The Wisdom of the crowd comes from the Society that tames the crowd into a Culture. In spite of our narcissism we exist in and as a series of collectives...from subatomic particles combining to form atoms, combining to create molecules, combining into cells...until eventually it all coalesces into conscious bodies collected into a "Society, a mass acting in concert with you, expressing the deepest part of you." (Alfred Kazin). From quarks to Culture is a long journey filled with mystery. How we go about unraveling the mystery says a lot about the Society we have created.
My new favorite candidate for a method is Anthropunk (Anthropology in motion). It is "...an explicit recognition that their lives are interactive, not driven by rules, scripts, schemata or frames but the creation of these. ...Individual people collectively make the world around them." Collective is no longer the scary Communist word of the cold war. It is the mechanism of social cooperation that will get us past the dangers of climate change, war, injustice, inequality... . On our own we lack the power to make the world different, we can only change our little space. Collectively, in concert, our little spaces become a Society with a Culture that can give our world the makeover it needs.
Is there some mysterious force or entity behind this drive to combine? If so then Anthropunk is one way to unravel it, there are others - the hard headed Empiricists want to crack it open, like a coconut, and suck its milky marrow, Idealists want to decorate it with metaphor and ritual, Rationists want to surround it with ideas and coax it into the light... . The success of one or another approach is a matter of context - the Society its adherents have created. Perhaps the mystery is the myriad of successful explanations. In the end I don't think it's the mystery that matters so much as the wisdom of the crowd seeking its solution.
That's all I have for now.
My new favorite candidate for a method is Anthropunk (Anthropology in motion). It is "...an explicit recognition that their lives are interactive, not driven by rules, scripts, schemata or frames but the creation of these. ...Individual people collectively make the world around them." Collective is no longer the scary Communist word of the cold war. It is the mechanism of social cooperation that will get us past the dangers of climate change, war, injustice, inequality... . On our own we lack the power to make the world different, we can only change our little space. Collectively, in concert, our little spaces become a Society with a Culture that can give our world the makeover it needs.
Is there some mysterious force or entity behind this drive to combine? If so then Anthropunk is one way to unravel it, there are others - the hard headed Empiricists want to crack it open, like a coconut, and suck its milky marrow, Idealists want to decorate it with metaphor and ritual, Rationists want to surround it with ideas and coax it into the light... . The success of one or another approach is a matter of context - the Society its adherents have created. Perhaps the mystery is the myriad of successful explanations. In the end I don't think it's the mystery that matters so much as the wisdom of the crowd seeking its solution.
That's all I have for now.
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