Colliding Softly

Psychology and “average Joe philosophy” is quite frustrating while at the same time interesting and, to say the least, bewildering. We all have thoughts and convictions that we take for granted are true, and we often react emotionally and with great certainty even though a fraction of a second’s rational thought would prove our reaction dead wrong. Yet a lot of people, if not all, have knee-jerk reactions that are in no way based in rational thought, logic, or even facts. They are nothing but reactions, which seem to hover without being attached to anything of value, floating through space yet being constantly at your service when you need them.

Such a reaction is the terrible yet very common reaction to police brutality. Most people, in this age of dependent - rather than independent - thought, react when they see someone ruthlessly attacked by another person. Even if we do not intervene, we react emotionally internally - we feel disgust, perhaps hatred. Yet this feeling is often dependent on who the perpetrator is. If a person with a badge, let’s call him or her a “police officer,” would ruthlessly attack a stranger most of us would not react.

If a neighbor gets his door broken down and his belongings stolen by someone we feel sorry for him and do what we can to help this poor neighbor. And if we get to see who did it we might react violently. This is not the case if people dressed in fancy militaristic uniforms (costumes?) carrying a badge - they may break into our neighbor’s house, steal his belongings and drag him out in his underwear with arms tied behind his back.

In this situation, the only difference to some other thug attacking someone you know being a badge and a label, how do most people react - “I wonder what he did?”

You might react emotionally to this statement, thinking I’m unfair - and I believe most people reading this blog post would react the same way. You instinctively think it is illegitimate and unfair to compare police officers to any thug breaking down your neighbor’s door in the middle of the night. But why do you react like that? I haven’t said anything to make you believe the situation is different; on the contrary, I’ve described the very same situation and the very same sort of crime. The only difference is who did it.

I claim the action itself, the situation, is what should be morally valued, not “who” did it. Killing a person is wrong no matter who does it, unless perhaps in self-defense, just like stealing is wrong no matter who does it. Or would you say some people have the right to kill, some have the right to steal - while others do not?

I believe you do - I think you condemn some people for carrying out certain actions while you praise others for doing the very same things. I would even be willing to claim most people have come to morally judge people not depending on what they do but depending on who they are. And this is the reason we’re in this unbelievable mess.

Let’s exemplify this thesis, using the same examples as above. Killing and stealing are illegitimate, morally despicable acts - they are simply wrong . Do you agree? I think you do. Then we should morally condemn anyone who kills and steals not depending on who does it, but depending on the act itself and the situation in which the act was carried out. We might have understanding for someone being directly attacked and in desperation and fear for his own life kills the attacker. He is still liable for the act of killing, but his crime was a necessity so we might be willing to let him go - or at least not judge him as hard as if he was the attacker.

The same goes for stealing, where we would consider theft a bad act no matter the situation. We would perhaps be willing to think it okay for someone to “steal back” that which had already been stolen from him. Some would even consider it “okay” for someone starving to steal food or shelter - because of the need in a desperate situation. Along the same lines we would probably be outraged if someone in the middle class would steal from people in the neighborhood, perhaps even more so if it was a rich person.

What if it was systematic theft going on on a day-by-day basis by the richest body of organized crime there is? We would be so mad we wouldn’t be able to sit down. Unless we called that organization a “State.” The same is true for killings - we don’t judge people killing in the name of government the same way we judge others. Some would even go so far as to say people working for the government have a “Right” to kill.

Consider again the thug, or perhaps a gang of thugs, breaking down your neighbor’s door in the middle of the night. They sneak up on your neighbor’s house and smash the door, running in shouting and with guns in their hands. Your neighbor wakes up terrified, reaches for whatever means of protection he has in his bedroom and uses it on the first one to enter the door. The thugs shoot back and literally fill the walls with lead. There isn’t much left of your neighbor.

This would be a terrible crime.

Now imagine the thugs were a lot faster and were able to break into his bedroom and tie him up before he could stop them. He was only able to hurt a couple of them, but didn’t kill anyone. The thugs carry him out in his underwear to their truck and tell all neighbors showing up that there’s “nothing to see” and that there is no need to worry. All they will do is take this neighbor with them and lock him up at their house - they promise he will get “fair” treatment, but since he harmed a couple of them he must be severely punished.

Unfair?

