We live more and more in a Network World. Our interactions, be it rational and emotional, are increasingly carried through different networked means with social, political, economic, technological, emotional and creative implications. Though no doubt, the supreme way of communication and encounter will still be, and even more intensively I believe, the physical contact, in which the energy can flow between us and life around us.
Authority: the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.
Authority is build up over many layers of legitimacy laid down through history. The nature of these layers varies. Take for examples monarchies. Which are their layers? Clearly not formally democratic. Some of them are based on tradition. Others on historic coercion (read violence) exercised by the ancestors of the current kings and queens – basically winning battles against their adversaries for power. And others are more subtle. For example, a monarchy can construct layers based on “material democracy”, that is, not the one coming from formal democratic procedures e.g. voting, but by the consent of the people. These layers can come from very diverse sources which connect the monarch with “the people”. One of them may easily be the participation of the monarch in popular events. Don’t be fooled. This is not because he or she enjoys them, it is a rite to connect with you, to get your material consent, to be “near the people”, yet the monarchy remains an unelected institution which head position is inherited by blood.
If we want to build up a more democratic society, I believe we have to learn, together, to peel the onion of authority, otherwise we’ll be kept being fooled. Beneath the “popular king (or queen)” who seems so near “his (her)” people, there is an undemocratic legacy based on nastier things: violence, hierarchy and traditions that leave us out of actual power of decision and action. Peeling the onion of authority is uncovering these crude realities that support illegitimate authorities. And monarchy, all monarchies, is one of these illegitimate authorities.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. - Albert Einstein
If you have followed the international news lately, you may know that Israel in an agreement with Hamas has accepted to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit. This morning Hamas, Egypt – the mediator – and Israel have confirmed that Shalit is in Egypt.
So 1,000 prisoners for one soldier? At first, it seems that Hamas has won this one. If we count it in numbers. But actually they have lost it. With this agreement they have reinforced the idea that one Israeli soldier, that is, one Israeli life, is worth at least 1,000 Palestinian lives. It is this kind of statements that are at the base of the conflict between both countries/people. This time Israel has done the right thing and ultimately its government is showing that they care for one life of theirs, much worth it, in their eyes, than 1,000 of the others. In the meantime, besides the joy of the families of the released and that the freedom of one human being is always good news, politically this agreement may be just one step more in no direction.
Free thoughts in a sunny London day. I see all those office skyscrapers (for banks and big corporations?), all those apartment building, I read on Facebook that a friend just bought a family house, and consider the wish of many young people being to have a house, their own private space. I must admit, I’m myself lucky, for I spend my time in quite decent private spaces in Barcelona and London. But I think, is it the best way for us to live? Before the advanced stages of industralization, before the bourgeoisation (?) of life, and the creation of the capitalist welfare state, people used to live in shared, not very comfortable spaces. So indeed there is a material improvement in having our own space, for our families, but there is also a social, environmental and emotional cost in it: we build walls around our extended protected selfs (i.e. I and my family), separating us from other people (the community) and nature (Earth). We have grown to belief in this system as the natural order of things: ‘who doesn’t want to have a place to live? A place to be intimate and keep our own privacy?’ equals to ‘who doesn’t want to have a big house?’. Well I don’t. And I presume many don’t either.
Can we then take another step to find new living-space alternatives that on the one hand let us keep our privacy and intimacy (essential for the development of the individual), keeping a good quality of life, but on the other create connections, facilitate relationships, and develop communities between us, allowing real sharing of goods, values, emotions, ideas, etc. At this moment the model is have ‘the flat’ and develop sharing in the neighbourhood. But can we think of another type of living space different than the flat, one that reflects the values of a sharing society?
Let’s say, for example, that the living room becomes a common room, that books, records or whatever is not stored anymore in our houses but in common spaces, that kitchens become community kitchens, where people can cook together. This will create more community spaces. We can also think of different degrees of ‘communitarisation’ of private spaces e.g. keep a small kitchen, for when we want to cook alone, a small library, etc. But surely, this solution will probably not satisfy everybody. Not everybody wants the same – many would still want to have their private space, that’s it -, thus they probably won’t look for the same. Perhaps diversity is the word. So if diversity is the way, let’s allow diverse models to emerge. Now governments, financial institutions (i.e. banks) and society keep encouraging the ‘private flat model’ (to satisfy the I-want-a-big-house feeling), in detriment of other alternatives in which many people will have greater satisfaction developing aspect of their lives now they can’t even envisage. We should then develop new financial, legal, social structures and technology that allow for this diversity in housing to emerge (just recently a friend of mine (@indy_johar) has launched wikihouse.cc, making easy house DIY design). Do not impose one solution, allow for the many to emerge.
