Creativity And Freedom

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Creativity cannot be separated from Freedom; it is the source of it and the result of it.  Share it, encourage it, understand it.

Creativity allows people to think in new ways that both liberates and maintains liberty. The creative can dream around problems, finding new solutions when none were apparent.  The creative are harder to constrain by despots, as they have the tools to out-think oppressors.  The hopeful tyrants cannot face down dreams they know nothing about.

The despot worries in his throne room, heart racing.  Someone is out there who can find solutions, communicate in new ways, invent new treasons.  The despot fears you and doesn’t even know your name.

Creativity strengthens the people that treasure it.  Society is stronger for the news ideas the creative people bring.  The imaginative see dead ideas and infuse them with new life, resurrecting the lost things of value. Creative people can see the foundations of society and connect them to their innovations, joining past and present, the new and the renewed.

A single shining inspiration in your mind and old ideas come alive, history is connected, and you can see how ancient thoughts and new dreams come together.  Centuries and aeons link together in new strengths and old wisdom.

Creativity strengthens relations among people allowing them to support each other.  The creative are open to new relations among people because they can dream.  The creative find new connections among people, building alliances that resist tyranny.  The creative discover new ways to understand others and cooperate in ways unforeseen.  A web of connections and associations and alliances makes people all the more resilient.

Those that create are your allies, and a single conversation can create a year’s worth of dreams.  A moment’s pause lets you see everyone new.  You reach out to make new friends easy.  What tyrant doesn’t fear a web of collaborators who can out-dream them?

Creativity should be encouraged and shared among people.  To arm people with creativity is to give them tools to find meaning and protect themselves and others.  To share with other people builds connections and camaraderie, creating alliances that maintain the society. The sharing and encouragement of creativity is a measure of the strength of society.

Once someone lifted you up and said you could create.  Now you can reach out to others, teach them to use their creativity.  Each person so encouraged is an ally and a beacon.  Connection spreads from the outstretched hand.

Creativity is the result of freedom.  Because new thoughts can come to mind, the unthinkable becomes possible.  As old ideas can be seen anew, the foundations of society are renewed.  Because new ideas are encouraged, society can change and evolve.  As people encourage creativity, alliances are built.

– Steve

On Truth, Connection, and Disconnection

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

In an age of propaganda and post-truth politics, we face people believing outlandish falsehoods and obvious propaganda and acting upon it.  How do people become so disconnected from reality?  Disconnection is the appropriate term, because some people seek to cut the strands of knowledge that helps us find truths – and some cut their own strands deliberately.

I’ve heard it said that we’re in a post-truth era in 2016, where the idea of truth is irrelevant to many.  It’s clear that enough people believe falsehoods, and many are happy to believe blatant lies and fantasies if it fits their agendas. Many propagandists and opportunists are glad to provide these lies to their audience. This is feared rightly by sane and rational people because this disconnection is enough to get people killed – and in modern times, technology allows that to be a great number of people.

We wish to oppose this “celebration of falsehood” for the as we’d rather not die or have other people die because of other someone’s chosen foolishness and those providing that foolishness.  To deal with this we need to deal with the nature of Truth.

The best way I have found to define Truth – which will always have a subjective component – is connection.  Something is True (or at least “truer” than other things) because it can be explained in multiple ways, because its validity is confirmed multiple ways, and the “true thing” relates to other data, concepts, and experiences.  One may look at the effect of a drug, find studies done by reliable researchers who in turn base their work on other validated research, talk to their doctor, evaluate their own experiences and have  a decent idea of the truth of that drugs effectiveness.

Truth is a web of connections. Truth does not exist outside of context.

In understanding the Truth of something, there will be flaws in data, mistakes, errors, even outright falsehoods.  The whole of the Truth stands together despite flaws in parts of it.  It is at worst, “true enough” to work with – connected enough to sources of information and validity that it’ll do the job.  At best, the Truth even incorporates its own flaws, with margins of error, exceptions, or contingencies.

In a connected age, which we live in at least at the time of this writing, one would think we would have more truth, and not be battling falsehoods.  I’d say we actually have both more truth and more falsehood – more useful and valid knowledge, but also more post-truth lies and propaganda.  Why is this?

