Unity Without Uniformity: The Implications of Wikis

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on July 13, 2009

The internet has resulted in forms of collective human association without any individual being crushed by the collective.

One form of such an association has come to be called a ‘wiki.’ In the implementation of wiki projects one sees the result of a collaborative effort in which each participant was an independent agent. There are no deadlines(other than death itself), there are no mandatory office hours. One can contribute when they want, how they want, if they want.

In terms of accuracy and quality of content, wikis compare favorably against traditional encyclopedias. In terms of sheer volume, Wikis can cover a much larger variety of content than an encyclopedia ever could and keep constantly up to date all the while.

Such a high quality public resource results from the efforts of many individuals who never even meet one another. A wiki is a product of an environment with very low friction of association.

As such it enjoys certain advantages over a highly regulated structure:
-People acting on their own don’t have to be motivated or compelled in any way. None of the actors are formal associates in any way, thus there is no reason to try to ‘get the most’ out of the labor of each individual. If one lazy person leaves an article half complete, someone else will finish it. There is no urgency because such an organization passively collects contributions as a leaf collects rays from the sun.

-Those who contribute tend to do so in their area of expertise. Individuals know more about their strengths and their interests than any manager ever could. A non-interventionist system results in everyone working on what they’re best at, what they most enjoy. When personnel distribute themselves on tasks according to their interests and strengths, standards of quality are maximized. Not only is higher efficiency achieved, the cost of an authoritarian manager is eliminated.

The whole thing causes me to reflect.
It becomes necessary to have a hierarchy and highly specific goals with deadlines when running a business or a state.
But when organizations with the loosest of ties regularly churn out an outstanding free product I have to consider:
Compelling, allotting, scheduling, and assigning people to tasks while accounting for every second of available work time per employee is an extremely maintenance intensive process. At a certain point the cost of governing one’s employees must exceed the benefits of governing them.

Minimizing friction of association seems to be the obvious means of improving effectiveness.
A society or organization founded on compulsion and uniformity is still attractive because such an approach ensures a certain outcome. However, such a highly structured structured system must consume a large portion of its output just to keep itself running. Such a system has little potential to outperform what is expected of it. It performs very like a computer program, doing only exactly what it is told.

As for the possibility of a cohesive Subtle organization that minimizes friction of associaton, consider the attributes of Subtle persons.
They are:
-Knowledgeable, skilled, imaginative, critical thinkers.
-Introvert outcasts who have little stake in any existing order. This makes them highly versatile agents who can serve their function any place, any time, and under any circumstances.
-Highly accustomed to functioning as independent self-motivated agents. Minimal if any maintenance or supervision required.
-Highly desirous of a niche that satisfies their basic human need to belong.
-Often unemployed or unusually low in the employment hierarchy for their ability level. No one is presently making good use of their potential, nor is anyone likely to do so. They are lying around in a salvage yard, readily available to anyone who wants them.

The trick is finding them within the vast orthodoxies that have swallowed them up.(or in which they’ve hidden themselves!)

Introverts and Sports

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on July 11, 2009

Sports in their most popular form are just another social venue. The minority players are involved in an intricate group activity and the majority spectators are involved in a mass cult of fandom.

A Subtle person tends not to fall into either of these categories. The wide world of sports is merely another obstacle in the way of belonging to the surrounding society. Attending team rallies and wearing team paraphernalia seems exotically tribal and altogether incomprehensible.

Why?

Someone who tends to feel out of touch with the group mentality is unlikely to feel drawn to team sports and probably even less so to the idolization of team sports.
Participating in a team sport is a ritual of belonging and being part of a social machine. It is about achieving victory by taking the ‘I’ out of team and subordinating oneself to the group for the benefit of all. A career outsider naturally doesn’t perceive the appeal of engaging in team sport. Why contribute to a ritual of social endorsement when one has never felt a part of society? Why make a dramatic display of submitting to a collective when one has never felt a part of the collective?
Adulation for athletes is distasteful to the outsider. Athletes’ enormous social status gained by playing a mere game seems artificial and shallow. Those who belong by participating in and promoting a hostile social system are more enemies than sympathetic heroes or ‘role models.’ To bow down to and give the gift of adoration and loyalty to a stranger who will never know or care about you seems the lowest and most abject form of subservience.
This lowest subservience would be given to the very people who in our youths stood at the top of the pyramid in which we never had a place.
-They were the enforcers and preservers of a hostile system.
-They were the arbitrary masters of our world for no real reason that anyone could figure. The parents, the newspapers, the ‘community’, everyone seemed to place them on a pedestal for no particular reason. They were the physical manifestation of everything the system selected for. They were the nobility of social Correctness.
To article: ‘Sports Do Not Belong In Schools’

