How to know if the Outquisition has gone horribly wrong
The Inquisition has a bad rap, and for good reason. I like the name, “Outquisition”, because it indicates an awareness of everything wrong, everything undemocratic, and everything arrogant about a certain kind of proselytizing. The name also implies a motivation to learn from the past and to do better.
I am grateful for the energy that has been captured here. But I am grateful for a less-than-obvious reason: I see this moment as an opportunity for tech enthusiasts to demonstrate that we can, in fact, be agents of social progress. I will describe more fully what this means in a future post.
I have spent a lot of time (not to mention money) searching for the human and the social in the midst of the technical. All of that personal investment, combined with my own need to do something of value to others, makes me feel qualified to serve as a guide to what this movement ought to look like. But no amount of intellectual “guidance” is worth a damn if it does not help people to improve their lives on their own terms.
No one ever asked me to do this. So instead, I will do the asking: Will you please give this a chance? More specifically, will you please give me a chance?
The name-calling has already begun. It does not bother me (yet), because I know that the name-calling is not (yet) based on demonstrable evidence. It would make me very happy if the Outquisitors with whom I find myself associating would strictly avoid those kinds of ad hominem assaults, even when those same Outquisitors are themselves targets of ad hominem assaults. Sometimes, the best way to respond to an insult is to silently show — not tell aloud — why one does not deserve the insult in the first place.
Emboldening a community of culturally sensitive tech enthusiasts who i) want to change the world and ii) do not deserve some form of ridicule is going to be difficult. To start, I would like to establish a few very basic rules, in the form of Three Ways To Know If The Outquisition Has Gone Horribly Wrong. I may add to this list if I think of more. The Outquisition is failing if
- the vibes surrounding the Outquisition start to feel eerily similar to what one could expect to have been the prevailing mood during the original Inquisition. If the people in the frontier of the unsustainable begin to feel, as a result of our actions or our demeanors, the way Galileo must have felt while under house arrest, then we have a problem. Sadly, this could happen more easily than we might think. Missionary zeal, like fire, is a useful but potentially extremely dangerous thing.
- we spend more time talking than listening. Even when someone is learning from you, be that person’s peer, not their teacher. Make genuine learning happen in the context of genuine partnership.
- Outquisitors go for months without ever cracking a joke about the Outquisition. I mean, we’re a bunch of geeks who named ourselves after an ecclesiastical tribunal who want to go out and screw around with people’s light fixtures. There is serious work to do, but if we can’t laugh about it, then we have no business doing it.
I’m following this silently in the background, but I like what you’re trying to do so much, I have to comment.
The rules for “It’s all going wrong” are probably the most important thing you could put together. If the Outquisitors Majoris can set a guideline of checks that really show that this is just a Bad Idea - then you can rest a bit easier knowing you’re still right when none of them have been ticked.
I’m sadly probably not the best Outquisitor material - being a low end lUser as oppsoed to a genius
But perhaps to go along with this you need a list of what you’re trying to achieve.
This might dispell some of the assumptions being made on what the Outquisition is all about!
what about spending more time talking than DOING?
Me and some friends once started this project that was meant to inspire people to engage with their environments and ordinary routes/routines in an imaginative, playful way. To initiate inter-creative relationships between people, and between people and their world. we had one key agreement - that we would only talk about what we wanted to do AFTER we did it. This sound strangely impractical I know… I don’t mean there was no communication of ideas - but more that we tried to communicate our ideas through simple creative actions. I believe that if you can create something that makes someone else go “wow!” - and make this experience one that invites participation - you have initiated an inter-creative transaction, which means a whole lot more than simply talking about an inspiring idea… Might even give us better things to crack joke about.
No one expects the geek Outquisition!
I don’t agree with the tact that both of the blogs you sited but I agree with a lot of the sediment.
I think that I come from a diverse background. I am an engineer, have a love for technology. I have lived in the “Big City”(Atlanta, DC) and the burbs and was born in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin.
I have this zeal for technology but I think this desire to apply it to a Post-apocalyptic world is very misplaced.
A.) Who knows when or if this apocalypse will come?
B.) What about doing all these things Pre-apocalypse?
