Good points on the issues and failure to respond by publications. While I’ve only been on Medium for a year and actively writing for six months, I’m not one of senior crowd, but I’ve been terribly impressed with Medium. Yeah, I know business model and how do you make money, etc , etc. But even with the struggle and the threat of ending up purveying click bait this environment is the best I’ve seen. The platform is the best yet, still missing things, but also still moving in the right direction. As an old web person I’be been waiting a long time for this to evolve.

My policy is to answer all reasonable responses as what I write is fairly radical for most people because I’m looking at the intellectual underpinnings of rapid change. Particularly at times like this the change is massive and accelerating and people are overwhelmed by the chaos of non-linearity intruding into their lives. This, of course, is the incubator for fascism that is the modern evolved descendent of feudalism. Feudalism was always a stage and not a destination just as fascism fills the same role as a stage in the collapse of a world order system. It seems to be true that the collapse of the old is only triggered by the emergence of a new ordering of human reality but that’s seen only as confusingly crazy ideas that don’t fit and aren’t recognized by many people for what they are. Pretty heavy going with stuff falling apart and trust as one of the first casualties.

But, back to your point, Gutbloom, I’m increasingly unhappy with anyone publishing positions and not defending them. I think I’ve responded to Louis Weeks as he has attacked some of positions. Correct me if I’m wrong, Louis. A serious response, even if it is primarily dogmatic, is a valid starting point of discussion. And that’s what we need however we move forward. I’ve been very happy as I really have not been troubled by trolls and true believers here although they show up but Medium is a bit too serious for them to get a foothold. So far.

But I agree we need a bit more broad community committed to discussion and external publications would be very, very good if they seriously discuss rather than just publish. As dead sites they are destructive. The shorter part of long form is very good, though, as I think it fits the new order. We can do multiple conversations that have small, modularized discussion points that can fit together without overwhelming people with densely argued academic stuff or endless recitation of brain dead talking points. I’m not completely sure if this is right as I’m struggling to figure it out, too.