Well-behaved women seldom make history
I’ve been tagged by Nick Barrowman at Log base 2, with the historical figure meme. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to pick a historical figure and list 5 random/weird things about this person.
I had to think really hard to pick my favorite historical figure. I don’t think I can name my favorite ice-cream flavor, let alone a favorite historical figure. I thought about William James, because when he was at Harvard he was a buddy of Charles Pierce, which is the historical figure chosen by Nick.
But–sorry Bill–it ought to be a woman. A crowd of bad-behaved women came to mind:
- Emmeline Pankhurst (”Be militant each in your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.”)
- Rosa Parks (”When they stood up and I stayed where I was, he asked me if I was going to stand and I told him that ‘no, I wasn’t,’ and he told me if I did not stand up he was going to have me arrested. And I told him to go on and have me arrested.”)
- Anaïs Nin (”I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy.”)
- Josephine Baker (”I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.”), and
- Rachel Carson (”The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.”)
I wonder why I thought of them. I suspect that it’s because women need to be good to the point of sanctitude or quite bad to become historically famous. And bad girls tend to be more interesting.
|
|
So I picked the baddest woman on the block, Mary Jane West, know to the world as Mae West. I’m pretty sure she counts as an historical figure. She was born two centuries ago–exactly on August 17, 1893. And everybody who is still famous after so many years deserves her place in History, wouldn’t you say? [or shall I say Herstory?].
Technology is not good for my social life.
In a previous post, I mentioned how YouTube tried to undermine my sense of security about my social life. Now it’s Wordpress’s turn.
This morning I was reading Andrew Hinton’s blog. Andrew has just published a great article on personas on Boxes and Arrows where he quotes some of my thoughts on the subject. So, I read a few older posts, and I notice one on Wordpress comment notification fix, which talks about a bug in Wordpress that prevents new comment notifications to be sent.
I go back to my blog and check the comments tab in Wordpress and horror! There is a bunch of true comments stuck in the moderation queue together with the usual series of comment spam. (By the way, Andrew has a link to the fix, from Mark’s blog MeAndMyDrum. It worked for me.)
Dear commenters, forgive me for neglecting you. I just thought that people had stopped commenting on my blog, not that I was not receiving notifications for your comments. I apologize. I love your comments, really.
Towards an Ecology of Mind, Society, and Biosystems
Blog post for Blog Action Day
Ecology (from the greek oikos for house) is the study of living organisms in their environment and it’s all about dynamic balance. Nature survives and evolves because living systems can be stable and in continuous motion at the same time. It’s the dynamic balance between predators and preys, for example, that keeps each population in check and prevents the extinction of species.
Homo Sapiens broke away from the ecological balance a very long time ago. We have messed up with ecosystems as long as we can remember. We have been suffering from what Gregory Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, calls “hubris” (in Greek tragedies, hubris was the excessive pride and defiance that led characters to the inevitable defeat and ruin).
It pleases us to picture ourselves as the masters of Nature. It reassure us to believe that we are independent, unconstrained, and we can expand infinitely, even if we are stuck on a sphere of less than 4,000 miles in diameter. We feel omnipotent like little children. Yet we have not defeated death, or illness, or fear, or violence. We have transposed them: now it’s more likely that we will suffer by the hand of other humans than by the forces of Nature.
It’s not only the relationship with our environment that is unbalanced. We also have a hard time maintain balance in our own lives and societies. Those of us who can, work too much, eat too much, produce too much waste, consume too much energy. One would think that having so much would make us happy, but it doesn’t.
The ecological crisis is not just about breaking our biosphere’s stability beyond repair. It’s about the pervasive tendency towards imbalance that we bring to our lives and our societies. Global warming is just one of the symptoms of human societies’ inability to maintain harmony and equilibrium within and without.
Environmental activism is hard because it’s about changing our habits and life style. Anybody who has tried to quit smoking or lose wait can attest how hard changing habits and getting rid of our addiction is, even when our life is at stake.
We need a global ecological movement. We need a powerful, strong, interconnected grass-root movement that works at regaining balance in our environment, in our societies, and in ourselves. And, to paraphrase Al Gore, we need to act quickly and we need to act together.
Two more days to Blog Action Day
The people on Earth had been sleeping for a long time, trapped in a nightmare. In the nightmare, the richest and most powerful of Earth’s inhabitant were possessed by greed and egoism. Their vision was blurred by arrogance and hubris. The Earth languished in misery and neglect but very few noticed it. Too many people were dying of hunger, illnesses, and violence, but very few noticed it. A restless and happyless illness was possessing the souls and bodies of those who had enough to be happy. The planet was on the verge of collapse.
