The invention of the printing press dramatically enhanced the average human being’s intelligence. Suddenly all the great written works of time were made accessible to any literate person regardless of income. Now the World Wide Web brings us all of this and more almost instantaneously. Instead of having to run to a bookstore or contact some bureaucratic institution for a Government report, they are made available free to the public for download.

IRS Statistics, Commission Reports, and transcripts are just some of the resources now just a few clicks away. The same is true of just about any statistical or scientific research by any organization or thinktank. We all now have the ability to check one another’s references. As a result on the blogs or in their comments sections, the most compelling posts are those that allow their readers to read what the author has read. Yet another dimension of openness is revealed.

Bloggers and Freepers and Watchdogs Oh My!

While one dimension of the Internet’s effect on discourse is the reader’s access to authors, the other is the access of authors to readers. Anyone can start a blog, join a discussion group, or volunteer mouse-clicks for an organization of their choosing. Becoming a voice to hundreds or thousands of readers has never been easier, if you have something to say that people want to read.

This populist medium has led the charge for breaking stories such as the Monika Lewinsky scandal and CBS’ forged documents. It has also propagated fabricated stories such as John Kerry’s alleged affair with an intern and organized readers to skew online polls in favor of their position. Partisan Media Watchdogs simultaneously present valid criticisms of popular media coverage and misrepresent the facts themselves.

All of these things, the good and the bad, are good for Democracy because they force us to become aware.

Karassi and Grandfalloons

In his book “Cat’s Cradle,” author Kurt Vonnegut describes a fictional religion called Bokononism, which describes a theory concerning social relations. In this worldview, there are two types of organizations, granfalloons, which are artificially constructed relationships, such as corporations, and karass, which are naturally occurring gatherings of people who work well together. A karass tends to be much more effective at whatever it sets its mind to, something the Corporate world has begun to explore through social-network mapping.

Democrats, Republicans, and our entire Federal Government are examples of granfalloons. They are bureaucratic bodies that force large groups of people together under one ideological roof. Members of these institutions are forced to either fit or rationalize their beliefs with the uberparadigm of the party. These individuals are like square pegs forced into round holes; their personal needs are lost, along with their identity, in the one-size fits all ideology presented by the party or institution.

There are other types of granfalloons, less obvious institutions that are coalitions of what I consider the “willingly manipulated.” These are people who have fallen prey to demagogues, been sucked into a pundit’s paradigm through emotive appeals and easy scapegoating. These people seldom recognize how these ideologies victimize them or engage in denial over how much the demagogues have influenced their ideas. Some of them, when regurgitating a pundit’s arguments, actually think the thoughts are their own and original.

Maintaining such a mental state requires a great deal of aversion behavior on the part of the victim. When confronted with a book filled with ideas that contradict what they have been told, they don’t open it. When they encounter a contrary voice on the radio or television, they turn the channel. If they do allow these alternative perspectives in, they do not listen to them, but quickly and defensively rationalize them away. A diagram of the book-buying habits of liberals and conservatives starkly illustrates the exclusionary mindsets of our political spectrum (The story complimenting this graphic here).

The most important characteristic of the granfalloons is their artificial nature. Television, radio, and print media are far more natural than Political Parties, but they artificially restrict the scope of the Idea Marketplace to only profitable perspectives, often the most controversial. Without the willingness to provide all ideological products to consumers, a true karass will never emerge from the traditional mediums.

On the Internet there are no limits to the spectrum of ideas. Anyone may throw their voice into the ocean of competing memes with a modicum of effort. We are no longer confined to media and party dictated left/right false dichotomy, but may now peruse a smorgasborg of possibilities. More importantly, through the expansion of blogging, ideas are being forced to confront one another through links and cross-references.

Clusters naturally coalesce out of this chaos of information to form karassi. Blogs link to other blogs, communities are formed, but most mimic the structure of ideas already established. Like-minded clusters of liberals and conservatives still try to maintain the old paradigms; yet, this is slowly changing. Clusters are emerging comprised of eclectic individuals, truth seekers. With discourse no longer confined to sound bytes and one-sided commentaries, substantial exploration of ideological nuances are occurring. People of differing viewpoints have come together in the spirit of debate and respect for opposing ideas.

