rebirth of blog, of ideas, of planet?

I was pleased to read that James Fallows has taken a break from blogging. At different times his wisdom has had its impact on me.

In part I am jogged back into blog by the internal need to write and attendance last weekend at the local gathering of the Fellowship of Australian Writers.

There is so much to write about and ideally with visual component. I have photos from a local journey Monday to blog soon, photos and aesthetic and social context. We have quickly filled the time allotted to be in Italy with valuable activity nearer home... though including too many medical appointments.

There are also the very large questions in the world which require reflection. One must read the daily news but with distance glasses, to note with sympathy the frenetic pace of journalism (a rise in proof errors evident in the most noble media) and the difficulties of the practitioners in getting out of warring trenches.

source

Politico proves perhaps the most valuable insight into American (thus global) affairs, especially for its daily US and EU 'playbooks' which for a mind of anthropologist bent is wondrously detailed with all the tiny things happening, without gloss—link after link after link of course. Also for reflective items, including this yesterday on the Jekyll and Hyde in Trump and his administration.

Back in October 2016 Fallows drew attention to this little movie clip below in which Trump is introspective (well Fallows used the word 'introspective' but in application to this narcissist it probably needs special definition). It has a different significance now (as has so much) compared with last October. Trump is now in residence at Citizen Kane's castle, somewhat isolated. In the clip Trump focuses on Kane's loneliness at peak of empty achievement, with isolation from spouse (Mrs Trump still living in New York with young son).  We need to know where the mind in this film clip from years back is now. We need to think about that away from the yapping of daily media, either side.

Directed by Errol Mark Morris. From one of Morris's "aborted projects"

Morris known best for his film with Robert McNamara, which all these current leaders should watch

and which can sometimes be found at YouTube or Vimeo, eg here..

In November 2016 Foreign Policy wrote comparing the Trumps with the Borgias.  My comment at the time was here.

The comparison with the Borgias is relevant in wide context of the way Italy in 1500 or so was not a place of landed gentry but of power and status coming from the ferocious contest of warrior businessmen, businessmen for the most part obsessed with local, with trade as maximising the out, minimizing the in. Political violence of selfish nature, even in Florence where the gangster-businessmen amassed knowledge over hundreds of years that produced a renaissance.

That is pretty close to the actuality of current 'American democracy'. 

We lack a Florence now. But maybe it was hard to see Florence then as we see it now. 

There was a information renaissance 500 years ago in Italy and elsewhere as printing presses proliferated and the control of the Roman church over language and entitlement to information and expression–the control of a 'deep state'–was under siege. 

We have now an information renaissance in the literal sense of 'rebirth' and in the historical sense of altered entitlement to knowing, to communicating, to use of language of choice, not language of the 'deep state', deliberate rejection of the deep state. Of disobedience. 

We will have to work hard to get the new knowledge system of now, as in social media, able and willing to look beyond virtual-local and tabloid things. Has the moment passed for educators to realise their job is less to impart knowledge, more to offer advice on good research and open-mindedness in assessing the now-everywhere sea of knowledge? 

We can compare with 500 years ago and say there is much more danger now, the weapons are such, the world is so jammed up. However, we can also consider that back 500 years for most people the world was as large as feet and eye could carry in a day, unless dragged to war, and life involved fear of disease, fear though teaching of horror dogmas, sudden entanglements with 'history' by pillage, sacking and rape: a generally more precarious place than our present, though with familiar themes. 

Community, respect, diversity and change

Australia, indelibly my country, frets more often than it fixes problems. 

It is difficult to reconcile our general apprehension with our continued second place ranking by the UNDP on its Human Development Index.

My personal experience with local community organisation and motivation in regional Australia in the past 15 years has been the increasing difficulty in getting people engaged except when there is something that irritates them personally or threatens real estate. My speculations as to why have covered generational change, Howard-and-since encouragement of personal focus and distrust and the arrival of the flat screen TV and its outpourings.

In a 2008 local government electoral campaign in a 'city' of fifty towns and villages over a hundred kilometres of coast, I was conscious that some towns, on the Australian Bureau of Statistic's Index of Socioeconomic Disadvantage, ranked 'very comfortable', over 1100, while at the core, the biggest town, ranked troublingly disadvantaged at 820. The comfy big-number people were largely immune to or annoyed by any suggestion of shared interest in addressing the problems at the low score end. 

My experience in building, managing and shutting down a brain tumour support group over that period was of building something strong and happy with over 300 emails a month at times and wonderful mutual support... then evaporation of membership and of contributions with the arrival of social media. 

http://dinuovoinitalia.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/mantova-according-to-edith-part-2-plus.html

The current information revolution is comparable to the turmoil of the renaissance 500 years ago in which the distribution of printing presses (see some context here) altered entitlement to knowledge, distribution of ideas, challenges to established correctness and empowerment of local languages. With a difference from now in the extent to which new knowledge seemed 500 years ago to be sought everywhere possible, led by the merchant barons of Florence, while the puddles of information and the frissons of communication among the wider population now seem to grow smaller and murkier.

Source here. Being maintained by Canadian architects now.

 Experience in the last decade or so encouraging local empowerment and planning by communities in Africa, via the internet, (here for example) has been with people who may write to say "sorry I've been out of touch, it was the malaria again" and when one writes with concern about Ebola over the border, the reply is that "I hope it does not come here, we have plague in the next village now". 

My impression is that such people, minimally resourced and up against big problems daily, have far more strength for adaptation to change and use intelligence for that, than we do in comfortable Australia. 

They also have as asset real community and place in community, which is sometimes irksome, but is powerful. 

It was pleasing to be asked by Lucinda Marshall to find an African contribution to a feminist magazine's issue on peace and for this, called "Women, the Mother of Peace" to be written and published. 

My brief experiences in remote Aboriginal communities are also of powerful community. Government campaigns for indigenous literacy are not going to work if they cannot begin to comprehend and respect that that small girl over there, just starting school, whose kinship system says she is my mother or my aunty or my grandchild, arrives at school with probably three languages and a universe of special knowledge and understanding of the world. 

Diversity depends on respect. Respect is not just a polite utterance, it is a key to community building.

Technological dependency varies inversely with interest in local community; 

economic disparity inhibits meeting and communication and, 

this year, apprehension that "that person may be a Trump supporter" makes conversation harder to start.