Let those who are without sin buy the first debt

Debt has become a strange thing these last few decades. While the concept of debt is as old as social relations themselves, the new conception of debt isn't. And it is as new as it is strange.

It used to be a rather straightforward thing. Someone gave you a sum of money, and until you returned it (and a little extra for the hassle), you were in debt. For the longest time, this was the gist of it. A relation where one part owed the other some amount of money. With the implicit social understanding that this amount should be returned sooner rather than later.

A two-party system, if you will.

Then it expanded into a three-party system. As capitalism became a thing, and as regular people were expected to buy ever more expensive things, a system arose for the facilitation of purchases where the buyer couldn't actually afford the thing sold. Which might sound strange, until you remember that houses are both expensive and rather useless if no one actually lives in them.

Thus, home mortgaging arose.

Now, people had bought houses since the dawn of buying and houses. What happened (mostly in the US, but also elsewhere) was that the notion of owning your home became a propaganda hit. Everyone should own their place of residence, the proclamation went, and this sparked a great surge in market demand. The demand was, in fact, greater than the amount of people who could actually afford to buy.

Which, to be sure, is good if you want to sell the one singular house. But everyone wanted to buy one, and soon the supply of people who had enough money to buy one outright diminished. And it takes a long time to earn such amounts of money with honest work. Longer than anyone - buyers and sellers both - had the patience to wait. Especially the sellers - unsold homes are the opposite of profitable.

Thus, the three party debt system.

The one part is the buyer. The other is the seller. The third a bank. The bank lends the amount of money required to buy the house to the buyer, who then buys the house. The seller gets the money, and the buyer is indebted. Not to the seller, but to the bank.

The advantage of this is that it speeds up the buying/selling process. Profits happen faster for those who sell, and housing happens faster for those who buy. The latter will, of course, have to pay off this debt over time, but they will at least have somewhere to live during the process.

This does two things. First, it speeds up the rate of consumption. Buy now, pay later! - whatever the bought thing might be, and how long "later" might be.

Second, it transforms debt from a social to a legal relation. It's still debt, but it's also something stranger than it used to be. You still have to pay it, but you're not paying it to someone. You're paying it to something. Mostly a bank, but it might be hard to tell at times.

Being (re)paid a sum of money each month is a stable way to make a profit. Stable, but slow, and predictable. And being predictably slow is something you do not want to be these days. So banks got their institutional thinking caps on and started to ponder - how can we speed up the moneymaking process, and thus avoid being predictable, slow and boring?

At some point, the notion of selling the debts emerged. There might, after all, be someone else out there who wanted slow predictable, and if they could be persuaded to buy these debts from us, why not? We might not get as much money, but we'll get more money to use now, and more money now means faster profits - which is the same thing as more profits.

Thus, there are mortgages for sale. Buy now, payments later!

No longer do we see the three-party system we've grown used to, but rather a confusing polypoly party system where it can actually be quite tricky to find out just who you're actually paying your debt to. It might be the bank you once went to to get a loan, but it might also be someone or something else entirely.

Again, it's not a social relation. It's a legal relation. Which enables you, with a bit of bureaucratic legwork, to do something very strange: to buy your own debt.

There might be some implicit social understanding that frowns upon this maneuver. Something about the inherent value of paying one's debts. But, and this might sound strange:

Why not?

Sustainability for the immediate future

There's much talk about making our society sustainable. While this is all well and good, we might want to take it one step further, and ask ourselves: is our society survivable?

Let's review the facts:

The air is slowly turning unbreathable
The food we eat is postprocessed beyond health and nourishment
Our social relations are toxic
Our social values dictate that only those who subjugate themselves to the labor market are deemed to live
The prevailing educational paradigm is to beat new thoughts out of you
Profit trumps ecology
Your right to live ends where monetization begins

Oh my.

Seems we have ways to go, still.

Rhetorical self defence

There are two ways to approach the body of knowledge that is rhetoric. One way is as an ancient tradition of social epistemics, detailing the various virtues and practices that one needs to continuously ponder, consider and master in order to gain a proper understanding of one's place in the lifeworld of one's peers. A tracing and retracing of the discourses of relevance that governs the life of those that matter to those people that matter - a techne of the ethics of the social, as it were. A comprehensive, systematic worldview, defining as it is redefining you and your relation to the relating of being human - confronting you with the limitations of what it means to be a meaning subject in human form.

The other way is as a cheat sheet to getting things done.

