World

'First, Do No Harm' in the context of society gives me, "I wish to create a world that I don't have to apologize for." That's impossible. Something will always be screwed up, but minimizing those screw ups can lead to a better world. When applied to just about everything, it's a good guiding philosophy to approach anything with. The idea is to improve upon what is.

People who claim or aspire to some form of digital revolutionary status often forget that the methods by which they act define the world should they be successful - or fail. That sometimes means that there should be restraint. Sometimes that means that there should be patience. It always means picking the appropriate battle. It never means protest for the sake of protest - there has to be a tangible result that one wishes. And the key questions that should be asked is: "How does this make the world a better place?" The end does not always justify the means if the end is to have an ethical aspect.

Some examples:

• One cannot expect Free Speech or any other rights while taking those Rights from others, no matter how justified you may feel.
• One cannot install democracy by failing to practice democracy.
• One cannot expect tolerance if one has no tolerance.

If one is in a battle, picked or not, the way one fights that battle affects how all future battles, small or large, are fought. And that, in and of itself, affects whether the world is better or worse place.

If you have only a hammer, be aware that not everything is a nail. Be aware that building something of worth makes something of less worth less than relevant. Be aware that attempting to destroy something of little perceived worth does not replace it.

Be aware. If you want to make the world a better place, how you do it defines whether you will be successful or not. A terrorist makes a statement, a revolutionary creates a better world.

These last few weeks have been interesting and have me more untethered than usual.

There's a side of me that has been immersed in Trinidad and Tobago, where aspiring to be a gentleman farmer seems to have reached the glass ceiling created by an integrity not shared by politicians and people past and present. This is the culmination of about 9 years of effort, trying to do things not as they are done but as they should be done. And, damn me, it hasn't worked.¹

Then there is my overgrown 'save the world' gland that got me to be a participant in CARDICIS3 - regarding the enabling of rebuilding of Haiti by Haitians after the earthquake of January 12th, 2010. But the problems are deeper than that of an earthquake and the system failures preceded the actual disaster. 'Continuance', a phrase often associated with mankind's adaptation to disasters (and the misnomer 'disaster management'), is really not an option since the preceding conditions that, while endemic to the entire world, demonstrate their untenability in the extremes of Haiti. And there I am again, trying to do things not as they are done but as they should be done. And, damn me, I don't think I'll see progress there either.² The focus on treating the symptoms by creating systems that do so simply makes treating the disease more complicated, in my opinion.

In both of the above, I do not feel I can have an effect. I have weathered much in the first and that makes me leery of expending time and energy in the second, especially in a context that is so complicated by design. Bureaucracy shows disdain for change, by its very conceptual definition, and because of that the necessary simplifications for solution of problems are defied on cultural grounds.

We live in synthetic worlds of our own perceptions; we create mental models of our worlds from these perceptions and live within these worlds. We do this as individuals. We do this in groups. We do this in every way.

But the world is greater than the sum of our perceptions. As our knowledge within our synthetic worlds increases, we do not know whether we actually pull in more from the real world around us.

Last night, I was surrounded by a lot of people who want to make the world a better place. And they're all great people, a lot of fun - and this criticism isn't leveled at them by any stretch - I don't know some of them well enough to compliment, much less insult¹. I like the people I met. But they got me thinking about something I have had on a shelf within the kitchen cupboard of my mind. An old discussion.

"We want to save the world!"
"What for?"

There's a context to 'saving'. It seems to me that popular media, social or traditional, talks a lot about changing the world or saving the world but not really explaining the goal of the whole thing. And we need to explain that goal if we are to guide our own behaviors to assure the world we wish.

So what would we save the world for? One thought is for the children - the most interesting sexually transmitted disease of mankind where the parasite becomes a host for another parasite. Because of the nature of procreation², we manufacture these parasites at a fairly high rate: At the beginning of the 20th century, there were a little over 1 billion people. 100 years later, we're at 6.2 billion. So we're saving the world for the children. And the children get increasingly small (or decreasingly large) parts of the world in a perfectly fair world. This approach doesn't make sense because even if we save the world, our sheer numbers will work against it³ - unless we can decrease the carbon footprint per person at a rate greater than inversely proportional to global population increase. So we'll have to kick the kids out to other planets if we keep doing what's so fun⁴.