Conquest vs. Conservation

One of the most interesting conversations I've had in my life was with a biologist turned technologist. He picked up tech skills to be able to implement his vision of a plant and animal classification system called iNaturalist.

He described the old vision of plant and animal discovery as one of exploration, which has since become focused on preservation. The transition that took place was a recognition (by experts) exploitation, and the necessary reaction against it.

Putting on my "well it's kinda like" hat for a second, I think we can see similar transitions in other industries. For instance, the transition from Freudian "analysts" seeking and sharing discovery (with a lot of bullshit and harmful ideas propagated) has transitioned (though potentially also "splintered", when considering bootstrapping Dr. Phil nonsense, the prosperity gospel, and worse) mostly to a psychology focused on preservation and cultivation of the mind.

Only in recent years has Disney started to pull back from rescue stories. But as the future is here, yet not evenly distributed, Mario's heroic conquest in the Mushroom Kingdom still remains the go-to plot, despite a well-deserved backlash from Feminist Frequency (et al), as well as a formal take-down/me culpa with Braid.

I only have bullshit "feelings" and anecdotes as evidence for this, but the idea of "The Frontier" seems to drive so much of our actions. The Frontier is the space we have to stretch out, to be left alone, and to realize our power.

It is the space where our "will to power" is executed. It's where we inject ourselves. "The Frontier" asks for nothing back. It's a giving tree. A giving land. A giving people. A giving regulatory environment. A giving relationship.

The free domination of The Frontier is questioned by those currently occupying it, but not by those seeking to occupy it. The Frontier is a yielding land and people who can become a new space to execute one's will. It's a place for self-discovery and greed.

Traversing, exploring, exploiting, and mitigating that exploitation is the path of ventures and conquest more generally.

The Problems of the Frontier

Bullying, gentrification, and wealth acquisition are all executed against frontiers. While we seek to open new frontiers, we do two things. First, we try to classify as much as possible as a frontier, either through PR or "pro-something (usually business) deregulation." Then, we frame our narrative as one of survival.

Not caring about "externalities" or exploitative supply chain is something most people can get behind, or at least come to terms with as ok after the shock wears off and we introduce enough layers of indirection into the process to alleviate personal responsibility.

Trump gives us (and I mean white people, but mostly ones already more wealthy than me) new frontiers to explore. And by that I mean we're now freer to exploit people than before. A bully doesn't make deals that only affect people unseen in the agreement ("externalities"), but offers a notion of a frontier without restraint. Entering into direct conflicts, threatening people with destruction, or refusing to honor an on-the-face mutually beneficial deal because wealth (or other advantages) make it possible are no longer tacitly condoned, but a patriotic right.

He is a sign that conservation efforts are no longer necessary. Capacity for exploitation is itself a good.

An example

I saw two kids on bikes slide stopping in front of people. "See if you can make them stop walking" was their plan. Here, they're exploring two frontiers, the physical challenge of a likely newly acquired skill (make the bike skid to stop it) and see if you can get people to do something. See if you can take up their space and their thoughts through intimidation and shock.

I understand the high school boy game of seeing what you can get away with (the answer is a lot). I'm disgusted at what that looks like on the corporate and national scale. I don't know how we stop this when it's small or large.

One of the frontiers these boys were exploring, physical space and your body within it, is very cool to explore. The other one is so fucked.

So I'm left with a few questions:

How can we help distinguish legitimate frontiers (transcending our prior limitations of imagination and skill) from ones that only appear to be legimate if we completely ignore that there are god damn people here for fuck's sake?

Acknowledgement and celebration of caring traits as a frontier itself?

Internalizing externalities?

Language

We don't have enough accessible language. I won't claim that "no one has a way to talk about this," because that isn't true. We have social sciences and humanities to describe and define these structures, but not enough jumps across from the academic realm. And when it does, it's either contextualized as fringe, distorted, or both.

If someone can't accept women as figure rather than ground, any conversation or terminology centering women won't make the jump. Same goes for race. And anything else thought to be exploitable or irrelevant. In-game chat is a place to ridicule and deride your opponents by any means necessary. Black Lives Matter is a disturbance that can't be absorbed as a factual description of experience, but as an obstacle to what should be a Giving Tree of culture to explore through consumption.

It's not that "we don't have the words," as a people to describe struggle and pain. Generally, people can very well describe their experience and academics (and journalists at their best) can bolster and synthesize narratives. It's not that we don't have words to describe where "explorers" meet what they think of as the frontier. Gentrification, colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, exploitation, microaggressions, gender gap, etc.

I have those words, but my experience can't describe what any of it feels like. The positive framing of exploration, travel, discovery, success, and the American Dream, bolstered by a Great Men view of history and catalyzed through economic and legal systems leave little room to view the world in terms of our negative impacts rather than just our positive ones. Negative personal experiences get shared only in desperate times when a safety-net has failed or was never really there. "Liking" someone's failure or tragedy just doesn't fit.

The boogeyman language is well described. What do you want to do, be a "recluse"? a "monk"? a "socialist"? a "hippie"? Contribute to society and work hard. The reward is the (increasingly disappearing and precarious) pursuit of happiness. Property and money. A frontier as broad as what you can imagine and capture. Fail, and that's on you for lacking vision and execution.

So what language can we use here? How to we appeal to virtues that aren't there? How can we describe being nice through exploration and discovery?

STEM? Philosophy? History?

Women's Studies, Black Studies, Gay Studies. Media studies. Stories.

In the large, we have metrics for these things. We have things we could optimize for. We have stories we could optimize for. I can't say to what extent GDP should be a factor at all, but it can't be the only one at the exclusion of all others.

But stories. We need a lot more stories, and we gotta pass the mic to people with the really good ones. Sorry To Bother You is a damn good one.

Sorry to Bother You

This movie explores these topics so thoroughly that I can't begin to express my appreciation. Every frontier of money or status presented in the movie is one where someone will get hurt. The character the movie's news media calls a "genius entrepreneur" is so grotesque and inhuman that it's hard to even hate him as an individual. He's so amoral and greedy that he's indistinguishable from the cruelty of society itself.

How can you hate him without rejecting the whole society? Despite deep misgivings around how their society works, the non-batshit-evil characters in the movie make bleak choices in a bleak world. They define fun for themselves and they get by. The biggest conflicts aren't born out of any conviction or decision that can't be traced back to just trying to survive. They forgive each other and are kind. Along the way, a (to put it non-spoilery) ghost demonstrates that what is right, exciting, and shameful within the scope of the protagonist's bleak choices.

The title itself does double duty as a wink to the audience, letting us know that we're being sold an inconvenient truth, with a information dense narrative you might expect from a telemarketer. The packaging of that message, purple, pink, with an atari font, let you know that it's still going to be weird as hell.

I didn't have this story in my head before. It's taking up space there, and I hope it sticks around for a long time. It's a good memory and an inspiration.

On the other hand, I hope that I won't have to wait long for more stories that hit me in the brain and heart like this movie did. I hope that we're approaching a golden age of films that serve not only as entertainment, but as strong critiques against racism, sexism, inequality, and a frontier that was always a lie.