There are dangers along the way, of which we must make ourselves aware.

Mind-Narrowing

The Internet provides its audience a level of customization yet unrealized in any other form of media. Cell phones, laptops, and other IT-age toys remove us from our immediate surroundings, and prevent us from engaging the reality surrounding us.

If liberals and conservatives do not read each others books, then what about blogs? If democracy harvests the power of disputation, then this power dissolves when followers of ideologies are prevented from challenging their ideas in confrontations with others.

The attitudes of the ideological shelters are magnified, through perpetual reinforcement and the lack of confrontational dynamics to temper them. We say things online we would never say in civil face-to-face discourse.

Xenophobic enclaves of like-minded thinkers emerge. These are ideological support groups, where members gather around and engage in “feel-good” rants that contribute nothing to world-debate. In fact, these individuals are often detrimental to world debate. Online discussion boards are very familiar with the “Troll,” an individual who makes one angry, ranting post irrelevant to the current discussion and then vanishes into thin air without reading any responses.

These are serious problems that can seriously harm the emotional growth and cognitive health of an entire generation of web-surfers, namely my own Generation X, who has born the brunt of this emergent technology. Today’s web-surfers are both the benefactors of the Information Revolution’s flood of information and victims of it’s deluge of disinformation.

Engagement is the key to solving this problem. We must engage those who think differently than us. How we accomplish this is by including the feedback dynamic in our online communities that is currently lacking from so many of them.

The Wonks, the Cranks, and the Lurkers

The Web’s free-for-all style of discourse gives equal share to all opinions regardless of quality; however, it usually completely ignores the overwhelming majority of web-surfers who provide very important feedback in real-life discourse. Think of a dinner-party where two of the participants are engaged in a lively discussion over some topic. The other participants are merely watching, but they are also providing positive and negative reactions to the statements being made with their body language. Also consider the audience of a town hall meeting, who is not participating in the debate, but provides sounds of approval or disapproval.

Internet discussion boards, feedbacks, and comments sections chronicle the discussions of our modern day issues. Many people who post to these forums are taking a very thoughtful approach to persuasion. They come from all sides of the debate and are seriously committed to informing their opponents of the facts, providing sources and demonstrating their knowledge of the issue at hand. These are the Wonks, the persuasive posters.

Often holding equal or greater share of the posting content are individuals oblivious to the debate at hand. These are posters often characterized as conspiracy theorists, one theory to explain everything idealists, or “trolls.” Their posts are often irrelevant to the discussion at hand or they will, through spurious logic, try to bend the debate to their singular paradigm. These are the Cranks, and their instances of persuasiveness are remarkably similar to that of blind squirrels finding acorns.

Wonks and Cranks garner equal time on the Internet, but the Wonks are persuasive and truth seeking, while the Cranks are merely looking for a convenient soapbox. Cranks cannot be persuaded online, because they are not listening, but merely waiting to speak. While Wonks are attempting to articulate a finely nuanced issue into an Ideal Mean, their discourse is derailed by the Cranks, whose ignorance must be addressed lest it go unpunished. This is where the real-world community of the unrepresented silent-majority requires taking into consideration.

For every Wonk or Crank there are five to ten Lurkers. In the real world, they are known as the audience, but online they are absolutely nothing, completely absent from the equation. They read the threads, formulate opinions, and move on without any affect on the debate; yet, they are so important to democratic discourse.

Amazon.com is one of many sites to create a system inclusive to the Lurkers. Products listed on their site are provided with user reviews, users are then allowed to review the reviews with a simple yes/no response to each one’s helpfulness. Such a system of simple feedback gives even the Lurkers a voice, and one they obviously exercise effectively observing Amazon, where the most comprehensive and persuasive reviews take center stage based on overall user responses to them. Users who consistently garner high overall approval ratings are given primary listings in the results.

The World Wide Web is quite egalitarian; however, it must factor in the audience who does not choose to broadcast their opinions for all to criticize–which is most of us. It’s easy to add this majority to the equation with a little bit of extra coding and some columns added to the database.