Then some people started waking up and saw the world around them. They realized that their beautiful planet was dying and the future of their children was at risk. They realized they could do something to make Earth a better place and they decided to act. They got together to find another way of living their lives, because the way of waste and exploitation didn’t make them happy.
They started to spend more time with their friends and with their family and less in their cars and air conditioned offices. They found other ways to feel satisfied that didn’t involve polluting and wasting scarce resources. They chose generosity and sharing to possession and accumulation. Others saw them and woke up. They tuned off their lights, sold their cars, discovered they could walk to places or ride their bicicles. They slowed down. They stopped running and started paying attention to flowers and sunsets and they realized that they felt much happier. For the first time in years, the Earth smiled.
Our Earth is generous and tolerant, but it’s not immortal. The balance that keeps Earth able to sustain life is strong, but we are stronger and more powerful. We can do great good and we can do a lot of damage. The choice is up to us.
Monday is Blog Action Day. Speak up on the environment. Look at the list of environmental issues on Wikipedia. Browse the page on environmental resources on Blog Action Day.
Blog Action Day on October 15
Eight thousand bloggers have pledged to write about the environment on Monday, October 15. (8000 to date, but the counter is ticking up as I write. The page that shows who signed up when it’s a great example of viral spread.)
Blog action day is organizing, Wire Magazine has written about it, LifeHacker and a lot of my friends are participating.
You should participate too.
Watch the video, visit the site, write a post, and let’s meet on October 15 in blog space.
If you think this is funny you are an idiot
The blogosphere is passionately debating Kathy Sierra’s death threats and misogynous bashing at the defunct meankids.org.
Kathy is mourning the loss of her normal self.
I have cancelled all speaking engagements.
I am afraid to leave my yard.
I will never feel the same. I will never be the same.
Some have decided they won’t talk about it, because nothing makes a troll happier than fame. Others have written beautiful and touching posts about it.
I will never forget the descriptions of how me and my friends were to be raped. And Kathy will never forget the descriptions of how she was to be harmed. That’s what it means to be terrorized. How can we live in a community that permits that? How can we allow spaces like that to foster under the guise of “free speech”? We have a responsibility, a moral responsibility, to help generate spaces that breed tolerance, to speak out in support of those around us, and to bite our tongues rather than spit hatred when we’re frustrated.
The web debates who is to blame. Of course the people who wrote the threats and posted the pictures are to blame. And yet, those who created the space for hate and violence, those who set up the chemistry experiment that got explosive—people who are considered smart and accomplished because they understand social dynamics on the web—should think hard about what happened and about the human consequences (even indirect) of their actions.
Hurting people is way too easy, and there is nothing remarkable about it. It’s just sad and despicable. [If you are curious about meankids.org, you can still find cached pages on Google. But I warn you, you'll be disappointed: it's really boring reading.]
If you think about it, Kathy Sierra has been harassed because of who she is, what she says and writes. Wake up! This is not funny: this is dangerous. It attacks and destroys the very essence of the freedom of speech you are hiding behind. If you think this is a funny, innocent game you are an idiot.
UPDATE: Read few more blogs. Some “balanced” people write: sure, being threatened and insulted is not nice, but it comes with the territory and we need to preserve freedom of speech on the web. Besides, you cannot be responsible of what people write on your blog.
I say: this is true and bullshit at the same time. Freedom of speech is essential, but viciously attacking somebody for what they write—or worse, who they are—is a limitation of their freedom of speech. The more I think about it, the more I agree with danah boyd: this is an issue of social responsibility.
There are people and there are principles: I’ve always distrusted those who put principles above people. “Sorry, Kathy, but you are less important than freedom of speech. Your feelings, your life, even your right to express yourself, is less important than this abstract idea. Get over it.” You know in your heart that if this is true, we have failed.
Should Kathy have refrained from naming names? Perhaps. For one, it would have saved her some grief. Some of the people she mentioned by name seem to be very weakly connected, if at all, with the site. So, we are back to the beginning: we may not have the legal responsibility to be respectful to others, but we do have the social responsibility to think about the consequences that our words and actions have on other people.
4/2/07 Update: Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke write a “coordinated statement” in preparation of their CNN interview.
Cool Readings
-
More Links...
-
