Godwin's Law

I wrote about Godwin's Law way back in January of '07, soon after I had started this here blog. Well it clearly has been too long because I have run into several discussions recently where a good dose of Mr. Godwin's logic would have served all parties well.

Here goes:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an early principle of Internet dialog or it damn well should be. This sanguine postulation was formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law makes the trenchant observation that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis, Fascists or Hitler approaches one." 


Or to state it less mathematically: some lame ass who can't really think for himself is going to call the other guy a Nazi or a Fascist or even Adolf himself. Sooner or later as the discussion heats up and the flaming begins, someone will pull out this universally overused analogy. Generally the user cannot spell analogy nor pronounce fascist.


Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion, electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms and more recently blog comment talk pages. To this I would add any and all group discussions particularly one that involves the potential consumption of large amounts of wine. [Oops, did I give too much away there. Will they know I am writing about them?]

Circulation of Elites

An academic friend tells the story of being asked about the 'revolution' in Egypt and replying: "It's not a revolution, they aren't changing the government only the names on the masthead." That basically describes the principle known as the Circulation of Elites. Vilfredo Pareto is credited with postulating this theory in the late 1800s. He suggested that political and therefore governmental change is nearly always the result of one elite replacing another. And despite the images on television and the internet it is not clear that Egypt was a popular uprising or simply a popular following of the new elite.

Most of the talk about democracy comes from outside Egypt. It appears what most Egyptians wanted was the removal of a tyrant who had ruled for three decades. Time will tell if any actual governmental or political change will result from the departure of the most recent elite. 

Revolutions, on the other hand, sweep the old regime from power and replace it with a new government. Not always a new form of government and not always a better one for those who were actually in the streets doing the revolting. You could use Cuba as an example to prove either point of view here. But one might better look to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989, where actually governmental change (communist to democratic) did take place and then either did or did not sustain itself depending on your political point of view.

There are those who would argue that bloodless revolution is an oxymoron. Others might look to the old adage 'revolution is the result of a nation pregnant with itself.' Both good solid political arguments, which may or may not speak to what is actually happening in the backrooms throughout the region. What remains to be seen is what actually did happen in Egypt. Was it a revolution? Probably not. Was it a change of elites? Most likely. What will be the eventual outcome? Ah, well there lies the piece for the historians. 

Now what about Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Libya and . . .


[It has been pointed out to me by the aforementioned "academic friend" that Ibn Khaldun back in 1377 proposed the theory of the "oscillation of elites," which may be an even more explanatory model as it suggests that elites not only supplant each other but they also recycle (oscillate) and recirculate through the corridors of political power.]

--

art - Clay Bennett in The Christian Science Monitor

Facebook Reality

Yes I have a facebook account. No you don't capitalize facebook. No facebook is not Big Brother, more like a big sister who is a fifteen year old gossip, an addicted texter and isn't bright enough to be on Jersey Shore.

But there are lessons to be learned from facebook or any other social networking site. First thing everyone needs to admit is that all of these websites are businesses. They are trying to turn a profit either by selling you stuff or selling your stuff. Your stuff being your personal information and internet preferences. If you equate capitalism with evil then they are indeed the spawn of satan. If you believe otherwise then you are a fool but facebook is no more evil than Bank of America or McDonalds.

But back to those lessons to be learned. Here are several examples I have gleaned from facebook.

My nephew has finally taken heed to his father's and my comments that someday he would actually want to apply for a real job and what is out there on the internet with his name attached will be there for all of his potential employers to find and consider right along with his college transcript. My rather bright nephew has found a way to play at will on facebook without having all of those beers and babes attached to his name. I am not going to give away his secret, but I will say -- Well Done Mister!

Next, in the category of double-edged sword, you will be judged by the content you post on facebook. Be sure you are reflecting the real you. I had a couple of coffee dates with a very nice lady, life intervened and our only contact for awhile was what each of us revealed online. In my case there is this blog, in hers there was her facebook page. Bottom line, I liked the person I met face to face; I really didn't care for the facebook version and that soured any future relationship.

In a similar vein, I know of two examples of rejected lovers following their former partner on facebook and coming away with exactly the same impression: "How did I ever think it would work with him/her."

Now part of this disjuncture has to do with the superficiality that pervades facebook and all the other social networking sites. They do not exactly encourage depth or insight. But even those who attempt to deepen the context seem destined to failure. I know I have a friend, someone I thought was becoming a close friend, but after following her for several months I was simply bored by the thin content of what she reflected as her life.

Final example. If you have something important in your life, like a philosophy or a mission; be careful how you reflect that on the net. I actually was asked to engage in a "conversation of depth" with a three people I thought were substantial. But after reviewing their facebook posts over the last year it was clear that they are deeply into the most superficial new age gloss on reality.

You know you can hide someone's posts on facebook without unfriending them. It's a way to not say to their facebook face: "You're an idiot!"
--
Big Brother/Facebook poster from collegecandy.com

A Thousand Words

I apologize that I don't have a high-end camera so that I might show you what I saw last night. These photos lifted from the web are only faint shadows of what I will describe for you. But words are my craft so perhaps it is appropriate that I capture the experience with my digits instead of digitally.

