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[- The first principle of community is exclusion.
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By Eric Hughes, Section discordia home improvement
Posted on Tue Sep 30th, 2003 at 06:17:37 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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Can we get over the collective delusion that we have to be nice to everybody we meet on the internet? The wonderful essay by Ivan Illich, "Silence is a Commons", underpins the typical "tragedy" of internet interaction—the idiocy of the commons—except that it's not a tragedy. Rather, it's an inevitability of putting too many people in the same place and expecting, with the tone of a benevolent autocrat, everyone to behave themselves. Without some form of exclusion, what might have been a community degenerates into a worthless brawl.
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Not all brawls are worthless, mind you. The problem with mud-slinging is that it's not mud-wrestling, which is far more entertaining both for the participants and the audience. Community is about having something of value in common that can be lost; actions within a community have a danger and a hazard about them. The potential for loss is the constraint that gives structure to a community, and differing views on the common wealth invariably lead to conflict.
The typical mantra, that community is about inclusiveness, is getting the order of priorities backwards. Once a functional community is present, it may become desirable to enlarge it (at least enough for one of your friends). Yet this question itself presupposes a community and its inherent exclusivity. The opposite order of priorities, when there's any external value at all to the community, attracts nuisances, who will surely, given a bit of time, degrade the original value. For this situation, I recall Nietzsche's dictum "the sick need sick doctors". And let me flatter the reader: Yes, you really are better than most of the people on the internet, and yes, there are a lot of sick people out there, but no, you're not one of them.
I've signed up for Discordia on the strength of Geert Lovink's participation, whose work I've always admired (although I don't think I've ever told him this, having never met him or corresponded with him). There is a nascent value here that I'd like to possess, yet I'm wary about the all-too-common failures of too much openness. I want to participate in an aesthetic that seeks to hone the disruptive capacity of words upon the unsuspecting. I love throwing apples of discord; it is one of the pleasures of my life.
So, will Discordia develop the "shared wall" that is the original meaning of community? Or, shall I consign myself to the dilemma of inevitables? For anything that's worth eating attracts flies.
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