence: “We have to constantly wait by bridges in order to love one another”. Fifteen years down the line I’m finally figuring out what that really meant. Why couldn’t have I just understood it there and then?

We do need to support the process of democracy. Anywhere, really. But attached to that support should also be a deeper understanding of what we’re truly supporting – and be prepared to see the whole process through. And that is truly a tall order. Merely altering the color of your icon is a very shallow form of support and more convenient for our conscience than of any real consequence for the matter at hand. You cannot change the world one click at a time. It will always, always come down to someone actually following the effort through with their heart, mind – and physical action.