That’s a very generous invitation on your part, considering how I slammed your readers and even your personal biases in this very post. I don’t think I really have time to do more of anything at the moment — I’m trying to cut back on the energy I put into this blog so I can do more fiction-writing (and other paid writing work).

I also discovered I’m grinding my teeth in my sleep, probably because of stress, and I honestly must say I think reading Marmot’s Hole-styled comments on my own posts would probably just send me over the edge. I’ll think about it, but I’m leery at the moment.

However, if you want, I could certainly add a category to my site that I could use to mark posts I think might be of interest at your site, and you could use the cat feed for syndication of those posts. But again, I don’t want to turn out like this guy — and I know I probably would, at some point (I blame my mother’s French blood) — so I’m not sure I’d be reading the comments too often.

Oh, and King Baeksu/Mark,

How ironic. I write SF — the genre that dates itself almost as quickly as the kind of books O’Rourke writers — yet I also find his stuff too throwaway to actually buy. Or even concentrate on for too long at a time. Hmmm.

And sadly, I haven’t read either of the Amis men’s books at all.

(I was put off by a VERY long rant by a friend whose opinion I probably would not take as seriously now as I did at the time of her rant, but now I have so many books I find it hard to justify buying more. I shall be on a reading binge this summer, though, since I’ll mostly be stuck in Korea.)

I dunno. I read Charles Stross, but I also read Ezra Pound. I find a variety of perspectives is good for me. I have a VERY hard time reading certain older books that are “classics” — Jane Austen bores the living hell out of me, except when she’s funny and then I can tolerate her, like in Northanger Abbey, but even there it was a slog by the end.

But these days? Mostly I’m just trying to catch up on the SF genre(s), and keep up to date with two main issues — computer/copyright/media/corporate-power and green-tech/climate change/resource usage/corporate power. You can guess where it all intersects for me.

I don’t think the average crowd at Marmot’s would read to the end of my posts, actually. To be honest, the comments there I like best — like the one I quoted here — tend to get ignored completely. So I don’t think I’d be happy contributing there. But more traffic would be nice, if it helped get an alternative perspective on Korea out there.

Well, if you ever decided you wanted to, you’d always be welcome. Yes, my commenters are the way they are, and my personal biases are what they are, but I’d always welcome a new perspective.

But you’re right: Lessig’s maybe blueskying blogs a little. At the same time, I wonder if they maybe do break down a step that you and I don’t feel is there, but is: talking about politics at all? If he’s right, a lot of people are conditioned just not to go there.

Maybe the trashiness of the blogosphere, and of usenet back in the day, are comparable? Maybe it’s all growing pains?

I’m starting to really appreciate how slow social and political change is on the ground, regardless of how rapid technological and intellectual change might be. It’s an interesting mess.

One more thing: I was going to say, Lime and I went a few rounds on the “banishing right-wing reporters” thing. People seem to be scared of being photographed by plainclothes cops — which is maybe paranoid, but I’m also willing to think it a sane fear given not-so-old-history and the authortarian gait of the current President — and their antipathy towards reporters also seems to come of those reporters being told they’re not welcome, and lying about their credentials. (Claiming to be from other media, like Oh My News for example.)

I think this is all a tactical mistake. If they were smart, and hip to the technology they’re using, they would be letting the reporters report, and then shaming them into telling the truth, or documenting them at the gate (photos, ID, die papieren!) and then cybermobbing the ones who lie in print. Dog Poop Girl was ridiculous, but similar power used to force reforms and accountability in the media would quite possibly be fair play, and I’d have trouble sympathizing with the many reporters who’ve built a career out of partisan distortions, racist claptrap, hate-mongering, and the like.

But I can understand protesters’ desire to simply shut out the corrupt media, whom they know will misrepresent them in the interests of the same forces they’re rallying against, instead of wading into the cesspool to fight them on their own grounds. I just don’t think it’s good tactics. (When they publish distortions, how can protesters complain? It’s not like they let the reporters see for themselves!)

I’m hoping people will start demanding debates before the election, and not just random sycophants gathered around the subway station in white gloves singing and dancing.

Thanks! You raise some good points worth talking about.

For one thing, and I know this is unfortunate, but you’re not the guy who’s going to get people to see reason, no matter how sensible you are. Maybe in a few hundred years Koreans will be over the poisonous race-fetish that was injected into their education (as an “alternative” to Americanized or Communist education) but for now, most will not see you as anything but an intruding American, no matter how much you care for their society or try to help. That’s where they are as a society: even if plenty of individuals are living in the 21st century, the social mores aren’t even close to the 20th yet. And there’s not much we can do about it, unfortunately.

Let enlightened Koreans raise the distortions aired on TV. Let those same people do consciousness-raising here. I’m not going to the demos for a reason: Korean society has to figure out this stuff for itself, and I’m no messiah; I’m not sent to shepherd anyone anywhere, regardless of how some seem to think I feel.