From my personal experience:

I am actually a fairly athletic person and have been involved with cross country and track and field. These are not exactly team sports, but people from the same school do work together to win. I found that I never really belonged socially even in these lower key environments because any sport overwhelmingly seems to attract those who have a collectivist mindset. Most of my teammates had exceptionally strong ties to the popular culture and saw sport primarily as a social activity

I repeatedly found myself an outsider in these organizations.
Only in cross country did I really stand a chance. This sport tends to be the lowest in terms of social prestige and it has the potential to attract nerds who have neither the coordination or the keen feel for group dynamics required to excel in team sports. Unfortunately, even cross country was not exactly a safe haven. For most participants, the sport was their cardio social session between a sedentary summer break and the popular winter games– volleyball and basketball. Members of the chess club were still in the minority. Even on the extreme, where Subtle folk could exist in the world of sport, it was still a contentious border zone whereas the classic team sports were entirely within hostile territory.

What are some of the reasons I did not quite fit in even in the friendliest possible sports environment?
Most of my teammates saw it primarily as a social activity. ‘Stretching’ often lasted half an hour to an hour. Not only do I lack shared interests with most athletes, I was seething the whole time as I thought of how I’d have time for nothing but homework by the time I finally got home. Furthermore, I approach exercise from a rationalistic perspective. Physical fitness and self improvement come first. I joined a running club so I could get better at running.

This brings me to consider:
Why is the Subtle ethic opposed with the world of sport?

Opposite values and life experiences:

The Subtle are those who have been in conflict with their social surroundings since an early age.
For some of them, lack of athletic talent/coordination have been contributing factors to their present situation of social otherness.
Society has shown itself to be an arbitrary, capricious tyrant. As such it has no legitimate claim on our lives.
A personal system of values is above the values that we are taught. Progress is achieved by progressively improving oneself.
One can always find new ways to achieve progress.
Those who are subtle cultivate a tight inner circle. They relate to and give themselves only to a few. One ought to recognize their human limits and focus on those who are most important.
Countless millions of dollars go into charity and yet world hunger is rampant: food aid only worsens the situation by spurring additional unsustainable population growth.

Athletes are those who have seamlessly integrated with their social surroundings from their earliest years. For many of them, outstanding coordination and athletic skills combined with excellent social skills have catapulted them to the heights of the orthodoxy.
Having fit in by their very nature, it seems as though society is all encompassing with a place for everyone. Those few who have difficulties just need to put in a little more effort and ‘get out more.’ The legitimacy of their society is taken for granted by virtue of its mass acceptance and their personal success within it.
To make one’s own values is a destructive departure from the group. Progress is achieved by improving the prestige of the team to which one belongs.
Progress has a tangible goal. Progress ends at the top of the pyramid whether one is trying to win the state championship or become the CEO. Outside of established structures, there is only the Void.
They sincerely believe the best way of ‘making the world a better place’ is cleaning up trash from the roadside on Sunday afternoons and giving money to monolithic charity organizations.
World hunger would disappear overnight if only more people engaged in such ‘service projects.’

Sports culture is a manifestation and promotion of Loud values. Those who excel in the world of sports naturally tend to be Loud people.
Thus one who ‘doesn’t follow sports’ can never quite an insider among those who stand within the orthodoxy.
As a celebration of all that is social and socially accepted, the world of sports is at best an obstacle and at worst a menace in the life of a true introvert.

The Tragedy of the Lords

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 23, 2009

Leads To: The Illusion of Higher Standards of Living,
Life After Mass Society?

A tragedy of the commons is said to occur when a resource available to everyone becomes overused until it becomes available to no one. Everyone loses in the end.

A tragedy of the lords is how I refer to the phenomenon of an endless escalation of socially motivated spending.
‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ as it is commonly called. (Don’t know why everyone measures themselves against the Welsh.)

