Buyer Beware...

Writing buddy seemed to be enthusiastic about some new website called "Global Ideas Bank" that has ideas for changing the world etc.

As soon as I saw the first line "The Global Ideas Bank is an online system of posting 'ideas' for the world (they seem to be social) that are rated. They're looking for some submissions from blogs some day soon.", my hackles went up.

Then it was sort of confirmed when further down, he said this:-

This idea is interesting because it's a proposed solution for 'at risk' families to try and help them get back on their feet:

'With the help of private organizations who serve the public's at risk population, a marriage of families, two or three at each privately owned home, can be a wonderful pathway of support.'

My rating... eh, sounds a bit pie in the sky, but it stuck out at me enough to open it.

I know what the reaction would be if I show this to the old hands I know in Toronto, and I tried posting some thoughts to his blog. His blogging system's comments is getting spammed something fierce, and it's not behaving... the subject's something that felt I can bring up here, so this is what I basically sent off to him in an email:-

While there may be some 'cool' ideas floating about on that website, showing this to people who have been active in the community for years (would)generally elicit a response of 'pop' activism, the idea behind that where people go, "We need to do something about the world! Yeah!" and go off trying to do things based on their assumptions, rather than going and doing research, getting in it up to their elbows even (because there are organisations that espouse belief systems and do nothing more than what is referred to as 'armchair activism'... more on that later), and- this is important- be willing to have their original presumptions either totally deconstructed or sent in a different direction altogether.

(Case in point:- While I was at the Evergreen Centre for Youth, there was a woman who was being interviewed. She wanted to help because she wanted to teach the at-risk and street youth about God and teach them about family, and a couple of other misguided notions. The centre's nurse interviewing her- a straight-talking woman who rides a motorcycle and regularly sports her leather jacket, and a old vet- told her that you do not volunteer here to teach the children about God (Evergreen's overseen by at least one church), or anything: these kids have been through things that you cannot imagine unless you've been through the same thing, and, as she said, "they teach you." The woman did not end up getting accepted; never saw the woman again.)

Just as you've heard horror stories where people, in the search for the cheapest, shiniest thing they can find, sign up with some domain registry and/or hosting service, only to find that they cannot move or switch later on because the companies hold their domain names, and end up losing them, one should exercise caution with things like this on the internet.

" 'With the help of private organizations who serve the public's at risk population, a marriage of families, two or three at each privately owned home, , can be a wonderful pathway of support.'

My rating... eh, sounds a bit pie in the sky, but it stuck out at me enough to open it. "

My response to that is, "Why rely on private organisations? Why not address systematic problems? Why not go out and push for affordable, public housing?" I'm involved in a few organisations, some action-based, some not, that are working for this here in Toronto.

A lack of exercising wisdom in this sort of thing would run you the risk of getting tangled up in organisations like the local International Socialists here in Toronto, that preach against 'top-down' hierarchies and elitism, but their own internal infrastructure and culture is precisely this. They're universally reviled. Any association with them, and you're kept at a ten-foot-pole distance, and would not be able to interact with other true, local activist organisations; and the one thing that you learn is that you cannot affect change on your own. There must be solidarity, and you *must* interact.

Otherwise you run the risk of becoming nothing more than the modern incarnation of Missionaries going out to the rest of the world to enlighten them, and save them from their pagan religions... where people go, "Oh, they documented cultures while systematically destroying them!"

So, yeah. Word to the wise.


Thoughts?