I would say it is. But this is a story that has happened a number of times the last few years in the United States, and every time the neighbors have reacted by thinking their neighbor must have done something wrong and that he “had it coming.” The reason? The thugs were waving badges and calling themselves “police officers.”

The automatic reaction of the neighbors were not “Oh my God! What are they doing!”, which would supposedly be the “normal” reaction, but “I wonder what he did.” The neighbor is not innocent until proven guilty, but rather immediately judged and forgot - by people who have known the person for years. All because the thugs carrying out the break-in were licensed by the State and therefore labeled “police officers.”

In many of these recent cases, which are all available on e.g. YouTube and in the blogosphere, there has been no reason whatsoever for the “police” to storm that specific house. In some of the cases, they have simply misunderstood the address; in others, they had received information from someone saying the person living in the house was committing a crime. In most cases, they suspected the person for having drugs such as marijuana - which obviously is enough reason to break down the door in the middle of the night and attack someone sleeping peacefully in his own bed.

Now you probably wonder what happened to the people involved? In most cases, the person being attacked by the “police” was charged with assaulting police officers, since they were hurt by the person trying to protect himself. The police officers were almost to 100% freed of all charges if they were at all investigated. The only thing we can learn from stories such as these is that the police can do no wrong, not even if they attack you in the middle of the night in your own home without any reason to do so, whereas you are in deep trouble if you try to defend yourself. Next time you are the victim of a burglar (or police officer), make sure to passively accept whatever is coming your way.

Now, this may seem unfair to the “poor” police officers attacking defenseless people in the middle of the night. But this is not an attack on the police or even on any individual police officer. This is an attack on you. The reason these things happen and will go on happening is because people like you react just like you do: when someone is brutally attacked you react in defense of the victim - unless the perpetrator is wearing a uniform.

Murder is wrong and both of us would probably be scared to death seeing a killer on our street, but you would cheer and feel pride if the killer was wearing the State’s uniform. I would not. Assault is wrong and we would be terrified if a gang of thugs would attack us or someone we love or hold dear, and we would take sides with the victim - but you would most likely choose to see the perpetrators as victims if they are wearing uniforms.

What is it with a uniform that makes a vice a virtue? Let me tell you a secret: there is nothing with a uniform that gives you the right to kill, pillage, destroy, and attack. The villain here is not only the person committing the crime - i.e., carrying out the attack - but to a great degree you. You are the problem with this world, for as long as you react not to the crime but what the perpetrator is wearing there is no hope for this world.

As I said, I’m not writing this as an attack on police officers even though they definitely are to blame for a lot of wrongs. This is about you, your crimes, and how your corrupt morality is destroying this world. You are an accomplice to murder, rape, and theft - unless you rethink your morality.

Today is a day to remember that no one is safe from the State, that it can use its system of “justice” in whatever way it pleases and put its enemies to death for crimes they did not commit. It is a day to remember that those who hold and claim power have no interest in other people unless they are loyal slaves; the ruling class does not hesitate to use brute, deadly force for the sake of keeping their system of power intact.

This day 122 years ago a number of people were killed by a bomb thrown into a gathering of people in Chicago. It is to this day unknown who threw the bomb and who were responsible for the people killed on May 3-4, 1886. But what is known is that eight people were sentenced to imprisonment and even death in a farcical “trial” despite overwhelming evidence of innocence. They were killed and chained by the State but for the sake of their views on life and liberty, for being anarchists.

These people learned first-hand the true meaning of power - death - and their fate has come to symbolize this truth. The memory, despite being ruthlessly exploited by statist and nationalist socialists hiding thei statist agendas and aim for power behind burning red flags and beautiful words, remains.

We should use this day to celebrate every man’s, woman’s, and child’s right to freedom, liberty, and justice. It is a day that was and should become the symbol of every man’s equal right and our collective humane, desperate need for peaceful, non-violent disobedience of the ruling class’s decrees. Let this day be known as a day of unpower and disobedience. But let it be a day for peaceful action, a day in lack of violence and aggression.

A well-known problem in philosophy and political economy since the time of Thucydides and Aristotle, and in modern economics since 1968, is what Garrett Hardin termed the “tragedy of the commons.” The classic example is that of an “open” village pasture equally available to shepherds. It is, unless the villagers somehow agree to regulate the use for the sake of their common good, inevitable that the pasture will be destroyed and that the destruction process will begin almost immediately.

