This is a little work-up from an extended Tweet sequence. Consequently, there are some misspellings and the usual gaps caused by having to write each volley in 140-character chunks. Transcribed, and corrected for spelling and related abridgements, the video slideshow would be as follows. I have added the footnotes to this transcription for additional context, including notes on the ideas behind the Tweets as I Tweeted and extensions of the thoughts occurring after the original Tweeting.
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This stream began as a Facebook consideration of a WSJ opinion piece…
“What the Tea Partiers Really Want” on WSJ @ http://bit.ly/cDTEAI
A snapshot of the Facebook consideration can be found @ http://bit.ly/cDTEAl and looks something like this:
But that is only foregrounding for the following stream. The catalyst for a broader consideration. The Tea Party is but one Player. 1
Thus…3
We…2
Begin…1
Gated Community Syndrome: The belief that the outside world just doesn’t matter very much. The belief in efficacious, sustainable isolation.
In Gated Community Syndrome, the outside world only matters insofar as it begins to intrude on the Community; but
in Gated Community Syndrome there is a belief that preventing said intrusion is a simple matter.
Gated Community Syndrome reinforces belief in one’s own superior merit; that merit is seen as greatest defense against intrusion; but
in Gated Community Syndrome, members of that community set the metrics for judging said merit.
Gated Community Syndrome does not acknowledge the possibility of Super Empowered Angry Men operating under different set of metrics.
Super Empowered Angry Men = SEAM
In Gated Community Syndrome the unacknowledged, subconscious awareness of the potential of SEAM asserts itself in the creation of
bogeymen. Those living with Gated Community Syndrome are naturally prone to fear, for this reason. 2
For the purpose of better understanding Gated Community Syndrome, we might turn toward a metaphor: The Christian Heaven, the Muslim Paradise.
Possibly, perhaps likely, these and Gated Community Syndrome have an evolutionary origin: protecting the familial tribe protected the genes.
Who knows, really? It is a point of abstract euphoria, an intellectual game of loving one’s own merit, to make such leaps of knowingness. 3
In other words, let’s not worry so much about evolutionary origins; let’s move on…
It is entirely unfortunate that some others nabbed the term “Gated Community Syndrome” before I nabbed it; so I have just discovered.
On the other hand, it is apropos and germane to the topic. Indeed, a valid example of the pertinent dynamics. 4
In any case, I would focus upon the reality of the potential for Super Empowered Angry Men – or any SEI – in any discussion of GCS;
SEI = Super Empowered Individual (May not be “angry”, or not motivated to destroy.)
It’s peculiar the fact that many calling for resilient and isolationist communities, and/or GCSers, also talk of SEAMs but don’t add 2 to 2. 5
--I mean, within this tiny hemisphere of the blogosphere. Of course.
It is comprehensible that these near-peer GCSers should create a bogeyman “SEAM” in order to reinforce the call for better Gates; but 6
but paradoxical and saddening (for me personally) that the reality of the potential for SEAMs is so overlooked, excluded from the equations. 7
Some discussion, perhaps most of the discussion re: #5GW, involves the creation of not better Gates but of better equations, thus responses.
No #5GW theory, save Mark Safranski’s genocide-as-type-of-5GW, can be founded in/by anyone suffering from GCS. 8
--Not that M.S. suffers from GCS; but that GCS + #5GW necessarily sees the best Gate as being the elimination of those who’d remain outside.
Every pre-#5GW conflict can be understood as a type of Gated Community vs Gated Community conflict. 9
(keeping in mind the “Gates”, though they might be reinforced by geographical bounds, mean something more significant in this terminology.) 10
M.S.’s outlier #5GW is a bit more twitchy. I’d say it’s not GC v GC because the victims are largely not fighting back, but being slaughtered.
…perhaps being slaughtered before they have a chance to formulate an opposing force/GC for a GC v GC conflict? Does this work? #5GW 11
It may seem inapt that I’ve said GCSers believe in efficacious and sustainable isolationism yet pre #5GW conflict is GC v GC, but
but I never said GCS was rational. Bubbles are made to be burst. You may not believe it, but the SEAMs do. #5GW 12
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Notes:
1 In short and grossly summarized, the Facebook consideration centered on the ideas that: a) the author of the WSJ opinion piece points out the Tea Party concern for karma, i.e., the belief that no one should be able to reap more than he sows, e.g., hand-outs are bad and rewards should be based on merit, b) such a concern and ideation for karma misses the reality of cross-domain, cross-population effects: The individually determined estimation of merit will tend to overlook actual merit within the system; regardless of one’s own abilities or merit considered in isolation, merit within the system in relation to others may be altogether different. Behind this idea (at the time of writing the FB consideration) rested the notion that letting the nominally “un-meritorious” fellow denizens suffer or wander aimlessly might come back to bite the “meritorious” upright citizen. Also shading the FB consideration: Many calls for “smaller government” – moving from Big Federal Governance to State Governance -- by some Tea Partiers in fact appear to be calls for a smaller pond, in which they might have a greater influence over that smaller system (be big fishes.)