In such a situation:
as one rises in economic status the more resources must be spent on tokens indicating one’s social status. Since everyone is trying to appear to have as high of status as possible, the necessary expenditure is always forced steadily upward.

In time, one car is not enough to keep up
one working spouse is not enough to keep up
a nicer, bigger house in a better neighborhood and a better school district is required to keep up
Even if a household got a third wage earner in the form of a worker robot, everyone else would get worker robots and the competition would go up yet another notch. People labor for that promotion and pay raise but no matter what they do, nothing will change. Worse, more money is just more rope to hang themselves with.

In such a system, millions of people fall deep into debt as they struggle to appear to have the highest status possible. Behind this flimsy facade there is mostly debt paper. A system based on illusion can last only for a time…
In the end, everyone loses the race.

Everyone ends up spending far more of their capital on the social expectations of strangers than they do on themselves and their families. This happens because arbitrary aggregate expectations become their expectations. To be trapped in a perpetual cycle of desperation is the price of letting an impersonal mass society define one’s personal desires.

Unquestioningly following a collective can be a terrible mistake in our complex modern world. However, most societies throughout history and to the present day are collectivist societies. Clearly it is not a recipe for disaster. The destructiveness in this case arises from a specific variety of collectivism.

-A small scale ‘tribal’ level organization has members who know one another and each other’s families. In such an organization, there is ample incentive for each person to genuinely care for and look out for every other. Such a collective is a stable foundation for social existence.

-A large scale collective society centers around tight family and clan bonds. A tribal-like foundation is preserved even if there are hundreds of millions of people.

-In a post-industrial Western style collective, most citizens have no defining tribal type organization to ground them. Each person is governed by the aggregate whims of millions of strangers. In such a situation, a million people could all lead each other to disaster. Each person is helpless to change the situation even if everyone knows on some level that everyone’s frantic struggling means everyone loses. Collective checkmate!

A tragedy of the lords illustrates the value and even the need for a more Subtle way of thinking. Simply doing what everyone else is doing is an excellent way to live in poverty while bringing in paychecks larger than anywhere else in the world. If you’re already earning so much but are still barely getting by are you really earning any more? Not really. As your pay increases, increased social expectations cause the cost of living to rise along with it.
Until one insists on self-defining and finding ways to deviate from the expectations, poverty and desperation are the order of existence whether you live in a house or a hut.

Unity Does Not Mean Uniformity

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 19, 2009

Society and social interaction are helpful tools for the introvert. Society does not just happen for its own sake in our point of view. It requires justification, for from proper justification comes its legitimacy.
Thus, a key value of any society of introverts would be to minimize friction of association.
In other words each individual in an introvert society helps every other to be free to be their best selves without hindrance and to pursue their most sacred aims without having to conceal them.

Such an idea sounds nice, but many, many theoretical systems fall down abjectly in implementation. Skepticism is the natural response to any claims made on a theoretical level.

I would contest however that such an introvert society is quite viable.

I would examine the case of Switzerland as an example:

This modern nation began as nothing more than a confederation of disparate city states of several different ethnicities speaking several different languages. To begin with, these minor territories were just tiny arbitrary shards of an irreparably shattered Holy Roman Empire. They had nothing in common except a desire to be able to preserve their autonomy against their more powerful neighbors. Through mutual defense, each of these city states gained and retained their independence. As these individual entities sacrificed to a whole, their individual freedoms were both preserved and increased. The tool of a larger society they formed served its purpose of defense while successfully minimizing their friction of association.
Each of these city states(known as cantons) had their own, often radically different governments. Indeed, the administrations of these statelets ranged from democratically elected councils, to oligarchies of noblemen, to theocracies.

Even to this day the cantons remain autonomous and Swiss national identity is extremely strong despite huge disparities that have existed throughout the nation’s history. The bond shared by the cantons is predicated not upon shared language, but on shared purpose.

So I would say that events in real life, in real history tell us:

Unity does not mean uniformity

If the cantons were able to exist for centuries in a cohesive alliance that improved all the cantons’ freedoms, why couldn’t there be a similar association of individual persons, each functioning as their own autonomous statelet?

I would even contest that a genuine alliance forged from shared goals and interests is a far stronger foundation than that which can be produced from the mere pressure of social expectations– that which characterizes the banal and oppressive social environments that surround us.

