Turn the Sky » Blog Archive » Trust in online community
Pui li blogged about the difficulty she encountered as she tried to gain trust and cooperation for her doco from people in an online forum.
I’ve had a totally different experience from hers when doing the community project, because my story is about a real-life community — the socialist youth organisation Resistance – rather than a virtual group.
The difference is interesting and worth a reflection.
I first learned about Resistance from their stall at the entrance to Building 8 of RMIT city campus. Then I went to the youth organisation’s office to interview people. The young guys were discussing the issue of multiculturalism when I arrived. Nobody knew me, nor did I know anyone there. But after my brief introduction of myself as a journalistic student hoping to do a online doco about them, they kindly let me participate their discussion and feel free to ask whatever questions and take photos.
In the following a few weeks, I took part in their activities — meetings and anti-VSU protest — and asked heaps of questions to obtain a deeper understanding of this alternative community in Australian society. My interviewees were always friendly and cooperative. I am much obliged to them for their trust and help.
Thanks to the online doco assignment, I had an oppotunities to explore a real community in Australia. It’s a valueable and memorable experience for me — a foreigner here.
I don’t think Resistance members and I have intentionally tried to build trust between us. As we chatted face to face, we looked into each others’ eyes and saw honesty and sincerity — we became friends, natually. That feeling is indeed lovely.
I think this arguement is a bit pessimist. Resistance members can profit nothing by offering me help — a sheer stranger and ’someone else’ from overseas, but they did spare time to help me. Is that because they are socialists? Socialists say capitalist society should be overthrown because social production under capitalist system cares only about profits, instead of people’s real needs.
Neal, my course mate, I suggest you join the socialist party to make yourself more hopeful about life, society and inter-personal relations.
” think this arguement is a bit pessimist. Resistance members can profit nothing by offering me help — a sheer stranger and ’someone else’ from overseas, but they did spare time to help me. Is that because they are socialists? ”
It is a factual statement. The world at its barest. Everything exists on a give and take basis. Fact being, Resistance or the Socialist party is a minority group, like all the other minority groups they lack the most important resource which is people. Is not being friendly and using the best of their charm whether deliberately or unintentionally to recruit or persuade more people into their cause? When minority groups grow large enough, they will have sufficient infrastructure and power to ease on their needs for direct inter-personal relations. They will have the ability to spread propaganda and make their idea popular. When control is almost absolute, they are in the comfort zone level to be able to afford threatening or coercing anyone else who isn’t part of their majority. So as the fine examples of the pre-war Socialists have given us, when the tiny unit begins to be cancerous and grow exponentially like wildfire, the hope of the people will actually dwindle into false hope and disillusioned realities. Yes people were able to be ‘close’ to each other, but also due to that, people sold each other out. Everyone including your neighbour, sister, father, random person on the street could be a spy on your activities.
This is not limited to Socialism alone. Our current Capitalist society also functions in the same way. Those who do not adept or conform to their beliefs or way of life are ‘threatened’ with imminent poverty and exile from mainstream society (ie lack of acceptance). Back when the Capitalist idea started, everyone was so idealistic. That the Industrial Boom back then could start things off and provide a great life. Massive propaganda was done like the Ford cars rolling off the production lines, Tupperware commercials… providing jobs for millions of people. Your friendly would-be employer would also be nice to you if the employer was with a small start-up company or small-scaled enterprise. Do the comparison with an established and multinational corporation and see if they would be equally as friendly with you.
What is hope? Hope is a projected reality in a possible temporal existence that matches your ideals and dreams. However the world has 6.25+ billion people each with their own ideal and dream? Only one future possible. And people are fighting all over to have it their way. The eternal struggle, left and right, proactive and reactive, black and white.
Naturally the aggressive and the strong will climb up to higher heights and positions of power first so it really depends where these aggressive people are and which idea they are leading / spearheading.
