Afghanistan Prophecy Gone Awry

I sat on a mountaintop today to try and write. Seemed fitting as the subject was the July figures for troop casualties in Afghanistan. A new record was set by opposition militants who managed to kill 41 US soldiers and 22 UK ones. Predictably there are no official numbers on whether July was a record for civilian deaths as well. We don't do body counts after all.

But it wasn't in me. Election season for Afghanistan comes in a few months, and I thought to tell someone how that would go. I thought to make some analogous witticism between people who think sham government is worth fighting about and people who demonstrably could care less. But no one was around, and it honestly sounded a lot better than it wrote.

As a writer, or not, you've heard of writer's block and experienced it. You may also be aware of writer's stumble. When you are eating or masturbating or zoning out in the irony of watching a rerun of a sitcom called 'Do Over', your brain is working behind your back. Puzzling at problems, pondering perceptions, making connections until you call it back to work. When all the words come out just right, be sure your brain has been working overtime. When they don't, you're trying too hard. Relax.

Assertion (that means don't take my word for it): The fundamental difference between the average Pashtun tribe and the population of Peoria is the difference in exposure to centralizing technologies.

Our lives are centralized, theirs are not. For instance, how do you like your soup seasoned? Believe it or not, most Peorians (always wanted to say that) will try Campbell's first. If it doesn't taste quite right, they'll turn to Wolfgang Puck, either/or they'll acquire the taste. What they won't do is make their own soup. Now this could be a matter of not knowing how, but I tend to think it's more about people not knowing what they want. Or further, not making the effort to know what they want.

Technology is an easy scapegoat here, but it doesn't work. Many technologies, the ones we are most familiar with, are centralizing. By which I mean, they foster a reliance on some person or process acting in a removed location, often in ways we don't understand.

Case: our water systems are centralized. The pipes are made in a factory. Expert engineers design the layout. Chemists concoct the chemicals to prevent bacterial growth en route. All this is done so we only need turn a valve and pay the monthly bill. Most of us have no clue of the history of the water flowing from the tap. Oh, the pipes it has seen. It's taken for granted. This isn't to disparage the ignorant, people tend to learn those things that are most material to everyday life. If you don't live it, there's little incentive to learn it.

Opposing Case: for many of the global population, pottery is a decentralized technology. You dig up clay, remove the impurities, fashion a pot, and fire it. In places without Hobby Lobs and Wally Worlds, the order of operations and tools (more technologies) are passed to each generation. There's no mystery to where the pot came from, and no need to drive five miles should it break. Which is good, because in places that still have some generational knowledge, driving isn't much of an option.

As can be seen, centralization means putting some task into the hands of a smaller and more specialized group of people than those partaking of the fruits of the task. More or less of course. Back in the days of canaries in the coal mine, it took a lot of people busting rump to fuel the trains. Then we discovered oil, a substance that delivers more of a kick and requires less people to rump bust (yeah, you always wanted to say that, didntcha). Since then, those few people have been hard at work finding ways to get at coal and oil with fewer people and less rump busting.

And we have nuclear, perhaps the most centralized of all technologies, requiring as it does a very few people with an advanced understanding of fission and all of the rump busting on the front end of making materials and constructing the reactor.

This isn't about making a list, so stop. We could do that all week long. This is actually about power, a concept poorly understood.

Raymond Buckland once wrote that magic can be defined as any act of will that cannot be explained by science. Hence, if we couldn't explain how turning a doorhandle opened a door, then opening the door was magic. Power encompasses both magic and science and can be found in the acts of brushing your teeth or dropping a bomb on a wedding party.

We all have power available to us every day. Centralizing technologies tend to focus the power of the average person on mundane end-tasks. We turn the spigot. We open the can. (We hit the publish button, haha.) We unfold the wrapper. We buy a pot. We cast a vote.

As with most technologies (which are simply tools designed to refine power), election systems can be centralizing or not. Ours is a centralized system in which most of the choices are made without our input and without our understanding. A decentralized system might look more like the Afghan loya jirga. Recall the term? It's a national assembly that is made up of representatives from each community that were chosen from within that community. Back in 2002, the US eliminated all serious opponents (that is non-warlords) to our man Hamid Karzai, effectively centralizing (Americanizing?) what had been a decentralized technological tradition.

So, this then is my hypothesis, if you'll be so kind. Centralizing technologies turn people into spectators over time, often spectators of their own lives, willingly turning much of their power over to a few people behind-the-scenes. Decentralizing technologies serve as a constant reminder, if you want something done, you'll have to do it or talk a neighbor into helping you out.

Now, I've got a batch of Kombucha ready that tastes like a mix of margarita and honey mead. Anybody want to help me bottle it? No? Sheesh, guess that's what I get for asking a bunch of centralized technology junkies.