For years I railed against "the mainstream", blaming it for all the world's ills, and firmly believing that fragmenting it into a network of overlapping subcultures would allow us to solve those ills. Thanks to mass adoption of the net and the effects of digital convergence, that fragmentation pretty much happened. But the world's major challenges seem as intractable as ever. What now?
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:10 UTC 
Strypey
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:01 UTC
Strypey
@estherThe folks associated with institutions like the WEF tend towards a top-down view of problem solving; how to modify the behaviour of crowds. I tend more towards a bottom-up view; how can I change my relationship to people, communities, institutions etc, to improve my life in ways that also benefit others. Subcultures once seemed like a way to do that. This piece sums up why that no longer seems viable:
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:03 UTC
Strypey
@esther I guess I was thinking more about the cultural than the political-economic, and probably with a bias towards domestic culture in Aotearoa, rather than any "global" culture (the scare quotes are a disclaimer that the English language slice of the net is the only way I have meaningful access to anything global). I'm both aware of the power of framing to tilt collective behaviour, and sceptical of the notion that changing the frame is, in itself, powerful enough to change global outcomes.
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science knower (esther@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:04 UTC 
science knower
@strypey https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/how-narratives-influence-human-behaviour/
it's related in that both are wef programs. a lot of it is just a bunch of rich posers in davos convincing themselves they already run the world. not that they aren't dangerous, even if they're not as powerful as they like to present themselvesβ¦
https://www.weforum.org/events/the-great-narrative-2021/sessions/a-call-for-the-great-narrative
schwab has begun giving speeches on the great narrative recentlyβ¦: "we are narrating the future". ie, the wef sees itself as the culture-shaper and storyteller of the future, believing, as they do, that "a good narrative beats even the best data." they aren't wrong, but they aren't very compelling storytellers either.
the wef is an ancient artifact of kissinger and the cia, so with the cold-civil-war level conflict developing in the us, this system of transatlantic alliances, itself a result of american power, is the main thing keeping the postwar system afloat and keeping both the us and the eu from collapsing instantly and violentlyβone of trump's primary goals was disrupting this alliance, telling nato and the eu they'd been freeloading on the american security state, basically.
sorry to ramble, trying to condense some thoughts on our new "multipolar" situation.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:05 UTC
Strypey
@estherHaven't heard of this. Is it related to the Great Reset thing?
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science knower (esther@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:06 UTC
science knower
@strypey well, there's the wef's "great narrative"β¦ π
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science knower (esther@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:07 UTC
science knower
@strypey "the mainstream" was always a network of overlapping subcultures. that's what "lowest common denominator" means. what now? mass work, mass culture. we either change the way we live, or fail.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 04:59:07 UTC
Strypey
@esther> "the mainstream" was always a network of overlapping subcultures.
This too was part of my critique, that "mainstream" was just a story the dominant subculture(s) told about their own importance. Now I'm not so sure, thus the OP. Maybe the whole was more than the sum of its parts? It definitely feels to me like there was some larger layer of cultural cohesion that isn't there anymore, and I'm no longer convinced this is progress.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 05:07:06 UTC
Strypey
Now it's even a struggle to hold subcultures together and I'm starting to miss having a "mainstream" to define myself in opposition to. I guess thoughts like these are typical of aging rebels facing middle age. Most of my contemporaries long ago laid down their rhetorical weapons and started learning to 'fit in'. The remainder are either aging cranks or surviving in one subcultural niche or another while they last. But I can't help thinking, are these really my only options?
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Tim (voidspace@mastodon.org.uk)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 05:08:06 UTC 
Tim
@strypeyAs someone who is likely a fair bit older than you and has also lived on the fringes of the mainstream for decades, I long ago realised that "resistance is futile".
However, unlike some of my contemporaries, I found that I couldn't just "suck it up" and get with the program.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 05:08:06 UTC
Strypey
@voidspace> I long ago realised that "resistance is futile" ... I found that I couldn't just "suck it up" and get with the program.
This is exactly the bind I find myself in. It seems like I was mostly on point about the problems with business-as-usual, but none of the alternatives seem to have legs. This could be a self-limiting belief borne of cynicism, which is why I posted the OP; to see how others in the 'verse have navigated similar crises of meaning.
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Vasilii Kolobkov (polezaivsani@chaos.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 05:08:18 UTC 
Vasilii Kolobkov
@strypey I have a slightly different take on opposingβrather than superposition of different forces, it can be viewed as a multitude of sources of light, all acting in the same space, with the benefits of contrarianism being the possibility to glimpse into most or all corners of it.
Understanding this illumination as a metaphor for learning and exploration of you own self, others around you and ultimately the realityβthat is the most cherished part of it for me.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 26-May-2022 05:08:18 UTC
Strypey
@polezaivsaniI find this intriguing and original, but I'm having trouble interpreting it. Can you expand on how this relates back to the OP?
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