Author: breakingranks

It was a tragedy that I couldn’t attend BlogHer. The conference took place a 40 minute drive away (San Jose), and I knew some people who were going. Unfortunately, I don’t drive, and I just can’t afford the transportation and hotel costs right now. I had thus reconciled myself to the fact BlogHer was out of my reach, and I planned to spend the weekend twiddling with Breakingranks.net and catching up on Jamal Dajani’s Middle East Intelligence Report.
At the very last minute, Mary Hodder, the braininess behind Dabble offered me a ride to the BlogHer reception. While I wasn’t actually registered for the conference, I got to check out this small part of it.

Just the ride to San Jose was an education. I shared a ride Sylvia Paull, who runs the Berkeley CyberSalon. I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1992, and I’ve been working and playing in “cyberspace” for almost as long,   but I’d never actually hooked into Berkeley’s vast community of bloggers, web developers, and tech entrepreneurs. I guess I’m too much of a geek to even go out and meet other geeks. 😉 Anyway, Sylvia made a special effort to invite me to all her Happenings. She’s at the top of the list of Thank You Notes I have to write today.

The BlogHer reception was a lot of fun. At first I was worried, because I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I didn’t want to hang all over Mary, either. Fortunately, I literally bumped right into Susan Getgood, an energetic marketing blogger. Since the flipside of my rage against the corporate machine is engagement with a lot of PR and marketing folk, I actually knew Susan. And since Susan is naturally gregarious, she introduced me to a few new people, most notably tsunami-blogger Evelyn Rodriguez.

I also admit to snitching some of the free wine. Hopefully BlogHer’s lawyer’s won’t come after me. 😉

Mary was staying for the conference, so I got a ride home with one of the new forces behind Our Media, Lisa Padilla. I at least knew Mary through participating in her Dabble beta and soliciting her opinions on rankism in the blogosphere. I’d never met Lisa at all, but she was extremely warm and friendly, and we found a lot to talk about.

The last kindness of the night had nothing to do with BlogHer or blogging. Lisa dropped me off at the Millbrae BART (train) station, which was closest to her house. There I discovered, thanks to my apparent inability to read a train schedule, the last train had already left for the night.

Thus, I found myself in Millbrae at 1am. I had no cellphone, and no one to call even if I had one (nope – didn’t even get Lisa’s card before she dropped me off). I had six dollars and my pocket. I also had a credit card, but taking a cab back to Berkeley would have cost me more than spending the weekend at BlogHer. 🙁 I had exactly six dollars in my pocket.

The BART station agent was then kind enough to point out that there was a popular 24-hour restaurant, Peter’s Cafe, right beside the BART station. While I questioned whether I still had the ability to pull an all-nighter at my age, I decided to give it a shot.

Apparently the staff at Peter’s Cafe has seen this situation before, because they were all very sweet and gave me a whole pot of coffee. I just settled in with the book I had luckily brought with me to read on the train (a translation of The Peony Pavilion, if anyone is interested).

I ordered something called a “Baby Pancake”, which was really the equivalent of a whole apple pie. I was only able to eat a quarter of it the entire five hours I spent there. I recommend it as a special treat if anyone else finds themselves trapped in Millbrae.

I ultimately made it home during the wee hours of Saturday morning. I then slept most of the day, and I wasn’t really functioning on all cylinders on Sunday, either. Now I’m back  in gear, though, and ready to follow up with all the cool people I met at the BlogHer reception.

All of these people were previously strangers to me. I was able to go to the BlogHer reception not through the kindness of one person, but the kindness of many. That sort of thing really renews my faith in the human spirit.  

One of the problems with establishing dignity as a fundamental value is that everyone’s idea of dignity is different. My friend Bob Fuller has been attempting to define it in the breach as the removal of rankism. Recently, I’ve been trying to supplement this abstract approach by enumerating specifics. As I jotted down images and ideas, a common theme emerged. I realized that the one thing I needed most to be able to maintain my sense of dignity in life was the ability to preserve my integrity.
The idea that I put integrity first explains a lot in my life, and the constant pressure to sacrifice my integrity explains why I never feel like I’m living in dignity. I often feel like I’ve been asked to choose between integrity and survival: choosing the former threatens my survival, while choosing the latter guarantees my indignity.