One week ago I was saying goodbye to people that just a week before I haven’t even met, though it felt like I was saying farewell to people I knew for years. For a week (18-24 July) I was in what my eyes and my heart saw and felt as paradise. It was the Ängsbacka’s Yoga Festival 2011 in Sweden. If you would have asked me about it before December 2010, I would have looked at you with open eyes in surprise and remain silent trying to guess what you were saying. Thanks to someone who helped me open a big crack more my door of awareness I now can say that this was the best week of my life.
There, together with 300 more people, I practiced yoga from 7 am, discovered new spiritual paths, made friends I can call brothers and sisters, ate amazing food, sung beautiful bhajans, danced like crazy, I had a collective tantric orgasm, and felt the energy we all share and that connects us all, love. Then in the middle of all this, a person in Norway full of hate killed dozens of people, many of them children and teenagers. At the same time I became aware of the power of love, of what we can build together, I felt how destructive hate can be. Then there is cynicism. That feeling that tells you that change is not possible, that thinking of love as a positive force that can make change real is naive, that the real thing is violence and hate, that we need to be prepared for the worse.
I stopped being cynic, for I became aware of things that changed my way of looking. I became aware that together we can make our world better. I became aware that the connection between all human beings, all life on Earth and the Earth itself is so strong and powerful, so beautiful that there is hope for a better future, not a one which we are slaves of a hierarchic machine of domination, addicted to technology that’s distracting from our feelings we don’t want to have because they may be painful. I became aware of love, the energy that connects us, brings us together, bind us as one. I really felt it all around my body. Our world needs a change, but it won’t come with domination, imposition or convincing. It will come from those that change as persons capable of be the change. As my teacher of teachers said, “be the change you want to see in the world”. In my case, the first step was to become aware of love, start loving myself to be able to love others dearly.
I would like to leave you with some wise Og Mandino’s words that I hope will guide my life…
OK. Tomorrow I am leaving for Sweden for a 10 days “connecting trip” (in all senses!). Let me just share with you a thought, a feeling. I think, I feel we are witnessing a big transformation of our world. We are going from a world dominated by hierarchical institutions, where trust was put on the organisations with “expertise” to manage our affairs to a world governed by networks of individuals and communities where trust is put on those that can offer at every moment the best of themselves (of ourselves!), a world where every one of us can aspire to be and be the change we want to see in the world like the great Ghandi said…Do you aspire to be?
In history we’ve been focusing on the big stuff. Revolutions, wars, leaders, countries, big events…but it’s much more difficult to see how small things make a big difference. Michel Foucault called ‘disciplines’ those “tiny, everyday, physical mechanism [...] those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical” (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison). These are typically present in state institutions like army, school or prison, but they are also in the bureaucratic administration and the capitalist corporation. All institutions that shape our lives in great extent. They have a great power to define how we frame our actions, what we see as ‘possible’ and ‘normal’, in opposition to the ‘impossible’ and ‘abnormal’.
Imagine, for example, the effect that has on society the fact of putting a clock with standardized time in all public schools setting the times of start and end of class, or the obligation of wearing tie and jacket to do business in the capitalist world, accepting with it the identity of a small part of the population who imposed the tie as a necessary garment, limiting de facto the expression of those that do not feel comfortable with it. The power of the small things lies on their ‘invisibility’. They are so ‘tiny’ that we think they are irrelevant details of life, but in fact they have a huge impact on how we live. Next time you are wearing a piece of cloth you don’t feel comfortable with because ‘this is what they want’ or the bank/public administration makes you feel unnecessary paperwork think about these little details, these disciplines, if they annoy you so much it is because there is something powerful behind…you just need to be aware of it to actually reject it. And perhaps make a tiny but powerful change in the world.
This video shows a group of Catalan policemen infiltrated among the demonstrators protesting against the cuts the political parties were voting in the Catalan parliament yesterday 15/06/2011. According to many sources these people were the source of the first violence against the police, which gave way to the police to act against the demonstrators. These seem to be a premeditated strategy to delegitimize these protest movements.
