2.28.2005
the new black
Heres someone who, unlike me, thinks the world makes sense. Lustick investigates models of identity vis-a-vis collective descision making. He has a theory of tipping points - borrowed from epidemiology and applied to ideas. Or memes. Whatever you want to call them.
Lustick assumes a certain model of identity, then posits that there are moments in group decision making that are sensitive to small movements, individual catalysts. Last week he gave a little talk at the Brookings Institute. Another tipping point man, Malcolm Gladwell's making a bit of a splash in NYTimes, Slate, had an interview with Stoppel? Kossel? I can never remember his name - at NBC.
And tipping points are headlines because...? Well, I think because the Bush administration is so ... activist. People are wavering in their beliefs, trying to predict whether positive change will occur in
- Israel (Sharon's recent change of faith re: settlements, palestinian state - death of Arafat, rise of Abu Mazen),
- Iraq (whats the fallout of the elections),
- Libya(assasination of ex-president, huge demonstrations of anti-syrian nationalism which cross the christian-muslim divide).
I guess in this tipping point model, Bush is the implied individual catalyst. I don't know whether he'd be a 'maven' or a 'node' or a 'salesman' - somehow his influence doesn't fit in to any of those categories. I wonder if I'm the only liberal flirting with the idea that maybe empowerment is not the way to go, that maybe we don't have to struggle to teach men to fish, that maybe we can beneficially act as the guiding hand of other nations' fates.
You know what strikes at the heart of it all, this new model of interventionism - its the changes to federal grants for aid. New restrictions from the Bushies, what, first it was the agreement not to hire anyone on the terrorist/no-fly list. Now just recently, no working with prostitutes, no needle distributions on organizations which deliver aid internationally. Money is shifting from the tried and tested towards evangelical groups, who are praying that god will help them find the right people with the correct information who will show them the gaps in secular programming.
And the question is: are there gaps in secular programming? Is there a tipping point in which America can act as a catalyst to shape the fate of millions? Do we abandon the liberal empowerment, damage reduction, teach-a-man-to-fish model? Is it time to force our language and our decisions and our thoughts on the world for their own damn good? After all that empathy and dialogue and encountering the other, are we better off being missionaries after all?
I don't know. Its the new black, a grand experiment, for all that it probably may have been tried before.
But, if it is a big mistake, through it all, I still have Samoa to fall back on. I don't know what you suckers are gonna do, but heres hoping Samoa will always be too irrelevant, too crafty, too far away, and too small to endure powerful mens' meddling. If they ever host a stupid reality TV show in Samoa, I will fly down and eat those spoiled american brats right there on the beach in front of the cameras and throw their bones in the ocean. Hows that for a season finale.
In other news, went to portland this weekend to see Debarra, who is doing well, real well. She has a lovely house and a lovely relationship with Curmie, whose a ball, and lots of cool Portland goodwill clothes. The aesthetic of portland is just so... it feels so good, to find a city where what is pleasing to me is so easy to practice and acquire.
The boy is still being a peach. He woke me up at 7:30 this morning and we read foucault and argued about deluze and insulted the dog and drank coffee, and then he dropped me off at the building. I was skimming a practice-theory debate. I like foucault, practice is theory, theory is a practice, its not a separate realm with linkages. But thats because this week I don't think the world makes sense. I have these weird anxiety routines where I strongly prefer one entrance to another, and it was funny to have that moment with another person. He indulged me, and here I am.
More to say but work to be done. Have a good one,
- Ms. Bling