History has shown us how mass societies can put millions of troops on the battlefield at a time and pressure them into killing one another en masse. These mass states in conjunction with mass societies have amply demonstrated that they can lead a man to a foxhole, but can they make him think?
Throwing an overwhelming quantity of warm bodies at the problem only works to a point.

Surely, an alliance of human beings is far more powerful if it enjoys the unmitigated loyalty of its members not out of ignorance or pressure, but from the imperative of mutually assured freedoms. A million troops can amount to no more than the net potential energy stored in their bodies and in their weapons. It is the very most that can be extracted from these soldiers. It is all that is wanted from them. In truth, a vast collection of coerced people will contribute far less than even their full physical potential. Each soldier is but an expendable token with a fixed value to be traded in whenever it best suits his arbitrarily elevated social superiors.

One truly free person in a group that they truly care about amounts to far more than the net force of their bodies. Their minds, their ideas, their being are devoted to the interests of their social entity. They choose to contribute everything they possibly could in their own best interests of their own free will. Such a person is far more powerful than a soldier/laborer whose limbs are moved by the will of others.

So with all these things considered:

-Hasn’t every introvert wondered how much less irrelevant input they would have to deal with if extroverts didn’t dominate every aspect of their immediate society?

-Politically correct people maintain that the ‘world needs both introverts and extroverts.’ But if extroverts disappeared, what essential component would be missing for an introvert (and vice versa)? Especially if all society was designed to accommodate the introvert remainder.

-Keep in mind, that in the present situation, the extrovert majority already discourages introvert participation in their society. Extroverts and introverts already live in separate worlds ruled by different priorities and values.

-The very most sought after job skills are talking with people, ‘managing’ people, and ‘being a team player.’ In other words, one of the main tasks of the entire workforce is simply dealing with high maintenance extroverts.

-Imagine what a unified yet mutually independent organization of Subtle persons could accomplish. With more focus on goals and genuine accomplishment and less energy spent on rote socialization, there would be great potential.

-A union of strong, self sufficient people comfortable with themselves united in a common purpose would implicitly require a bare fraction of the maintenance and management customary in a typical organization governed by Loud principles. Most introverts prefer to function as independent agents. A constant and firm hand of authority governing every action and process would be neither necessary nor desirable.

Friction of Association and Social Selectivity

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 5, 2009

According to present tendencies:

-The more people in society, the less personal it becomes.
-The more mechanical it becomes, the more sophisticated formal rules and red tape required to maintain order.
-The more people, the more everyone has to sacrifice for everyone else.
-The more people, the less powerful the individual becomes.

This trend is an example of what I like to call friction of association.

Yes, there are tremendous advantages to reaping the productivity of a mass society, but it comes with a terrible price.
Redundancy cushioning is the predictable emergent property of this trend: Eventually the phenomenon of aggregated humanity itself becomes so large that no single person or group can make any significant change. Mass society itself becomes in effect enthroned as a mindless autocrat.

People form into groups to benefit from their combined productivity, for companionship, for protection, for increased variety of available mates. When friction of association reaches a certain threshold, losses begin to outweigh benefits. The abstraction of ‘group’ itself solidifies into a substantial governing force beyond any means of human regulation or accountability. It is difficult to hold a corporation accountable for its ‘actions’ when treated as a single being for legal purposes. It is altogether impossible to do so with an overgrown society.

The only way out of such a situation is Fracture. To cease to acknowledge the autocrat, to create a new group.
To prevent the cycle from repeating itself, it is necessary to model new groups with the objective of minimizing friction of association.

One of the most successful ways this has been done is by being selective about who is admitted. Whoever is a member of your society is someone for whom you share responsibility. The beliefs and expectations of each person admitted determine what is to be the collective culture of the group. As such, high selectivity holds a social body to its original ‘intentions’ and keeps it in the service of those who founded it.

History tells us that cultures with precise definitions of belonging and exclusion are the longest lived. Excellent examples are the Jewish and Armenian communities that have persisted across milennia despite multiple attempts to wipe them out altogether.

These two example cultures endured stressors that would break apart any other social group because they had a well defined criteria for belonging (ethnicity) and most importantly, a complex shared tradition formally written down to serve as an impermeable barrier to outsiders and a powerful force of unity to those on the inside.

Fracture

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 4, 2009

The solution and the inevitable result of mass society is Fracture.

