Open Source Democracy: How online communication is changing offline politics · Chapter 4Part 4
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Conclusion
The new transparency offered by the interactive mediaspace allows even the casually interested reader to learn how the West's foreign and domestic policies have been twisted to a perverse caricature of themselves. I do not wish here to beat the drum for a partisan revolution. Instead, I am to demonstrate how a growing willingness to engage with the underlying code of the democratic process could eventually manifest in a widespread call for revisions to our legal, economic and political structures on an unprecedented scale, except in the cases of full-fledged revolution. Transparency in media makes information available to those who never had access to it before. Access to media technology empowers those same people to discuss how they might want to change the status quo. Finally, networking technologies allow for online collaboration in the implementation of new models, and the very real-world organisation of social activism and relief efforts. The good news, for those within the power structure today, is that we are not about to enter a phase of revolution, but one of renaissance. We are heading not toward a toppling of the democratic, parliamentary or legislative processes, but toward their reinvention in a new, participatory context. In a sense, the people are becoming a new breed of wonk, capable of engaging with government and power structures in an entirely new fashion. The current regime, in the broadest sense, will have ended up being the true and lasting one, if it can get its head and policies around these renaissance modalities of increased dimensionality, emergence, scalability and participation.
My advice? Don't beat them. Let them join you. Choose to believe that the renaissance I am describing has already taken place. Instead of looking forward to a day when justice will be won, declare that we are living in a just world right now. Declare that we are simply fighting for more justice.
Movements, as such, are obsolete. They are incompatible with a renaissance sensibility because of the narrative style of their intended unfolding. They yearn forward towards salvation in the manner of utopians or fundamentalists: an increasing number of people are becoming aware of how movements of all stripes justify tremendous injustice in the name of that deferred future moment. People are actually taken out of their immediate experience and their connection to the political process as they put their heads down and do battle. It becomes not worth believing in anything.
This is why we have to advocate living in the now in order to effect any real change. The should be no postponement of joy. Once we start down this path, there's can be no stopping. We begin to see the unreality of money. We begin to see how 'salvation' has been traded in for 'retirement' as the new ultimate goal for which Westerners suspend their lives and their ethics. (People work for companies they hate, and then invest in corporations whose ethics they detest, in order to guarantee a good retirement). We see the artificial obstacles to appropriate energy policy, international relations, urban planning and affordable healthcare as what they are: artificial. Meanwhile, what we can accomplish presents itself on a much more realistic scale when we engage with it in the moment and on a local level.
Yes, political structures do need to be changed. But we may have to let their replacements emerge from the myriad of new relationships that begin to spawn once people are acting and communicating in the present, and on a realistic scale, instead of talking about a fictional future.
The underlying premise is still dependent on the notion of progress. Indeed, things must get better or there's no point to any of it. But our understanding of progress must be disengaged from the false goal of growth, or the even more dangerous ideal of salvation. Our understanding must be reconnected with the very basic measure of social justice: how many people are able to participate?
Our marketing experts tell us that they are failing in their efforts to advertise to internet users and cultural progressives because this new and resistant psychographic simply wants to engage, authentically, in social experiences. This should sound like good news to anyone who authentically wants to extend our collective autonomy. This population is made up not of customers to whom you must sell, or even constituents to whom you must pander, but partners on whom you can rely and with whom you can act.
Treat them as such, and you might be surprised by how much you get done together.
1 Karen Armstrong, A History of God, (London: Vintage, 1999)
2 First Monday, The High-Tech Gift Economy, Richard Barbrook., 1998, (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/)
3 Douglas Rushkoff, Cyeria: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, (Flamingo, 1994)
4 Wired Magazine, Jul 1997 (see http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.07/longboom_pr.html)