How about getting down in the dirt and going to a learning center or non-profit in the “ghetto” and teaching some of these kids linux or just basic math. I worked a little bit with an organization like this in college and 90% of these kids have learning disabilities from their mothers drinking and doing drugs while pregnant and they crave attention because most come from broken homes. Meeting some of these base needs can mean more than anything.
Sorry for the diatribe but I think doing these things NOW is more important than planning for some event that no one knows when it is going to happen.
Peace
2. “we spend more time talking than doing” Fixed
Johnathan, I have the feeling that you may not understand why people are upset. Cory and Alex have created a model where information flows one way - from the enlightened city out to us rural, suburban, and rust belt bumpkins.
In one mighty blog post, Cory managed to massively insult about 7/8ths of the American population.
There are tech enthusiasts and people with valuable skills everywhere - yea, even unto the rust belt, suburbs, and rural areas. We already HAVE textbooks and solar panels and MySQL programmers, and we get irritated at the assumption that we don’t.
Unless the Outquisition changes its focus and becomes an evenly-distributed network of information and members, and loses the urban ‘tude, it’s going to continue to be met with irritated push-back. (And rightfully so.)
I’ve read the criticisms that you linked to, and while I agree, there are quite a few areas that left to their own devices would get by just fine, there are quite a few more areas that really would have no clue what to do with their land without modern contrivances.
Way back in ‘99 with Y2K looming on the horizon, I started thinking,”well? what if it DOES all go to sh!t? What’ll I do?”
And I started looking around at the various survival groups via news groups and web forums, and I came across quite a few gun nuts just waiting for the opportunity to be able to shoot someone. (disclaimer: I know they’re not all like that) but very few groups had any real coherent idea of what to do when TSHTF.
So I started doing my own research. involving everything it would take to maintain a relatively modern standard of living. I say “relative”, because without most of the very modern methods like chip manufacturing which can only be done with massive amounts of infrastructure, there IS an upper limit of what you can do.
I determined that anything after the advent of the transistor would be unrealistic. Sure, there are literally TONS and TONS of material out there that can be reused and recycled, but there wouldn’t be any NEW technology for quite some time. So that’s where I aimed my research. I currently have about 9 GB of information covering everything from how to rotate crops in a field,to how to make coke from coal for forges, to blueprints for bunkhouses and barns, to different methods of transportation and how to make and maintain them, and more. There are still quite a few holes in the information I have, but It’s an ongoing project. basically, how to maintain a standard of living about equivalent to the 1920s-30’s with a few higher tech easily made exceptions.
Admittedly, it’s all information I’ve collected from the web, from the most reliable sources I could find. some historical records of methods used in days of yore along with some newer methods(ie. Biodiesel)
Give me a place to dump it, and I’ll contribute it.
The implication I picked up from Cory’s post wasn’t about city slickers teaching the rural folks how to live, but about a network of people gathering and spreading useful information: that would necessarily be not just a 2-way flow, but an N-to-N flow.
However it does appear that Cory laid a bit of an egg with some of his wording. And frankly that is going to be something to overcome. On the other hand, it might also have touched a raw nerve and brought to light some attitudes that we would do well to examine.
Some rural areas already have what it takes to be permanently sustainable. Others are situated in places that will become un-viable through climate change. The same can be said for cities and towns. Air, water, temperature, energy sources, and susceptibility to natural disasters, are the key factors.
In any case, cities and towns depend on outlying areas for food, and outlying areas depend on cities and towns for manufactured goods. Consider something as simple as the steel in a plow, or any type of motor, or spare parts for any tool or machine regardless of its power source.
Consider something as simple as eating implements: forks, spoons, knives. Think long and hard about how those things are produced, and in particular, how the materials from which they are made are produced.
The fact of the matter is that we will not get anywhere unless we’re willing to cooperate.
Namecalling, I wouldn’t call it namecalling I would call it honest criticism. However we all have our own perspectives on the particulars of how things should be done, as we have all played the game “If the fan gets hit by brown, how will I and my family/immediate friends/community survive?” we all have ideas, most of them half assed and pretty impractical, some pretty novel and interesting.
