A major contradiction has been brewing in my mind sometime, that bubbled to the surface in my dissertation but received little attention. It is between the need for society to have positive direction, both for sustainability but especially to be able to overcome the problems we face today, and the impossibility of impressing direction upon people without falling into a kind of totalitarianism of the mind and spirit. I think (as usual) that hackers and other free, productive communities show the way to an extent insofar as they move the locus of attention from revolutionary change throughout society to revolt and transformation in individuals and communities. Let me explain some thoughts that I'm only really beginning to understand myself...

One the one hand, society needs positive direction. Western societies, which generally value abstracts such as money or 'individual liberty', and unattainable or nebulous states of mind such as happiness, will always lead to a profound narcissism; a society incapable of making necessary collective decisions that may harm, in the short term, us as individuals or us as particular communities. Capitalist societies tend to lead to disconnection between peoples, and between people and their environment; work is characterised by a lack of fulfilment; ecosystems are ravaged; and so on. Each of these depressing characteristics is only mitigated where people rebel against the basis of capitalism - capital - and see inherent value in, for example, interpersonal relationships, meaningful work, other life forms, and so on. Though this is a grand generalisation, I'd say that capitalism, monotheistic religions that claim some special place outside of nature for humans, and the worship of science and reason have both contributed to and driven some of the most pressing problems of today. Why? Because they create an unquestioned basis that is, either in part or wholly, unhealthy.

However, on the other hand the positive direction needs to be both something that society as a whole develops and follows, and something that each of us on a personal level can do. We can generalise across our species, and to an extent in certain cultures, about values like how we connect to nature; do we industrialise all those processes that might bring us closer, losing any connection, or do we foster and understand our environment and how we work as part of it? But only I can understand what fulfils me, what I need from interpersonal relationships, and so on. Societies that have sought top-down approaches are, by their very nature, totalitarian. When Lenin and Stalin abandoned the communist soviet/village style of governance in favour of mass, mechanised, industrial production methods, they amplified the terrible alienation already felt by labourers by giving them no real control over decisions that affect them, over their work and their products, over their place in society. As an activist in a minority - because most people aren't discussing or mobilising about pressing issues of the day - I also face the problem that I haven't the platform to impress my ideas upon the whole of society (which is possibly a good thing ;-). I can only affect people on a inter-personal and community level, unless I want to sell out on a lot of my principles and become part of an institution with a national platform.

So, what is to be done? How should we balance the need for positive direction with the impossibility of impressing it in a convivial manner? Or in less academic words, how can we start to change the way that people think such that lifestyles and elections actually move us closer to sustainability, without dictating to people what they should do?

The solution has to be in creating and broadening spaces in which life unfolds freely, by which I mean parts of our life where we can take control with other people, be relatively autonomous, live healthily, do things that fulfil us, recognise our place in the ecosystem, and so on. For me, at least, promoting the hacker ethic is a big part of this, because the hacker ethic emphasises most of these things (though it lacks an ecological component). Working on Remix Reading, I can try to bring people into a space in which their lives can unfold freely, in which they will become more aware of values besides capital. The more we can do this, the more we undermine the grip that consumerism and the Tories and the politics of fear and selfishness and short-sighted policy have on society.

Approaches to life and thinking

But it also has to be more than that. People could live really wonderful, freely unfolding lives and still be short sighted. It also requires a change in attitude, which means two things.

The first is well represented with the following cross:

This takes some explaining. Each axis aligns to opposites that complement one another. So we need to both be active and reflective; we act, then we reflect upon our actions, then we act, and so on. Without both, or with a poor balance, we cannot hope to move in a positive direction. Likewise we ought to balance creation with consumption. In my opinion, a lot of people in Western society consume a lot, create very little, and act a little with next to no reflection. This causes a huge imbalance towards short-term consumption - in other words, consumerism.

So why the cross? Well, whilst each opposite complements the other, so the two axes reinforce each other. Creation requires a balance of action and reflection; action requires a balance of creation and consumption; and so on.

Creating this fourfold representation required the consumption of existing literature, and the creation of new representations. Now I want to both act and reflect upon on.

The second takes a similar form, but represents modes of thinking:

I want to think both on my own, sitting and considering ideas I have, and socially, bouncing those ideas off others. I also want to be aware of myself and of my place in nature, so that I neither fall into the trap of narcissism nor of losing myself in a wider whole. If we try to apply reason alone we will fail to think through big questions. The triumph of economics over politics, ethics, honest spirituality and other intellectual frameworks is an extreme poverty of mind, and a disaster for society. One thing that often frustrates me when studying analytical philosophy and political theory is the tendency to work towards extremes rather than to seek understanding of opposites. For example, ideologues posit the individual, the collective or society as the ultimate point of reference. But how can we begin to understand the individual and his/her rights if not as part of communities, as part of a society, as part of an environment or ecology, as well as the obvious - as a unique individual? Any theory that attempts to build an entire system of thought on the exclusive emphasis on one aspect of an issue, for example on action at the expense of reflection, is bound to fail.

The idea of creating these fourfold representations is relatively simple. They help me understand connections between ideas, to place them in context and see how they might be important. They're a handy kind of mental exercise, though it'd difficult to do it honestly and not just lump a few words together and feel clever!

All of this may seem rather obvious - in a way I hope it is - but it is something that I consider important. If we can promote and enlarge these spaces in which life unfolds freely, in which people can think properly about issues, we might at least stand some chance of moving towards a better world. It certainly beats banging the drum of revolution or just lobbying politicians endlessly!