This is because there are people who profit from untruth, motivated by everything from money to self-esteem.  These people can use our modern media and technology for their own gain with relative ease.  With this technology they do what dictators and liars always do – they attack the connections that form the truth.  They attack the knowledgeable, the advocates, the educators, and the informed – breaking the social and cultural connections needed for some kind of truth and common ground.

The attacks made by the propagandists break both social and personal connections, sowing mistrust and disregard not to increase truth by questioning, but to decrease it destroying credibility of ideas, institutions, and people.  These attacks don’t always offer a replacement truth outright.  Instead these attacks are passive-aggressive ways to say “believe me” by focusing on saying others are not trustworthy.  When someone believes the attacks on people, they will more easily believe the attacker.

No this is not sane, not rational, and is very dangerous.

Our modern times gives us people gladly following and sharing falsehoods and placing themselves in narrow social bubbles with modern technology.  These two experiences, of falsehoods and of echo chambers, are really two sides of the same phenomena.  Media companies cut the ties of truth with their lies, and out of them form echo chambers.  Others obsessed with believing untruths make online communities build echo chambers and then cut ties to a larger shared Truth.  The results are the same – and overlapping.

People are cut off from the “larger picture” of what is true, believe only certain things, and then reinforce these beliefs with each other. They may feel connected  but ultimately are not, their only connections are to someone feeding them lies, to a closed community, or both.

This is cult like behavior; separating people from community, convention, and connection.  We have people acting as cult leaders who are news figures and media figures, severing the ties that maintain our truth with lies.  We have people willing to act as their own cult leaders, isolating themselves deliberately among specific communities that share their views and untruths. Either way we end up with people separated from the rest of the world – yet trying to influence it because of the falsehoods they believe.

It’s disturbing to think in this modern world there are people so disconnected from reality that they deny large parts of how the world runs and works.  These people cannot keep a functioning society running at best; at worst they part of dysfunctions in society.

It is the duty of any citizen to maintain and increase the connections that we rely on for Truth. We should actively introduce people to knowledge.  We should support and expand knowledge systems such as schools, publishers, and magazines.  Perhaps maintaining these truths was once unconscious or assumed; today it must be a conscious and committed effort.

The more we maintain and improve the social and informational connections that give us some Truth, the less we have to deal with the pathologies.  We must create and maintain a healthy social and cultural system that can resist propaganda, lies, and delusion.  Our survival depends on it.

– Steve

Resources To Support Female Geeks

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com  Steve’s Tumblr)

After posting about chanting tech culture’s attitude towards women, I wanted to list the resources I found to support female geeks while working on my civic geek project (which I should update).  Find something for you and give them your support!

  • Computing
    • Anita Borg Institute – A historic institute to assist women in technical careers, fostering innovation by ensuring a broad range of people in technology. Provides a variety of services and ways to get involved.
    • Girl Develop IT – A nonprofit that provides accessible programs for women who want to learn coding.
    • Girls Teaching Girls To Code – A Bay Area program where women in CS teach Bay Area high school girls to code.
    • Grace Hopper Celebration – Produced by the Anita Borg institute, this is a celebration of women in computing.
    • Ladies Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping people learn beginner technical skills in a comfortable, social way.
    • Made With Code – Promotes women in coding with projects, events, and mentoring. Has several alliances and supporters.
    • Mothercoders – An organization focused on helping mothers get tech-savvy and up-to-date for this economy
    • National Center For Women And Information Technology – Focuses on correcting gender imbalance in technology, and bringing the balance of diversity to the industry.
    • Rails Girls – A worldwide group that works to empower women with technology.
  • STEM
    • Geek Girl Dinners – Promotes geek girl friendly events, resources, and connection.
    • She’s Geeky – An SF Bay organization that provides events and and conferences around the USA for women in STEM.
    • Tech Girls Canada – Provides national leadership for the various industry groups in canada encouraging women in tech careers.
  • Video Games
    • Girls Make Games – A series of international summer camps encouraging girls to explore the world of video games.
  • Writing
    • Girls Write Now – Supports future female writers with mentoring, advice, and more.

 

– Steve