The elites can not be accurately defined as a coherent group since the accusers are shooting in so many divergent directions.
No more than a young child’s fear of the closet ghost, which can ever be used in a forensic investigation. There may not be elites but certainly there are many fearful people unable to do any more than hurl accusations. Shit hitting the Fan. As Glen and others tried to do by narrowing down the types of “elites” we all must have noticed something amiss. People are clearly afraid and thus vulnerable; as also are those who have never given another human a cause. The victim becomes the villain. Six upright men were slaughtered in a mosque in Quebec City on Sunday. Canadians are mourning this slaughter across the country in marches. Some are blaming Trump some blame the rightwing racists but everyone seems to blame someone else. The news is full of insinuations today. Everyone seems to be unanimous in finding fault that can be ultimately attributable to the mysterious elites of the imagination. The best I can guess is that 40+ years of fear mongering in politics has left most of mankind so fearful they have crapped their pants. So they blame a fast fry cook for using too much chili on their burger. Blame rarely makes sense. Nor do accusations which are just another version of the scapegoat preliminaries. We indulged all kinds of fear mongering in the past Y2K viral plagues terrorists anarchists communists, orchid smugglers. Take your pick salt, sugar, cornsyrup… A society run almost exclusively on fear, just yesterday my Microsoft update tried to instil fear when I tried deleting BING. Certainly some of us might partially fit the description of elites. But only when we ignore or deny the many other characteristics we possess. Hey I like Boxing, Flying Kites building boats and Shakespeare as well as Cycling and writing code. I also have Multiple Sclerosis seizures and paralysis along with 4 degrees. I probably have little in common with any of you but what I do share is the desire to communicate freely. So the elites are a figment of popular culture and flexible enough to justifying murder for any sort of Alpha male wannabe like Dylan Rouff in the US or Bisonette in Quebec or Anders Brevik in Norway… The E list of Assholes. I admit that each of them looked to me like people with no visible talent but a weird desire to be famous for leaving behind a mountain of stinking shit. I once had a male wolfhound that choose pinnacle of fire hydrants for his monuments of shit. Reasonable people used to live on this planet and then the fearful arrived always calling for some kind of extraordinary protection from closet fantasies. It took 40 or 50 years to ferment into this unholy quagmire. I say, Keep your genitals in your pants and never share your childish fears and expect gratitude. Economics is also a fear based system rather than being rational and fear prompted fast traders to get even faster. Feminism exploited fear, they even suggested castration as more merciful than circumcision, for decades. Then Climate change/carbon tax proponents exploited fear for about a decade, so now the masses are frightened of the living dead, Zombies and they arm themselves as Crusaders. These holy warriors manage to attract enough temporary mates to repopulate ravaged nations and continue their degenerate ideology. When they finally execute Dylan Rouffe look at the crowds that attend his prison, I am sure he will get marriage proposals in the mail. I am sorry for my outrage but the only way to stop such atrocities is to mock/shame these vermin that stalk innocents. If they like killing so much then get them jobs in a slaughterhouse. God how I have come to despise these wannabe Alpha males and their girl friend’s insidious fears. The terrorists seem less of a threat than these racist rednecks , our prime minister conflated these two categories today and that really ramps up fear again, but most politicians jump to use fear at any opportunity. I suppose if you can’t think then make a scary face. Most dogs will chase anything that smells of a bitch in heat. So my take is that Globalism is also a convenient disparaging alias for Civilization which threatens every primitive tribal or national social structure. At any point in time any natural accidental idiot could become a member of the so-called elite/terrorist category , no credentials, proof of competency, nor affiliations are required. I guess what makes this explanation appear nuts is because it is. Every villain depends on a belief that he has been a victim in fiction/fact to justify some atrocity upon innocents because the truly guilty are invisible, unknown or fantastically protected. So the death of the innocent becomes a symbolic necessity to prove their guilt, since only the living can plead for justice, and thus venerate the villain/hero. No mere wounding will suffice. The symbolic logic of madness. I am starting to sound like that lunatic, Jacques Lacan and that freaks me out. An entire generation of the fearful trying to export their version and derive profit . Time to open my stash of Cuban Rum. vib From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: January-31-17 4:02 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Globalism in the age of populism? .. & Open Source Software Right, poorly stated. I believe the conversation was tending towards saying elites tend towards globalism. I don't think the reverse was intended. I actually didn't bring it up but did comment on it. I suspect "elites" as used would mean the ruling class, or more loosely, those well educated and middle class. I dunno. I'm still much more interested in the possibility that we are so global, culturally (i.e. taken for granted, daily events, open research and software) that populism, any of the 10 examples cited, can reverse it, It tipped. -- Owen On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 2:16 PM, Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote: That sounds to me like a conditional: > We are global because we are elite. If not-elite then not-global. or: elite or not-global or: not (global and not-elite) If that is meant to be true as an expression in propositional calculus then there is no conversation to be had. A mean, small-minded provincialism is entailed by anything not-to-be-rejected or attacked. But that is the logic of thugs, which is no logic but just the betrayal of the good faith of those for whom the form of logic stands for something real and valuable. I see no reason to treat that as meaningful. It is just a dominance behavior, and the appropriate response to it is to stay focused on throwing it off. Eric
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