Sunset last night was just north of the Golden Gate, after the sun had set behind the Marin Headlands the sky glowed with an orange/blue layered effect. The horizon grew a brighter and deeper orange and the sky above remained illuminated in shades of blue. Of course, I have quite a view from the apartment, I can see nearly fifty miles of San Francisco Bay coastline on each side of the Bay. The City of San Francisco sparkled in the middle of the tableau. 

It was then that I noticed a thin crescent moon just to the south of the City, I knew the moon was setting and wondered if it would plunge into the cityscape below. As I watched the lunar progress it slid lower and slightly further north on its way to the sea. The moon was indeed going to set right over the towers of downtown San Francisco. As I watched through my Super Giant Astronomical Binoculars I glanced down to see with my naked eyes where the moon might impact the City when I noticed something out of place, something very orange. 

It seems that in celebration of the baseball SF Giants making the MLB playoffs, several landmarks have had their normal lighting changed to Giant orange. Coit Tower was one of those attractions, so last night it glowed brilliantly orange. When I looked up again the white crescent had begun to yellow and I realized that the moon takes on yellow and orange hues as it declines through the atmosphere.

You perhaps can imagine what happened next, in the now black sky, a very orange crescent descended directly over a very orange tower and all of my desires to capture the moment peaked. It was simply visually stunning . . . and just when I thought I was seeing natural perfection linked with man-made construction, the final passage began.

As the moon lowered into the atmosphere of the ocean behind the SF peninsula, it also descended into the heat footprint of the City. In the last ten minutes the sharply defined edges of the crescent began to mottle, the sky and the moon began to blur together, the brilliant orange moon became an organic cantaloupe with bumps and depressions along its leading edge.

I made one more false assumption that the moon would sink behind the City as the sun had sunk beyond the Headlands but instead with the double atmosphere of the Pacific and the City, the lower edge of the crescent moon simply dissolved just as the Cheshire Cat had. Slowly the moon disappeared as the dark below consumed it. As the last third stood just above Telegraph Hill, anyone looking up for the first time might have wondered at the strange triangular cloud dimly orange in the night sky.

Wish you had been here to see it with me.

Quote Quagmire

Yesterday several news director felt it "newsworthy" and reportable that Frito-Lay was replacing a recyclable chip bag because of noise complaints from customer. I felt that really was not worthy of reportage until I came across another story about two different groups of cheerleaders, one group was complaining that their uniforms were too revealing -- the other, of course, felt their costumes were too modest, which led to this quotation:

"If nothing else, the two divergent pleas provide an intriguing case study for why establishing national cheerleading uniform standards might be justified."

Please allow for a moment to mull the concept that elected officials at some level might now be spending time, energy and potentially tax dollars pondering national cheerleading uniform standards. And if this comes to pass would the standards be the same throughout this great nation, making them uniform uniform standards?

This, of course, led me to my 'saved quotes' file. I offer these without comment for your appreciation, contemplation and derision:

On the contemplation of life: "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice invariably says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

On caring for oneself: "Health food may be good for the conscience, but Haagen Dazs taste a hell of a lot better."

On the difference between men and women: "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."

On life, dating and/or something else: "Sometimes it's barely worth chewing through the restraints."

On politics, the Tea Party and jihad: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."


On advice and wisdom: "Enjoy life, this is not a dress rehearsal."

Tools or Words?

I tend to pay attention to synchronicity, which is to say that when recurring images or thoughts, phrases, songs, personages, situations, nouns, verbs, physical traits or other ephemera repeat themselves within range of my seven senses, I take note. Lately, there seems to be a debate, indeed a reengagement of a conversation about what makes homo sapien the dominant species on planet earth.

The two sides are quite simply: language or tools. Now obviously the answer is -- both! But that does not settle the argument, at least not in the academic circles of this circular universe. Today I encountered the following logic: when archeologists search for meaning in ancient human settlements besides human remains (bones) we typically look at cultural artifacts. Artifacts being the stuff we made. We made this stuff with tools, which are considered a higher order of artifact because they are created in order to create other things. With the exception of some primates and a few birds, we have no observable evidence of other species using tools and obsoletely none of any other animal creating a Sears catalog to desseminate their tools.

Now the language folks would point out that an even higher order of artifact is the written word in the form of books, scrolls, tablets, cave paintings and even remnants in oral traditions. I would add that when one of our historic or pre-historic ancestors innovated and build a better hammer or mousetrap; the culture was more likely to be transformed or paradigm shifted when the caveguy next door could come over and say: "How'd ya do dat?"

I brought this up because in a skype conversation last night, one of my younger but wiser friends offered that language itself is an artifact but whether it is higher or lower order is really irrelevant particularly because the discussion is taking place in language, which makes words both mundane and sacred to us and perhaps the debate ---- well . . . academic?

We Used to Speak the Same Language

Recently one of my friends asked for some help, a bit of assistance with a project. He/she told me that if I went to the museum and looked at the sculpture in viewing room #4 and then went to the gift shop and purchased the replica of the key depicted in that sculpture, I would have all I needed to complete the requested favor/task.