A recent conversation gave me cause to ponder the order of my values. We were discussing how job interviews work, with an eye to why I compulsively sabotage myself. The fact I hate job interviews like the plague was no excuse. Everyone hates job interviews, but since people have to work 99.9% just bite the bullet and do it. What makes me different from them? Why should I be the exception to the hazing that everyone else has to go through?

I hope my very smart friend won’t mind if I quote him exactly, because I think he nailed the common outlook:

I am not a good interviewee. But having sat on the other side of the table, I have become better. Because I realized that it’s a game, and what we’re looking to see is that

1. you are competent
2. your personality is agreeable and isn’t going to piss everyone else off.
3. you are socialized well enough to corportations to play the bullshit game. For example, one question we always ask is “do you prefer to work alone or as part of a group?”

The correct answer is “both”.

We know it is BS, the interviewee knows it is BS. But the game is to say it sincerely, smile and tell us how you like both.

Now despite knowing this I’m still not very good, because I have an allergy to BS that I can’t entirely control. But that’s the game.

Competent, likeable, socialized.

For a long time I’ve wondered why the current employment system persists. If everyone hates job interviews, and everyone understands the reason is the distortions mentioned above, why don’t we find a better system? Is hazing more than a metaphor here? Are we just all struggling to get to a position where we can put others through what we went through?

This is idle speculation on my part because I’ve never been a hiring manager. All I know is no matter how much I want the job, I find some small way to rebel against it every time. I always find a way to express my discomfort with the very circumstances of the interview – from admitting I put integrity first to just looking very uncomfortable about “probing” questions.

Choosing integriy goes against the advice of all my friends. They see my choices as quixotically impractical, self-defeating, or at least self-punishing. Everyone accepts that people need to “get along” first, and to refuse to do what you have to do to get along is the equivalent of asking the rest of the world to pick up your slack. (For instance, if you can’t afford insurance, society ends up picking up your tab when you go to the county hospital). As a very good friend put it recently, I’m not in a place where I can afford the luxury of integrity. I should put integrity off until I have a safety net.  

So why do I put integrity first? I have some theories based on my personal history which I’ll spare everyone. There’s another aspect of my last-ditch defense of integrity that I think may be a universal reaction to this day and age. We are all being asked to constantly adapt to change, constantly chase the cheese. Most of us are in debt (student loans, mortgages, car payments) and this compels us to submit to others so they will “give” us work. Our skills don’t determine the compensation for that work – the market determines are compensation. Furthermore, corporations have the power (through lobbying, litigation, and PR) to jimmy the market in ways that decrease the power of the individual. In other words, everyone feels the rug can be pulled out from under them at any minute. Under those circumstances, the only thing individuals can protect is their sense of self. Integrity is the primary component of a sense of self. To be treated with dignity is for the rest of the world to respect your ownership of yourself. To be forced to sacrifice your integrity just to survive is slavery.

Back to the problem of the job interview: when push comes to shove I believe, with all the power of the deepest spiritual belief, that the job interview itself is a test of my integrity. Every interviewer is asking me whether I would put “fitting in” before everything else. I can’t say “yes” to that, either directly or indirectly.

Worse, if I feel everyone who “passed” the interview did say “yes” to the implied question of whether they would put their integrity second, that means the entire workplace will be populated by people of questionable integrity. Every wonder why we end up with so many psychopaths at the top? It’s because the interview process screens out people who put integrity first at the bottom. This also explains groupthink and turf wars – the interview process selects for people who are either utterly conformists or fantastic liars. I don’t want to work in an environment where I feel surrounded by people who put “fitting in” first.

I apologize if everyone who has a job now feels insulted: I do think that there is a widespread gut instinct about this problem which is reflected in the fact that most everyone hates job interviews. I don’t think people are evil because they need to get a job.

So what makes me different? Am I just so special that I don’t have to do what everyone else does?

