Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

I’ve been asked by The Technology Source to write an article about the Second Superpower ideas and education.  TSE goes to teachers and others concerned with the institution of education.  Can any of you help me jump start my thinking on this one?  My best starting idea is that students and teachers should be blogging and using the tools of online dialogue to mobilize their own emergent point of view in schools.  I think this is true, but not particularly brillaint. Perhaps schools should be rethought in terms of cognitive and spiritual communities, linked by various communications media–and all become experimenters in the new discipline of emergent democracy.  But I don’t know, concretely, what this means.  In any case, anyone have some better ideas?? Thanks!!

How do we strengthen the Second Superpower?  What are the next vital developments we need to make?  Are there one or two things which, if accomplished, would enable more rapid and fuller evolution of emergent democracy and the second superpower?   Are these spiritual, technical, political, or in our collective mindset?

In ecology there is a sub-field called “assembly rules” that seeks to understand the combinations of species that are required for a functioning ecosystem.  The field goes farther and looks for the sequences by which a few species can establish a foundation on which others can grow. Aspen trees stabilize nitrogen in the soil, making a place for hardwoods to follow.  Lichens break down volcanic rocks into a primitive soil, mosses and ferns follow.

I wonder, what are the assembly rules for emergent democracy?

Googlewash? Hogwash.

by Kevin Marks Thursday, April 3, 2003

Andrew Orlowski has written a rant about bloggers ‘googlewashing’ the phrase ’second superpower’.

Separating out the bizarre attacks on Joi Ito for eating lunch, his thesis seems to be that ‘A-list bloggers’ have hijacked and neutered the phrase from the Anti-war (or anti-Bush) protesters, and swamped Google with this new interpretation.

In fact, the original article he cites (reproduced here) did not contain the phrase ’second superpower’; it had a throwaway rhetorical flourish in the first sentence:
The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.

(Orlowski elides the first part about the Western alliance to support his thesis that it’s all about the street, man).

As he says, this meme circulated about the web a bit, and eventually James Moore explored the idea in more detail, and a broader context than just marching against Bush, combining it with the preceding discussions on ‘emergent democracy’ that had been going for a while. Of course this gets a higher rank for ’second superpower’ – it is in the title, and enough people found it interesting enough to link to. (Update: today the NYT removed its archives from the web, so any links to the original article would now be dead).
Instead of a lot of incoherent slogans, here are people discussing how to bring it about.
Orlowski then completely distorts the quote from Patrick Nielsen Hayden I posted to the list. Discussing a report on the very disruptive, street-blocking protests, where protesters in San Francisco, Boston, Washington and elsewhere shouted the same slogan, “This is what democracy looks like!”

Patrick said
No, that’s not what democracy looks like.

It’s what protest looks like, and it’s often the right thing to do. And of course “democracy” had better entail significant tolerance of unruly protest, or it’s not very democratic.

But that slogan is stupid, even by the standards of slogans. Long and often boring meetings are what democracy looks like. Tiresome horse-trading is what democracy looks like. Talking to your neighbors is what democracy looks like.

Democracy can function perfectly well without people painting their faces and blocking streets. It can’t function at all without that other stuff.

The emergent democracy group is about how to build tools and structures to capture democratic intent in a digital world. If you’re interested in this, join in.

Perhaps what Orlowski is really worried about is that a group who aren’t part of the clerisy of professional Journalists and activists are taking an interest, and actually discussing ideas calmly and rationally, and thereby attracting links from other people, Doc and Dave earned their high Google rankings by writing lots of things that people found interesting enough to link to, day after day for many years.

Andrew, if you have interesting things to say about the future of democracy, join the discussion, but don’t troll for cheap links by stooping to selective quotation and ad hominem attacks.

Coda:
I like to link to Orwell’s Politics and the English Language essay at least once a year, if only to remind myself to re-read it. Mr Orlowski could profit from reviewing it too. His neologism ‘googlewash’ falls down on Orwell’s criterion of creating a meaningful metaphor. Orlowski derives it from ‘greenwash’ which evidently derives from ‘whitewash’ – to paint over flaws to give a gleaming exterior. Yet ‘googlewash’ does not follow here – the complaint is not that the new google-friendly definition is hiding the flaws of the old, is it?
As Orwell puts it:
The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.
posted by Kevin Marks 4:54 PM

Last week Adrew Orlowki flamed The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head. His article mostly made arcane comments about google, but he took the time to trash the piece and its supporters as follows (and see the rebuttal by Kevin Marks, above):

It’s a plea for net users to organize themselves as a “superpower”, and represents a class of techno-utopian literature that John Perry Barlow has been promoting – the same sappy stuff, but not as well written – for the past ten years.

Only note how this example is sprinkled with trigger words for progressives, liberals and NPR listeners. It concludes – if you can find your way through this mound of feel-good styrofoam peanuts – “we do not have to create a world where differences are resolved by war. It is not our destiny to live in a world of destruction, tedium, and tragedy. We will create a world of peace”.

Actually, Andrew, I like this vision for the future. What is your problem, buddy? Not getting enough?

There are limits to the validity of the term ‘power’ — it sort of implies top-down control and influence, doesn’t it?  I think perhaps the French word ‘puissance’ (amplitude) has nuances of meaning which much more accurately describe our growing shared potency.  We are synergetically amplifying — ’surging into’ — this new realization of who we are and what we can do.  We are creating a new extension of ourselves with which we are reaching out to one another and the world, telling one another who we are and what we care about most.  And most especially we are learning the incredible validity and ultimate ’satyagraha’ (truth-force) of human intentionality

The above from John Wilmerding, Convener and List Manager of the
Coalition for Equity-Restorative Justice (CERJ), who has an email list.
and sent in a long, brilliant, Biblical response to the Second Superpower concept, called “Old Covenant, New Quickening.”  Wild!

In response to my article on S2, I’ve gotten several critical emails that accuse me of being too soft, too unrealistic.  Usually the senders talk about how the Second Superpower doesn’t have enough missiles and such.  Well, we may not have missles, but my guess is we definitely have the best massages.  And we may not be tops in inflicting trauma, but we definitely have the edge in healing it.  The serious point is that it is very difficult to build a society out of traumatized, emotionally-scarred people. You need a lot of command and control.  On the other hand, one can envision a society that invests in education and in personal and spiritual growth–and that focuses on pleasure rather than pain–might be organized with a much lighter hand.

Along this line, this weekend I participated in a very special personal growth workshop from an organization called PRH (The initials are for Personnalite et Relations Humaines) that originated in France (ah, thank the French!) but is now available worldwide.  Part psychology, part spirituality, it reminded me of the kinds of resources we have available to us for healing and for increasing joy.