Being a friend, I did indeed go to the museum and found viewing room #4 but alas, there was not a single sculpture in that gallery. So I inquired of my friend about this mystery. She/he was unable to get back to me until later that evening, but then told me that I had gone to the wrong museum but not to worry the same key could be found in a local art store near where I lived. She seemed a bit stressed, so I did not make a point of the "wrong museum" being the one he had originally directed me to.

I googled the location of the art store and discovered it was not anywhere near where I lived but if one store had the key then why not another. After a bit of searching, I found an establishment with the same key and I picked it up the following day. I then called my friend again, only to discover that he had gone out of town until next Monday, which apparently was why she needed my help in the first place.

The key, however, had to be delivered by this Friday in order for the task to be successfully completed. Since my friend would not be back in town until Monday and she had not given me the destination for the delivery, it would seem like all was for naught. Further, he was not answering her cell phone.

Making one last attempt to salvage the endeavor, I called my friend's colleague from work and inquired about his knowledge, if any, of the process and discovered that the whole enterprise had been rethought and not only was delivery of the key not needed by Friday, apparently the key was not longer going to be required at all. So in the end my help was entirely unnecessary.

I have been sitting here reviewing this little escapade, which briefly goes something like this: a favor is asked of me, the favor is outlined with incorrect information, when I attempt to comply using initial instructions and discover the bad link, new allegedly simpler information is discovered, which too proves to be inaccurate. Through my own devices, I managed to acquire necessary item, which cannot be delivered in a timely manner, but which is no longer needed in any case. My friend managed to delivered incorrect information or instructions each and every time she spoke to me and neglected to tell me the entire project was no longer necessary before she up and left town.

After due consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I can shorten my list of friends by one inconsiderate flake and I now consider the entire adventure a complete success.

Internal Escalation

It would seem that a small but significant number of my friends have been engaged in something I have come to call internal escalation. For anyone familiar with customer service, I am not referring to the flowchartable concept of the same name that is used to bump complaining customers up the chain of command. No, I am referring to a tendency of some individuals to engage in an often self-defeating mode of overthinking. Personally I have been jousting with just such a concept in my writing the last week or so, prompted by a fictional Tibetan monk suggesting:

"An excess of reason is itself a form of madness."

Internal escalation is a process wherein a single individual, on their own, without consultation nor confirmation takes a piece of information, an impression, a snippet of reality or not and mentates on that singular iota of interiority and expands it to the brink of implosion, explosion or madness. More than simply overthinking, internal escalation adds facts, scenes, dialog and potentially wild outcomes to what to others might have been a mere tangent or passing phrase.

The problem with simply stamping out such behavior is that internal escalation lies very close to magical thinking. Again, let me make a distinction. I am not talking here about the definition of magical thinking which says that it involves the belief that thought is the same as action; that can be the stuff of madness and Prozac. I refer rather to the realm of magical thinking where it is believed the sentient thinking does have an effect on the natural world. Interesting how many scientific people "know" that the natural world affects our rational processes but they cannot conceive that it works in the other direction.

So to my many internally escalating friends. Go forth and ponder the world, all these worlds. However, show caution. Stay moderately in touch both with ordinary reality and with other adventurers in the realms of magic. Beyond here there be dragons, so proceed with the Audubon guide to basilisks, hydras and wyverns. And call if you get lost.

[It seems every time I attempted to type escalation, I thumbed out excalation. So I thought I had better look it up. Excalation: The absence, suppression, or failure to develop one member of a series, such as a finger or vertebra. Who knew?]

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photo credit: archives

What's in a Word?

Since I began referring to my current status as undomiciled, I have received suggestions that there were perhaps other ways to describe my status. Two of my commentators have used the term - peripatetic. One said: "you appear to be peripatetic once again".

Strictly speaking, peripatetic means walking from place to place. It has come to imply the act of traveling about in some kind of itinerant manner. In that respect the word does seem fitting to my current endeavours. But it was further pointed out that the word also refers to followers of Aristotle, who it is believed were given his teachings whilst they walked with him about the Lyceum in Athens. And while I am not in a particularly Aristotlean frame of mind, I am pondering a few philosophical avenues that appear to be influencing my life these days.

Another reader wondered if this wander might be some sort of "automobilized walkabout". Interesting thought that. I think the major difference is that a true aboriginal walkabout is meant to be taken on foot in order for the individual to be close to the land. I am seeking most of my wisdom from people and the highway travel allows me to seek them out over some far scattered distances. But the element of seeking or searching is certainly foregrounded in my current journeys.

The final vocabulary selection for today is mine - panoptic. By definition, panoptic refers to everything that is visible in one view. Often it usage leans towards a totality of view, that which one might have from on high, like in an aerial view. I am seeking some perspective on my current place in a transitory world. So I am looking at my recent past and asking myself how the last few years will inform and influence my near future. What I am discovering thus far is that I may indeed be going back to the future. Here come the nineties all over again.

Another geographical shift appears imminent.