On 02/06/2017 07:32 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> One fine gem is the fact that the generally accepted most brilliant Chess 
> Player of all time, Garry Kasparov is a Tweeter and is one of Vlad's (Putin, 
> not Burachynsky) greatest critics!

Yep.  I didn't realize how much of a public intellectual he was till that 
article.

> Trump-bashing aside,  I like your point(s) about self-policing/governance and 
> membership in a community.   I think community membership it *is* a slippery 
> but key topic.  I think we are suffering from a massive "tragedy of the 
> commons",  where facts and truth, while somewhat mutable *are* part of the 
> commons.  Or perhaps more to the point, Language is part of the commons, and 
> it has been pretty thoroughly mangled in many quarters.

Very cool.  I hadn't thought of the problem as one of the commons.  My 
Trump-voting neighbor interrupted my yard work sometime before the election 
complaining about how the internet (and TV and phones) separated us from each 
other.  I mumbled something about urban vs. rural populations and tried to go 
back to work.  But I think there's something important there.  Our increasing 
ability to choose our own bubble, albeit in a weak identify-with way, not a 
member-of way, is a large part of the problem.  I think Nick's "problematizers" 
are really just opportunists jumping into that impoverished medium.

> Your distinction between "identifying with" and "participating in" is 
> particularly apt.  In our modern culture, it feels as if our consumerism has 
> lead us to "identifying with" as a substitute for "participating in"... 
> Further in-depth analysis seems worthwhile.

The locals who manage our part of the city keep trying to put me into some 
position of responsibility.  I continue to tell them that I don't have the 
right temperament for such a position, mostly because I enjoy both 
contrarianism and a bit of anarchy ... let's call it "annealing" ... adding 
enough heat to disrupt the current order just enough to (perhaps) bring it back 
into a better optimum.  They're assuming my persnickety dialogue is an attempt 
to do things right or find the truth.  But it's actually just heat.

It's interesting that _they_ see me as belonging to the community because I 
participate, whereas I see me as simply twitching for a good time.

-- 
␦glen?

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