The reason for this is that each herder will recognize that the cost of adding one more animal to the pasture is zero to the individual herder, whereas the benefit is great. He will also realize that if he does not take the opportunity to put the additional animal on the pasture someone else will. The benefit will thus be reaped by someone, the question is but by whom.

So in order not to be beaten to it by the others, each herder will rush to maximize their benefits through adding as many animals as possible to the pasture. This will soon degrade the land and make it unusable due to the excessive overuse caused by the rational benefit-seeking herders. The more obvious the profit, the faster and more devastating will be the overuse.

The same type of problem is haunting the Internet, since the Internet technology makes a number of activities almost or totally free. The very structure of Internet builds on the free transmission of data on any suppliers’ networks, which means it is an easy target for anyone who can make a profit out of its use.

Spamming is the most obvious “tragedy of the commons” problem. Since e-mailing is virtually free, anyone can contact anyone else with an e-mail account at no cost - and it does not cost more to send one million e-mails than it costs to send only one or two. Radically increasing the volume is therefore “free,” which means that anyone who can make money out of sending e-mails will tend to do so. This is why so many spend hours of their potentially productive time clearing their inboxes of numerous unsolicited and anonymous e-mails with misspelled offers of Viagra, penis enlargements, and women “for sale.”

The problem of spamming is further increased by the Internet making it possible - indeed, even easy - to send such e-mails anonymously. The structure of the Internet allows for far-reaching privacy through hiding one’s whereabouts, and it is also an open system, which makes it easy to pretend to be someone else. The result of a commons that allows its users anonymity is obvious: it will suffer from hyper overuse.

Another problem on the Internet, which is not as commonly identified, is so-called trolling. This phenomenon is often described as people using commons such as Internet discussion forums to post irrelevant, offensive, and possibly harmful messages in great quantities. The obvious reason for such anti-social behavior is to disrupt and destroy the discussions (or the web site), but it is also the case that these so-called “trolls” find pleasure in being seen (however anonymously so).

Trolls haunt practically any setting on the Internet that supplies a costless framework for discussion or sharing, and since the Internet is built on the principles of freedom, gratis, and anonymity it has proven very difficult to be successful in charging for such services. Thus: discussion forums and other such “collective” free services develop different methods to keep trolls in check and minimize their damage. Such methods include anything from moderating and surveillance to blocking of IP addresses and users. But since it is easy for a troll to, e.g., simply create a free e-mail account and re-register, most measures taken to get rid of trolls are rather ineffective.

The trolling problem is increasing all over the Internet and it has lately become a rather great problem with the world’s largest encyclopedia: Wikipedia. With its success it has become increasingly important for the organizations and people with “articles” on Wikipedia to make sure they look good and that the articles do not give them bad will. In other words, it has been noted that e.g. the CIA has routinely edited articles that are of interest for the United States government - the government wants to keep sensitive information (about its illegal and oppressive policies) out of the Wikipedia and far from common people’s knowledge. Also, it has been discovered that the Vatican is also editing Wikipedia entries in order to hide not-so-beneficial details of its past and present.

Of course, big business has also recognized that they can lose a lot of the goodwill they might have in the market place through letting people write “anything” in “their” Wikipedia entries.

Part of the negative information added to the Wikipedia articles might not be true and some might even be slanderous. Since the Wikipedia allows anyone to update and edit articles, one would think that the positive and negative extremes would even out so that most information in the articles are true or mostly true. This is however not the case, partly because of the commons problem, which is why the Wikipedia has appointed volunteer editors and even hired people to check the quality of entries.

But the problem with Wikipedia is greater than a lack of quality. It is easily targeted for campaigns due to its nature of being a “commons.” There are a great many trolls out there, and they seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

For instance, it has been noted that pro-global warming trolls are very active in changing Wikipedia entries on scientists who are skeptical towards the “imminent man-made catastrophe” scenarios. They therefore edit entries as part of their campaigns or even delete entries they are not very fond of. The National Post wrote about the scientist Fred Singer who, the Wikipedia entry said, believed in Martians.

The NP writes, for example, on U.K. scientist Benny Peiser:

Wikipedia refused to accept Peiser’s critique, or his interpretation ofhis own views, or an account of his views that he had provided to me, or an account of his views published in a peer-reviewed journal, or an account of his views published in The Wall Street Journal, or an account of his views published by the U.S. Senate committee on environment and public works.

