(2009-08-16) Rushkoff End Of Movements

Douglas Rushkoff thinks "movements" (Civil Action) are obsolete. In our current position, when disconnection from the real world is itself a cause for concern, movements only serve to disconnect us further from the Actionable. They give us content for websites, language for our bumper stickers, and faces to put on our ideals. But they distract us from the matter at hand, and worse, turn our attention upward toward brand mythologies instead of immediately before us to the people and problems that need our time and energy. In the place of real connections to other people, we get the highly charged but ultimately fake connection to an image.

Activists would do more to fight Big Agra simply by subscribing to their local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups. We'd more effectively pull the rug out from under a corrupt financial sector by simply investing in one another's businesses--our own town restaurants and drug stores (SmallCo) --instead of outsourcing our Retirement savings to Wall Street. We could more easily re-invent Public Schools by volunteering our time to them directly, instead of sending our kids to private schools while we sign petitions for government to re-prioritize. And even in HealthCare, we'd end up cutting everyone's costs by commuting less, smoking less, landscaping less, and, yes, hating less. For each of these actions triggers different responses, undermines industries, requires new legal structures, and so on. It's tiny, but it's almost fractal in its impact.