Memes

 

 

The purpose of this blog - Recap

This blog is above all else a personal exercise I do for my mental health. I have found keeping the mind active through reading, writing and drawing to be one of the most useful tools in my recovery. It is true that I am also a bit of a narcissist, so I like the idea of being able to post some of the interesting ideas I’m reading about online, which gives me a good motivation to do a bit of writing.

I often have little to say, so a lot of it is just quotes. I have a scanner sitting next to me and could easily scan the pages and use an image-to-text app, but I actually prefer to transcribe them. So when I read something interesting, I’ll get up, transcribe a few paragraphs, maybe stick a few together to put it into context a bit, maybe fill the gaps with my own summaries. I might find a few related articles or a video to link in there. But I’m not trying to sell myself as any kind of expert, or any kind of genius, or even particularly mentally well for that matter.

I’ve just been reading a few interesting books recently and would like to share what I’m learning.

Like many people who experience precarious lifestyles either through choice or circumstance, I am burned out. This is a blog that is also designed to speak for the dispossessed, many of whom are not well...and I am one of them.



So I deliberately leave it a little rough around the edges. I am using a free blog, with a standard template, and I often do my posts in a rush. Sometimes I post a lot, sometimes I post nothing at all.

It looks a little bit like virtue signalling? Well I guess it is that. We all like to look like smarty pants these days I guess. But I think you’ll find it’s equally self-depreciative too. In order to speak about the topics I am covering, I think it would undermine my own message if I weren’t completely honest about some of the poor choices I have made in life. At the time of this writing I am jobless, living in public housing, a heavy smoker and suffering various forms of mental illness.

Oh, so it’s competitive victimhood then? I suppose it is a bit of that too, if I’m being honest with myself. I will be speaking about economic discrimination the same way you would talk about other forms of discrimination, and it will at times probably read like “oh look at this poor white man who’s being discriminated against”, and I guess I apologise in advance for that. I’m sure that’s how some people will read it.

I will talk a lot about the incentives and disincentives that different people face in life to make certain choices, and when I do that there are going to be differences. It can’t be helped.

What is 'The Precariat'? What Do I Mean By 'Denizen'?

I think Guy Standing does a better job of explaining this than I ever could

Having changed the title of my blog from 'Citizen Zero' to 'Denizen One', and floated the idea of a new emerging class 'the precariat', it's probably high time I explained exactly what I mean.

Here is an extract from Guy Standing's book 'The Precariat: A New Dangerous Class'

"Varieties of precariat

However one defines it, the precariat is far from being homogeneous. The teenager who flits in and out of the internet café while surviving on fleeting jobs is not the same as the migrant who uses his wits to survive, networking feverishly while worrying about the police. Neither is similar to the single mother fretting where the money for next week’s food bill is coming from or the man in his 60’s who takes casual jobs to help pay medical bills. But they all share a sense that their labour is instrumental (to live), opportunistic (taking what comes) and precarious (insecure).

One way of depicting the precariat is as ‘denizens’

A denizen is someone who, for one reason or another, has a more limited range of rights than citizens do. The idea of the denizen, which can be traced back to Roman times, has been applied to foreigners given residency rights and rights to ply their trade, but not full citizenship rights.

The idea can be extended by thinking of the range of rights to which people are entitled – civil (equality before the law and right to protection against crime and physical harm), cultural (equal access to enjoyment of culture and entitlement to participate in the cultural life of the community), social (equal access to forms of social protection, including pensions and health care), economic (equal entitlement to undertake income-earning activity) and political (equal right to vote, stand for elections and participate in the political life of the community). A growing number of people around the world lack at least one of these rights, and as such belong top the ‘denizenry’ rather than the citizenry, wherever they are living.

The concept could also be extended to corporate life, with corporate citizens and denizens of various types. The salariat can be seen as citizens with at least implicit voting rights in the firm, covering a range of decision and practices that the other groups of citizens, the shareholders and owners, implicitly accept while having their own explicit voting rights on the strategic decisions in the firm. The rest of those connected to corporations – the temps, casuals, dependent contractors and so on – are denizens, with few entitlements or rights.

In the wider world, most denizens are migrants of one kind or another, and they will be considered later. However, one other category stands out – the large layer of people who have been criminalised, the convicted. The globalisation era has seen a growth in the number of actions deemed to be criminal. More people are arrested and more are incarcerated than ever before, resulting in more people being criminalised than ever before. Part of the expansion of criminalisation is due to petty crime, including behavioural reactions to social assistance schemes that create immoral hazards, situations in which deprived people risk penalising themselves if they tell the truth and thus fall foul of some bureaucratic rule.