Instead, the Wikipedia trollers insisted that all of the above sources were disqualified or irrelevant under Wikipedia rules, and that the trollers’ own understanding of Peiser’s views trumped all others.

The trolls are numerous and they are always there, which makes it very difficult to make sure the truth is kept for long in the articles. This is a problem for a great many people who are slandered on Wikipedia and cannot seem to have the slanderous remarks removed. Others have entries added only to see them be deleted over and over again even though they seem to comply with Wikipedia policies.

In this case, scientifically proven truths are tested by popular vote. If a sufficient number of people editing Wikipedia consider it important to have only one view on global warming on Wikipedia, then it seems this will be the case. But scientific truths aren’t subject to popular vote; on the contrary, it is science that is supposed to challenge our faulty world views through offering new theories and empirical proof that we are, indeed, wrong.

After all, if science was subject to popular vote, then we still wouldn’t have begun using the wheel and we certainly wouldn’t have adopted the view that the Earth is round - not flat. Popular belief 500 years ago was that the world was the center of the universe and that it was flat - that one could fall off if traveling too far in one direction. Was the discovery that the earth is indeed round a step forward, or would we be better off with the popular view?

I am myself a victim for such a trolls’ campaign on Wikipedia as described above. The last few years there has been an article on me emphasizing my anarchist views and political writings. But beginning the summer of 2007 there were constant “flags” on the article stating that it was up for deletion. The reason? I’m not “notable” enough. This may be true, I don’t know, but it seems strange to me that I was notable for three years or so before anyone questioned my notability - and that notability became an issue only after I had become somewhat known for my writings. Or was it an issue because I had become “notable”?

I tend to think the latter, since my views are hardly respected by most - and I have even received quite a few death threats, which would prove that some people aren’t too accepting of my views.

I’m personally not very interested in whether I’m on Wikipedia, but it was fun to see how the article evolved. It is not allowed for the person to edit articles on him-/herself, so I stayed away - but I checked it a little now and then and was amazed about how people could keep track of my views, my background, my whereabouts, and my ideological evolution. Most of it, I must say, was absolutely correct - even dates and places were correctly noted in the article.

An article was also added on the web site I started back in 1999 (or was it 1998?), Anarchism.net. But as soon as the article on Per Bylund was flagged or deletion, so was the article on Anarchism.net. A debate followed on the Wikitalk pages, and it was repeatedly decided that the article on me should not be deleted. But just like it isn’t possible to keep politicians at bay through clearly advising them against their wishes in a referendum (have you noticed how they always seem to hold another referendum soon after the first one if they aren’t pleased with the outcome?), one cannot beat trolls in a democratic vote.

The article on Per Bylund was kept the first, the second, and - I think - the third times it was up for deletion. Between each “flagging” it was updated by people who had more references and information, so the article quickly grew. This was not enough, however. The trolls finally won the battle through being more persistent than the anti-trollers, and both the articles on Per Bylund and Anarchism.net are now deleted from Wikipedia.

The interesting thing in this “war” on Wikipedia was that as soon as a deletion “flag” had been removed, another one was added. And there were only two or three people adding the deletion flags every time, at least one of them being a Wikipedia editor (with rights to make the final call to delete or keep). They obviously had a strong interest in not having these articles on Wikipedia. One would think nobody should think it important whether there would be an article on Per Bylund on Wikipedia, but obviously a couple of people thought it extremely important not to have it there.

I was continuously updated on what was going on by people with an interest in editing articles on Wikipedia. It was an interesting experience, to see how some people so eagerly invest such enormous amounts of time into having an article on someone so insignificant as myself removed from a free, online encyclopedia. I hope their gain, which I suspect is at best “feel-good,” was worth the trouble.

These are just a couple of examples, on that I experienced first-hand, of the tragedy of the commons problems on Wikipedia. The solution for Wikipedia is of course the same as for any such problem: adding cost to the use (and especially abuse) of the resource. Paying as little as 1/10 cent for editing a page would keep all or almost all trolls away. They are, after all, only doing it because it is at the expense solely of others.

In a sense, these trolls are unsuccessful politicians. Whereas politicians manage to get their hands on power and enrich themselves through making use of the that great [force-based] commons called the State, the trolls on Wikipedia and elsewhere don’t get further than their personal computer. But they have a lot in common - both thrive off the use of commons and eagerly invest in other people’s misery.