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How To Frame Yourself: A Framing Memo For Occupy Wall Street
I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.
About framing: It’s normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.
In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it’s wrong! Or because it doesn’t matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda. 
photo: Tom Giebel
Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics
Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is “deserving,” defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative “democracy” is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.
Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.
The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one’s family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it on their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.
A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population — the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.
It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement — whatever those particular changes might be.
A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street
I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.
It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.
We Love America. We’re Here to Fix It
I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country — a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That’s what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.
Publicize the Public
Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, … That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.
All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.
Democracy should be about the 99%
Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.
Strong Wages Make a Strong America
Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.
Global Citizenship
America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.
Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?
Nature
We are part of nature. Nature makes us, and all that we love, possible. Yet we are destroying Nature through global warming and other forms of ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.
At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms, tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves, and fires that have devastated huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and blizzards. Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm, but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of the storm and the amount of water it carries. In winter, evaporated water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow northeast over the arctic, and fall as record snows.
We depend on nature – on clean air, water, food, and a livable climate. And we find beauty and grandeur in nature, and a sense of awe that makes life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature. And a fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have known it.
Summary
OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from citizens caring about one another as well as themselves, and acting with both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about The Public, and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment to the preservation of nature.
From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns all flow from one moral focus.
Elections
The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it too brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.
A Warning
This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral in calling for debt relief. Positive and moral in upholding laws, as they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99% as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress the positive and the moral.
Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.
I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let’s find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same. You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.
Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths.
Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.
- Posted in
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286 Comments so far
Show AllYes, the right has used framing to mislead people. So because some people have used scissors to attack others you will not wear clothing?
Because some people have used electricity to kill others you will not convert to solar or wind?
Because some people have used food to feed armies you will no longer eat?
Because some people.... well, you can see that this kind of thinking is going to lead you to sit in a corner, in a puddle of feces and urine, and die. (except corners and puddles also have associations with evil, as do all manner of suicides. Wow. There's no way out!
Framing is a way to express truth in a way that people can understand it.
If you were expressing the truth, there would be no need to "frame" it so that people would understand it. The underlying assumption that "framing" is needed is arrogant and condescending and elitist. It reflects an attitude toward people of contempt.
Regardless of the purpose people may have, or claim to have, when they lie it is still lying. You ask "because some people have used food to feed armies you will no longer eat?" Here is a more appropriate way to look at this: Because some people have used sales pitches to sell people food that actually harms them, we suspect sales pitches from the corporation about food, and we resist calls for more sales pitches about food regardless of the supposed "cause." Why? Because that approach is so easily hijacked - as we can so clearly see with what the corporations have done with organic food - and is so often is used to hide nefarious motives.
In the battle of "frames" the bad guys always win, because that approach gives them all of the advantages.
As to whether Lakoff is simply naive or is trying to "frame" us in order to herd us back into safe channels is not easily known, and does not really matter for the purposes of this discussion. There certainly is some evidence that Lakoff's agenda, witting or unwitting, is to prop up the failed Democratic party model for opposition to our antagonists.
We have no need to lie, and it is counter-productive to do so. The right wing lies - "frames things so that people can understand them" - because if they told the truth about their program there would be massive resistance to it.
Do you lack shame or self-awareness, Mike? You lie *constantly* (I've pointed out instances in this very thread). Are you so used to doing it that you're unaware, or do you have so much contempt for us that you believe we won't notice, or what exactly is it with you?
Let's focus on the message, and not the messenger, shall we?
People only resort to insinuations and speculation about the writer when they cannot refute what the writer said.
"People only resort to insinuations and speculation about the writer when they cannot refute what the writer said."
Oh, you mean like accusing someone of "red-baiting" when that person points out your own political sympathies? THAT sort of insinuation?
TA - you are one of the most prolific users of that tactic of anyone I have had "discussions" with on this site .... I can think of only one (well, maybe 2) other person(s) who do(es) it more ...
"Let's focus on the message, and not the messenger, shall we?"
Ah yes - that brings up tactic number 2 - misreading the person's message in such a way that you derail discussion of it, creating straw men in order to attack them, attempting to leave the impression that you have, indeed, "refuted" what the author said when you haven't gotten close to addressing it, let alone refuting it ...
TA
The underlying assumption of framing comes from science—observing that people do in fact frame differently, think differently, image differently. To attempt to discredit it with lies, denials of science, distractions, and twisting arguments is a waste of our time and threatens our movement.