Adopt this meme my fellow Lurkers, and demand your anonymous voice.

Beyond…

My Generation X grew up in a world of established news networks and raised with a faith in the integrity of the written word, but these are issues easily overcome through adapting our minds to the new environment. These problems with the system are the result of the obsolete nature of the minds inhabiting it.

We are adapting more quickly than my skepticism in the human race allowed. I was amazed at how quickly people became aware of e-mail urban legends and learned to fact-check before forwarding them to others. I don’t get urban legends in my inbox anymore. People are growing more and more skilled at detecting scams. We are checking every single thing that comes out of our politician’s mouths against the more trusted watchdogs. We are confronting one another in debates that I have watched evolve in their sophistication. We, as a species and culture, are growing more aware.

I envy the children born today, who will inherit the healthy skepticism of all the information instantly at their fingertips from those of us who first explored it. They will be so incredibly savvy, so familiar with the technologies being pioneered today that they will inevitably amaze me with skills they take for granted. Once the minds inhabiting the system have fully adapted to it, we will begin to see the real potential of the Internet.

Then I think about their children, and how incomprehensible their accomplishments will seem to me in my rocking chair at the old-folk’s home. They will befuddle me with words and concepts I know nothing about except through their enthusiasm for them. I will nod politely and listen patiently.

I won’t need to tell them about my times, because they are all preserved here, waiting to be discovered again and again.

Note: For a much more sophisticated user-feedback system, explore Slashdot’s complex forum system. This site’s discussion boards allow users to filter the discussions to only those posts with high ratings. Even those who rate are given programmatically-determined ratings based on how many users concur with their opinions and are allowed more rating-power as a result.

“I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” – George Bush Sr. August 27, 1987

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s statement on military action in Afghanistan contained a sentence that struck me like a bolt from the blue on October 7, 2001. He said, “This atrocity was an attack on us all, on people of all faiths and people of none.”

I was astounded at the Prime Minister’s inclusiveness. I realized that never before had I heard a public official acknowledge this segment of the public, the “people of none,” as part of the whole. Could this be, I wondered, a symptom of a shifting paradigm?

Then, on June 27, 2002, a federal appeals court ruled the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional. My perception was that one of our society’s “eternal stupidities” was finally struck down. The Government referencing “God” was in direct contradiction with the doctrine of Separating Church and State. The two concepts could not coexist and someone had finally recognized this.

Then George Bush Jr. referred to the ruling as “ridiculous.” Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, characterized the ruling as “just nuts.” Politicians across the political spectrum erupted in outrage, even making a bipartisan public demonstration of reciting the Pledge on the steps of the Capitol building in protest.

The case was never resolved. The Supreme Court sidestepped having to rule on the issue due to the Plaintiff lacking proper custody of his daughter, whom was the center of the case. The dispute quickly faded from public memory, but this is an issue that concerns civil rights and the oppression of a minority in America.

15% of Americans chose the “None/No religion” option in the National Survey of Religious Identification. An estimated 27 million Americans doubt the existence of god. These people comprise a minority that no one cares about, perhaps because they are such a small and non-vocal minority. They do not march door to door through our neighborhoods seeking to convert believers to non-belief. They do not have organizations active in the community or politics.

These are the Brights. They are not atheists; they are a branch of Secular Humanism. Their only real organization is their ideology, which is founded on reason, scientific inquiry, egalitarianism, and freedom. They are academics, intellectuals, and they deserve respect.

I do hold a bias in this issue. I am not a Bright, for the same reasons I am not a Christian, a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or other religion. I am a Devout Agnostic. I firmly believe that we cannot rationally reach any conclusions concerning the hereafter. Because of this firmly held belief in non-belief, I am heavily biased toward moderation and respect for all faiths, including non-faith.

America has a long and inspiring history of tackling the issue of equal rights and protecting freedoms. In the last century we have seen demographic groups of diminishing proportions go through the process of gaining equal status in our society. From the 50% population of women, to African Americans, to Homosexuals, we have refined our inclusiveness admirably.