The argument that City people going to Rural folk telling them out to live lives well honestly that is pretty offensive to rural folk who probably would be wanting to stringup every city slicker who comes in with high minded ideals of how they should live be it an apocolypse or not. In fact more likely rural people will be showing city folk how to survive.
But we aren’t just talking survival, you can get a whole lot of media and products about Survival. A number of people make their living solely off of ‘Survival’, but few have thought of beyond the 72 hours that most people worry about. The assumption is you survive long enough that eventually someone with a lot of resources and manpower comes in and restores things, and you can get on with your lives. What I see the Outquisition being useful for is what happens when it doesn’t step in, be it because it doesn’t exist, doesn’t want to, or the people decide to reject it. Ronald Regan once said the 9 most terrifying words were “We’re from the government and we’re here to help” (and the rural people are also understandably upset, their own version; “We’re from the city, and we’re here to help”).
While I really think making absolute statements of what people should or shouldn’t do is naive at best, if you permit my delusion that the outquisition should focus on providing information and skills to the city folk (of which I do count myself among) to make something work right where they are… and the advanced stuff of new paradigms of society be experimented with and hammered out BEFORE the fan gets hit by brown?
There may be a red flag on rule one already. Though not in the anticipated form. If I may go about my twisted logic…
quote: “If the people in the frontier of the unsustainable begin to feel, as a result of our actions or our demeanors, the way Galileo must have felt while under house arrest…”
Would not the frontier of the unsustainable be suburbia? With the heart of unsustainability being downtown any city? There in, we “urbanites” whom may have good intentions with a project like this, start to receive attention like that detailed in the two posts of “Name Calling” referenced above.
Regardless of who may be what or where, there is alienation afoot. Not that it can be avoided with the proliferation of opinions and ass holes, and there are plenty more to go around. A project like this should be searching for any and all nuggets of useful information regardless of the source. Be they goody-two-shoes urbanites, or podunk rust belters. The more freely available, good information there is, the better a project like this can be towards helping those whom may need it. The information to LEARN must come from every available source. Is not the idea to minimize the time spent in, and lessen the impact there of a new dark age? Or even, best hope, prevent a new dark age?
other signs of toruble (in my opinion) would be as follows
* any form of utopian thinking - when people get into utopian ways of thinking then the ideas they coem up with are not one possible solution/path but the ONLY soultion/path and any other way is therefore wrong and must be opposed/demolished. then any criticisms of the solution/path are wrong and must be destroyed. usually ends to a bad end. see the history of socialism for 60’s hippy communes for further fun examples
* when there are cults of personality and private agendas running rampant - transparency must be maintained and leaders must be mocked see The Daily Show and the Colbert Report
* when people startr re-inventing the wheel - there are tons of solutions/ideas/pratical knowledge out there and already groups aiming to collect and distribute it, so it would be best help further that work and not waste energies on stuff that is already built, just add to it. Viva la mashup
* beware the hairshirts greens - going on about the need to sacrfice/give up stuff is a major turnoff, as is trumpeting how much you ahve given up/suffered for ‘Mother Earth’ or telling people what they ‘have to do. Avoid puritanism and authoritarianism, instead be coll and weird and wonderful like the Viridians. Coolness trumps stridency.
* lack of respect for those you help/work with since the Outqusitions would need to work with all kinds even, ugh, conservatives who like 60’s style country music. Well, you could shun neo-conservatives, sociopaths, full blown passive-aggressives, and NPDs. some people are beyond help and/or sanity
that’s my suggestions- take ‘em or leave ‘em
Now I may be wrong, and I’ve na’er even spoken to Jonatahn or anyone else who’s gotten involved. I’m just sat on the outskirts and reading, and liking the idea.
And I can see a lot of ‘rural dwellers’ gettins somewhat irate at the assumption you’re all bumpkins with little or no technical skill, or ability survive without city folk. Which is odd, because when I read how the Outquisition would work, I took it the complete opposite way.
See - the big O would be starting with the places that we’d all assume would actually survive said apolcypse/war/rapture of the nerds. It’s obvious the rural area’s have the means to survive, and the food and possibly the shotguns. I didn’t see anything to say otherwise (noted is the possibility of Cory’s wording).
