tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG (tom jennings) (04/27/91)
Those messages I entered a while back listing rather hi-profile things
about my life was meant as a demonstration. It did not work. Here's the
story:
I wanted to invoke the thing that I believe to be the *real* problem --
the inability of most people (it seems) to (like someones brag-line said)
take responsibility for theirown actions, and their willingness to meddle
in others'. The underlying drives are fear (intentionally fanned) and
ignorance (intentionally maintained).
The intent comes from what I call the law'n'order mentality. (A R.A.
Wilson phrase.) Like -- they just clicked into awareness that there are
OTHER people doing things that they don't uderstand. With their limited
P.O.V. they think about allth e TERRIBLE things that OTHERs might be
doing. And consider others actions to be different from theirs.
Specifically -- I wanted to invoke that hatred/fear thing, then illustrate
the mechanism of how the law'n'order types get away with locking people up
and seizing their property.
Not that I was expecting to get many flames from people in here, I was
kinda expecting more or different responses. With one exception, I
received no replies in public -- but a half-dozen or so privately,
answering the (a) (b) thing in the expected way, and I thank them for it.
But it illustrated EXACTLY the problem from "our" side -- no one was
willing to do as little, insignifigant act of saying so in public. The
social stigma is too much for most people, excuses and reasons to the
otherwise.
So I guess it wasn't a total failure. What if I were charged with
"distributing homosexual pornography to minors"? If you were not willing
to even respond to my previous message, I wouldn't hold my breath.
(My zine HOMOCORE is not "pornographic", and has no genitalia (well, once
in one issue), but it has explicit language, not in an "erotic story"
context but in letters and articles etc. Lots of young people read it,
and many of them have NO OTHER communications medium. NONE.)
It's not hard to imagine getting spuriously charged (or not, plain old
seizure) regarding HOMOCORE. Oh yeah, and they might have had drugs in the
house. (You can always add that in.)
The monolithic middle-class image is a giant mental prison, and very
nearly everyone I meet who considers themselves a "professional" is in it.
Sorry. It's the bell-curve of varying width used to define "me and mine"
from OTHER, and I can tell you nearly everyone numberts-wise is "OTHER".
Nearly no one can afford a $1000 computer. Nearly no one has the social
context in which to read or even understand e-mail. It's not intelligence
or skills, it is the social matrix and the context upon which we build our
mental models. "File", "folder" indeed. Office /business models, and
hardly universal.
So yeah, I'm scared shitless. I do not fear illness, violence in the
streets, drugs, unemployment, toxic environments, etc -- I fear spurious
imprisonment, essentially sanctioned by concensus.
--
tom jennings - via FidoNet node 1:125/777
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