Radicalization as The Death-Kiss of Reason and Results

- "p. As I’ve gotten flack over the past week or so from my criticism of TSA-martyr John Gillmore, and at the same time seen formerly-level heads like Lawrence Lessig not only back him up (file under “heros”? gag me…) but begin to engage in a discourse on other topics that reeks of anger and pettiness, I’ve come to a personal conclusion: radicalization spells the end of an idea or movements’ effectiveness.

So many of the values important to the IT community have become radicalized over the last few years. The push for more open and modern intellectual property law has become the “copyfight,” in which we the media-consuming public are somehow the victims of the entertainment conglomerates we willingly give our money to. In a similar vein, Open Source advocates have turned a pleasantly informative community happy to talk about their alternative IP policy into software militants, here victims of Microsoft, the media, and anyone who dissents.

Libertarianism in the tech community is no longer about reason and moderation in sociopolitical life, as its spokespersons would have you believe, but is instead another agenda-ridden dysfunctional political platform. Hacking has become “hacktivism,” standards bodies are political battlegrounds, and the list goes on and on.

The terrible thing is that these are all good ideas being ruined by radicalization. Great ideas. Ideas now forever sullied by those in such desperate need of a personal war to wage that they ignore, or do not understand, that the casualties are their very causes. Who would be so self-absorbed, so stupid, so full of radical bluster but without reason nor results to show for it?
I hate to play the culture/gender-studies critic, but I believe I see a pattern, one that persists in other facets of (American) intellectual life. It is white men, largely those who came of intellectual age in the oh-so-radical 1960s, who now tarnish our best of causes. There are exceptions, and an emerging younger generation of self-styled radicals, but by and large it is middle-aged white men with an axe to grind who have appointed (and anointed) themselves saviors of these agendas: your Gillmores, Barlows, Stallmans, and now to my great disappointment, your Lessigs.

But doesn’t the radicalization these individuals practice get the job done? Don’t we need to stand up and shout, protest and yell, scream our dissent to force the great manipulators and uninformed beset-upon masses understand our plight? I don’t believe so. I see a post-1960s American culture shaped by ideas that have survived in mutant forms despite their radicalization: commercially viable “girl power” feminism; the twisted multiculturalism that dominates our textbooks; a gay rights movement that’s here, queer, and still utterly marginalized by the same people who’ve always marginalized them; “free love” that gave way to promiscuity and disease, now ever-lowing the age barrier to loveless sex; drug policy that’s more draconian than ever despite the LSD generation being of age for political dominance. I could go on, but I think you see my point: the “radical” movements of the ’60s, of the generation now undermining IT policy, have turned out ineffective at best and utterly detrimental at worst. And yet the approach to pushing ideas taken by the men above is identical.

So I’ve talked quite a lot of shit here, but what would I change, how would I make it right? Stop the zealous, over-emotional treatment of these issues. Encourage zealots to step back, think about the majority for a change, reread a good economics textbook, talk to some people who aren’t familiar with their personal war, remind themselves that life (and political life, particularly) really isn’t a Foucaultian power struggle. If your ideas fail or are not immediately accepted, maybe there’s a reason for it and not a vast conspiracy of ignorance and malintent.

But it’s more glamorous and more fun to be radical, which is why it will persist. Technologists love to be iconoclasts, which is why we’ll be cleaning up the political messes of geeks with ill-executed agendas for many years to come. And a new generation with the same lack of restraint, cool, and political precision is now stepping in the awkward footsteps of their forebears, which is why things won’t be getting better soon.

It would be terribly radical not to be radical.