If a thief uses a hammer to break into a house that was built with that hammer, should we stop trusting thieves or hammers? Your arguments are ridiculous and a waste of time and space. You’ve sidetracked this thread to the end. You can rest knowing you’ve convinced some uneducated, gullible people who were already ready to believe you because the way was prepared with framing.
OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT
WHEN the Occupy Wall Street Movement needs an anthem, it has to be Do You Hear the People Sing? From Les Miserables. The song is best heard with sub-titles from Les Miserable 25th Anniversary (2010) performance at the Royal Opera House, London
Do You Hear the People Sing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYizXBQ5EQA&NR=1
Recall Victor Hugo's immortal words:
“There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Here's are some great videos about protest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=QYOTe7V2DlA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsnbLqgLK0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ9ad90Lulc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZowiT5ZyRs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_V0NXFpSSA&feature=fvwrel (French)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_V0NXFpSSA&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMZ19aanrCw&feature=related (French)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t2OUXiUPos&feature=related (Chinese)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOKfwtMeyFg (Spanish)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD_QOrQDjyQ (Spanish sub-titles)
LYRICS
Lyrics to Do You Hear The People Sing:
Enjolras
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Lyrics www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/les_miserables/
Combeferre
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Courfeyrac
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!!
All
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Feuilly
Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!
All
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes
Arise! People of our true American Democracy and take back our nation from the coils of the Corporate State of America! See: http://thedragonsteeth.wetpaint.com/page/THE+NEW+PARTY
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@gmail.com
OPEN LETTER TO THE 1% FROM THE 99%
Your only hope is to recuse yourselves from control of the national political and economic system. You will need to plead for foregivness from the masses of folks upon whom you have imposed hurt, damage, degration, and dismissal of their hopes. Your burden is heavy. You and your predecessors over the past one to three or so hundred years have financed and enviggled governments to fight hideous wars. You have installed dictators and supported them, knowing of their will to murder their fellow humans and impost great deprivation upon them. Worse, you have used the media to divert the folks' attention from their woes created and imposed by you – a gigantic wasteland of radio, television, movies and national diversions. You have intentionally “dumbed down” the average citizens by refusing to support high quality education among all residents of the nation. You threaten further deprivations of shelter, food, jobs, education and health care.
You have contributed your wealth to your personal pleasures while homeless folks suffer wretched conditions of existence. You have excellent food, shelter and medical care while great numbers of us sleep in poor and inadquate shelters – or no shelter at all – and suffer from our disabilities. You have used your exteme wealth to buy our elected represenatives while at the same time hoovering great wealth from the masses. You have annointed the winners in the political and economic games you play, and dismissed those chosen by you to lose, with impunity. You throw good, competent and loyal workers from local jobs and move your factories to slave labor nations ruled by your former “communist” enemies. Your hippocracy is evermore transparent.
You pretend to be terribly concerned about the Federal debt, yet your coporate enterprises have been the chief beneficeries of the transfer of wealth thereby exploding the public debt. Your banks first throw fake money at the DOTCOM sectors and the real estate sectors, driving huge economic bubbles. Then you unload the risks on late entrants who try to “score” the same as you have done. They get caught as the Money Masters pull the triggers for the ensuring depressions. The banksters then gobble up equities of vast numbers of Americans who were led by you to believe in the American Dream. You turned those dreams into nightmares.
You have much to answer for. It is better that you admit the failures of your attempts to rule the nation by the creation and operation of the Corporate State of America. Your actions will be carefully monitored by us, the 99%. If your actions are found wanting, you will surely pay a greater price. We will change how our nation is governed. We will change how our life's hopes are spun. We will change how to claim the value and benefits of our labors, to the exclusion of your corporate enterprises. Your perks and privileges, extracted by bribery of the cowards you have caused to be elected to public office, will dissolve into nothing. Act now! Delay and resistance will most certainly embolden the 99%.
The Ninety-Nine Percent
The CORPORATION is central to this issue. Specifically, artificial personhood.
Without the corporation as a front, the "Private" that Lakoff speaks of would have no innate leverage over the "Public".
The corporate business form floats the wrong people to the top of the "Private" moral view and empowers them by insulating them from accountability to society and nature. From that high perch they then betray both Public and Private commonsense frames of what a successful society is.
Nationally and globally, those flesh-and-blood people have a lock on that setup. However, coming into play are character flaws and systemic internal contradictions that even the most casual observer can see blaring the immanent collapse of such a system.