As a friend of mine was saying yesterday while having dinner, what politicians should do is to listen, and not complaining about “how undemocratic” these demonstations are. Unfortunately, they are not listening, instead they are accomplices of cover actions against their own people. Shame on them…
On May 15, something extraordinary started in Spain. On that day, a network of Spanish citizens under the banner Democracia real YA! (Real democracy, now!) called for demonstrations all around Spain to protest against a corrupt political system, with its epicenter in Madrid’s Plaza del Sol. This has ignited the powder of indignation accumulated during these last years against political and economic elites that use their positions for their private benefit, being the bailout of the bankers the maximum expression of this alliance of the crooks. As in other places, the Internet has played a key role in the mobilisation of citizen for expressing their rights. On Twitter, people are using hashtags #spanishrevolution #notenemosmiedo #nolesvotes #acampadasol #acampadabcn…to tell, express, protest, coordinate, call for more and more action. On Facebook, the page of the campaign Democracia real YA has already more than 225,000 likes, and a petition to ask the Junta Electoral Central (Board of elections, regulating and supervising good proceedings during elections) to revoke a decision to ban any demonstrations during Saturday, “reflection day”, has at this moment 165,000 petitioners.
In February this year, in one of my posts I said:
In well-established democracies these technological changes may facilitate revolt against the privileges of the political class – from the pettty corruption of letting the taxpayer pay a hotel room in a private trip to the big commissions attached to public procurement contracts -, and the manipulation of state structures for the benefit of the few, those with money and position to influence, sometimes even determine, how we are governed – above all the financiers, who with arrogance move money, take money as they please.
This is the citizens’ revolution. Those who enjoy democratic citizenship use it to stop the crooks, the corrupt, the greedy profiting from the loopholes that an imperfect system – as it always will be – offers them for their private gain.
At 7.50 today I flew from Barcelona to London. Before going to the airport I read an article on Huffington Post about the possible economic impact of Japan’s “verge of apocalypse” (words of the EU commissioner) on the world economy.
The full impact of the disaster, and the extent to which it could harm economies globally, cannot yet be assessed, experts say. In economic terms, the tragedy might not have much effect on other countries, as companies compensate for devastated facilities, say economists. But even once the crisis subsides and Japan begins to rebuild, that country’s economy could face major challenges.
The world’s third biggest economy gets a big chunk of its territory wiped out, one of the country’s nuclear plants explodes and starts releasing considerable amounts of very dangerous radiation reaching even Tokio, many of its main manufacturers have stopped production, thousands of people flee the capital and foreigners the country, all in a matter of days. In the meantime, the Arab world (where the biggest reserves of oil are) is exploding in revolution against its authoritarian rulers, food prices soar, and we’re approaching the peak oil is seems to come much sooner than expected.
The question is not anymore whether the Japanese disaster has an impact on the outside, for there is no “outside” anymore. There is no Japan and the rest of the world. We live in a densely connected world.
Until very recently, dictators in the Arab world could repressed non-Islamic political discourse. With the establishment of repressive states in these countries, Islamism became gradually the only political discourse with space to oppose the state: the mosque. Secular ideologies, socialism, communism, nationalism and liberalism were crushed by the violent repressive apparatus of the state. But political messages attached to religion couldn’t be suppressed. Any attempt to do that would have meant an attack on the basic values of the society the state avowed to defend – an Islamic society.
Among the urban population, a powerful socialisation process emerged through the social institutions attached to the religious dimension of Islam. The mosque was not only a place of prayer, the madrassas and the Islamic universities did not only educate, and the Islamic societies’ social services did not merely take care of men, women and children, they were all powerful spaces of transmission of myths and symbols, and were the basic means of production and circulation of the Islamist political and social discourse, the only alternative to the repressive state. The Mosque was the only connection space allowed.
I define connection space as a space, be it virtual or physical, where people, knowledge, ideas and projects can be connected. In the Arab world, in the absence of more secular spaces, the mosque was a connection space that allowed individuals to express socially their opinion with relative freedom – within the boundaries of Islamic religion. It allowed sharing of knowledge, and the collaboration of different projects for taking action (economic, social, political…). It was the primal space for people with socio-political concerns to establish, keep and extend their social network. This was before the Internet disrupted existing social structures and dynamics.
I remembered with very fond feelings the times I went to Egypt to study Arabic in 2002 and 2003. There I was amazed to see how people were hooked to their mobile phones. In Egypt, as in many places in the Mediterranean, extensive and intensive communication and, within the limits of the technology available in those times, social interaction are an essential part of people’s everyday culture. Going from Assouan to Cairo by train, we had to sit next to a guy who didn’t stop talking loudly on his mobile phone for the 6-7 hours of the trip! Now, the social internet has revolutionised the way people communicate and interact. It has opened new public spaces unreachable to state repression, unless paying a high economic cost. The entry of Facebook in people’s lives has changed from where and how they get and share ideas and projects of life.
