OceanHorgan

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hey wiki people,

I'm twenty.

I'm from ireland.

I'm an anarchist.

I study philosophy english and history in college.

I produce a zine called bluntbase politik: http://www.bluntbasepolitik.cjb.net

I can be mailed at thefridgedoorathotmaildotcom

OceanHorgan

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Welcome! I was in Ireland not too long ago. What part are you from? -- SunirShah

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I'm from the Dublin city suburbs.

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Welcome, Ocean. Cool name -- best, MarkDilley

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Moved back from DefendAgainstParanoia.

Bend Over The Government Wants To F*** You

or "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you"

I've never been a fan of conspiracy theories: they always seemed to be a little too grasping. Searching legal cases, like the events of the JFK assasination, in search of inconsistencies that prove that something must exist behind the scenes reminds me of people grasping for religion: they just want to believe in something that they can't see.

People shouldn't be paranoid, but they should definitely wake up and find some clarity. Paranoia is a state of ignorance about why events are really happening, people should be able to see right through all the crap out there.

Paranoia is a reformist tendency: if only we can expose the real villains then they can be punished/stopped and everything will be all right. The problems go deeper than individual guilty parties... no one and no thing should have the power to commit atrocities like what happened in Union Carbide's Bhopal (see www.bhopal.net) or America's fun and games in countless theatres of aggression.

The idea of a reliable news source is a fantasy. As a European, seeing the invasion and occupation of a country labelled "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and the Israeli suicide bombers oddly mislabeled "Homicide Bombers" on the biggest American news networks is horrifyingly biased. You're a sucker if you don't realise you're getting sold a perspective.

[Further copy-editing left as an exercise for M. Horgan. If your style makes my head hurt, I'll never read what you say. Life is too short.]

if that's the perspective you want on the world (ie. despite all the evidence to the contrary our governments are benevolent) then that's fine. if you want something different you're going to have to get your news from someone who isn't a billionaire and doesn't own any TV stations or newspapers... basically some sort of "news wiki" like the indymedia websites.

The internet is censored. if you think it isn't, then as an exercise in why you should be paranoid try finding an image or video from the waco siege of a national guard tank with a flame thrower setting fire to the compound... all you'll find is dead links to it on otherwise flawless websites about waco.

our governments are minorities that leech off the rest of society. when they're underfunding the schools we send our kids to, doing business with dictatorships, bombing defenceless third world countries, allowing corporations to pollute the world we all need to survive... it's not paranoi because these things are happening and can't be excused through the petty rationalisations of the reactionary conservatives. --OceanHorgan

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Perhaps you'd like to write that one more coherently and less cynically. You shouldn't write so lazily. (Spelling, grammar, and clarity count.) Ask yourself what does that rant have to do with DefendAgainstParanoia anyway, aside from being an example of paranoia. Focus on expressing your point clearly, not on the mere exhilaration of writing. That makes for better writing. -- SunirShah

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Curious.

I seem to have been under the impression that the wiki medium lent itself to conversational discussion around topics... whereas you seem to suggest that it's much more formalised. Apart from my habit of constructing unwieldy compound sentences, i would have thought that my grammar and spelling were above average. Maybe you're used to the americanised spellings of words? I'd ask you to please avoid reading what i write with a red pen in one hand and a frown in the other but it already seems a little late for that.

Writing off the piece as "cynicism" is as much about your own world view as it is about mine. Since both factors are subjective I can't really see the problem.

As you have pointed out my "rant" was colloquial rather than formalised argument but it was relevant to DefendAgainstParanoia in the following ways:

1. It dismissed conspiracy theories as a paranoid irrelevance (ie. stated an opinion on topic).

2. It suggested an alternative interpretation of why paranoi was a bad thing by equating it with ignorance (ie. presented an opportunity to alter the flow of the discussion along an interesting and previously unexplored direction).

3. It drew attention to the reformist nature of paranoid thinking and implied that a more fundamental outlook than mere paranoi may be required (ie. proposes an alternative direction for solution to the one already proposed which was to "trust" professional liars).

4. It debunked the rather dangerous suggestion that ANYONE should unquestionably believe what they hear through the media. Using illustrative examples of rabid bias in the American media.

5. It attempts to unsettle the naive illusions of net folk as to how controlled their environment actually is through the use of a simple exercise (trying to find a picture of a tank with a flame thrower setting fire to the compound at Waco). This is designed to steer people away from the idea that everything is OK in the world, when it cleary isn't, into a frame of mind where they motivate themselves into doing something (anything!) about it.

I get the impression that you cut and relocated my contribution to the discussion in a somewhat arbitrary manner, having dismissed it on the grounds of style and tone. Dismissing something on stylistic grounds is merely superficial, but dismissing something on the grounds of tone is a little more serious.

If I disagree with something then surely (especially on a wiki!) I should be afforded some space next to that which i take issue with in order to make my opinion known. Cutting and relocating "protests" under the guise of them being "off topic" is really just ghetto-isation of disagreement and dissent. It has the net effect of herding people into ideological categories where they can spout platitudes and remain safe from the danger of actually changing anyone elses opinion.