It is an open question whether the difference in length between the first paragraph and the second is an example of the first or the second way. The rest of this text is going to be written more in the spirit of the second.

So. Without further ado. Here are six utterly concrete ways to win every debate you'll ever happen to find yourself in. Regardless of your eventual knowledge about anything, including the topic of discussion. The first four are about what your opponent is saying, and the last two are about your opponent in general.

1. Make your opponent appear unclear and hard to understand.

In order to be accepted, a proposal must be understood. The opposite of being understood is being unclear, confusing and hard to follow. If you can introduce elements that makes it seem that the things your opponent is saying are unclear, confusing and hard to understand, then the likelihood of understanding is reduced.

One of the more famous examples of this being used is the media treatment of the Occupy movement. Despite the most clear cut political statements made since the "tear down this wall" speech, the general framing of the movement was - you guessed it - that they were unclear, undefined and hard to get a grasp on.

This was no accident. Clearly.

2. Make it look like your opponent is inconsistent and self-contradictory.

It is a generally accepted view that one cannot think both a thing and its opposite at the same time. It's hard to be both for and against the same thing at the same time, and appearing to be on both sides of an issue is either a sign of inexperience, not having thought the thing through or just general stupidity. Neither of which is a positive thing to be - less so to appear to be.

Remember what the ancient Greeks said about the difference between being and appearing to be. It is brutally hard to convey the message that you are when appearing to both be and not be. And with the added bonus of the internet, finding things in the past that is not congruent with what is said today is easier than ever.

Or, as Bill Clinton said recently: "You gotta give him one thing, it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did."

3. Make it look like your opponents position is impossible.

This is more easily said than done. If you know any political persons at all, the one thing you have to do to see this in action is to mention communism. Especially if these people are liberal with a thing against the King of France.

Another issue where you might encounter this is the moon landing. Remember what Kennedy said? "We choose to go to the moon." Despite the fact that we did go to the moon, the impossibility card still finds ways to work its magic. Epic speeches and literal tons of physical evidence to the contrary.

It is indeed impossible to please everyone. But if you can make it appear that a given project is an impossibility, then no sane person would go for it.  Regardless of how possible it actually turns out to be.

4. Make it look like your opponents position is unrealistic.

So, you're a blogger, and want to make it big? Don't be silly. Be realistic. You're just one guy, in fierce competition not only with people writing a lot better than you, but also with every other activity in the world than blog reading.  Get real. It's not gonna happen.

See how that works?

If you are a mean-spirited soul, you use this to limit persons perceived life options. If you have ethics, you're more nuanced about it.

5. Make it look like your opponent is the wrong person to say what he/she's saying.

This is sometimes more easily said than done. If Gandhi would somehow return from the dead and conduct a massive campaign in favor of total global war, the criticism would write itself. On a harder difficulty setting, this can be harder to pull off.

Let's, for instance, take the random good guy Lawrence Lessig. Here's a guy who's done a ton of good stuff, is still doing a ton of good stuff and will most likely continue to do tons of good stuff in the foreseeable future. One would think him immune to the "being the wrong person for the job" argument, but - he isn't. Despite all the good stuff, he's still a human being, and human beings have limitations. One of them being lifespan, meaning that no one person can know everything about everything. There's always some things people don't know, and there's always situations where they are not the right person to speak.

So. When discussing copyright reform - don't go there. When discussing, say, the finer points of quantum mechanics - do.

6. Make it look like your opponent are motivated by nefarious motives.

I'm pretty sure a honorable reader as yourself wouldn't stoop to question a fellow human beings motives. In fact, I am convinced that you as a fine specimen of the human race is full of trust and compassion for your brothers and sisters, and that your first and foremost reaction to hearing of tragic news is to try and support the grieving.

Others, on the other hand, are not quite as honorable. They lie, they steal, they do all manner of things in order to further their own profits. And they will not hesitate in masquerading as honorable fellow citizens - for as long as it profits them! But when you least expect it, they will go for the jugular and make your life miserable at every turn!

If you need an example of this, look no further than at the ever so loudmouthed right wing radio talk hosts. There is no end to the bad will the government seems to have against just about everything. About everything.

# The reversal.

All of these ways can be used to make someone else look bad. They can also be used in reverse, as hinted above. That is, if one makes something out to be clear, consistent, possible, reasonable, the right character for the job and motivated by a heart of gold - well, who wouldn't go for that?

