Green Room - Week 15 - Day 1

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I'm home sick today. My fingers typed "home suck" three times there. They are correct, it does really suck! :)

Another thing that sucks is saying goodbye to people, like we had to do last night: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/878572.html

We also had a new set of choices for a topic: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/910933.html
and a Work Room: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/911244.html

***

It's an old conversation - but how much of the "instant communication" of online interaction do you think has played into a feeling of wanting/expecting social change at an increased pace?

I keep seeing people from "an older generation" express how slowly change comes, if it comes at all. Sort of the river running through a mountain approach.

But the younger someone is, the more it *seems* (to me, your mileage may vary) that they want to go after all the things at once, take them all down and move forward ASAP. Granted, I do recall having a bit of that when I was younger, but it feels like it's amped up to 11.

I only wish those damn kids were as quick about getting off my lawn!!

Comments

change

[tijuanagringo.livejournal.com]

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the president is in Cuba today
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how many years did that take?
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shhheeeeeeeeeeee.....
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frist frost frast
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not fast
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RE: change

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

You're not Ded to me because I don't have the authority (or the cookie stash) but happy first!

Re: change

[tijuanagringo.livejournal.com]

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjjOM3m77EekBp9Mu4yTvprfp9awP3wA3fEaIynyKyyDanj8kT

RE: Re: change

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Ha! :)

Re: change

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

You're *DEAD* / *COLD* / *WOOT* to me!

by the authority i possess as the master of the meme, i grant you access to the cookie supply. i hear the snickerdoodles are particularly good today.

Re: change

[tijuanagringo.livejournal.com]

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coooooooooooooooooookiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssss
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[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Keeping in mind that I'm a little delirious and just throwing things out there for the sake of throwing them out:

Is there a chance that a generation raised with the idea that everyone is special might be the sort of generation that *demands* that the world change to be the sort of place it "should" be? And how is that a bad thing?

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Those young'ins feel enough of a sense of entitlement as is. Don't encourage it!

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I thought old people were the ones with all the entitlements #socialsecurityjoke

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

Throwing out is better than throwing up! Feel better soon! AW

[murielle.livejournal.com]

Delirium can be fun, but sick not so much. Feel better soon, Gary.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear you're not feeling well, Gary.

Today is National Goof Off Day! Whose goofing off with me? =)

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

Feel better Gary.

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but for a variety of reasons and not that dang ole Entitlement Generation and their social media, smoking their marijuana tablets and demanding an instant fix. Activism is just different these days.

(I'll just be talking about Americans of this generation right now. Stuff like Russian activism is way different and I know less about it in general.)

1) In the past people were trained in social justice. Now everybody is expected to do activism in their spare time to some degree, or at least reblog informative shit when it shows up on their Tumblr dash. Because of this, people are disconnected from the history of activism and effective tactics and how change is going to happen (and a lot of this is because, in a vacuum of information, they'll look to historical examples, and they're getting taught about the Civil Rights movement in school as a bunch of Black people who just happened to be SOOO heartfelt that White people collectively felt sorry for them and gave them rights. No, it was organization and tactical strike protests and collective upheaval and it was VERY carefully planned. Rosa Parks didn't happen to be tired that day, that was a planned protest and she was picked out as someone that would be sympathetic to the media and make their cause look good. But there's a ton of distortion around MLK because the Powers That Be just don't want people to know about the strategies he actually employed, and a bunch of people running around being all emotional and loosey-goosey are comparatively easier to handle. Remember the 99% protests and how everybody was angry for valid reasons, but the movement fizzled out because nobody really asked for anything in particular or knew how to negotiate it or in general, what the fuck they were doing? That's in part because a lot of money and effort has been poured into raising generations of people who think that's how the movements like the Civil Rights movement worked.)

(This also explains how in the nastier forms of online social justice the angriest, most emotional person wins, and the person who's suffered the most gets something like street cred and being oppressed and not dealing with it well is seen as a badge of authenticity. But I think we're starting to move away from that attitude on social media in general.)

I'm really not very familiar on the history of activism myself and unsure -how- we've moved away from the kind of activism you used to see where you had groups out there with Plans and trained recruits: they're still out there and they're fewer in number, but I couldn't tell you why.

2) Social justice is a lot more immediate and intense. You get personal accounts of human suffering flying in your face at the speed of light. If I'm just scrolling down Tumblr, for instance, I'm going to see three posts about the sexual attacks against First Nations women and bombings in Istanbul and they're going to be by people who have personally suffered, or whose communities have suffered, and this a very immediate and visceral pain. And kids are having all the "normal" opinions, like they'll think it's rude to call a woman a slut or bitch but won't understand ideas like "gendered slurs", they might use "gay" as an insult and think that there's no real racism anymore and antiblackness is more of a class issue, they'll think transsexuals are pretty weird but whatever, I guess (mix and match based on which groups this hypothetical kid happens to personally belong to) ... and then once they get involved in social media they're going to get a very very highly developed idea of how this hurts people and their attitudes and their educations are going to change very rapidly. And this is going to happen to pretty much everybody in their peer group, or at least their online peer group. So since change happened rapidly internally, and rapidly even on a generational level to some degree, it's not totally unfair for people to think it could happen that way externally. (Especially because, again, you get a lot of people talking with urgency and desperation about their pain. The police are out there shooting Black kids - it's easy to see how, if at all possible, fixing that just can't wait.)