Should we try to save the world? I think most people would think this question to be a little bit silly. Interestingly, however, the reasons for which they so think would perhaps split respondents down the middle. One group would say: what? Of course we should try to save the world. Are you mad? Why wouldn’t you want to save the world? Are you some kind of misanthrope? The other group would say something like: What? Of course you shouldn’t try to save the world. It’s the people who are trying to save the world that are ruining it. Saving the world displays a kind of arrogance - that you know best. You end up forcing a square peg into a round hole and making everything the worse for it. But perhaps there is an argument for the former that avoids this charge of arrogance. Perhaps we can remain optimistic without being dogmatic. But how?
As our police commissioner warned us after the APEC meeting in sydney: this is how we do business in Sydney now. And so it goes. SMH is reporting that our elected representatives have once again invoked ‘emergency powers’ in order to protect the pope when he visits Sydney next July. Ter-fucking-riffic…
Dorris Lessing is the latest of a growing list of notable people who have spoken out against the internet, claiming in short that it makes us stupid. Another prominent example is the author Andrew Keen who argues first that user generated content (along with copyright infringement and the like) is undermining the business models that enable the production of quality content - content that is vetted by professionals. On the other side you have people like Lawrence Lessig who argues in defence of the cult of the amateur and the democratisation of content production. It’s interesting that the internet has produced such divergent interpretations of its contribution. Either it will liberate us from the elite culture makers, or it will doom us to a swill of endless mediocrity where we can’t tell fact from fiction. Either it will be the birth of a new democratic consciousness, or the end of consciousness itself. I’m not going to take a side in this particular debate. It is an old debate as I will point out in greater detail below. However, there is a manner in which the internet may provide for a genuine raising of consciousness, one which is continually overlooked by the pundits. It’s nature is not what you’d expect - and it certainly doesn’t rely on a wholesome belief in the goodness of the average human being.
I was on a bus on Broadway in downtown sydney when I saw this billboard. I must admit, those spammers are getting really good.