The federal appeals court ruling the Pledge unconstitutional has placed a spark in the minds of Americans and the dialogue will not end with this first case. I’ve observed its effect in my own locality of Tidewater, where the “United We Stand” bumper stickers now plainly outnumber the “God Bless America” ones. If women’s continuing fight for equality through legal skirmishes in the modern day is any indicator, the non-religious have a long way to go. The Pledge of Allegiance would make a great start, but the battle will continue, as it should, to tackle the “common sense” of Judge’s swearing oaths and the country’s slogan, “In God we Trust.”

Perhaps the progress is most apparent in one of George Bush Jr’s statements in the third 2004 Presidential Debate, where he said, “You’re equally an American if you choose to worship an almighty and if you choose not to.”

The tide is turning.

There is something very Zen about Einstein’s most famous equation. E=mc2. mc2=E. Energy and matter are related through the equal sign. They are like Yin and Yang, opposites that are different presentations of the same stuff.

Keeping this equation in mind, which direction is our Cosmos moving? Observing the history of our Cosmos from the beginning of time, we see all existence channeling from the big “E” to the “mc2.”

Let’s see this play out:

We begin with a tiny ball of infinite mass and energy. Pop. The Big Bang occurs. At 10-43 seconds the universe has diffused enough energy for the force of gravity to condense out of the other forces. From 10-33 seconds to 10-5 seconds quarks and anti-quarks are able to condense out. These sub-atomic particles condense into protons and neutrons at 10-5 seconds.

Three minutes after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons have condensed to form 75% hydrogen and 25% helium nuclei. 300,000 years later, the universe has cooled enough for hydrogen to begin capturing electrons, forming the first atoms.

600 million years after the Big Bang, the first galaxies condense out of the clouds of hydrogen. Clumps of hydrogen condense into greater and greater densities, until hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form helium atoms. The difference in atomic mass is released as energy and stars are “hatched” out of the hydrogen clouds.

As the stars grow older, they will fuse heavier and heavier elements until all of the atoms we are familiar with today fill the universe. These will form our planets, precious metals, and, most importantly to us, will produce ample quantities of carbon, the element crucial to our form of life.

So from the beginning of time, our universe has gone from a state of infinite energy to an ever-expanding state of cooling, where matter condenses out of the light. Our universe grows ever denser, heavier stars forging heavier elements. Energy and matter are two states of the same stuff, and it comprises everything in the known existence.

We are truly stardust, forged in the centers of stars far more massive than our own. We are coalesced atoms that have traveled millions, possibly billions of light years. We are also more than this. We are condensed light. Everything around us is concentrated energy, massive quantities. We are, each of us, the concentrated force of a hundred atomic bombs.

What will happen to all of this? The original theory was that the universe would slow its expansion and eventually collapse back in upon itself. Now we are observing a universe that may expand forever until it freezes into absolute zero. As far as I am concerned, all bets are off. Finding out what the universe has in store for us is part of the fun.

What we know for now is that the Universe is all we know, and we are inextricably part of it.

Nature reveals nothing to us about whether the Universe loves or hates us. Some argue that nature works against us. Lions and sharks, viruses and bacteria, spiders and snakes, starvation, disease, disasters, and all of the other terrible things that can happen to us seemingly at nature’s whim are indisputable proof that the natural world is at odds with our welfare.

The flipside of this argument is observing all of the wonderful things nature provides for us. Beneficial bacteria thrive in our digestive tract, helping to process food. We harvest far more from lions, sharks, and other predators than they harvest from preying on us. All of the detrimental effects of the natural world are nothing in comparison to the fact that these same mechanisms brought the human race to its present status.

Good, bad, and indifferent aspects to the Cosmos exist simultaneously, with only our mind’s talent for pattern-recognition emphasizing one aspect above the other two. Emphasizing one by choice according to our personal needs is fine, so long as we remain mindful of the other two’s existence.

Reading tarot cards is an exercise in mindfulness, a form of guided meditation on a topic. Each position represents another way of looking at our situation and each card represents a variable to consider in the equation. The powerful insights that often arise are the result of the process. The exercise is certainly metaphysical, but any supernatural aspect remains wholly debatable.

Understanding all of these dimensions to our thought-processes provide a clearer understanding of existence and our place in it.