As a huge fan of
bOING bOING (having been hanging around the magazine's progenitors when it was a print magazine, back in the Gultch days, and sharing office space with MIGHT magazine in San Fran), and as
one of the long-standing makers of the
culture obscura their talented group reports so enthusiastically upon, I have a request to make of them as some of the most responsible and ingenious journalists of our day.
It is this. Stop encouraging people to vote please.
In fact, what I am indeed asking of the group members of bOING bOING is to cease
encouraging people to rely on the functions of a corrupted mechanism,
and to (dedicatedly) encourage the consideration and examination of options (and optional standards) located outside of the moment's dialogue of "paradigm" (sic).
About a month ago, in public space somewhere in the Florida Keys, I happened upon a young man wearing a t-shirt which succinctly captured my position. It read,
"If voting changed anything,
it would be illegal"
Complimenting the t-shirt's wearer, and inquiring of the individual as to it's make and from whence it came, he explained his friend "made them by hand." I later googled the phrase, and learned it is attributed to (Lithuanian-born) American anarchist
Emma Goldman, and popular with anarchist groups world-over.
But as a slogan and motto, in this particular era we have misfortunately found ourselves sorting through together, I say in America, it's time has come. And bOING bOING, as reporters on movements in public sentiment and rationality, I ask request that rather than continue to prolong the agony and death-throes of what we had, you now encourage (by report) the birth of what is to come.
What is to come, then,
post-9/11, post-America?
Space, for one. As in
outer space. It is unquestionable that our present situation here on earth is untenable. That is, there are two distinct groups living on this planet. An unpopular idea only because within the each of the two groups there are many beliefs, ideas, and opinions. But for better of for worse, here, as I see it, is the two groups living on the planet earth at this very moment.
Astronauts (for lack of a better term), and everyone else.
Personally, like so many of us, I know I was born to live off planet in space. For one, I know because I realize earth to be so unique and so special. It's make-up is of a nature as to practically guarantee
homo sapiens are to make such a leap, leaving here and moving out and off-planet. But like our proverbial ancestor who decided living in the tree was a better idea than living on the ground, so to is the separation between those of us looking to the stars for new expression of freedom and growth and identity, and those of us happy to stay as they are.
How is "as they are?" It is how it is. But it isn't tolerant and it isn't unafraid and it isn't respectful, and worst of all, it isn't loving.
Loving is what our kind does best. And, apparently, astronauts do it in stages. And apparently, this is one of those stages.
But let's stop beating around the Bush, as it were. The differences between we, who are (pre-)determined to move outwards and onwards, and they, who are satisfied with present conditions, are irreconcilable. And this isn't conjecture, it's evolution.
The joke goes, "Why do we not teach the monkey to talk? Because it wastes our time and pisses off the monkey," but the humor gives way to the adages' wisdom. Voting is not our way because the mechanism itself is inherently flawed, tainted by the short-sightedness of its small-minded operators, like a real Disney World built by us all, but being run by the nazi-minded.
Voting on machines whose software is intentionally maligned to do the will of the contractually-obligated friends and owners of the bosses of the software (and hardware) developers is like playing slot machines built only to receive coins but never to pay off. It isn't an exercise of free will, it's only an exercise.
Furthermore, imagining this situation to be hopeless with regards to our future - the future of off-worlders - is to give the organizations of the people who have chosen to stay put here on earth too
much goodwill (for being interested in conversion of their views), and too
little credit (for the consciousness of their choices). Whoever is "happy" and "ok" with the dramacronistic antics and tactics of the TSA/RIAA/TSA's DRM/RIFD
is so inconvertibly and non-upgradeable. They should be left to their own, and interacted with in the same way we utilize, say, an working Atari 2600, Commodore 64, or Apple II. That is, respectfully, but as an amusement, hobby, or diversion, but not as a serious or practical application of contemporary standards and directions.
In other words, encouraging voting, as it is presently situated, is either pro-manipulation or anti-reality, but in any case this is counter-productive, counter-intuitive, and, really, at this point, uninteresting.
To everyone who may not have started with a proclivity for cultural dissonance and creative anarchy but who have since developed a predisposition for it), remember Emma Goldman also gets credit for saying, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
Once again, bOING bOING, stop encouraging people to vote please (but keep on encouraging people). I want to get to space, and killer stingrays and falling pianos withstanding, I will. But in the mean time, the bad monkeys are killing us using factory-reconditioned components of a grossly-obsolete political machine.
So voting no longer works for us. That's alright. The question is not "what is it that we should do?" it is "what is it that we should do...
and that's fun?!" I may not know much, but I have come to depend of the metaphoric truth of one thing, which is this. "If the women are dancing, everybody's happy." And right now, bb,
the women ain't dancing!