Just as animals can perceive an earthquake well before it happens, #OWS, even T-Partyers, know it's a house of cards that cannot withstand either/both such imbalance of wealth/power, and/or the force of Nature juiced by the effects of corporate-enabled choices.
Dissenters are the canaries in the coal mine, and they are chirping now.
If they go silent and nothing changes...I'd head for cover.
Representative, Regulated Government is & always will be a FAIL. It's growth must be constrained by The*People. What's needed is a Transitional Tool that provides both immediate & long term change. Individual Directed Capitalization, Empowering The*People to direct public funding creates a DEVELOPMENT BUDGET that must be met by Corporate & Representative Power.. simple. Corporations Lobby for The*People, Elected Officials enact Directives of The*People. Regulations are scrutinized by The*People.
Us vs Them will FAIL & only serves 2 ignite the spark Look@King & Gandhi the FOCUS is on a Single Moral ACTION that SHIFTS POWER while galvanizing the debate & fringe support into Unified Agreement that creates MASS Appeal & delivers both immediate & long term change. Many of "Them" agree with you & demonizing limits that support. Empowering The*People to direct public funding creates a DEVELOPMENT BUDGET that must be met by Corporate & Representative Power... simple.
One*Demand My*1040 + Control the funding & YOU+The*People Direct Development & Corporations MUST LOBBY YOU+The*People One*Demand My*1040 Individual Directed Capitalization + iDC 65% of Your tax contribution directed & spent in the areas of public funding of YOUR CHOICE Power+2+The*Peaceful +My*1040+ Tea Party, Coffee Party, Any Party = The 99% DIVIDED-WE-FAIL Seize the Moral High Ground Unite the C.H.A.O.S. The Opportunity is N.O.W. Demand My*1040 Recovery Security Unity will Rapidly Develop
A system based on Individual Directed Capitalization creates unlimited funding growth due to the FACT that it's centered and valued upon human potential NOT limited resource or a global monetary gambling scheme... While @ the same time offering an incentive base for voluntary revenue increases to those capable of supporting higher rates of taxation by insuring a fixed rate over a certain time frame. Therefore tapping HUMAN POTENTIAL the TRUE PATH to PEACE.
i*have been to an Occupy & seen GREAT POTENTIAL for ACTION that would Unite this country & lead the way for other nations, especially those developing democracy, to directly empower The*People & shift away from being controlled by the NEXT Corporate installed DeMocRacy. This movement has the OPPORTUNITY to Unite the C.H.A.O.S. Don't WASTE IT + Demand My*1040 + Individual Directed Capitalization.... N.O.W.
The constitutional POLITICAL checks-and-balances in America have broken down, because the concentrated capital-ownership/money-ownership of the “1%” has allowed them to prostitute all three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — at all levels of government, from national, to state, to county, to municipal, to their interests, at the expense of the “99%”.
There is a group — the “Equitist Advocacy Group” — who have worked out a constitutional amendment to implement what they call “EQUITISM” — to establish constitutional ECONOMIC checks-and-balances so as to also resurrect our constitutional POLITICAL checks-and-balances.
Their website URL is http://www.equitism.org
As a result of the concentration of capital/money ownership in the “1%”, in my view, given the influence of ownership-concentrated economic power on politics, via our system of “legalized bribery” ["lobbying"] at all levels of government, not only economic justice, but all justice, and the rule of law itself, is breaking down as well.
The — now international — “Occupy Wall Street” movement is right in rallying people around present economic injustice to get started.
However, the movement will not get much further if it does not get on to solutions soon!
That brings me to a leaflet that was handed out at the Friday “Occupy Wall Street” rally in Eugene, which I attended.
That leaflet had two sections: “Diagnosis” and “Prescription”.
The “Diagnosis” section was the longer of the two, so I will only quote here its first sentence: “The self-continuation of the capitals-system predictably concentrates predominant capital ownership, & therefore predominant monetary power, & therefore predominant political power, in ever fewer hands”.
The “Diagnosis” section goes on to document the undue political influence, and specific democracy-subversive strategies, of particular plutocratic families, and, especially, of the Rockefeller family.
But the “Prescription” section is where a solution is proposed, brief in its expression, but vast in its implications, for a successor system to the present system, one which is NOT “socialism” [i.e., which is NOT "state-capitalism"], but something new. So I quote that section here in full:
“PRESCRIPTION:
Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY,
via –
•International boycotts of the products & “services” of global corporations who prostitute government policies.
