(Re-reconsidered) The ripcord...

The original version of this post was available on Medium but no longer.

I pulled that version from LinkedIn for reconsideration. The surprising but interesting feedback was that by being “too self-critical” and “too open-minded” I legitimized the policies and agenda of “the other side.” I did not trust the validity of that thesis then. And three years later even less.

To be an effective opposing force, to counter chaos with intention and malpractice with good practice, we must be self-critical. Critical thinking does not work without constant appraisal of our and others’ thinking and actions.

Since Medium now has a paywall, I am reposting it back here:

(Original) The ripcord and other doomsday devices…

9 November 2106

“We, the people” of the United States of America have pulled the ripcord to see what was actually packed in there. A parachute? A grilled-cheese-and-ham sandwich? A blue dye bomb? P.T. Barnum? A wizard of oz? Nothing at all? A letter from the future stating: “By the year 2016 CE you had already lapsed as a civic society but had not noticed.”…?

The thing about ripcords, break-the-glass boxes and emergency breaks —interestingly like people in democratic systems or roiling stock markets— is that they have fickle affordances and surprise unintended effects.

A possibly real pattern continues to show its features. 8 November 2016 may have been the American Populists’ very first effective-at-the-polls pseudo-right-of-center [SEE NOTE X] uprising in 200+ years. Previously, in Britain with Brexit, in Colombia with the Peace Referendum, in the Philippines with Duterte &c&c&c, people around the world have been breaking through a hoped for “in case of emergency break the glass-box” barrier.

WELCOME TO BEING DISRUPTED WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.

“We” may think “they” have caused an emergency where there was none. But “they” clearly believed their vote was responding to a real emergency. We are polarized and not in the usual ways of our two party system. We need new ideas. And renewed and enhanced memory of old ideas.

The meaning of “the electorate” and “the popular vote” also need reconsideration. We should not so easily discount the huge part of the electorate that does not vote. Just like in Colombia, our election upset was made largely by those who chose not to vote.

But blame-games, I told you so’s or face-saving explanations are now ineffective and destructive. Unpolitical, too.

The sobering fact is that we have ignored the rising inequality in our economic environment — at home and abroad — and the effect it has on the actual functioning of our civic society.

Three few basic questions...

1. What have “we” done to help or hinder? Or failed to do?

2. What should we do next? And not do?

3. How will we demonstrate our design, design thinking, technological prowess or political persuasion left-right-or-center offers real value to ourselves AND our fellow citizens?

The answer is not paranoia, panic or populism of the many or the few. Our first and simplest requirement is to stand and hold our (collective) ground as a true civic society must: messily and excruciatingly discomforting as that will be. We must change.

Our current dismay needs to be transformed into enthusiastic commitment to the next four years of hard and unfamiliar work. As soon as possible. Roll up our sleeves and commit to the daily struggle of participating in a free and civic society.

So...

—A— We should modulate the tenor of our conversations so are inclusive and conducive to individual and collective action.

—B— We should promote consensus by working for the collective good, not to enforce ideological purity.

HOWEVER. Items A and B above do not mean adopting a stance of capitulation or a policy of appeasement. On the contrary. It will require actual civic and political involvement to exercise constructive but critical models of engaged opposition.

—C— We should act together to intelligently distribute tasks of social and political advocacy to groups and individuals that can be effective and sustainable over the next four years. And beyond. The election year of 2020 is an urgent target in time. As are the next six months.

I am more appalled at the mechanics of the 2016 Election than at the results of the 2016 Election. But I am even more appalled at our continuing failure of imagination. It makes us ineffective agents of change.

How can we change that...?

Will we succeed in managing the mechanized power of digital social media to assist real groups and communities of humans acting in concert over the short and the long run for the benefit of all?

[ To be continued... ]

— by Hector Moll-Carrillo / copyright ? 2016, 2019

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Responding to some quick and great direct commentary from friends and strangers here are a few notes…

NOTE 1: I use the phrase“pseudo-right-of-center” above in quotation marks. Populism is not only pseudo-populism but also anti-populism. I use “populist” and “populism” to refer to the flim-flam tactics currently back in vogue. I, of course, mean no offense to the real People that Lincoln mentioned at Gettysburg in 1863.

NOTE 2: I use the word ‘uprising’ literally. If you believe this election upset was not a popular uprising you are still not getting it. Whether you believe this is a great victory or a great disaster, the fact remains that this upset to the received and calculated wisdom is a popular uprising by the simplest of factual measures. Numbers. Even if the people have equivocated, the people’s numbers have spoken.

In practice Electoral College numbers once more. But numbers nonetheless. Such is the agreed-upon numerical component of our civic-political framework —ouch or no ouch. California Senator Barbara Boxer has proposed changing that.

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NOTE X: A ripcord is part of a skydiving apparatus. You pull the ripcord to release the parachute. And stop your fun freefall from turning into your last fall. So allow me to conflate a bit further seeking matching and contrasting patterns.

The ripcord is a safety mechanism but also an emergency mechanism. A playing-chicken mechanism. Often used near the point of no return. You pull the ripcord at the last possible moment before disaster. For a skydiver seeking the thrill of the sport that simply extends the free-fall experience. For a military skydiver it means less time in danger from enemy fire and higher accuracy as to the landing point. In design-speak, different end-users have different needs and motivations to wait until they pull that ripcord.

