The Lunatic Fringe

“A Lunatic:  one whom the moon inhabits.” - Ambrose Pierce

There has always been a sense in which the madman is the visionary, who sees the moon beyond the clouds.  The mad see things we do not – for that we brand them either insane or genius – and this is what makes them dangerous, for

“The nose of the mob is its imagination.  By this, at any time, it can be led.” – Edgar Allen Poe

And led it has been, to the maw of Auschwitz and the killing fields near Phnom Penh.  When the lunatic and the mob are combined, anything might happen.

Surely by now, we have learned to distrust grand narratives.

Still, poq ponders the relation between the Cloud, the mob and the mad.  The Cloud has opened the ears of the many to the voices of the few.  Words are no longer vetted;  they find your heart directly, like a drug on drip-feed.  In this way a new type of beast has emerged:  a hyper-ventilating, panic-driven, super-sensational echo chamber, where opinions are minted in minutes and forgotten faster.

In the Cloud, the smallest of pins hits the floor like thunder.  A moment later and a million voices will make a mob, noisy voices – maybe not angels – dancing on the head of the pin.  A moment after that, and the whole circus will move on, learning – and earning - little.

In Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, a genius child realizes the potential for power hidden in the anonymous voice, and uses the Cloud to shape the global discourse to his advantage, writing stories and crafting comments as a virtuoso conductor would direct an orchestra.  He carefully creates an atmosphere of fear in which only he can provide the solutions to the world’s ills.  Eventually, the child ascends the ladder of his own making and steals the ears of the world’s leaders, and from there he (somewhat fancifully) steals their thrones too and becomes world leader.  Beware the visionary who comes bearing narratives, because the guardians are all gone now.

Mobs are as mad as the Moon, and where the mad go they follow. In a Cloudy age, we should fear those who shape the shapeless Cloud: they are the most dangerous of all.

(Matt Drudge, we are watching you.)