Nowtopian

There’s an editorial in the SF Bay Guardian today, but they don’t seem to have included it on their website, so I’m going to post it below… The Committee for Full Enjoyment chimed in on the recent frenzy surrounding Critical Mass…

But before we get to that, I want to congratulate Jeff Schmidt on his remarkable victory over his former employer, the American Institute of Physics, publishers of Physics Today. When his book appeared he explained how he’d written a lot of it on the job at Physics Today, and that was their excuse for firing him. But the content of the book is so damning to the entire profession, it’s not surprising they tried to suppress it, or at least punish him for writing it. The whole story is posted online here, and the victory letter announcing the capitulation of the magazine is here.

Jeff was a long-time subscriber to Processed World magazine, and some years ago now he published a very important book: Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives. In it, Schmidt really unpacks the deep compromises at the heart of the professional’s middle class existence. Hilariously (and alarmingly) he advises studying the US Army’s Prisoner of War survival manual as a way to maintain your intellectual independence while going through graduate school… I’m quoting him in several spots in my forthcoming book. Here’s one of my favorites:

“Professionalism” in particular the notion that experts should confine themselves to their “legitimate professional concerns” and not “politicize” their work” helps keep individual professionals in line by encouraging them to view their narrow technical orientation as a virtue, a sign of objectivity rather than of subordination.”

Jeff Schmidt’s dissection of professionalism illuminates the powerlessness that characterizes crucial aspects of the careerist experience: “Professionals control the technical means but not the social goals of their creative work. The professional’s lack of control over the political content of his or her creative work is the hidden root of much career dissatisfaction”¦ Professionals are licensed to think on the job, but they are obedient thinkers.” Schmidt further argues that by leaving unchallenged the employer’s control of the political content of his work, the professional “surrenders his social existence, his control over the mark he makes on the world.” This is a core aspect of the deep dissatisfaction experienced by many so-called successful professionals. Reclaiming their dignity and full humanity often leads such professionals to disengage, to walk away from apparently successful lives.

So check it out… Physics Today had to pay him a half million dollars and offer him his job back. This all came about in response to a huge campaign amongst physicists across the world, really encouraging my endless hopes for a revolt among the technicians!

And I still think Critical Mass is a bit of that too… and after all those comments on the last post, I’m sure there’ll be some more after this… so here’s the editorial, as promised:

Tempestuous Bicyclists Stir San Francisco’s TeapotOur local road/culture war has erupted again, this time thanks to some unsavory gossip columnists at the monopoly paper in town. Wildly distorted accounts of two confrontations at the March Critical Mass have been presented as evidence that bicyclists are anti-social, out-of-control, and generally immature scofflaws. Such accounts serve to frame a narrative that is in sharp contrast with the actual experience of tens of thousands of bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists on the last Friday of every month, not just in San Francisco but in hundreds of cities worldwide where Critical Mass rides take place regularly.

Suddenly “normal” life is suspended as thousands of bicyclists, talking, singing, playing instruments and boomboxes, smiling and laughing, take the streets. Bells tinkle, people wave, traffic stops, encouragement is shouted, and uncounted conversations of unknowable depth and breadth happen by serendipity and choice. These are much more characteristic of the Critical Mass experience than the relatively rare confrontation between an overheated, impatient motorist and a self-righteous, antagonistic cyclist.

Cheap “journalism” of the type practiced by Matier & Ross just obscures the truth that our transportation system is designed to promote mayhem, anger and alienation. Every day, motorists crash and die, confront one another angrily, or are left cowering in isolation. The fact that such events can also happen during Critical Mass should come as no surprise.

The sheer exuberant pleasure of a mass, rolling occupation of city streets month after month is hard to understand unless you’ve been a part of it. For the dozens of online flamers that have ferociously denounced Critical Mass, it’s inconceivable that an event that doesn’t behave according to the staid norms of a placid democratic society can have any justification. “Critical Mass doesn’t make demands! No one is in charge! The participants don’t all behave like obedient school children! They are destroying the Cause of Bicycling for the law-abiding cyclists!” And so on.

In February and again in March, Critical Mass bicyclists rode for 2-3 hours through San Francisco streets, enjoying the city in ways unplanned for by traffic engineers, police, or city bureaucrats. It’s a remarkable re-invention of urban life in an organized coincidence that is mostly spontaneous in spite of its predictability ” surprising every time, and inspiring most of the time.

Critical Massers are engaged in that most rare of activities: an act of collective imagination and invention that is considerably greater than a sum of its parts. And part of its magic is the convivial, friendly, enthusiastic reception the vast majority of motorists, pedestrians and people in their homes give the riders as they roll by.

For those motorists or bicyclists who think Critical Mass is about a fight between cars and bikes, THINK AGAIN! We are all in this together, and a monthly demonstration of how much better life could be is an invitation to everyone to try something different. There is a well-defined etiquette among Critical Mass riders that thanks stuck drivers for their patience, that promotes an atmosphere of friendly camaraderie on all sides, and invites the curious to join us next month at the foot of Market (April 27, 6 p.m.), on a bicycle, for an experience that just might change your life!

—Committee for Full Enjoyment, April 11, 2007