Temporary career-less workers, migrant denizens, criminalised strugglers, welfare claimants...the numbers mount up. Unfortunately, labour and economic statistics are not presented in a way that could allow us to estimate the total number of people in the precariat, let alone the number in the varieties that make up its ranks. We have to build a picture on the basis of proxy variables."
~Guy Standing, The Precariat: A New Dangerous Class

That gives you a rough idea of what I mean by precariat, and why it is I often feel more like a denizen than a citizen.

It is this feeling of disenfranchisement that has led me to choose to be creatively maladjusted to everyday society. Inspired by this speech by Martin Luthor King Jr., I consider myself to be not only a member of the precariat, but also a proud member of The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjqzG-QCX-Q&feature=share

Blog Name Change

My blog will be shifting focus...

I'm saying goodbye to the old citizen zero, because I don't feel like much of a citizen.

So the title now reads 'Denizen One: Voice of The Precariat', rather than 'Citizen Zero: Your Voice Counts'. A small change, but an important one.

I am currently reading Guy Standing's The Precariat, and I quite like some of the ideas.

Stay tuned.

Some Usefel Links To Get You Started

There seems to be a lot of information, so where I start?

I don't want to swamp you with information, so I'll start by giving you a few links to some short videos introducing some of the concepts. To begin with I'll stick to becoming aware of our modes of communication, including the mediums we are using to communicate like social media, but also the way we speak to each other in general, and a bit of information on economics.

So here's a link to a TED Talk I found useful about how to have a better conversation:

https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation?language=en

And here's a short video with Eli Pariser speaking about Internet personalisation and online filter bubbles:

https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be having conversations while in their own online filter bubbles.

How it might change our perceptions of how we see different points of view. After all, the more we spend time in our own online filter bubbles, the less exposure we have to those who don't think as we do.

Is it making us less tolerant of other points of view?

Is it making others less tolerant of us?

Is it hampering our ability to see common ground with people we disagree with on the whole?

With economics, I've just found this wonderful website where you can find up-to-date news and information on the new wave of thinking in economics, you can check it out here:

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/

And if you are interested in how some of these issues are playing out here in Australia, I strongly encourage you to take a look at what these guys are doing:

https://gameofmates.com/

Here's a short introduction to get you started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ni2pAZ_k-w

That should be plenty to get you going. Economics isn't about left or right politics. It's about what works. A good, strong, sustainable economy benefits us all. There should be nothing preventing us from having sensible, rational conversations about it regardless of our political persuasions.

Economics isn't about how you feel. It is a field of study that is dependent on facts and information. It should be viewed without passion or political bias.

I'm hoping that with a little bit of thought and discussion about how we relate to these issues we can have a better, clearer, more productive conversation on these issues.

If you are interested in probing a bit deeper into these issues, I highly recommend you get your hands on 'Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed The Nation' by Cameron K. Murray & Paul Frijters. It's a great place to start.

You can get the book here:

Amazon
Booktopia
iBooks

Or at your local book shop. If you're in Hobart, I recommend seeing Richard at Cracked & Spineless New & Used Books. He's already ordered all of the books I'll be writing about and knows where to get them. ;)

Introduction

Who am I and what is the purpose of this blog?

The aim of this blog

The purpose of this blog is pretty simple. I would like to try and get people thinking about how we have conversations. In particular I would like to try and improve the quality of political conversation by asking people and myself to take a small step away from the conversations we are having, take a look at how we are speaking with one another, and hopefully find a way to improve the quality of that conversation.

Happily, there is plenty of information out there on this topic, it isn't complicated and anyone can learn.

I'm hoping that by applying even just a few simple rules when we are talking about politics that together we can have a more productive conversation.

I'm convinced that if we want to improve politics we need to do more than simply expect better from our politicians. I think we need to expect more from ourselves. Our politicians after all are an expression of our political will. The conversations they have are a reflection of the conversations we are having.

To this end, I try my best in life and online to stay in contact with people of all political persuasions. I am trying to find issues common to both the left and right and encourage people to focus on some of the issues they have in common.

I want to find ways to have those conversations between people of different political persuasions without it descending into a slagging match, without retreating behind ideological walls, and hopefully with some sort of agreed outcome at the end of the conversation.

By sweeping away some of the emotion and talking about simple, practical issues I think we could achieve a lot in this country. Even if the left and right can get together and agree on just one issue, that is a hell of a lot of political power, and whenever it happens we get results. We move forward.

