Tootfinder

I tried to write something up to talk about an idea, but it didn't quite work. I have a lot more I need to put into it. But I want to get an idea out, and, after talking with a person who pointed out some of the flaws in what I wrote, I think I can maybe write down the kernel of the idea here.
An acquaintance of mine did a deep dive on Operational Art and wrote his thesis (which prompted an earlier set of posts and an article I wrote for my professional-ish blog) on the intersection of the OODA loop and critical philosophy. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kilcullen's Three Pillars model (after watching Andrewism's wonderful video) and Beer's VSM. The TL;DR of it is that there's a much better insurgency model. Of course, the insurgency model also works for a bunch of other things, because cybernetics lets you do all kinds of cool abstraction like that.
So as I was reading the essay of a comrade the other day, that model popped back into my head and I'm going to try to share what I can of it.
When colonizers came to the Salish region, they saw what they believed to be an untouched wilderness. They failed to see the ways in which Salish people tended the land. Indigenous fire practices were common on the northwest coast, and the suppression of those practices remains a problem. There is an interrelationship between an environment and the systems within it. Systems, like people, animals, and cultures, adapt to the environment. In doing so, those systems will also change the environment.
Social technology was invisible, so colonizers defaulted to either some kind of Rousseauvian or Malthusian model of these people. They were not, for the colonizers, people who had developed advanced social technologies to live in harmony with their world. They were, rather, people in "a state of nature."
The European influenced left continues to draw this Rousseauvian model, which continues through a lot of Anarchist revolutionary thought. European anarchists were heavily influenced by observations and theories around the behavior of indigenous people. The remnants of this thought still exist in the idea that the system must only be destroyed for us to be free.
This is the same obliviousness to social technology, that social technology actually exists, often informs both early colonizers and modern radicals.
It is through this obliviousness that we fail to recognize how capitalism is a social technology that is managed into existence and maintained, and how changes in the environment can threaten institutions that have become over-adapted to a specific version of that environment.
We can extend Kilcullen's metaphor of a "conflict ecosystem" through cybernetics into a much more rich model, populated by viable systems. The ecosystem itself has a fitness function, which drives adaptation within the environment. But all actors in the environment also affect it. Some try to manage the environment. Revolutions are often over who manages a social ecosystem, over who controls the social technology and what it does.
Once we see this dynamic at play, calls of "riot" and "revolution" make a whole lot less sense. Rather, the question becomes, "how do we change the ecosystem in such a way that it cannot be 'managed' at all?"
Graeber/Wengrow talked about Turtle Island indigenous social technologies in Dawn of Everything, such as the system of moieties and clans described in the book. So I have a good reading list as I think through this model, but I hope the "ecosystem" model is helpful (if not completely fleshed out).
I'd be interested in any critiques or thoughts to help develop this idea more.

Steven High, a historian of labour and de-industrialization, knows a thing or two. Here he offers his take on Lewis, contextualizing the positions he's taken in a very (very, very) brief potted history of the NDP and a reflection on the party as it stands at the moment. Worth a couple of minutes.
https://

Avi Lewis will make the NDP think big again
The road ahead will not be an easy one for Lewis and the New Democrats. And while his vision may ultimately resonate more with the party’s urban progressives than its working-class base, it is exciting to think that the NDP might once again be the source of bold new ideas. Canadian politics will be better for it.

Technically the Senate Dems *DID* concede the original demands to claw back ICE/CBP/HSI funds and to ban some of the Fash tactics used in MPLS and Chicago as conditions for any DHS funding.
But those were always sacrificial asks. They existed to be conceded. @…

David Nir (@davidnir.com)
Absolutely extraordinary. The Democrats conceded *nothing* and got everything they demanded. They said no ICE/CBP funding, and that's precisely what happened. In other words, they did not cave. At all. But the GOP did—completely. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Glad to see people getting into the holiday spirit #aprilfools

So, look. I get why Tim Horton's has used this name for their promotion ("Timbits" are their name for doughnut holes, for those not familiar) and I really want the mission to be a success, but I don't want to be the guy who thought it up if things go pear-shaped. Space is hard.

Premier Mai/May Day, 1974, Montréal
Source: Fonds La Presse, Bibliothèques et Archives nationales du Québec
#PremierMai