So, The Update

Well, it was something to do. It took a couple of hours to tweak and what not, but finally here it all is. I hope nobody was married to the old format.

I was for a while. I'd puttered around with an old Blogger template, which is the greatest way to learn anything. The result pleased me well, but then I saw a recent YouTube that emphasized one great revolution of the Internet - the ability to manipulate form independent of content.



That's what convinced me to change: I saw what an old grump I was becoming about the very idea of change.

But to resist change is to eliminate yourself from the vital conversation. And I'm not ready to pull back from that just yet.

I've just gotten a copy of Edward Bernays' Propaganda, another one of those books that every high school student should read. You may have heard of that "invisible government" line - you know the one:
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
But even in the quotation of this vital first chapter at Wikipedia, a key paragraph is snipped loose. It's a single sentence, but it changes the entire character of the message. Here it is:
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
At once, the thrust of the book pulls back from the Orwellian mold into which it is usually cast, even in the blurb on the back cover. "A fascinating and controversial look at how governments and corporations control how we think and act"? Two added words would make the description more accurate: "seek to." Governments and corporations seek to control how we think and act, and they can be largely successful.

But they can also not be, because the invisible government remains invisible even to itself. This might be an irreducible fact of human society.

The Internet is one more place that we seek that old Egyptian principle of Ma'at. We must make sense of the world, and once found, we relinquish that hard-won understanding only with suffering.

But we must do so when necessary, and should do so when fitting.

Well, anyway, that's enough of that.

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