•Equitarian Constitutional Reform / Equitarian Non-Violent Social Revolution — Constitutional establishment, via global ‘‘‘populist’’’ up-rising, of new, Universal Citizen Equity Rights, creating ECONOMIC checks-&-balances, to resuscitate the existing, political-only checks-&-balances, vitiated by concentrated economic power:
1. Citizen Externality Equity Rights — Popularly-elected, Boards of Public Directors in all localities, constraining the production of pollution, etc., “externalities” by enterprise local operating units’ private boards of directors / management committees. Popularly-elected Associations of Public Directors at the local, regional, national, &, eventually, continental & global levels reshape the geography of human society.
2. Citizen Birthright Equity Rights — A Social Trust Fund for each newborn Citizen, by right of birth, to help defray lifetime costs of education, re-training, health care, housing, etc., with legislated expenditure rules.
3. Citizen Stewardship Equity Rights — Competing, Citizen self-organized producers’ cooperatives that have qualifying business plans, & that are democratically self-managed internally, are granted stewardship of the social property needed to launch their cooperative enterprises, & to conduct their business plans, with two income streams for each stewardship cooperative member: an equal share in net profits of each stewardship cooperative for each of its members, & a job-based, skills-based competitive salary for each of its members.”
The “by-line” of this leaflet is “the Equitist Advocacy Group”, and the leaflet gives the URL http://www.equitism.org as a site where “constitutional amendments”, for implementing the above-described solution, are to be found.
This proposed solution my not be the answer, but, to my mind, it represents an attempt in the right direction, with the right scope: successor system to the present, [state-]capitalist system.
I hope to see a lot more thinking like this up for discussion in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement as it, hopefully, develops into a “populist” movement that can deliver solutions to the problems that it has so vividly highlighted.
Greetings fellow human of Oregon! :)
These ideas being promoted in the leaflet do not seem to be written in a language that is for the 99 percent, but maybe less than 1 percent of the 99 percent. Who put out the leaflet and how was it decided that it would be worded as it was?
All that is going on here is we are getting framed by the oligarchic elite! A semantic coincidence that I think reveals an essential truth.
Getting framed is a frame up of the worth sort for thinking activists.
Frame that Lakoff!
I'm sure it doesn't bother you to have so much ego and so little understanding, but it looks self-embarrassing from here. You appear to have almost no awareness of the dynamics that have kept the few in power almost everywhere during recorded history, and only the most meager, simplistic ideas about how those dynamics might be overcome. It makes me wonder whether anything you claim about your age and politics is even close to accurate.
Simplistic you say? Read this and see if you can come up with a coherent counterargument then we shall see is "simplistic," won't we? It's OK to use google to figure out what I am saying as I suspect some of the concepts may be new to you, smirk!
"OWS as a gathering of individuals unconstrained by ideology, talking points, or static lists of demands, allows for individual initiative being a form of parallel simultaneous creativity in formulating ideas as opposed to the static uniformity seen in a social movement with static demands. Parallel simultaneous creativity creates an eco-system of ideas, and the general assembly consensus process is the selection pressure to select for the best ideas. Thus, the combination of parallel simultaneous creativity and the general assembly process harnesses the power of evolution in meme section which is much more powerful in generating complexity and adaptability than static lists of demands. Because we are as diverse as the 99%, we are in essence creating a new society, and this is the way societies generate their best ideas is through individual initiative, and then societies dialog process to select the best ideas.
We wouldn't ask society to have a static list of demands, and neither should we ask the occupy movement to have one as that would kill the PROCESS we are using to evolve ideas quickly of high complexity, and high quality that are adapted to our local circumstances. Once people see how effective this model of an idea ecosystem, or alternately an idea economy is, they will want it in their communities to replace the more cumbersome slower moving pseudo democracy known as “representative” democracy. Just as Hayek said that markets will set prices efficiently without top down regulation, so too can local communities evolve ideas appropriate to their context quickly using the power of parallel creativity and the consensus process. Until people understand that the occupy movement is not merely a reform movement looking to petition government with a static list of demands, but rather a more humane, empowering for all individuals' social process, AND an idea eco-system/economy looking to wholly replace cumbersome top down political and economic structures, they are not going to understand the movement. Unmediated direct consensus democracy combined with self organized cooperation is thus not only a more just, fair, and humane way to live (and more fun), but actually is a social process that generates more complex and high quality ideas than top down processes like finance capitalism, and representative democracy. Our high quality complex ideas combined with the humane decency of addressing ALL peoples' needs in general assemblies means we will win in the long run, as top down empire is brittle as seen in the work of Joseph Tainter in how complex societies collapse.