The thing is that these universal techniques can be used for both good and evil. And, indeed, both good and bad. The reason I wrote this post is not so that you can go out in the world and club random people (not even Lawrence) with your newfound rhetorical prowess. To be sure, you could go out there right now and start making unfriends - but I'm not sure how that would help you in the longer run.

The reason is rather the fact that you will encounter these forms of argument just about everywhere you go, and that you will be immensely helped by knowing about them.

Make no mistake. Sometimes, things are unclear, inconsistent and so forth. But as you now know, there's a difference between being and seeming to be, and in the distance between those two there's ample room for making things seem more or less what they are. And there's no lack of people that makes a hell of a living off of this distance.

Marketing exists, after all. And propaganda.

Learning to detect these things is a good skill to have. Learning to talk back at it even more so.

I would, in my ambition, recommend that you walk the whole nine miles and learn rhetoric in the sense this post started in. The more comprehensive style of thinking that turns every social situation into a window of opportunity, and transforms one's discourse into a reflection of the self as a self-among-others.

Until then - this short cheat sheet. This short introduction to rhetorical self defence. Use it wisely, use it well. And share it to those who might be in need of it.

Two-way streets

One of the things on my mind lately is the militarization of the social. How we are constantly in a state of alertness, mobilization - ready to act at a moment's notice. Indeed, ready to take and receive notice in the first place.

This is, in part, due to the ever increasing connectedness of everyone to everyone else. Back in the days, you had to send a guy running to get the word out, so naturally it took some time for word to get out. Now, it takes some literacy and a charged battery. It lowers the barriers, so to speak.

But more precisely, it is those barriers that are not lowered that makes this militarization of the social both necessary and unavoidable.

A local example of this is the recent trend of mass transit commuters to tweet about where ticket inspections are occurring. Whenever they see those men in uniform - a tweet is sent, and everyone hoping not to be found in transit can instantly react to this sudden intel.

The interesting thing is that it's not just fare dodgers that participate in this. You'd imagine that it was a self serving thing, freerider to freerider, but many respectable commuters share what they see. Not because they necessarily agree with the ethos of fare dodging, but because they know that those caught are more likely than not to be roughed up if the uniforms have a bad day.

And in solidarity with this, they share what they know. Not due to the lowered barriers of communication, but because of those barriers that have yet to be lowered.

Solidarity, remixed to the streets.

A more global example is, of course, the Occupy movement, and every subsequent protest movement afterwards. What the Occupy movement did/does is that it removes barriers of communication - it doesn't matter if you're black, white, rich, poor, strange, pathologically normal or just around. You're angry and want change, and that's good enough - let's talk.

But the solidarity created is one under siege - literally, in some places. The constant threat of police action, and the even more literal/constant barriers the police presence gives rise to, makes a readiness to confront confrontation necessary. Where are they, what are they doing - what are we to do next?

The flipside to building community, libraries and a general sense of social acceptability - is this very preparedness to get moving. In defense of what should be by virtue of people talking to each other.

Conversations, remixed to the streets.

And as the internet makes it easier for the strange to find each other, for the lonely to become less lonely and for people to get together in general, an opposite reaction happens. The guardians of remaining barriers become increasingly worried, and tries to strengthen the what they fear might be lost otherwise. Monopolies of information are draconically enforced, the war on terror makes everyone a suspect, and even the defenders of traditional values turn violent when it turns out that people who are not afraid of each other don't see things their way.

As the barriers fall, the walls start to become fortified. And we, the people, are the Hannibals outside the gates. Whether we want to or not, we are mobilized into a confrontation with the militarization of the social.

War. Remixed to the streets.

Whose streets? Our streets.

Access granted

Have you read the Cluetrain Manifesto?

It's one of those books/texts that really just tells you what you already know, in your heart of hearts, but never really got around to thinking about. And after you've been reminded of it, you start to wonder how you could ever not have been reminded of it.

Take, for instance, this passage:

One day, I met with a [Japanese] researcher in a coffee shop. Language was a problem, but he spoke more English than I did Japanese. I had just been to the bookstore and was lugging a stack of books on highly advanced computer-science topics. It was all Greek to me, but I figured something might rub off. Suddenly the guy asks me, "Who gives you permission to read those books?"

I was stunned. Bowled over. Did his puzzlement reflect some sort of cultural difference? I didn't think so. It struck me that this fellow was just being more honest and direct than an American might be. He was articulating what many people in today's world seem to assume: that official authorization is required to learn new things. I thought about this deeply, and I'm thinking about it still.

