Everyone and no one wants to save the world

[Kragen Javier Sitaker]

I was reading the Reuters piece today on Julian Assange by Mark
Hosenball, "Special Report: Julian Assange versus the world", which I
would link to if Reuters provided stable URLs.  He gives mixed reviews
to Assange's published writings:

> His blog entries, which can still be found on the web, are a mixture
> of pseudo-scientific and philosophical gibberish, cultural and
> literary observations ("Kurt Vonnegut is dead."), extremely technical
> computer coding sequences and often jumbled political statements.

Pseudo-scientific and philosophical gibberish?  That hardly seems in
character with the hard-nosed, unflappable public figure we see today.
I wondered which writings Hosenball meant.  He goes into more detail
a bit later:

> In an essay entitled "Jackboots," Assange describes how he felt that
> his own personal travails were comparable to the experiences of Gulag
> prisoners in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel "The First Circle" -- the
> story of a brilliant mathematician imprisoned by Stalin and forced to
> choose between aiding the state or being transferred to a Siberian
> camp.

> "To feel that home is the comraderie (sic) of persecuted, and infact
> (sic) prosecuted, polymaths in a Stalinist slave labor camp! How close
> the parallels to my own adventures!" Another essay, this one almost
> incomprehensible, is headlined: "Everyone and no one wants to save the
> world."

Almost incomprehensible, eh?  I googled up a copy at
<http://www.sidkay.com/post/1985856429/everyone-and-no-one-wants-to-save-the-world>.
It turns out to be perfectly clear and lucid, although it contains a
number of debatable and unsupported assertions.

My conclusion: Hosenball merely cannot tell the difference between
material beyond his own rather mediocre reading level, and gibberish.

Here's the essay, with spelling and punctuation improved because the
original hurts my eyes:

> Everyone and no one wants to save the world
> -------------------------------------------

> When the world extended to onebs surrounding hills and mountains and
> over them was only legend, saving the world was approachable, and a
> natural activity to all of independent character.

> You do not need to justify the possession of these noble instincts.
> Such attributes are normally distributed. You have a constellation of
> these attributes and that makes you who you are. Recognise that the
> substantial ones are invariant.

> You must satisfy your invariant instincts or you will be at odds with
> your own character. It is only when we are not at odds with our basic
> makeup that we can find life meaningful.

> To exercise your instinct for saving the world requires saving what
> you perceive to be the world.

> Being modern, educated and wordly, the world you perceive is immense
> and this is disempowering compared to the valley world of your
> ancestors, where your feelings were forged, and where saving 10 people
> saved 10% of the bworldbbs population.

> Here lies the difficulty in actualising your character. Your
> perception is of a world so vast that that you can not envisage your
> actions making a meaningful difference.

> People try to fool themselves and others into believing that one can
> bthink globally and act locallyb; however, to anyone with a sense of
> proportion b not most people, btw b thinking globally makes acting
> locally seem to be a marginal activity. Itbs not setting the world to
> rights.

> To meaningfully interact with the world, you have to either constrain
> your perception of what it is back to valley proportions by eschewing
> all global information (most of us here have engaged on just the
> opposite course, which is what has provoked this discussion), losing
> your sense of perspective b or start seriously engaging with the modern
> perception of the world.

> That latter path can be hard to find, because it is only satisfied by
> creating ideas or inventions that have a global impact. Perhaps I have
> found one, and therebs others out there, but for most people of your
> character, a combination of eschewing knowledge of those parts of the
> world they canbt change, and robust engagement with the parts they
> can, is probably optimal.

> Do not be concerned about when one is to do good, who defines good,
> etc.  Act in the way you do because to do otherwise would to be at
> odds would to be at odds with yourself. Being on a path true to your
> character carries with it a state of flow, where the thoughts about
> your next step come upon waking, unbidden, but welcome.

> I support similarly minded people, not because they are moral agents,
> but because they have common cause with my own feelings and dreams.

> <http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/#Everyoneandnoonewantstosavetheworld>
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