Permission Statement
in which our author introduces himselves to Corante readers and begs their kind indulgence.
I realize the "Ad Hominem" title may spook a few folks. Well, good. However, I can assure you I will never directly savage individual persons. Unless they truly deserve it, that is. This reminds me of my favorite line in Foreigner's song, Double Vision: "I never do more than I really need." If you missed ingesting massive quantities of psychedelics, the reference will be wasted. Just as I was in those bygone days.
In Gonzo Marketing, I wrote:
"You may argue that a concept like 'payback' has no more place in a serious business book than would that beastly trope so hated and shunned by people of good will everywhere: the ad hominem attack. But, while that is certainly true in the usual case, let us reason this out together..."
This was followed by a complex rationalization of why I felt I had every right, nay, a moral obligation, to situate Seth Godin in a mental hospital and quote him speaking passages from his book Permission Marketing so out of context that he sounded truly insane. Was this nice? No. But it was funny. Some people thought so. Perhaps not Seth. As Kurt Vonnegut was wont to say: so it goes.
If you're getting the sense that I'm trying to warn you off here, that's it precisely. Case in point, The Financial Times writer who reviewed Gonzo (her usual beat seems to have been real estate; which is curious, no?) said that "right thinking people" would not be amused by the book. Having never met any right thinking people, I wouldn't know. If you are one, here's your chance to escape.
I'm getting used to this cool blogging tool Corante uses. It's produced and maintained by WebCrimson and it's worth checking out. However, I was chagrined to come across this first item in the Service Agreement:
"You must agree not to use WebCrimson's services to upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable."
Anyone who knows me will immediately understand how much that's going to cramp my style. Nonetheless, I plan to make the best of it.
As to the "sociology of IQ," it's partly a bounce off two other Corante blogs: Donna Wentworth's ("the politics of IP") and Arnold Kling's ("the economics of IT"). And it's partly there to scare you even further. Yes, a Mensa representative will be visiting you soon. We know where you live.
But enough of this anti-explanation. Time for a story or two.
If I were a sociologist, I'd drive around a lot. On the highways, people show their true colors. Mr. NiceGuy, who would never interrupt someone else in a business meeting, makes up for his enforced corporate bondage by cutting you off at the exit. Then flipping you the bird for honking. Ms. Manners, who is always so deferential to the boss, delights in going 30 in the left lane. Passive aggression? You think? Everyone knows that behind the wheel, something else takes over. Something dark and terrible. Maybe I'm just projecting here, but I bet you're almost as much of an asshole as I am out on the road. Only you won't admit it. That's Part 1 of the point. Hold that thought.
I once read about a guy who was remanded by some court to undergo psychotherapy. Why? Chances are he was psycho. The therapist told this tough guy (he was one; maybe even a Wise Guy, like Tony) that she wanted him to write down his dreams and bring them to their sessions. The dude was having none of that crap. So he decided to make up a bunch of baloney and feed it to the shrink. This went on for a couple months until one day he realized she was reading him like a book. Despite the faked dreams. His mask had given him away.
So Part 2 is that we're out on the highway of the web (I can't bring myself to use the Gore trope) and we're suddenly free of the constraints of everyday so-called real life. Only it's pretty real here, too. I saw you flip me off in your blog. Hope you saw my reply. This is just awful isn't it? We were going to achieve World Peace through weblogging, but now it turns out we're human -- as David Weinberger once remarked, the best kept secret of the corporate world. And we bring all the gnarly foibles and neuroses of "meatspace" -- I'd like to murder whoever came up with that one -- to the wonderful, promising, too-good-to-be-true world wide web. Bummer, huh?
Nope. It only looks that way because we've so long resisted the notion that we might be imperfect. Horrors! The Interstate Sociologist isn't recording some sort of anomalous behavior out there amidst the road rage. She's seeing what we cover up elsewhere. Acknowledging that we're human is good. Even when we find out we're "bad." Personally, I like it when people are bad. They seem so much more real than when they're trying to convince themselves and everyone else what lovely, reasonable, rational beings they are. As I once wrote somewhere, "Take a chance. Take a trip. Take a leap of faith. Incorporate for real. Take a walk on the wild side."
And Part 2b of the point is that we're none of us quite sure just what it is. "What are we doing here?" "What is The Truth?" "Why are we blogging our lives away?" Questions, questions. Gee. Maybe we should all get out more. Maybe watch more TV. Something. This is nuts. This is positively twisted.
Yeah, it is. We're making up stuff and feeding it to each other. Lies and fictions and contrafactual fabrications of the worst sort. Or the best sort. We think we're hiding behind all these random words we sling around. Then we're horrified to realize we've betrayed ourselves. Our masks have given us away.
Scary. And beautiful. Magnificent, in fact. What we are seeing today on the web -- discounting the plethora of corporate spew -- is the emergence of ourselves as human beings discovering what it means to be human. If you're not doing that, do it. Spook yourself. If you're already spooked, don't quit now. We've only begun to scratch the surface. Why is the net getting so much pushback from the top-down hierarchies of power that freak if they can't control everything. Because it's working, that's why. We're giving ourselves permission to be outlaws.
Cool, huh?
