Wealth Bondage

SmartCommons Launched

Posted by The Happy Tutor

SmartCommons:

We want to enable communities that already exist. That is the main thing that is different about us (compared to all of those other guys doing social software): We don't want people signing up. We want communities signing up!

Very good idea. The unit of analysis, for once, is not the consumer, or entrepreneur, or voter, not the isolate self, nor the opportunist builder of a network or rolodex, but the pre-existing community in which the "self" is already a node, finding its identity in relationship to others. What is even better is that SmartCommons supports multiple personas. The authentic self is the Eldorado in pursuit of which I lost my mind. Ever after all I had was voices. Nice to see software support that, as if it were a common malady. And I think it is, unless you are peasant, in some village in the Tyrol; we all belong to multiple communities, and have a role to play in each.

We are built up in layers from the communities in which we participated long ago. Since the communities are often like islands, separated from the others, in space and time, or by ideology, our identities are necessarily multiple: Try bringing together, for example, wealthy conservative blue collar clients, limousine liberal heirs with Ivy Educations, Critical Theorists, Jesuit Priests, novelists, sales people, tax attorneys, politicians, dumpster-dwellers, and prostitutes and treating them as all happy members of one community - Wealth Bondage. See if you can be "authentic" (within the same persona and decorum) with each member in turn. The only way to be a coherent self is to restrict your dealings to members of an ideologically coherent tribe who accept unthinkingly their own way of life. And that is not for me. I prefer to slip across the boundaries undetected, in various guises, passing for normal among the mad, group by self-satisfied group. So, SmartCommons would allow me to invite all my contacts and prevaricate as usual with elegant support. In reality, though, my friends from my various tribal identity groups, would not get along. That is why I slip from group to group and mask to mask. How about you?

Suan Sontag RIP

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Links at Vitro Nasu. A public intellectual, without a sponsor. Few can claim that title.

The Consolations of Philosophy

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Speaking of good philosophical models for moral practice at the Dawn of a New American Century, there is always Boethius, who, arrested on trumped charges of treason, wrote The Consolations of Philosophy in prison. His masterpiece completed, he was taken into the courtyard by the Emperor's security team; a cord was tightened around his neck until his eyes burst from his skull; and he was beaten to death with clubs. May we do as well when tested by adversity.

Who Owns the Democratic Party?

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Moveon to DNC: "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."

As we say, there is no outside of wealth bondage, even in the imagination of Moveon. Very sad, even disgusting. How quickly a little money and a little power corrupt. Soundbites, attack ads, mailing lists and money muscle. Can't we do better? Is this Open Society, Mr. Soros?

Weinberger is a Uniter not a Divider

Posted by Dick Minim

David Weinberger ably summarizes the narratives of the Reds and the Blues and calls for an uber-Narrative that would reconcile us all in a single peaceful tale. I second that suggestion. Reasonable minds can always agree, without recourse to contumely or violence. I think the Reds mean well, the Freedom Pens are probably necessary. I don't take Horowitz on Politics as War seriously, and maybe Rove and Delay don't either, though with Texans it is always hard to tell, they are so raw, don't you know. In any case, best to heal the nation's wounds, and seek peace in the family, else we be kicked in the head. Life is good, and the trust remittances keep rolling in. Can't say that Bush is all bad. Without estate tax, God knows I will have enough when Mummy goes, God forbid, to endow Wealth Bondage. It's a shame though, about Democracy. Ah well.

Antanas Mockus: Mayor, Moralist, Artist and Clown

Posted by The Happy Tutor

One of the most promising signs I have seen of a better world in the making. Everything we have said about satire, art, carnival, bearing witness and clowning around comes together and is both proven both possible and effective in this wonderful article from , the Harvard Gazette on Antanas Mockus a professor and artist who was recently Mayor of Bogotá. He has shown that when we are simply human with one another, and use our creativity, not to market and to create phony fads, but to "delight and instruct" (as Horace famously said), we can restore civil society, democracy, and even our sense of humor, and right and wrong. We can literally laugh the Knaves out of office, and shame the marketers into returning to the true calling, that of Jugglers and Clowns. Join the Carnival of Democracy! Strut about in your tall black boots, shadowing those in power. Poke your head from a Dumpster among the unemployed. Wear a ball gag to work as a newscaster. Go to your job at Wal-Mart in chains. Pray for the lost souls in the market. Celebrate the death of reason. Play the fool for the surveillance cameras. Party in the Freedom Pens. You figure it out. Pantomime works. Send in the Mimes.

From Dunciad to Dicordia

Posted by Dr. Chadwallah

Eighteenth-Century Print Culture: Martinus Scriblerus, and the Future of Hypertext, Andrew Barrett, M.A. student, Department of English University of Saskatchewan.

Martinus Scriblerus, a hack invented by Pope, Swift and friends, remains my idol, role model, and muse. The Dunciad, ed. by Martinus Scriblerus - a text disappearing into its own black hole. I hope my own scholary efforts at WB will make Martinus proud. Sing Muse! Of Chaos, Dullness and Dark Night:

Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And Universal Darkness buries All.

Let Discordia reign. Bow down to Folly, my Fellow Scholars, wherever you find her. For the world is her plaything, and all things in it.

Yellow Bracelets: Live Free!

Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage

I am having these zip cuffs inscribed: "Live Free," with the WB Dumpster Logo.

All the best people are wearing them in the Freedom Pens. Could catch on. Freedom Pens coast to coast with my fucking logo everywhere.

Bogus Beggar's Opera

Posted by Dr. Chadwallah

Beggars, some of them are bogus, but do we stop voting for President, or Congress, just because some candidiates are bogus, and precinct counts are faked? Brands are they real, or bogus? Compassionate Conservatives, Bogus or not Bogus? Before they start calling someone Bogus they owe us a knock down theory of Reality - and I know enough about postmodern theory not to hold my breath. As a percentage of the total I would suggest that there are fewer bogus homeless people than reasons for war in Iraq.

The Meaty Excitement of National News

Chastity Powers Reporting

Cyndy at Mouse Musings, on investigative journalist, Dan Webb, now a suicide:

But there is a second part, beyond the impossibility of loving a true revolutionary under capitalism. There is something else that assures a suicide when combined with deception and it is very much related to capitalism: The person looking down the barrel of the gun must lose his or her sense of place.

"Under capitalism," doesn't that give you goosebumps? I mean, "We Report; You Decide," but isn't "capitalism," like Freedom or something? I mean, like, what is the alternative, Cyndy? Now this: "Try the complete line of Alpo(tm) Brand Dog Food...."