I think the difference is I subconsciously made the connection between integrity and dignity. I realized my life had no dignity, and I haven’t figured out how to get it back. Hopefully this won’t sound like hyperbole, but I’m not sure life is worth living if you’re obligated to live in a state of indignity. Since I’m living in indignity now, I guess I’m just waiting for it to be over.

I wonder how many people out there feel the way I do?

Tonight at 7 PST and 10 EST, Link TV will be doing another special edition of Mosaic.  Mosaic is a really cool show that brings together news segments from all over the Middle East.
I went to a live filming of Mosaic in San Francisco on Friday. What they do with the special “Insight” show is bring together people from various sides of the issue to comment on the show. Audience members can call in or email questions. At the show I went to they took questions from all over the country and across the political spectrum.

Link TV is a satellite channel:

DIRECTV Ch 375

DISH Ch 9410

If you don’t have satellite TV, you can view the streaming version here.

Link TV has also been doing a lot of documentaries related to the Israel/Lebanon conflict this week – check out their web site for more details.

Link TV doesn’t receive Federal funding, and they operate on a shoestring budget. They have virtually no advertising. It would really help them if people passed this info along.

Early this morning, Mary Hodder announced that Dabble had finally gone live. Dabble is a social media site that allows you to organize and share your collection of online vids. I’ve been working with a beta account for a couple of months (note my nifty collection of YearlyKos video), and it’s great to finally be able to share my video playlists with people outside the beta wall.
While I was looking at my Dabble account just now, it occured to me that this is a nifty way for people to create a video event that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Dabble enables you to collect clips and re-arrange them into a meaningful blend of perspectives. If someone wants to get into videoblogging without worrying too much about bandwidth and loadtimes, they could host their videos on YouTube, use Dabble to construct a playlist, and then present the feed of the playlist on their blog. This would be, in effect, running your own TV station on your blog.

This approach could be used for awesome social and political effect. Think of combining clips from Witness with hip political vids. Another model is Link TV’s Mosaic, which remixes news segments from all over the Middle East. I just tried the Dabble bookmarklet (one-click button to add videos to your Dabble playlists) on the Mosaic page, and it worked fine after I remembered to stop the video that was streaming on the front page. Anyway – grab clips from here, there, and that other Web 2.0 place, and you have your own mash up TV station. Crank up the volume!

The strangest thing happened while I was on BART (the San Francisco commuter train) on Friday. The girl standing next to me, who had been complaining loudly about the over-crowded train, spit at the people standing on the platform right before the door closed. Her friends immediately started doing a victory dance, singing “Boo-boo-be-doo – we spit on you!”

The fact that all these kids immediately knew how to celebrate the spitting on random commuters made me wonder if this is part of an evolving subculture. It’s probably not that far a leap from spitting to the pyrotechnic subculture. Random violence seems to be bubbling up from the ground. Yet because it’s happening in a familiar setting, we’re striving for labels other than “terrorism”. Our children aren’t terrorists. They’re just confused by hormones. Only “other people” are terrorists.

The irony was that I was returning from watching a live filming of Link TV’s Mosaic (there are streaming episodes here if anyone is interested). The most moving part was a woman who expained the ambivalence that the Lebonese people have about Hezbollah. To the Lebonese, Hezbollah is not necessarily a terrorist organization. Many see Hezbollah as an organization of “freedom fighters” and Israel as a terrorist state that has killed over a hundred people and levelled whole neighborhoods to do their “Boo-boo-be-doo – we spit on you!” victory dance.

My landlord just got back from Mumbai, where almost 200 people were killed and 700 injured in train bombings on July 11. While the U.S. has been too distracted by Lebanon to give Mumbai a second thought, I wonder whether 7/11 will provoke the same sort of reaction in India that 9/11 did here – with “kill the terrorist” flash games circulating by email in a matter of hours and general patriotic warmongering? Where will the anger of the people turn?

Mumbai trains are famous for their hot, over-crowded conditions – and this again takes me back to the spitting girl on the BART train. While the commuters on the platform probably wouldn’t regard themselves as having anything to do with her problems, I don’t think her actions were irrational. It seems to me that in an era where a lot of things that oppressive forces are systemic or anonymous, it’s hard for people to figure out where to pursue their fight for justice. These kids were angry at everybody. An anonymous stranger symbolizes everyody.