As we start to agree on issues and shared values one by one, I'm hoping that will create good will on both sides of the political divide, and start rebuilding a new sense of national identity.

That isn't to say I am aiming for some Utopian vision where we all agree on everything. That would be foolish. I am trying to get people to see that we don't have to agree on everything to agree on some things.

By dividing ourselves along bipartisan lines and refusing to speak to each other except in our own online filter bubbles and friendship circles, I think we have lost a sense of what we agree on. After speaking with people on both the left and right I think we agree on more things than we would like to admit. It is easy and it feels good to feel righteous. But to be to righteous means you close your mind to different ways of thinking.

Where did I get the idea?

This is not my idea. The 'citizen zero' concept was originally conceived by a woman called Kaitlin Byrd (@GothamGirlBlue). You can find her old blog here:

https://citizenzeroblog.politics.blog/

I first heard her talking about the idea on this episode of Harmontown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wuck5Iv6lc

I have since spoken to her about what I am doing here. She has decided to give up on the idea over there, claiming that she wasn't aware how bad the problem was in America, and that she thought the Republicans were too big a threat to have a non-partisan position. She now fights for the left and is a guest writer for the Huffington Post.

I still think her idea has merit though, and I highly recommend checking out some of her videos and blog posts. It's still a great place to start if you want to get thinking about having a better conversation.

So, who am I?

I think it's important that we all feel we have a right to have our say when it comes to politics. I think it's important that we also recognise that with that right comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities I think is to try and be honest. So in the interest of honesty I would like to point out that I live in public housing, I do not work at the moment, I have mental health issues and I am on a disability pension.

I am in no position in life to be telling people how to live. But I am hoping that by being brave and having my say anyway, that it might show others that it really doesn't matter who you are or what your position is in life, you still have a right to have your say. Citizenship is not a job interview. Your voice counts just as much as a wealthy business owner. You may even be able to bring a new perspective to the table.

If you are worried about whether your contribution will be valid or useful, then there are a few rules you can follow to ensure that your contribution is productive.

I have also worked in the following industries:
-Computer Sales
-Telecommunications (Customer Service)
-Federal Government (ABS)
-Various Call Centres
-Various trades (cleaning, laboring, picture framing)

And I have studied various units in philosophy and computing at the University of Tasmania, without having completed my degree.

As part of my studies, I did cover a lot of material on logic, reasoning skills and boolean algebra. Of the units I passed, the only area of knowledge where I completed all the units were in Mathematics for Computer Science, where they cover boolean algebra. I took those units as far as they would go. There isn't a whole lot of information to cover and the units stop in second year. I passed them all with around a distinction average. This means I'm good with logic. I also studied reasoning skills in philosophy, which enables me to put that logic to use in conversation. Another area where they covered logic in language was information systems, where we learned how to take a request from a client and translate that into practical measures. Both the reasoning units and the information systems units involved breaking down sentences into boolean arithmetic, which is a very useful tool for healthy debate.

So the point is I don't claim to be an expert on anything, but I think I am pretty good at having tricky conversations without having a flame-war. I don't claim to be a saint. I have been trying to get myself back into working shape in the last few years, and in that time I have been reading to keep my mind active.

The things I have been reading about are mainly economics, but I have also read books on certain areas of medicine, certain social, psychological and philosophical issues and history.

Since the field of inequality is a relatively new, a lot of the books I've been reading had to be ordered in, and were released only in the past few years, the information isn't always easy to find. I want to help disseminate some of that information.

I think my position in life doesn't invalidate what I have been learning about and would like to share some of it with others.

At the same time I would like to:

a) Show people anyone can talk about these issues. If I can, anyone can
b) Show people how to talk about these issues in a non-partisan way that both the left and right can agree on
c) Refer people to the information - that's important.

These are not my ideas. I think that one of my responsibilities as a simple citizen is to be honest about where my ideas are coming from. I am not the expert. I am not even a University graduate. Very few of the books I'm reading are written for academics. I am reading books by academics written for the general public.

I am not an expert I am a concerned citizen and I am making a rallying call to all concerned citizens and trying to figure out a way to bring all those voices into the conversation without creating a rabble. And so I am not going to make too much of a big deal about my own opinion. I would like that opinion to be heard, but I am certainly not saying it is more important than anyone else and I'm certainly not claiming to be any kind of expert.

Along the way you fill find I will contradict myself. You'll find spelling errors. Perhaps factual errors. I'm not an editor or a journalist.

But I'm hoping that by having a conversation about having conversations, we can ah...have a better conversation. Say that ten times fast!