On February 15, 2011 Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, delivered his second speech on Internet Freedom or “Internet Rights & Wrongs: Choices and Challenges in a Networked World“. This the first part of a personal analysis of her speech. One, how to fit Wikileaks into a briefcase.
Hillary Clinton:
Fundamentally, the WikiLeaks incident began with an act of theft. Government documents were stolen, just the same as if they had been smuggled out in a briefcase.”
Well, no. It is not the same. The obvious: you don’t need a briefcase to smuggle digital information, that’s the beauty of it. Yes, this sounds so bloody stupid/obvious/clear, but it actually points to an important truth (remember: truth always hides behind obviousness and paradox): information is not “briefcasable” anymore, that is, it flows, it cannot be kept in a drawer or in anything physically encaged. It can be copied and recopied with no cost. The support where information is recorded has changed, the cost of distributing information has changed with it, basically it has dropped to nearly nothing. Therefore, in terms of physical and cognitive effort, disclosing the diplomatic cables is something that anybody could have done, you just need a slight motivational push to do it. This brings the action of doing it to a different level: it’s freaking easy.
The Arab world is awakening to a new political era. Times of real democracy and respect for human rights seem to have arrived to a region which seemed condemned to live in the permanent dilemma between secular autocracy or radical Islamic rule. It is too soon to say, but from what I’ve seen from trips, conversations and research about the region, this seems to me a radical change from past experiences. This is neither an Islamic revolution (the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Rashad al-Bayoumi, said in an interview to the Spiegel “We don’t want this revolution to be portrayed as a revolution of the Muslim Brothers, as an Islamic revolution. This is a popular uprising by all Egyptians”), nor a traditional liberal one. Islamist groups have played a marginal role in the uprising, and no secular political groups or leaders are capitalizing the change. Instead young people from different affiliations, religions and political beliefs coordinated their action under the conviction that their country was in a bad state, it needed to change, and change had arrived.
There is no single cause or factor that explains these sudden political changes. There are, however, elements that facilitate it happening. And today this is how people are using new tools of information, communication and organisation to challenge the power of the state against those who appropriated it for their own personal benefit. In autocracies, this means bringing the authorities to kneel by the force and conviction of the many, coordinated to achieve a well-defined common goal e.g. in Tunis and Egypt for the toppling of the dictators (Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak).
This is people’s revolution. Those who don’t enjoy the rights and obligations of democratic citizenship, revolt against the powerful to get them. This will extend to many other autocracies in the world. Many countries are ready for a real people’s revolution.
In well-established democracies these technological changes may facilitate revolt against the privileges of the political class – from the pettty corruption of letting the taxpayer pay a hotel room in a private trip to the big commissions attached to public procurement contracts -, and the manipulation of state structures for the benefit of the few, those with money and position to influence, sometimes even determine, how we are governed – above all the financiers, who with arrogance move money, take money as they please.
Having done some research work on Middle East politics (including a Masters in Middle Politics) and being academically, professionally and personally connected to what the Internet is doing to politics, it is amazing how I haven’t commented on what’s happening in Egypt yet. I want to write a longer article on young people, revolutions and communication. But for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with a bit of free time I have found to write a short note on Egypt twit-face-wiki-jaz revolution. A short note, because I just want to point towards a couple of interesting sources, on internet or non-internet related factors in relation to the Egyptian revolution.
First I should mention the unavoidable Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) and his article “The dark side of Internet for Egyptian and Tunisian protesters“. Not that he says much more than his usual (see his book The Net Delusion)): new communication technologies help democratic and non-democratic revolutions alike, dictators also use Internet to repress, there are more reasons behind a revolution than the Internet. But it is also interesting to have a powerful critical voice out there, pointing these (rather obvious?) facts.
Spaces is a metaphor for the physical, mental and spiritual places where all things that can imprison or make us free act upon us. The liberation of these spaces is the first step towards our freedom.
hi! my name is alejandro ribó.
first light in barcelona, second light in paris, future lights through open windows. lecturer and information activist. like traveling, reading and connecting. love our earth, its life and people. my life is connected to all through yoga. like running, snowboarding & swimming. vegetarian, eggs, no milk.
lecturer on negotiations processes with a flirt with technology. developer & facilitator of eu negotiation simulations, activist for open government & our right to access public sector information. more...