2 This inherent susceptibility to fear may be related to an extended consideration of performativity and 4GW I have previously made as well as to deeper considerations of 4GW (for instance, to how political systems such as America’s may be fundamentally 4GW). The Us v Them dynamic by which Our own merits are elevated and Their own merits are reduced for all to see may cycle into a process of increasing demonization. Consequently, those whose knee-jerk response to any perceived conflict is by nature 4GWish may, ironically, become even more susceptible to 4GW attacks. The enemy becomes some dimly seen and largely unknown (in the sense of real knowing and understanding) threat: rather than operating outside the Gates to neutralize threats – one’s own close-knit community and estimation of merit should be enough – the call is made for better Gates.
3 The movement of these three lines was somewhat unintentional or perhaps intuitional. The first, a consideration of Heaven and Paradise, was motivated by the image of Heaven & its Pearly Gates, in which only those who merited admission into Heaven could pass the gates. Similarly, Paradise is available to Muslims only when they have passed the tests prescribed in the Quran. How interesting that these conceptualizations of the afterlife match the general worldview of those suffering from Gated Community Syndrome. But the third line here was meant to move me beyond a consideration of evolutionary origins, where my mind had drifted; my mind had started a leap into knowingness by postulating an evolutionary origin I can in no way support from actual knowledge. Nonetheless, what is stated in the third line could be read as a commentary on the first line and add value to the 3-line drift.
4 At this point I had stopped to make a search of "Gated Community Syndrome." Others may use it somewhat differently although by no means completely differently. I had first used the term without knowledge of these other uses. The dynamics mentioned here would deserve an extended post for a complete consideration. My general drift here: I had thought my use of GCS as a term and idea was unique, isolated, but more often than not absolute isolation is impossible.
5 Here it is important to note that, yes, I was thinking of John Robb and his Global Guerrillas and Resilient Communities, but not of him alone. This line begins the main drift and impetus for writing this long Tweet stream, which concludes only at the end of the stream. Also I had in mind the contrast between John Robb and Thomas P. M. Barnett: The difference between setting exterior threats while calling for better resilient communities and setting a course that would neutralize exterior threats by operating in the world exterior to localized systems as a method of defense. And, yes, this contrast was explicitly behind my Facebook consideration of the Tea Party approach to system creation/maintenance.
6 See notes #1 & #5.
7 The flow from #1 to -#6: Consideration of SEAMs as some vague, little-understood bogeymen, may reinforce the perceived need for better Gates; but the fact remains that actual SEAMs may continue to exist regardless of the one’s own Gate Construction. In other words, a focus on developing one’s own localized system while excluding from consideration a strategy for altering what lies outside that system is a defective strategy.
8 See: "Mark Safranski Goes into the Heart of Darkness" @ Dreaming 5GW.
9 But not 5GW. We could perhaps outline xGW on the basis of GCS by defining how the “G” and the “C” of each xGW is distinct for every x before the 5th and how 5GW recognizes all these distinctions for what they are. See also the next line in the Tweet stream.
10 Different potential “Gates”: Geographical, Might-based, Ideology-based, Economy-based, Legal System-based, Ethnicity-based, Race-based, Intelligence-based, Technology-based, etc., as well as different Gates built from multiple of these. The Gate is the merit-based defense system, very broadly speaking. Here it is important to note that a) because these Gates are being considered in context with GCS, the individual Gates in question are largely conceptual, or in the minds of the GCSers, b) these Gates may have more or less bearing on real conditions in both the localized systems and the larger system, and c) I was rather vague in this line, in order to stimulate and allow for further exploration and also because a full exploration would make for a very, very long Tweet Stream indeed at 140-character or less installments. In fact, I would suppose that a development of a Gate-based approach to xGW could constitute a whole new branch to 5GW theory.
11 I think that, from the start, M.S.’s genocide-as-type-of-5GW formulation is and has been fairly twitchy. Here, I acknowledge the possibility that the actual examples given by M.S. in his essay may allow for the discernment of GCs, however ill-formed or ill-executed, in the target populations. We might say however that the 5GWer utilizing genocide overlooks or disregards or moves around those GC, so this prevents the GC v GC type of conflict characteristic of any other x in xGW. Dunno. This line left the question open.
12 In conclusion, then, is this: Although I stated earlier in the stream that “Some discussion, perhaps most of the discussion re: #5GW” has centered on the creation of better equations (for systems) and implied that these concerns related directly to the potential for SEAMs, I think that others discussing the theory of 5GW may not always have had such a focus. The potential for SEAMs has played a part in most or all 5GW theory, but sometimes and for some theorists it has played an ancillary role. Generalized anti-4GW concerns may be the biggest motivator for some 5GW theorists while others may merely be searching for a better strategic and tactical system for conducting selfish or self-interested operations. (For some, such as Hammes, 5GWers ARE the SEAMs to be feared; but I reject so simplistic a notion.) Within my own mind however, the potential for SEAMs has played a very large role in my continuing interest in 5GW theory. It might be that pre-5GW operations and general non-induced emergences within the global community can result in favorable conditions on the whole. So, it is possible to imagine highly developed Bubbles, or complex and innovative GCs, being fairly successful, resulting in a fairly low-grade and/or manageable constant conflict in order to preserve the Gates of those Bubbles—but the specter of truly super empowered and truly angry SEAMs always exists until and unless effective 5GW is utilized to remove the possibility. Even if said possibility can never be removed entirely, 5GW as a method for reducing the likelihood would seem a valuable goal, full of merit.
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