Shucks. -- OceanHorgan

I recognize this as being a bit ironic, but we DefendAgainstParanoia here; instead, we AssumeGoodFaith. I did not move your text here because I disagreed with it, but because it wasn't very good. It didn't contribute anything to the page. Usually when people do that around here, people take it as an opportunity to improve their work. That's part of BarnRaising. You should recognize, though, that we do not have to create space for your opinions. In fact, a lot of effort is expended here to delete bad ideas and leave only good ones behind. In this case, I returned your text because I think you need to work on it (a lot) more. Indeed, I think you should just delete it and read more of MeatballWiki to get a sense of what's expected here. I don't think you fully appreciate the depth of your audience here (as indicated by your "The internet [sic] is censored." tangent), let alone on the level of writing, the style of writing, and more importantly, the attitude of writing. We're not here to impress each other with our wit and rhetoric. We're here trying to teach each other. That means clarity and depth are critical, and rhetoric and style are impediments.

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On MeatballWiki it was said: "Everyone with an opinion, ideas or knowledge is highly encouraged to participate!".

Well, i've got opinions, ideas, and knowledge, yet now you tell me that "we do not have to create space for your opinions". Oh, I see, curious.

Very simple. We do not have to create space for you. Persuade us that we should. Persuade us that your ideas, opinion, and knowledge are interesting and relevant to what we're trying to accomplish.

Note the word "participate". That invitation is to use your opinions, ideas and knowledge in a way that is relevent to our MeatballMission; it doesn't mean that people should write any old thing on MeatballWiki. It also means that anyone and everyone can edit and move your contributions. We're not trying to be elitist here, but we do appreciate thoughtful essays and discussions over rants. Poor grammar and spelling in a contribution, while not ideal, are not show-stoppers if the ideas are interesting and relevant. Your text wasn't removed because people disagreed with it; it was removed because it was a wordy, stumbling rant with little content and focus.

You are welcome to participate here. However, poor contributions will be edited, moved and/or deleted. That's just the way we do things around here. I encourage you to look around, read more of the material and get a feel for the place. -- StephenGilbert

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Poor mechanics disrupt the reader, making her job much harder, and much diminishing your ability to convey your message. Frankly, poor mechanics are a result of poor thinking, and it is legitimate to have returned your text based on that alone. At the very least, it's certainly unfair to expect someone else to clean up after your mess. That isn't fair BarnRaising.

If you want specific criticism about mechanics, first paranoi is not a word--the word is paranoia. The word I is capitalized. The name Internet is capitalized. The first letters of sentences are capitalized. deffinately is spelt definitely. Be careful of comma splices. Ellipses indicate incomplete thought, and therefore text to be deleted. I could go on.

I could spend hours talking about the (lack of) content of your little rant, but, as you said, it wasn't a serious attempt at exposition. I actually think this new response that summarized what you attempted to describe was a much better attempt at exposition. However, it still isn't more than an list of assertions (not that it was meant to be anything but).

By the way, note that arguing is not teaching. In fact, philosophical debates are even less welcome here than rhetorical rants. Also, you stated that "If I disagree with something then surely (especially on a wiki!) I should be afforded some space next to that which i take issue with in order to make my opinion known." I have to say that, no, you aren't afforded space by birthright. Dissent doesn't automatically warrant attention. In fact, you have even less protection on a wiki than, say, a weblog as the corpus is community owned, not individually owned. If you have problems with people deleting or editing your text in good faith, you will have a lot of problems on a wiki. Like I said, most people take it as an opportunity to improve their writing. It could be good for both of us if you trust that I'm not going to eradicate your text just because you disagree with me, but only because, at least in this case, that it wasn't coherent nor substantive. -- SunirShah

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From UnitedDiversity...

You wrote

Positive social organisation (ie. Anarchism) works: just look at George Orwell's experiences in Barcelona in 1936 as described in his "Homage To Catalonia".

It's pretty useless to make a reference to an arcane source outside the audience's expected range of knowledge without explaining in detail what the source is about and how it is relevant to the discussion. No one is going to read it. You made a thesis that "Positive social organisation (ie. Anarchism) works," but you didn't really explain what it means or how it is accomplished. A better way of writing this is

Positive social organisation (ie. Anarchism) works. George Orwell's experiences in Barcelona in 1936 as described in his "Homage To Catalonia" are a suitable example. In this book, Orwell explains how he took telepathic control of the Spaniards to enforce a harmonic social collective, otherwise known as a HiveMind, his mutant power. This allowed him to enforce that all acted in the hive's benefit by preventing them from acting of their own free will, and thus preventing them from harming each other.

Or whatever. You get the point. -- SunirShah

Welcome Ocean, I think by keeping to the "Golden Rule", in Meatball, positively formulated as FosterEachOther, we can do wonderful things together. -- FridemarPache (PS.: Just detected your RealName the first time in Meatball).

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