http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6942
Whereas we are adaptable through the harnessing of parallel creativity and rapidly evolving ideas through the consensus process selecting the best ideas quickly compered to top down processes that have slower feedback loops. One could even posit that only a process of evolving ideas rapidly like the occupy model will allow us to survive in a time of ecology and economic turbulence that is going to demand the rapid generation of ideas to adapt to changing local conditions. For we are likely to face rapid change social, economic, and ecological in western society brought about by bad decisions, made in an unaccountable fashion, by the elite in our uncountable top down economic and political systems."
The only major hiccup to this thinking that I see right off the bat, in my humble opinion is that the less than 1 percent of the 99 percent are representing the 99 percent, in doing this they have no idea how the 98 percent would like to be represented unless they form a system of some sort that can represent them. This leaves us with a shift by 1 percent and leaves 98 percent still unrepresented. That 98 percent unrepresented and showing no obvious desire to be represented remains the problem. Perhaps the key is to reach the 98 percent through the internet and set up simple systems of input for all to have a form of input through which all 98 percent will then be considered/ processed by the other 1 percent. This would be an ever evolving format though. Challenging but exciting to think about.
"OWS as a gathering of individuals unconstrained by ideology"
----------------
Right away you expose how embarrassing a lack of political self-awarness they have -- and, it would seem, you share.
They're far from being "unconstrained by ideology"--the whole reason they're there is that they believe (that's the definition of "ideology": a values-oriented belief system) that the Really Big Chunks shouldn't have the power to do what they're doing to the rest of us. That they -and you- don't even realise they have a constraining ideology suggests that they -and you- are quite young, and not careful thinkers.
--------------------------------------
Parallel simultaneous creativity creates an eco-system of ideas, and the general assembly consensus process is the selection pressure to select for the best ideas. ...
Once people see how effective this model of an idea ecosystem, or alternately an idea economy is, they will want it in their communities to replace the more cumbersome slower moving pseudo democracy known as “representative” democracy.
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They write as though they've at a minimum discovered a new continent, if not an entirely new spacetime continuum.
What do they (and you) suppose people who're now my age were doing 45-55 years ago, when *they* sat in community sharing food, wine, dope, and blankets while they described the beautiful world of equality, peace, and plenty they saw in their hearts.
How much of what we have today is what they chose? If not much, then see whether you can explain why some ideas survived while others didn't (there are reasons!). When you've understood why it didn't work then, then you might get a glimmer of why doing all the same things again, which is what O** has been doing so far, is unlikely to work this time either.
The work of those counting themselves somewhere in the 99 percent should be nothing less than to be 100 percent true to the powers of love. This is not done through our power alone, but through the greater power we are of. We do not need to frame this power, we need to build within this frame of power. When we are it, then we will do it. You are either working with it or working against it. It is that simple. It is 100 percent the greatest challenge of our time. 99 percent of the people, 100 percent love.
How To Hang Yourself: A Self-Destruction Memo For Occupy Wall Street
I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to neuter and tame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be taming and neutering itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you defeat yourself, others will defeat you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. If you let others defeat you, it could be painful. You could be beaten, you could lose your job, you could be arrested. Better to defeat yourself, and then look for a safe landing place for yourself.
I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small errors in caving in and compromising could have large negative consequences - just look at what happened in Oakland! So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about destroying itself.
About self defeat: It’s normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. The alternatives are too scary! Besides, you will not be accepted in the better circles of the educated enlightened people if you run around talking all radical! Self defeat is found throughout the structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of submission-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, self defeat is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act. The key here is this - look out for number one!
In politics, self defeat ideas are always claimed to be part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, self defeat is presented as a moral enterprise: it supposedly says what the character of a movement is, when it actually is simply about different approaches to cringing and caving in to those in power. All partisan politics pretends to be "moral," when it is actually the exact opposite. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are "moral" when they are merely the safe things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it's risky! Or because it doesn’t matter! Some "moral principles" or other - really cowardly accommodation and self-preservation - lie behind every political policy agenda.
I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let’s find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same. You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.
But, above all: get back into the system. Channel all of this energy into partisan electoral politics, before someone else forces you back into the system. Better safe than sorry!