Who gives us permission to explore our world? The question implies that the world in fact belongs to someone else. Who gives us permission to communicate what we've experienced, what we believe, what we've discovered of that world for ourselves? The question betokens a history of voice suppressed, of whole cultures that have come to believe only power is sanctioned to speak. Because the ability to speak does involve power. It entails ownership and the control conferred by ownership.

Who gives you the permission to do stuff? And why do you care?

Don't care. Just go out and do things.  Go out and learn. Do, make, say, think. Not because I tell you to, but because it's what you like and want to do.

And don't, ever, ask permission to be awesome while doing it.

Keep the change

I know many people who want to change the world. I more than know them - they are my friends, cohorts and general virtual hangarounds. And, as you might imagine, I'm one of them. Us.

Here we are.

At times, it seems as if the world is unchangeable. It's just too big, too complex, to overwhelming, too much to do anything about. As if the world will look your attempt squarely in the eye, laugh, and transform your transformative effort into another part of its infernal machinery. As if anything and everything you could possibly do would, in the end, ultimately serve to perpetuate the very things you hate in this world of hours.

If you happen to find yourself in a state of mind similar to this, do find someone to hug for a moment. And read on.

You see, this world of ours isn't as stable as it's cranked up to be. Sure, its been around fo a while and seems to be quite good at what it's doing, but consider this: every day literally billions of people work their collective asses off to keep the world running at usual. And an ever increasing amount of uncountable billions of whatever currency you care to mention is spent on keeping the world working as it is.

Now, if something takes that much effort just to keep going, then it obviously isn't keeping itself alive by virtue of its robustness. Rather, it is the fragility of it that makes it necessery for all those billions to get to work.

And if it's fragile, then it can be changed. If one only finds the right maintenance workers and persuade them to do the right thing.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the world is a giant, amorphous blob that won't budge at anything. I've lived there for a couple of years, and I still fall back into the black hole of despair every once in a while. And I know how utterly crushing that sense of utter hopelessness can be when it reaches its most brutal stages.

But the world isn't a giant blob. It's rather a giant mess of moving parts, and if you can find and modify these moving parts, the rest follows. Even if that one modified part is yourself and those in your general vicinity.

Keep the faith. Another world is possible.

And keep a spare hug ready for those who have lost their hope. For some, that might be just the thing that gets the rest going. -

The production of space

Space is a funny thing. You would think it was something that just was, in general. Something that just was, in order for other things to move through. The precondition for things, moving and the intersection of the two.

This view of space makes a phrase like "the production of space" seem somewhat absurd. How can you produce something that is already there? How can you produce something that is needed for things to be in the first place? Indeed, for the first place to be at all?

We can get out of this headscratcher in two ways. The first is the IKEA solution - just think about all the ways you, somehow, can transform your living area into a giant storage facility in disguise. With a lot of anger, assembly time and frustration that there is one screw missing - space happens.

It would be rude to call it effortlessly. But space happens - because we made it happen. Produced it.

The second way space is produced is socially. The clearest example of this is when a theatre is built, and a stage is defined. Only certain people can occupy that space at certain times, and at these times the people occupying that space take on a very certain meaning.

Remember what Shakespeare said about the world? All the world is a stage! And all those places we visit every day follow suit, as stages. Or, rather, as produced spaces, with certain meanings at certain times. Schools, factories, work places, public places - all produced spaces, constructed with more or less intention to them. They are more than just space in general, and follow different rules then, say, an abandoned parking lot.

Which, incidentally, is also a produced space, with its own rules.

Whis is, of course, not a radical thought. Anyone who behaves differently in a bar and in a library know this, and it would be rather radical to not know it. Though I will refrain from speculating on whether it is worse to bar-behave in a library or the other way around.

What has made (and makes) the Occupy movement so effective is its brutal remixing of public space. We all know how public space is, and we all know that despite its name it more often then not is all but public. By breaking unwritten (and sometimes written) rules, they bring to light the conditions under which we make use of our not so-public spaces, and forces us to ask ourselves - who owns the city? Who is this public whose space it is?

The biggest crime of Occupy is not the destruction of space, but the production of it. And it is my hope that it will continue to produce open, public and most of all new spaces.

It would be a rude awakening indeed to find that there are no possible new spaces. Let's make sure this does not happen, shall we?