Lost In A Lost World

Some have been wondering why I haven't been writing, and I suppose I could simply say, "Writer's block". Writer's block is a nice, vague way of saying, "I just can't seem to write". Yet as usual, it's much more complicated than that.

So I've given it time. I've sat in front of the keyboard and waited for my fingers to start moving. Sure, there are 'strategies for dealing with writer's block', but over time I've found that the best way to handle it is to simply write about the writer's block itself - something I had been intending for a week or more, but which at least now I am doing. It's a hard thing to do, perhaps much harder than someone who doesn't write could understand.

Sometimes the world simply renders one speechless. It isn't one thing, it never is - it's a combination of things. Maybe it's dealing with a 3rd world government's probate system through a lawyer whose office isn't smart enough to pick up the phone to ask a question. Or maybe it's seeing the world repeat itself when it comes to wars and fistfights. Maybe it's seeing the same lack of progress in ICT that was there this year and the year before and the year before that.

Maybe it's just the loss of an innocence, an innocence which allowed one to think that the world really did want to become a better place. That people really did want to move forward, to work, to move forward, to advance. So very few people out there who pick a direction and GO, and so very few are out there who should bother doing that. Complicated and involved strategies get written down by large groups of people for such simple things to do, but in the evenings they go home and in the mornings they return. They tell us that they care. Lost in a Lost World.

I turned 35 last week. 10 years ago, the Internet started and 10 years later it's still starting. 10 years later it's still not starting for roughly 80% of the world's population. There are people who try to be the voice for those 80%- be it the wandering tourist through Africa turned torchbearer for a people she or he doesn't belong to, the academic discussing the reasons for a lack of internet usage in rural areas who does not actually live in a rural area and probably never did. It's about giving people $100 laptops for $100 million when that $100 million could put in an infrastructure which could actually support the laptops. But some people are concerned more with the appearance of doing than actually doing, so they eat their steaks and talk about how much other people think that they did to anyone who will listen, perpetuating the illusion.

Over the last 10 years I have shifted from one area to another, looking for the Hope that is supposed to exist in many of these circles. I embraced open source and free software and advocated it only to see these things become nothing more than tools of businesses and governments (where there is a difference between businesses and governments), the empowerment for the average person cast upon the rocks of the cliff which lemmings jump from. I've embraced open content, practiced it, only to see people who say 'yes it is very good' pay lip service to it when it comes to venture capital because, you see, they want to do more and they sincerely believe that to do more they can't do something original - or at the least new. I became involved in Digital Divide and ICT issues since this was (and is) the stumbling block not only where I live, not only in the region where I live, but all over the world. And there are good people working on all of these things, it's true.

But something's missing. I suppose when you stare at the void long enough, you see it. There's no unifying theory. There's a bunch of people off digging holes with no rhyme or reason in the greater sense of the world; the holes only make sense within their own smaller contexts. While everyone is waving flags and placards talking about adhesion to other groups they fail to talk and act with cohesion - thinking that groups are so different that they must adhere instead of be cohesively bonded. It's a state of mind which I find not only counterproductive but also repulsive.

And during all this time, people email me - 'What do you think about this?', or 'What do you think about that?' and my response has become - out of necessity - 'I think if my bank account reflected your interest in my thoughts I would share them'. So many NGOs are out there trying to find the Holy Grail with the funding which they have, and they expect others to work for free when they do not. Adhesion. Cohesion. See the difference? And when a response about working with other groups is sent, the silence becomes so tangible and bland one cannot help but wonder if it is a fruit grown on an exotic tree.

In the grand scheme of things, so much could be done with so much less. The systems now are based upon the systems of the past which most would agree are antiquated. Nothing has really changed, nothing will change unless people actually want to change, want to have change... and can voice that themselves. While democracy has been so lauded, a look around at the world shows that the vast majority of countries in the world are supposed democracies which are at different levels of failure - and communism isn't doing too well either. It takes a certain hubris to attempt installation of an antiquated system of government in other countries, but everyone finds their own opiate.

The opiate for some is religion, for others politics, for others technology, for others it is science... and while under the influence of these opiates, do things which largely do not help do anything but enhance or detract from opiate distribution systems - even so far as to have turf wars with other opiate distributors, the drug dealers of peace of mind. Salvation here and now is forgotten for an obscure promise of a future which someone else dreamt; the meditation zafu is a couch and the third eye is the television. The last thing we would want to do is give up our opiates and see how miserable a global society we really are. Charities exist which do no more than the same when they could, with less pomp and public relations, could do more if they just had all of their members lobby... but that doesn't make one famous.

Like Achilles, they wish to die in glorious battle and be remembered for thousands of years instead of leaving a legacy - the true tragedy. We have this wonderful place around us, you may remember seeing the world through a child's eyes and looking with wonder upon all that there is. When last have you looked at the clouds? When last have you walked the beach, the lap of the water licking the rough sand your toes trail through? When last have you heard a bird whistle, such a wondrous creature. When last have you seen a thing as if you have seen it for the first time? When was the first time you saw a computer, and what wondrous things did your mind see instead of the opiates you use now? Did you not see a future?

We rush back and forth to save time, even with mobile phones, and yet what do we do with all this time we 'save'? To what end have you actually used what is around you to make the quality of your life better, and does what you perceive as quality entail an opiate for what happens next door?

Writer's block. Perhaps all of this could be blamed on Writer's block, on people's inability to describe that which could actually leave breadcrumbs to all of us lost in a lost world.