I’m thinking that it’s time to get rid of the word “terrorist”. First it’s far too easy for politicians to label anyone they dislike a “terrorist supporter” (or possibly a “terrorist” for wearing the wrong t-shirt or hugging a tree in a logging zone). Second, too many mental acrobatics have to occur to separate the “terrorists” out there from other sorts of violence from spouse-beating to “pyrotechnic subcultures”. In the end we should be looking for the source of the anger and repeatedly asking ourselves whether we’ve shut down the alternatives to spitting and basement bombs.

Yesterday, while I was standing in line in the post office, people who had never previously met were arguing passionately about the slaughter in Lebanon. It reminded me of 9/11, except the conversation had flipped over somehow. On 9/11, the Muslim family that owns the corner grocery was practicing community diplomacy, handing out free sodas and assuring nervous neighbors that terrorism wasn’t part of their culture. Yesterday, non-Muslims were promising their Muslim neighbors that the U.S. doesn’t support the murder of civilians.    
When I was growing up, the lingering memories of WWII assured that Israel always got automatic sentimental support. The pro-Israel tendencies were magnified by the lack of information about the Muslim world, especially in rural areas with no Muslim neighbors to speak of. It’s not that people were determined to remain ignorant: my undergraduate college desperately tried to find a professor to launch a MidEast Studies program. If I remember correctly, the one remotely qualified candidate got poached by Harvard.

I’ve always been interested in world history, so I probably have a stronger sense of the adventures of the Middle East than most…as long as the clock stops around 1699. I do have my antenna up regarding news from the Middle East, and I try to watch Link TV’s Mosaic to get a variety of takes on the Middle East. I’m particularly interested in the situation of women. I’ve read three or four books by Fatema Mernissi, and I now get Google alerts on various keywords related to the Middle East.

Yet, as I was standing in that post office listening to people I’ve known for a number of years shouting and wailing about the events tearing apart their homeland, I felt I still knew nothing. And I had nothing to say to the same man who had offered me a free soda on 9/11. I’m curious about how other people keep themselves informed about the Middle East and talk to their neighbors about it. I welcome any suggestions for resources.

For the past week the media has been ablaze with the transgender perspective on bias against women in science. Women have been crying out about this sort of rankism for decades, but the public has been largely apathetic toward “ivory tower” issues.
It’s terrific that the media finally found a hook for this. With public attention stretched so many ways, it’s easy to forget that we has a society haven’t done much to alleviate discrimination against women in research areas where we need all the help we can get. If the U.S. wants to remain a world leader in scientific research, we need to throw all available resources at the big problems. The petty old boy network has to go.

I’d just like to shore up the transgender article with a couple of similar, but lesser known, recent news items:

A female neuroscientist was bullied out of a job at MIT.

The University of California system was recently shaken by the suicide of the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, one of the vanguard leaders for women in science. This raises the question of how much beating down should we expect women to take? I think women have been placed in a position where they have to prove they aren’t “thin-skinned”, so they end up accepting mistreatment that their male colleagues would never put up with.

It’s easy to mistake the mere presence of women for equal opportunity, and there is already backlash to make sure squeaky boys get the grease. However, women know that they don’t have access to equal resources, much less equal power networks. What gains they have made are fragile, and the reality is that we still live in a world of sexual terrorism.

One of the tenets of the dignity movement is that it would strive to eliminate rankism in general. The science research establishment is one of the main areas that would benefit. If anyone is interested in learning more about the dignity movement, the man leading the charge, Robert Fuller, will be interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum this morning (Tuesday) from 10 to 11am. I’ve been told the interview will rerun at 10pm.

Update: Michael Krasny has posted a podcast of Fuller’s interview here.

