The Movement You Need…

This article from Saturday’s London Daily Mail somewhat confirmed something I have been pondering over the past few weeks.

Don’t listen to the liberals - Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows | Mail Online

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. ‘One sometimes gets the impression,’ he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, ‘that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England’.

It all started when I forwarded to a cousin a bit of minutiae regarding statistical differences between behaviors of peoples of various cultures. The data fascinated me because I have done many analyses of precinct-level voting behavior. Past behavior is a great tool for predicting future behavior. Generally, people within a precinct share a greater level of “sameness” than they do with those in neighboring precincts; people self-differentiate themselves from others when they select a place to call home. This information is pretty much confirmed by various sections of the General Social Survey (GSS) to which the Mail’s article pointed as a source.

My cousin, a dyed in the wool egalitarian leftist, apparently was upset that I had the audacity to even read statistics that explore differences between peoples’ cultural traditions and how they might affect behavior. To him, it appears I have committed some some sort of thought-crime in pondering that people from various cultures might be different in any way at all. To him, all people of every culture and every nation are not only “equal,” they’re “identical;” it is an article that underlies his humanist faith. If people actually are different, and that difference is in any way based upon folkways, traditions, or anything handed down through the generations, then his whole set of assumptions about the way the world works might crumble. (Continued)

Tags: Conservatism, general social survey, london daily mail, Political Correctness, progressivism, sameness, traditionalism

For my readers who may be unaware, another phase of Internet-centered communications advances is upon us. As my good friend Jack Latona might say, they just aren’t widely distributed… yet. I’m urging those who don’t usually tune-in to the latest and greatest until after folks on the cutting edge stop bleeding to get familiar - now - with the ideas behind the terms “Web 2.0” and “Social Media.”

With that in mind, today I’m going to introduce you to Twitter. It is definitely within the realms of both of the aforementioned new-fangled terms. And it is something that I instinctively know will be some sort of “next big thing.” That’s the oddest truth about Twitter: nearly everyone who uses it for a while finds it indispensable but we can’t describe it well. Most users believe that Twitter (or something very much like it) will become as much a part of our daily lives as email, but we still can’t tell you precisely why that will be the case.

Even explaining what Twitter is presents challenges. OK, it’s a means of “microblogging,” as if that helps. Rather than bore you with technical jargon, I’ll point you to this because it’s a good start:

But that’s all the video is: A good start. By the way, the video is by the good folks at Common Craft. I’ll have to do a post about that great company later; they’re really embedded in the Web 2.0 wave. (Continued)

Tags: blog, communications, Communications tools, microblogging, Social Media, twitter, Web 2.0