What I see is a bunch of techs and geeks, who would travel the lands bringing the information and knowledge to rural areas that they didn’t already have. Not because we/they are better - but because one of the few things worth taking out of the decimated cities is knowledge.
Like, perhaps, how to make penicillin. How to produce manufactured electronic parts from scratch - or at least begin the ‘tech tree’. Perhaps the details of industries that the rural areas would need but don’t produce themselves (anyone been in a coal mine? Know about shoring and gas detection? No…).
It becomes apparent that some folk would rather build wooden palisdes and sharpen their weapons, than just admit that they wouldn’t mind a bit of the one thing us ‘city folk’ can do. As apparently we’re all a bunch of has beens compared to those outside…
Ok - what’s offensive (if you care about hearing WHY so many people are annoyed by this) is that your language keeps breaking down into urban=educated/high tech, rural=uneducated/low tech. If you think about a Venn diagram - do you know what a Venn diagram is? - think of two big, round circles - one is for urban people and one is for rural people. Ok? Now, slide them together so they are overlapping. Ok? That part in the middle - that’s urban and rural people who are educated and understand tech. The parts that don’t overlap - that stand for urban people who don’t have tech skills, and rural people who don’t have tech skills. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are LOTS of rural dwellers who understand the internet, and are geeks and techs! Wow! I know! And there are lots of urban dwellers who have never used the internet and don’t know anything about making penicillin. I think if you dropped the whole “let’s us smart city folk go help out those dumb rural folk”, you might get farther.
Also, in the comment section, “Mail Address” needs another “d”, you spelled it wrong.
Re. the suburbs:
You may find this surprising, but the suburbs may turn out to be quite sustainable. Any home that has a lawn has space for a garden; or if it has a deck, it has space for a greenhouse or equivalent.
Envision this: the country folks, wary of suburban folks flooding into rural areas, go to the suburbs and teach the suburban folks how to tear our their lawns and grow food, including practicing smal animal husbandry (chickens, rabbits).
Now the suburbs also have to relocalize their zoning for the obvious purpose of reducing driving. So you take an intersection, with four houses on the respective corners. One house becomes a small grocery store with an apartment upstairs. One becomes a hardware store with another apartment upstairs. One becomes a school. One becomes a church. All this takes is a change in zoning, which is to say, a “permission,” which is to say, “words on a piece of paper.” Those words on paper should be very easy to come by when locales demand them.
In Europe there is, or used to be, something called a PostBus. This is a bus run by the Post Office. It carries passengers on routes that aren’t necessarily viable for other types of bus service. In the luggage hold it carries the posts (mail and parcels). Consider an American suburban version of this: passengers, parcels, and goods being shipped to these micro-shops at the intersections. Perhaps it will also subcontract to the post office to carry mail between various suburban post offices
With relocalized agriculture, relocalized micro-shops, schools, etc., and a variation on the theme of PostBuses to connect up various places, the suburbs could work.
With one exception: places where those execrable Mickey Mouse Mansions have been built almost to the property lines, to the extent that there are effectively no yards around the houses. “There’s nothing wrong with those places that can’t be fixed with some dynamite and a ‘dozer,” or more realistically, by carefully deconstructing every other Mickey Mouse Mansion (recycling the building materials of course) and turning its property into a garden serving the adjacent houses, which themselves will be turned into some kind of multi-family buildings, e.g. duplexes. Areas of this sort will be more difficult to fix, but in theory it can be done.
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What I can personally bring to rural areas: I can make the telephones work, and keep working. With cord-and-plug switchboards if needed, which I can build from components or by resurrecting old (”antique”) equipment. If you don’t think rural areas need telephones, do your research. When telephones were new, rural folks did whatever they could to get them, including stringing the wires themselves along the fence-lines for miles. I know the history and I know the technology, and I can make it work, so I’m fairly confident I will be one of the ones who will be welcome.
The lesson of that is: seek out an obscure skill-set or trade in a field that’s a necessity, and learn it like the back of your hand. START NOW, because it will take longer than you think to learn it well.