Society is just an amalgamation of people, like our body is comprised of millions of individual cells. Some people decide to be gluttonous or carnivorous and eat more than their body needs so their drive and desire to obtain food is greater and so they take action and force to obtain as much food as possible, to the extent of depriving others of it. Of course in the long term they would exhaust all the food around them and they are the cause of their own death. But they will of course grow faster and bigger. Think of this as an allusion to Capitalists. This is the current model of our civilisation.
Socialists.. mm its like ensuring everyone has their fair share, no one starves and so on. But we live in a perpetually entropic universe. Our rate of destruction / consumption greatly outweighs our rate of repair / regrowth. So if we currently have 6.x billion people, to make sure everyone’s basic needs are fulfilled, means equal distribution. Will everyone be willing to accomodate to this need? Like in nature, we have hawks, which prey on snakes, which in turn preys on rabbits, and they eat grass. There are some who eat more than others, and this unequal distribution contributes to a healthy variety which can sustain our existence versus a monostructured society. To keep everything in balance, there is a lack of growth, stimulation of ideas and to enforce this permanency of equal opportunities and fairness (Socialist Ideal), rigid control is required and even the most hardy of river banks guiding the flow of the river can corrode and its rocks smoothen away over the years. The rivers will flood despite the control. People will die, things will rot, metals will decay, heat will escape.
So given a contained environment, the Socialist model will indeed thrive. An ideal environment where resources are a constant, space and growth is not an issue. Reproduction will have to be limited in order to constrain growth. Because if numbers increase then obviously resources will be strained and scarce. To maintain and sustain the current population, the equilibrium has to be struck at how much food has to be produced, how much basic needs. So growth will only be feasible (in order to have everyone grow at the same rate = given extra resources to grow) when technology or whatever grants extra resources in some way or another. A slow staggering inefficient bureaucracy in which given the other Capitalists around who have a higher competitive rate and Survival Value undoubtedly it will die off.
As much as I do not want to believe in Survival of the Fittest, the natural around us already is solid enough proof. The strongest predator prevailed (animal kingdom), and now the human race is at the top of the chain, killing off all the flora and fauna, and enslaving the rest which aren’t destroyed as purposes of maintaining / feeding us.
What is hope if you turn a blind eye to reality? What is reality if you do not have hope guiding you? I believe in taking a balanced stance. However of course, to reach and remain at the equilibrium would be the final stage of any ecosystem or society or civilisation where growth is done with and everything is stabilised and maintained in a plateau stage. Providing like Newton’s Law, no other existence influences the existence resting at equilibrium (A mass will not move unless it is acted upon, likewise a mass will continue moving until it is resisted sufficiently).
So you could say that the Socialist model and the Capitalist models are two ideas moving in opposing directions. A balanced model.. would be one smack dab in the middle, with both Socialist benefits and Capitalist benefits or ideas pushing at equal strength to force it into a standstill.
Right now the Capitalist movement is moving with greater strength and therefore pushing the Socialist movement further away from the middle point..
So before I rant any further like old men do…. please excuse me and let me refrain myself from incessant banter~
Hi Neal,
You are a superb debater. I like your writing, which is so coherent and logical, and the strong arguements.
Your comment has really educated me about the essense of human society. And if one day I have child, I’ll probablly quotes some of your points to educate him/her about the reality world, alerting him/her about the dark side of life.
But personally, I still believe in the existance of trust, friendship and love that make the world go around. Such belief supports me to live in the world where the priciple of the Fittest Survives applies.
You bet! To keep an eye on the reality and to reserve some hope in the mean time is a resonable strategy.
Thank you for the reply.
And that is why dreamers, poets and naive people still exists in this world after 5000 odd years of humanity interlaced and effused with far too many incidents of corruption, degeneration, depravity and cruelty to count.
We are survivors after all. In a world with not much hope left, or much to hope for, hope (and love, trust and friendship) is the hope that will keep us alive. In that way, you are more or less the fittest (or amongst) in this time and age.
Glad to know you.
~Where there exists hatred, love exists side by side~
::Thrown into the middle of a pool of sharks, remember, others are thrown in together with you – the combined weight of your trust and friendship will crush the individual sharks squabbling to consume you::
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