That is, people are by nature best adapted to a ‘tribal’ existence. Like a presidential candidate, a massive scale society that is for everyone cannot truly be for anyone. People crave connection to their social unit on a visceral and personal level. It is this sort of connection that gives life much of its meaning. It is a basic need modern mass societies have proven completely unable to satisfy.

Introverts, many of whom already exist under the surface are in an ideal position to break away entirely and colonize the void.
Mass society by its very nature has already set apart from the whole a group of people with similar tendencies and values. Most importantly, they share a lack of belonging.

Introverts, Money, and Employment

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 3, 2009

What is money to an introvert?

For those in the main stream of society it defines every aspect of life.

For those who look inwards for meaning and exist outside of the larger society, it is just one part of life.

Money is a physical manifestation of social force, it is the lifeblood of society. A wad of cash is a solid chunk of aggregate human desire.

As such, one who is Subtle has an uneasy relationship with money. One receives money based on how much society desires what they have to offer. Money is a phenomenon that we can experience only in reference to a collective entity.
The dollar is a fiat currency based entirely on public confidence.
Thus the possession of wealth is in a way, a measure of popularity. It is a measure of how valuable each person is to everyone else.
To define oneself by money is thus to worship the desires of everyone else over one’s own desires. The old question goes “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
This question is itself very revealing. The asker quite obviously perceives money to be the ultimate standard of validation and success. Clearly, it is implied, anyone with brains would put the acquisition of money before all else.

Those who look within are not likely to see the acquisition of wealth as the ultimate good, however. The importance of money for such people derives from a completely different purpose.

-One who is Loud strives for money as the supreme source of validation and social approval.

-On who is Subtle accumulates money to achieve independence from the whims of others.

Big houses and flashy cars are most important to those who let society define them. These possessions are tokens that flaunt society’s approval and esteem for all to see.

The true introvert is far more likely to see such things as superficial and a waste of time. The purpose of wealth is to obtain the ability to control one’s time, to pick and choose who one associates with, to be able to flout social conventions if desired. The principal use of money is not to increase one’s subordination to society but rather to sever one’s compulsory ties insofar as possible.

The hallmark of extroverted wealth is countless hours, even a lifetime spent accumulating as much money and as many tokens of social recognition as possible. Since society’s approval is the meaning of life, all hours are bent on obtaining it. One’s social relationships and self esteem are built upon it.
Without money such a person can hardly be considered to exist.
A fiat currency disappears the moment people stop believing in it. Likewise, those who have built their identity upon money are fiat people in a fiat society. The moment other people stop believing in their value, they will disappear.

To the introvert, money is meaningless if one sacrifices all their time and power while obtaining it. The purpose of money is to secure personal autonomy. I’ve found that a high proportion of extreme introverts have difficulty achieving steady employment. While most people are focused on simply ‘making a living’, one who is Subtle constantly strives to achieve the optimal balance between money and time.
Time is in fact more valuable than money. One can always make more money so long as one has time to make it. Time, however, is a non-renewable resource. We only have it in a discreet quantity that is steadily dwindling. True introverts, then, tend to cooperate with society insofar as is necessary to secure control over their time. In the hands of one who is Subtle, the very lifeblood of society is subverted into freedom from society.

The Irony of Modern Individualism

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on May 4, 2009

Members of the modern industrialized world are typically individualists in the sense of each individual competing for maximum gain with every other and thereby raising overall standards for all.

This competitive ethic born of modernity is so pervasive that even social relations become competition. In this arena, one competes for quantity of popularity and attention. One does so most effectively by making oneself marketable to as many people as possible. This means achieving mastery of all things conventional and widespread.

The ironic result of this modern, material individualism is that a society tends towards massive scale uniformity.
In such an environment there can be no place for eccentricity. The true introvert is compelled to live in hiding.

Social Choreography

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on May 3, 2009

Leads to: The Mark of Cain

Quite simply, some of us never picked up basic social norms during childhood. Consider: one can almost tell a Brit and an American apart by their age lines. Each adheres to a different set of orthodox facial expressions. Any culture has what I call social choreography, a set of conventional body language that is for most people acquired and carried out subconsciously. When a career outsider like me walks into the room and is out of synch with the collective ‘rhythm’, those who belong perceive that something is ‘foreign’ about me without knowing why.

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