How to Shoot Yourself in de Feet (or Some other Part of your Anatomy ...)
By all means listen to those who tell you to abandon the electoral system, those who (falsely) tell you that "the only choices you have are Ds/Rs" and there really is no point in using the polls to express your views and advance your agenda. Leave that entire field, and the power it has to pass legislation and promote policies that, quite obviously, have profound effects on your lives, to TPTB.
Yup - way to go!
(this message was approved by the campaign for TPTB)
Tell me how much success people have had trying to elect politicians not beholden to the money power in the last two generations? No compare that to the progress made by protestors outside the system.
There are really only three ways to make major changes in a system:
(a) persuade/force those in power inside the system to deliver
(b) replace those inside the system with people who need no persuading
(c) destroy the system (by violence, because those profiting from the system would strenuously resist its destruction) and devise a new system with the aforementioned people-who-need-no-persuading in power .
If you can think of another way, you can probably get a PolSci PhD out of it.
"There is nothing more difficult or dangerous, nor more uncertain of success, than to institute a new order of things in the world. For all those who profit by the current system will be your bitter enemies, while those who would profit by the new one will be but lukewarm supporters." (N. Machiavelli, "Il Principe", ca. 1522)
When have the 99% (more like the 75%) really banded together to turf out the scum? Never, so far; we instead have relied on begging the scum, which doesn't work even when all we're begging for is crumbs! When are we going to wise up?
Seriously, Mairead,
you can’t think of a single other alternative? You don’t know how India obtained its independence from Britain, or South Africa from racist minority rule, or the territories of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia? Hmmm. I have a hard time believing you are so ahistorical. How do you explain those victories if it’s so impossible for us now? Sorry to say I don’t think there’s any doctorate in rediscovering what everyone already knows.
How do you think you persuade people in power to deliver? Flowers and chocolates?
How do you think you go about replacing those inside the system?
Violence on the part of the poor and outside invites not only violence from the rich but fear on the part of most potential allies, who thus become allies of the rich against the violent ones. Didn’t September 2001 show how shocking violence delivered up the ladder is to those unfamiliar with the much more commonplace downward-directed beatings? Non-violence, self-suffering and education are not only the most moral way to act they’re the most effective way to win.
Do you recall what Orwell wrote about Gandhi and non-violence? That if he'd tried it on any other country, Nazi Germany for example, he'd have been Nacht-und-Nebeled within the week and that would have been the end of it. Which in fact is precisely what happened to the idealistic, non-violent young pamphleteers of the Weiße Rose: caught, tried, convicted, hanged, The End.
Moreover, non-violence wasn't Gandhi's first choice. Alinsky quoted from Gandhi's writings: the Brits had disarmed the populace and occupied their minds as well as the country. Thus the only thing Gandhi had to work with was the people's passivity. If they couldn't be hedgehogged into doing more than sitting around, they could at least chant "English go home" while sitting.
One persuades the ones in power to deliver by explaining to them how much better things will be *for them* if they do. This usually doesn't work (I was being sarcastic), because they wouldn't need persuading if that were the case. The ones in power get excited when they make life hard for us - being able to exercise arbitrary power over us is a major part of their payoff. It's how they tell themselves that they're better than us.
One compels the ones in power to deliver by credibly showing that they won't be in power long unless they do deliver. The O** movement is in a funny place right now: they might be beggars, they might be an army. The ones in power don't yet know which (nor do we or, probably, they). If they're beggars, they can be ignored as per usual. But if they're an army, they have to be conquered or appeased (as an army their weapons might be bullets or ballots; the essence of an army is force no matter how applied).
One replaces those inside the system by killing them, either logically via the ballot box or physically via bullets, and empowering ones who will behave differently. That's something we haven't tried yet.
They laugh their arses off every time they force another lesser-evil on us, and laugh even harder when we discover the new evil wasn't lesser after all.
If we can get a dangerous dog to bite a stick rather than our arm, how do we keep it from dropping the stick and having another go at our arm? Pull on the stick!
Good post!
"One replaces those inside the system by killing them, either logically via the ballot box or physically via bullets, and empowering ones who will behave differently. That's something we haven't tried yet. "
Unfortunately, folks have tried removing those inside using one of those methods (bullets), always bad news, IMO, but, it is true, have not made a concerted, "targeted", sustained effort to use ballots. Too many dismiss the option without ever having really used it .. Rather like getting in a car, starting the engine, leaving it in neutral - then when you don't get anywhere, shutting down the engine, getting out, and walking away while disgustedly remarking, "this POS is no good!"