(I’m not saying you feel you’re a Messiah, I’m saying that I don’t feel participating in the demos will help anyone.)

In my class today, some students debated the whole Mad Cow issue, and the people on the cons side actually made some good points. Unfortunately, the student with the best English mostly just spouted “trust the government!” silliness — and it is silliness, not because we should fear US beef but because we should never trust a government farther than we can throw it — but the other two on her team were moderates and raised a lot of good points, including many that snide foreigners love to imply aren’t on Koreans’ radar.

As for mob rule, well, periodic outbursts of that are also part of figuring out what the hell democracy is. I got the same fearful feeling during World Cup soccer madness, but it didn’t become anything dark then. I have to wonder if part of all that fear of dark stuff isn’t a fear of democracy itself. Not the watered-down vote-for-me shit that I (and I presume you) grew up with, but the voice of the people. Democracy is dangerous, which is why most governments fear it explicitly and fight to quell it implicitly. And combined with those toxic one-blood-fantasies, it really can become something awful. Honestly, I worry about what will happen when all those mail-order-brides’ kids are 18-20 and pissed off at being unable to get any jobs despite being Korean citizens. Things could become very dark then, and nobody’s thinking enough about how to head off that awfulness at the pass.

I don’t know… the French made a bloody hash of their democratization, enroute to finding their way. Many other societies since them have also failed to learn from their mistakes. I don’t see guillotines being wheeled out in the streets yet, so I don’t think it’s going that way. There’s hope yet. But this is a very long haul, and I’m dubious this stuff will get resolved in any of the generations I’ll live to see.

But a start is a start. Like I say, sometimes you need to discover that you have a voice before you figure out what the hell is worth saying.

Mark,

Coulter is just disgusting and pathetic, and Maher is too. I haven’t seen O’Rourke not sneer and actually say what he does stand for, and it’s a turnoff. Making fun of dolts is like shooting fish in the barrel: saying, “Hey, all kidding aside, this matters!” about something of significance is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.

(And yes, I do think there are objective standards for what kinds of things matter; it’s a property of being fragile creatures in a harsh physical universe.)

But like I said, I’ve not read much of him, and maybe he does take a stand on something significant somewhere. I just haven’t seen him do it, whilst he is often what you described elsewhere as “glib,” and this makes me less than eager to read him.

I don’t think the average crowd at Marmot’s would read to the end of my posts, actually. To be honest, the comments there I like best — like the one I quoted here — tend to get ignored completely. So I don’t think I’d be happy contributing there. But more traffic would be nice, if it helped get an alternative perspective on Korea out there. Frustrating as I find this place sometimes, the depiction I see on blogs like Marmor’s is just unfair and far from helpful. Which is why I’m typing up corrections klate at night far more often than I’d like.

Mark: you’re conflating elections with democratic participation, just like I said we shouldn’t do. I don’t think elections are usually life and death, but they can make huge differences in how people live, and this is why having an atmosphere where political discussion is necessary. Otherwise, votes are just coin tosses in a void.

I think you are only free not to see participation in politics because of the freedoms you enjoy because others participated actively in politics. These freedoms, by the way, are use-it-or-lose-it freedoms. The liberties you enjoy are far from the norm in human history.

Majority rules philosophy is useless if debate and discussion cannot be part of it. Majority rules without discussion gets us slavery, forced conversion to Christianity, and so on. There have to be ground rules, and there has to be a space where deliberation and debate can occur among the people.

I’ve long found it sad we build temples to consumption (shopping malls) but not to citizenship and democratic participation.

Tristan,

I think you’re right about the ideological isolation that occurs online, but I think that in the fringes surrounding the polarized debates of right and left, a lot is going on where minor bloggers are trying to grapple with what “the other side” has to say in an intellectual manner. This is bottom-up, not top-down, so I expect it’ll take a long time before we start to see blogging come into its own. Maybe when live videoblogging debates take off? Blogging is still a new technology, and I think it took a LONG time before books were used constructively and in a sophisticated manner, even after the invention of writing.

The Vingean belief circles have to clash and meld, I think, eventually. Scootch-a-mouthis will be wandering among the Hacekian critters eventually, it just takes time. As I argued above, Korean society is just starting to realize that social participation is part of democracy, and even now it’s only a small part of society that gets how crucial it is.

Val,

I’m between bookmark lists, but I think some of these apps and thesecould probably retooled to do something like what we discussed.

I am not the best person to discuss the difference between libertarianism and conservativism, except to say that I find both tend to be all too eager to ignore any of the more complex social, cultural, and economic factors that impede “liberty.” The differences seem to be about just how little we need to fund and intervene, and Libertarians seem simply to think Republicans haven’t abandoned enough of what liberals consider the purpose and function (and duties) of good government.