If you pull the ripcord —within the right time— and everybody has done their job (meaning, your parachute was correctly folded and packed &c) and materials science and many other factors cooperate that day: the parachute mechanism will save your life. You will live to jump another day.

In the original post I also refer to those “in case of emergency break the glass” boxes that dot our environment in logical and odd places. Those actuators are similar but different from the ripcord. When you break the glass you simply gain access to some kind of tool or additional device. It may be a fire extinguisher, an axe, a water hose, an oxygen mask, an epinephrine auto injector, a fire alarm, &c. Those tools are not as nearly automatic and intentional as your parachute. They don’t assume knowledgable users. In those “cases of emergency” an unknown human agent will have to wield the tools to good effect to contend with the emergency.

And then, there are the ubiquitous emergency breaks, too.

Even our private cars have an emergency break. A separate mechanism from the more common slam-on-the-break-pedal impulse. When you pull these actuators, you should be certain that things are so dire that the results of this sudden and not-so-controlled emergency breaking are probably better than not stopping. Even in such an inelegant manner. (To put it mildly.)

The parachute ripcord, even though it may seem the most extreme, is actually the least so. Because it is designed to fundamentally change the situation. Deploying your parachute transforms your situation in an expected way. You undergo a transformation from a design point of view. From a compact object in free-fall, you turn into an airfoil in aerodynamic relationship to our atmosphere. It is similar (only similar) to a free-falling hawk holding its wings against its body on a dive towards its target suddenly spreading them open to go back to “flying.” (The hawk spreading its wings is metaphorically “opening the box to retrieve its wings and fly.” And that requires great skill.)

Emergency breaks are the most extreme. Fate only knows what may happen when you pull the emergency break. It is hoped it will be the lesser of two evils. But the train, for example, does not transform from one coping structure to a different one like the diving hawk does. The environment inside the train, instead, suffers a great upheaval. Hawks know how to pull out of a dive. What skills do we apply to the emergency-breaking train or car? It is a difficult cost-benefit analysis.

The thing about ripcords, break-the-glass boxes and emergency breaks —interestingly like people in democratic systems or roiling stock markets— is that they have fickle affordances and unintended effects. Easy to actuate, the consequences of their triggering are never certain. In fact they are always uncertain. The same goes for the numbers of people who will be affected. In skydiving one or two lives at risk to perhaps tens in cars and hundreds in trains and by cascading effects in areas like management, legislation, wars, elections and autonomous automation, on to the thousands, millions and billions.

The thing about ripcords, break-the-glass boxes and emergency breaks —interestingly like people in democratic systems or roiling stock markets— is that they have fickle affordances and unintended effects.

I may be stretching our pattern-matching mechanisms a bit. Pardon the mental calisthenics. But doomsday machinery may accidentally accrue from basic parts of our everyday infrastructure. Actuators meant to avert doomsdays may sometimes trigger them. Actuators meant to do menial tasks may aggregate unexpectedly, too, and cause major disruptions of the harmful kind. (And that is simply by accident. Imagine what may happen when humans purposefully manipulate them.)

Doomsday machinery may accidentally accrue from basic parts of our everyday infrastructure.

All require a degree of thoughtfulness. You do not want to pull the ripcord too early. Or too late. Breaking the glass even just to sound the alarm will cause conditions and effects in which the safety of many people will be placed at risk. You certainly do not want to trigger the emergency break unless it is absolutely necessary. Fear and alarm are essential parts of our triggering mechanisms. But they may cause serious errors of judgment and produce chains of consequence difficult to guide, predict —or stop.

In our recent election in the USofA a great amount of demagoguery was deployed to manipulate our fear and alarm mechanisms. A great amount of rational and critical thinking was also deployed to appeal to our intelligence and best intentions. In the end, however, both sides went for the fear tactic. And, surprise, surprise: fear won the day. “Their” fear, however, not “ours.”

Why?

I believe this happened because we are polarized in ways that go beyond the usual Liberal-Conservative or Republican-Democratic divides. No wonder “the center cannot hold,” we have been vacating it for a good 50 years. The actual experience and expectations of a large segment of our population (that is recently not so easily amenable to our usual marketing-driven segmentations) have fallen onto the far side of a huge chasm. One side was afraid of President Trump becoming a reality. The other side was afraid of the reality they live and are trapped in never changing.

The results were strong motivations to vote but also to refrain from voting. These played chaotically on each other. We saw the results of similar dynamics in the Philippines, England and Colombia before we saw them here.

The fear of losing your comfortable circumstances is never as great as the fear of your uncomfortable circumstances. The former is the fear of a possible outcome —tomorrow. The latter is the fear of an unfolding outcome —today.

We are still confusing empathy with charity —and weakness.

Empathy does not automatically lead to sympathy. (That would be dangerous.) Empathy is simply the ability to [A] intellectually and [B] emotionally understand what other people may be feeling or thinking. Empathy is not a soft power. Empathy may equally soften or harden our stance. Empathy gives higher resolution to our conception of the mind of others, which is vital for our survival as a social but individualistic species. Empathy can help us use our intelligence to defeat our opponents just as it can help us protect our values.

See also: All you need is love? (https://tinyurl.com/lby6rbz) and Empathy, Sympathy, Sentimentalism, cold-blooded Contingency and dumbed-down Design (parts 1 and 2) (https://tinyurl.com/z4cet28) for more on the subject of empathy.

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— Hector Moll-Carrillo (copyright ? 2016-2017)