I do confess, however, i can't quite figure out your last sentence ...
You misrepresent the message of those with whom you disagree in order to make your rebuttal sound more plausible.
There is a concerted effort going on to channel any and all dissent back into partisan electoral politics, and to hold partisan electoral politics as the ultimate and most important form of political expression. Many of us are opposing that proposition, and pointing out that historically election results are the effect and not the cause of social and political change, and that efforts to channel dissent back into partisan electoral politics have been used to thwart and sabotage movements for social and political change.
But of course that's not what Aquifer is suggesting. "Partisan electoral politics" is not a synonym for "sham duopoly politics" except to those who want us to think that way --as seems to be your goal. The partisans can equally well be construed as the owner class vs the rest of us, and that's what Aquifer is talking about. I'm sure you could see that, if you wanted to look. Why don't you want to look?
I did not say, and would not say, that "partisan electoral politics is a synonym for sham duopoly politics."
I said what I said.
Mairead, thank you ...
TA knows quite well what I am saying - we have had lonnnnng drawn out discussions over this very issue before, on several occasions ....
TA doesn't want to look because it directly refutes on of the major tenets of his spiel - i.e the entire "system" must be done away with, and electoral politics (what i call voting for reps), apparently (though i could never pin him down, he is very slippery on this) is part of "the system", ergo voting for reps must be done away with.
Every time i point out the obvious - that someone will win the election and that the winners do, indeed, have a great deal of power via law, policy, etc. and that by refusing to participate we hand that power over to TPTB, and that anyone who advocates we do that is, unwittingly or not, carrying water for them - TA huffs and puffs, claims his position is misrepresented, though never says how, and will never admit the obvious. That is one argument he has no real answer for ...
Oh, you're welcome, Aquifer.
I find it hard to interpret in any charitable way Mike's preference for passive aggression, or his motives in dismissing the importance of electoral politics while choosing to work for the election of two candidates with visibly authoritarian, right-wing records (Clark in '04 and Edwards in '08). All that raises flags for me.
Hmm, thank you again, that is very interesting - you obviously know him as Mike from outside CD, I presume. My only exposure to him is as TA here on CD.
I generally try to sound someone out if i decide to engage with him/her wherein we disagree on an issue i feel strongly about - and have done so, ad nauseum, with TA regarding electoral politics - tit for tat, point for point, on several occasions.
Now I just cut to the chase - OK, don't vote, don't support a good candidate - help TPTB retain their hold on gov't.
I am a 4 time Nader voter, starting in '96 after Clinton pushed NAFTA -
I believe in ballots, not bullets (spent my working life in healthcare, to patch up wounds, not make them) and am perpetually frustrated when folks refuse to support good candidates and then complain there are no good choices ...
At this point Jill Stein seems to be a good candidate - www.jillstein.org - and I would like to see some energy coalesce in her direction - or we could waste time having endless discussions about lousy Ds and Rs and how awful it is that these are our "only" choices and whine, whine, whine ....
Yes, I first encountered Mike at a now-defunct site, The General Conversation, years ago, I couldn't even tell you how long. And my perception is that the persona he shows is probably his real one: very PC (in the original sense: power-seeking through smoothly saying the expected thing) on the surface with a lot of hostility he usually expresses in passive, indirect ways.
Apropos Jill Stein, I like what I've seen of her, and voted for her for governor (tho I thought that was in '04, not '02 -- I didn't bother to vote or even register last year). I doubt she'll get anywhere for president any more than Cynthia or Ralph did. Theresa Amato's book (she was Ralph's campaign manager) was an eye-opener for me on how the duopoly maintains its hegemony. I knew the situation was bad, but I'd honestly no idea how bad and felt both shocked and naïve, reading it.
I read Amato's book as well - a real eye opener; seems to me it should make even diehard Dems blush. But, frankly, what i got out of it was an even greater appreciation for Nader's ability to get on ballots in enough states that, in theory, he could have taken the electoral vote. In other words, in spite of the system, it wasn't lack of ballot access that was responsible for his poor showing ...
It seems to me, and i have argued elsewhere, that what helps to doom a candidate is the self fulfilling prophecy by would be supporters that "(s)he can't win, so why bother". In the dear old USA, we like "winners", so if we allow ourselves to be convinced that our otherwise desirable candidate "can't win" we don't bother to work for or support him/her - If even "supporters" propagate the "can't win" meme, how the heck to win over "outsiders"?