I think you’re right about the importance of education, especially of the development of critical thinking skills. Foreign teachers here routinely argue that this is what’s needed most severely in Korean education, which is (broadly speaking) rote-memorization based and exam-centered, to some degree even in universities. Watching Koreans debate things can sometimes be frustrating, as opposing arguments much more often get thrown aside or dodged than picked apart or even acknowledged.

And back to Mark,

Yeah, but irony wears thin. I noticed in grad school that all the cool kids, the cynical, world-wise, and very ironic kids, were the ones who had nothing much to say about the world. I’m sure your favorite writers have style, but the things by O’Rourke that you’ve linked or that I’ve come across after reading your praise of him leave me nonplussed. Style and wit are nice, but underneath it all he usually seems (to me) to be saying very little besides, “Ha! Those dolts! They believe in something!”

Sometimes he’s right, and they are dolts but I irony in the place of basic convictions doesn’t move me. In fact, I think we could do with a little more conviction in our world — conviction and commitment to the world of ideas and of discussion, that is, and not just to specific ideologies or supernatural beliefs. Irony’s no substitute for giving a damn about something enough to be willing to be proven wrong.

Loved this post – incredibly well written and thought out. You should be writing for the Marmot’s hole – or at least your blog should have greater traffic here in Korea. Posts like this are true gems.

Christopher Buckley and P.J. O’Rourke are an even bigger influences on me, and I think very few writers can match them in terms of talent, wit, and skill. When it comes to getting ideas across, O’Rourke and Buckley can do it with panache, flair, and style to burn.

The Cato Institute and Reason magazine have a knack for getting the really cool kids on board, like Penn & Teller, the aforementioned P.J. O’Rourke, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Drew Carey, and John “the Buttman” Stagliano. Maybe it’s the nut point of view, hell maybe their wrong and I’m not that bright for paying any attention to them, but it’s a much more interesting crew than what everybody else has.

on marmot: haven’t read much there, but I’ll look out of curiosity. Although how is Libertarian and right-wing different, at least among folks in the US? They seem to get along rather well, esp considering all the yutzes that supported Ron Paul who was against choice (something that would set off freedom alarm bells for any sane Libertarian according to their definition, although how should I know I’m fairly socialist affiliated).

Is it just me, or could this so turn into a discussion not only about media but about education (esp comp classes…admittedly my training and background biased me) can help folks build the sort of critical thinking skills they need to evaluate this stuff, which may also spur them to look at the arguments of those who disagree with them.

I don’t really know much about Korean politics; this is just a response to the Lessig quotation. I have to question how effective blogs really are at spurring political dialogue. I’ve been reading blogs for years now, and I don’t recall coming across a single non-ironic conservative statement. Not even one. Perhaps there’s a preponderance of liberal blogging (I wouldn’t be surprised), but even so it’s pretty astounding that I haven’t encountered ANY serious conservative thought. The more likely explanation is that I’m unconsciously screening the blogs I read to maximize the likelihood of getting political opinions I agree with.

I’m not saying I run away from conservative content — out of anthropological interest I sometimes click over to foxnews.com, just to see what the other side is up to — but when I follow links from one blog to another, scanning the first few lines before deciding whether to keep reading or move on, all I’m consciously screening for is content that’s likely to interest me. Somehow in the process I manage to screen out all right-wing political content — if it’s even there in the first place. Perhaps I’ve already screened it out by beginning the chain of clicks at a friend’s blog. Lessig writes that conservative and libertarian blogs are some of the most popular, but I’d be willing to be that they’re popular exclusively among conservative and libertarian readers. Indeed, after writing this sentence, it seems so obvious as to be redundant. To call a blog “conservative” or “progressive” is to describe its readership as much as its content.

So here we are in our Vingean belief circles. Even if “the blog’s very architecture” solves the problem of talking about politics, there are cognitive filters in place determining how we use the technology that allegedly connects us. How can blogs solve the problem of talking about politics if we haven’t solved the problem of taking the other side seriously in the first place? This is how I conceptualize Lessig’s social norm against talking about politics — or at least a big chunk of it. People who hold beliefs opposite to ours are either incapable of reason or are reasoning from baldly insane first premises (such as belief in a Jewish zombie who blessed everyone with His very conditional love, or, from the other side, belief in a universe ruled by randomness, devoid of purpose or guiding intelligence). Even if you’re curious why, for god’s sake, someone would hold those beliefs, conversation with such a person is unlikely to be fruitful due to their aforementioned insanity. Consciously or not, this is how most of us approach political discourse. I know it’s what I do when I click over to Fox News, with a protective half-smile already in place. It’s what we do when we happen to overhear a pair of conservatives talking and we think, “My god, they really do sound like Steven Colbert.”

This has become a little bit rantier than I wanted it to, but the problem troubles me: what good does any communicative technology do us if we lack the spirit of citizen juries — the drive to reconcile opposing ideas?