Land grabs: words from a corner of the Liminal Web.
I am a landlord. Raised a socialist. I believe Jordan Peterson when he says anti-capitalism doesn’t solve the problem deeply enough, but I also think the land enclosures in Capitalism’s history can make for a nice metaphore to toy with as we look at the Liminal Web “land”scape.
In a recent metaphorical exploration with a fellow Liminologist, one of the Titans (ancient, god-like, loved, hated) of the Liminal Web came to me as a giant, fat, behemoth caught up in a war with all the other Titans. The scene was dark and foreboading, it felt like the Harvest of Battle by Nevinson (https://www.historyhit.com/the-art-of-world-war-one-in-paintings/), crossed with the battle scene from Avengers: End Game. All were fighting over rubber chickens and plastic children’s toys. Each Titan had armies of foot soldiers who were of course doing most of the fighting, passing the rubber and plastic back to their respective super human overlords to devour.
We were meant to be able to do better than this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/
So many of us seem to have something to sell, either to others, or to ourselves. Not just products and courses both digital and real, exchanged for (acceleratingly acknowledged to be symbolic) fiat currencies of various sorts; but also ideologies, practices, perspectives, maps, religions, personalities, communities, forms of existential threat, ways beyond existential threats, various forms of kudos. The having something for sale is bad enough (if you enter a dialogue knowing exactly what you want to fill it with, without a willingness to discover what others want to fill it with, or without a willingess to witness “the third” emerge, you’re not in dialogue, you’re in marketing) but the accompanying dismissal of whatever isn’t our particular thing is perhaps more pernicious. I’ve noticed this tendency with many entrepeneurs both inside and outside of the Liminal sphere. It’s not enough to be proud of one’s own product. One HAS to denigrate something else. For some, there’s always a war being fought on some level.
Real human’s are out there, thousands of them milling about the Liminal Web space, trying to be awesome. I’m suggesting that if we instigate pay “walls”, demand they “add value” (or “signal”?) to “our” project, demand that they “take things seriously”, demand that they “work harder”, then perhaps we aren’t doing what needs to be done. One of the reasons we’re screwing things up is because we can’t love each other. Maybe start there? The others are good enough. If we don’t think they are, there’s a strong chance we don’t believe we’re good enough either and are probably better starting by working on ourselves.
Try to listen out for the metaphores used. Are you or they a “warrior”? Are you or they “hiding behind” something? Are you or they “taking a position”? Listen out for these languagings in yourself and others. They might (also might not of course, but worth a check!) be an indication that a land grab is afoot.
I don’t know how much of the “seem”, from the above “So many of us seem to have something to sell” sentence is my problem. Perhaps my socialist upbringing filled me with a hyper vigilance towards profiteering? Perhaps I’m just excessively Liberal and any time I get a sniff of someone trying to tell me what to do, I want to run a mile? It could also be though, that the shadow which comes from pointing our ego at the task of saving the world, is that we fail to save ourselves and each other.
Links to the follow ups:
Land Grabs 2: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-2-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-4d3e6c9989a2
Land Grabs 3: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-3-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bitches-gotta-eat-17ad4460399f
Land Grabs 4: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-4-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-who-owns-what-600a932c1ba6
Land Grabs 5: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-5-a-bowl-of-emergent-soup-please-ba9e46f8767d