You "can't win" if you don't get votes - if people don't vote for you on the "a priori" assumption you can't win, you won't get votes, so then, obviously, you won't win.
I confess, what i fail to understand is why folks allow the "lesser evil" and "can't win" memes to interfere with their using their vote to choose who they WANT to win. I suspect, if we actually did that for a couple of cycles - the results would be gratifying indeed ...
I'm in complete agreement with you. I voted for Dennis in '04 and (you probably remember) he kept saying "vote your HOPEs not your fears". That, and the question he asked when he was in Oakland-- "Let's say it's the day after and we won. Okay, what did we win? Healthcare? Peace? Jobs? Anything? If we didn't win anything we wanted, who *really* won?" --were totally compelling to me, and I felt sure anyone with 2 active braincells would have an epiphany on hearing them. But of course they didn't, and he lost. And Ralph lost. And Cynthia lost in '08. And all because people voted their fears and tunnel-vision.
Which leads me to the explanation for my (very obscure!) dog-and-stick reference: the owner class doesn't give a damn about whether (e.g.) we smoke dope. So why do they keep it illegal?
Because as long as they can keep us focused on dope, or lack of healthcare or whatever the shiny object du jour is, we won't go for their throats (i.e. take the country away from them). We put all our energy into trying to get this or that stick away from them when what we should do is drop the goddamned stick and go for their jugular. But they pull on the stick and we reflexively clamp our jaws tighter --and they're safe.
We can't rip their throats out as long as they can keep us trying to take the stick away from them, so they keep tugging on the stick just hard enough and often enough to keep all our attention and energy bound up in this consequential but peripheral battle.
Grrrrrr.
I was Kucinich supporter - worked to get him on the ballot in '04, voted for him in the Dem primaries in NY in '04, '08 (his name was still on the ballot even though he had dropped out by then), then promptly voted for Ralph in the general election - to me it was an obvious segue ... However, when he caved on healthcare, it was clear that if even someone like himself would chose party over principle in the clinch - the Dems were, indeed, worse than worthless.
I have no illusions about the odds - all i know is that you cannot achieve what you cannot conceive. If you shoot yourself in the foot from the very beginning, do not blame "the system" for your limp.
Which segues ( :) ) into the need to go for the jugular - deprive them of their power base - the halls of government; for as much as we claim that TPTB are "in control" the question is what is the mechanism by which they exercise that control - the levers of government .. If they didn't need to control government, they wouldn't spend a dime on, or a moment in, interfering with elections ...
Reminds me of that Monty Python skit - where the knight is guarding the access to the bridge and the other guy comes along, and one by one he whacks off one of the knights limbs - the knight keeps spouting off, but eventually is powerless to prevent access ...
As soon as i clicked save - i remember an image from mythology (I am from those days when they were used as stories) - the many headed Hydra ( rats, can't remember the hero's name!); the hero and his buddies were battling the Hydra - whacking off heads right and left, but for each one whacked off, several more grew - until the secret was uncovered - there was a central head - whack that one and the beast is finished ..... (I am also a devotee of the Gordian Knot approach ... )
Which segues ( :) ) into the need to go for the jugular - deprive them of their power base - the halls of government; for as much as we claim that TPTB are "in control" the question is what is the mechanism by which they exercise that control - the levers of government .. If they didn't need to control government, they wouldn't spend a dime on, or a moment in, interfering with elections ...
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D'accord. It's like the difference between a revolution and a civil war: a revolution targets just the few people controlling the levers of government, and is over when enough people agree that the levers have changed hands. It might not even require shooting, as for example the coup d'etat in 2000 didn't. Whereas a civil war is brutal, messy, senseless and very hard to stop before everyone is dead.
In 1911 Oscar Ameringer wrote a pamphlet called "Socialism: what it is and how to get it" that makes for very interesting reading even now. In it, he made the same observation you did here: that if the rich didn't get anything from controlling government, they wouldn't bother trying. So (he suggested) we should take their wealth generator(s) away from them when they use their wealth to meddle in government. Buy them out using eminent domain: hand them lots of printing-press money and let them spend it on whatever they like - except politics or another wealth generator. I thought it made very good sense.
(I thought it was Theseus who knocked off the Hydra, but couldn't completely remember, so I checked and it was Herakles. It was the Minotaur that Theseus whacked. At least I got the region right.)