I’ve said nothing about the #occupy movement…
The last #smc_mcr was all about #occupy and raised a ton of interesting debate, which I’ve seen played out elsewhere.
One of the best observers of the occupy movement I’ve seen is from Media Theorist Douglas Rushkoff, he’s his piece on CNN of all places…
To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.
One of the biggest problems have with occupy is the lack of a coherent and mass adopted message. Rushkoff is right, this notion is very 20th century and our media isn’t setup to deal with these new type of movement/message. I made the comment at #smc_mcr that in the same way the terrorists adopted a decentralised method to bomb there targets, also made it extremely difficult (some would say impossible) to find and stop them.
I know comparing the occupy movement to a suicide bombers is a leap and half, plus its not ideal but the idea of a decentralised movement is scary to the powers that be.
People are very upset, be it the 99% upset with the 1%, wall street, rising unemployment, rising oil prices, the lack of helium, whatever. Its enough to make people stand up and say there simply not happy.
Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful. Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they are upset about, and we all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. What upsets banking’s defenders and politicians alike is the refusal of this movement to state its terms or set its goals in the traditional language of campaigns.
How they say there not happy is another story of course…. But it reminds me of pay it forward in nature. Simple rule set in which you can frame your own movement.
Take shelter or Occupy? Thats the question, as we head into 2012 and a collapse of our man made systems and way of life.
…in the process, they are pointing the way toward something entirely different than the zero-sum game of artificial scarcity favoring top-down investors and media makers alike…