For the past week the media has been ablaze with the transgender perspective on bias against women in science. Women have been crying out about this sort of rankism for decades, but the public has been largely apathetic toward “ivory tower” issues.
It’s terrific that the media finally found a hook for this. With public attention stretched so many ways, it’s easy to forget that we has a society haven’t done much to alleviate discrimination against women in research areas where we need all the help we can get. If the U.S. wants to remain a world leader in scientific research, we need to throw all available resources at the big problems. The petty old boy network has to go.

I’d just like to shore up the transgender article with a couple of similar, but lesser known, recent news items:

A female neuroscientist was bullied out of a job at MIT.

The University of California system was recently shaken by the suicide of the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, one of the vanguard leaders for women in science. This raises the question of how much beating down should we expect women to take? I think women have been placed in a position where they have to prove they aren’t “thin-skinned”, so they end up accepting mistreatment that their male colleagues would never put up with.

It’s easy to mistake the mere presence of women for equal opportunity, and there is already backlash to make sure squeaky boys get the grease. However, women know that they don’t have access to equal resources, much less equal power networks. What gains they have made are fragile, and the reality is that we still live in a world of sexual terrorism.

One of the tenets of the dignity movement is that it would strive to eliminate rankism in general. The science research establishment is one of the main areas that would benefit. If anyone is interested in learning more about the dignity movement, the man leading the charge, Robert Fuller, will be interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum this morning (Tuesday) from 10 to 11am. I’ve been told the interview will rerun at 10pm.

 

For the past week the media has been ablaze with the transgender perspective on bias against women in science. Women have been crying out about this sort of rankism for decades, but the public has been largely apathetic toward “ivory tower” issues.
It’s terrific that the media finally found a hook for this. With public attention stretched so many ways, it’s easy to forget that we has a society haven’t done much to alleviate discrimination against women in research areas where we need all the help we can get. If the U.S. wants to remain a world leader in scientific research, we need to throw all available resources at the big problems. The petty old boy network has to go.

I’d just like to shore up the transgender article with a couple of similar, but lesser known, recent news items:

A female neuroscientist was bullied out of a job at MIT.

The University of California system was recently shaken by the suicide of the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, one of the vanguard leaders for women in science. This raises the question of how much beating down should we expect women to take? I think women have been placed in a position where they have to prove they aren’t “thin-skinned”, so they end up accepting mistreatment that their male colleagues would never put up with.

It’s easy to mistake the mere presence of women for equal opportunity, and there is already backlash to make sure squeaky boys get the grease. However, women know that they don’t have access to equal resources, much less equal power networks. What gains they have made are fragile, and the reality is that we still live in a world of sexual terrorism.

One of the tenets of the dignity movement is that it would strive to eliminate rankism in general. The science research establishment is one of the main areas that would benefit. If anyone is interested in learning more about the dignity movement, the man leading the charge, Robert Fuller, will be interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum this morning (Tuesday) from 10 to 11am. I’ve been told the interview will rerun at 10pm.

 

I’m posting this for David Brown, a Link TV producer who is making a documentary of YearlyKos. Here’s an opportunity for 15 minutes of blogosphere fame!

(Feel free to spread the word!)
Letter to YearlyKos attendees,

I am producing an hour-long documentary for Link TV on the historic YearlyKos 2006 Conference.  In addition to airing the show this fall on Link TV national satellite channel, we will stream many new clips at LinkTV/YearlyKos and distribute the program on DVD.

We are seeking additional footage of the YearlyKos conference – panels and parties that we missed or any memorable or illuminating moments.  We’re also interested in blog entries that are unique, funny or especially striking visually, including innovative video blogs. Please send links to any blogs that you would recommend.

If you have footage or resources, we would greatly appreciate receiving email links, DVDs or videos (mini-DV or VHS) by mid-July if possible. Label anything you send clearly, and DON’T SEND YOUR VIDEO MASTERS UNLESS WE ASK IN ADVANCE. All contributors will receive on-air credit and have their websites identified as cross promotion.

Please email comments, resources, ideas or links to Dbrown@linktv.org.  Check out the video coverage already posted at LinkTV/YearlyKos.  Thanks!

David L. Brown
Producer,
Link Media
Dbrown@linktv.org

www.linktv.org