Information Bubbles
It’s in the news in Europe right now, that many people are looking within their own bubbles of information that reinforce their own pre-existing beliefs, and not looking as much to the outside world. I’ve also written about this before. The monarchy in Europe often makes Christmas addresses to their people, and the king of The Netherlands used his address to focus on this. Former US president Obama also had an interview with Prince Harry of the UK where he addressed this point — irresponsible social media use. How many of you readers out there are using this blog irresponsibly?
In particular, in countries like here in the Netherlands, language plays an important role in these information bubbles. People tend to feel most comfortable in the language they grew up with, and tend to exclude other languages. Here in the Netherlands the primary language is Dutch, which in relative terms is spoken by only a few people in the world, meaning those people who’s life is centered around Dutch live in a pretty small world. This is especially true since the Dutch language itself is fragmented, with lots of dialects and accents. There are also large numbers of people here who speak other languages, like English, Turkish and Arabic, creating strong social barriers.
Honestly, I hope most people reading this blog are doing it as part of a ‘healthy diet’ of information from the Internet. I hope most of you, as I do, regularly search the Internet and read the ‘other’ side of the story. I think that’s an important part of being able to understand what I write here. Although it doesn’t happen as much as I like, I also appreciate when discussions develop here and readers bring other ideas and information from other places on the Internet. As gardeners and human beings it’s very common we disagree with one another.
It’s true, there’s lots of garbage on the Internet, but reading this garbage sometimes and being able to understand where it comes from and why it’s there, is key to being able to appreciate sites like this one.
Circles of Trust
This blog is really all about circles of trust. I’m not paid at all for what I do here. There are no commercial interests behind this blog. There are no advertisements on this blog. I spend a lot of time forming opinions about others, and making decisions about what to include or exclude from this blog. Not only this blog, but I travel and visit other gardeners and seed savers, and I talk with them and exchange opinions. I also participate on a couple of mailing lists, and exchange opinions in this way too.
I err on the side of safety, and there are at least a few people I don’t include on this blog not because I don’t trust them, but because from time to time we have profound differences of opinion. Often, in their hearts these are really good people, and probably deserve your trust too. Of course many people are not included here, simply because I don’t know them.
I also make mistakes sometimes, and include people or groups I shouldn’t. Occasionally, I go back to old posts and remove links or sometimes entire posts.
You should put a lot of value on links or information about people here, but not have complete trust in them. You should also not completely write off people or organizations not mentioned here.
Friends
There are many wonderful people in this world, and many people have done important things for me personally or this blog. The majority of readers of this blog are great people, and without you I’d just be an unimportant blip on the Internet. The numbers go up and down from one year to the next, and are subject to some interpretation because more and more information on the Internet is being anonymized. There are roughly 100,000 of you, on an annual basis, from almost every country in the world.
Next are the people engaged in the activities I write about, seed saving and natural food production. This is the reason for this blog.
Being a blogger is often seen as being a journalist, and there are many other journalists out there who have done very nice things for me. Sometimes it’s letting me make a guest post, or helping to spread the messages on this blog. Sometimes it’s much more than that, and actually supporting me as a person. In particular there are a number of Dutch and British journalists who have been really helpful over the years.
Other than this are just people in my life. My friends, neighbors, people at the market and others that give me different perspectives on life and ideas for things to write about.
These people are what this blog is about. Without all of these people, there would be no reason for me to do what I do, and this blog wouldn’t be here.
Foes and Predictable Behavior
The early years of this blog were all about making friends, and linking to others doing similar things. There are many things I miss about that time. In recent years things have often been less pleasant.
The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of food in the world, by monetary value, after the United States. The country is also only the size of Rhode Island. In particular, a lot of soy beans are imported, fed to animals and then exported as meat and dairy. There are also a lot of mega-greenhouses here. The country is also known as a tax haven, according to Oxfam the third largest in the world after Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. This means the country is very industrial, with a lot of money, and there are a lot of people hostile to this blog here.
As social media has been growing in popularity in recent years, and information bubbles have been growing in importance, I’ve become much more of a focal point. Right or wrong, there’s often a perception that if this blog or me personally am not paying attention to some issue and responding favorably, it won’t succeed. I have my doubts with this premise. I don’t think for example if I suddenly started following the line of the food industry, that many of my readers would pay attention to me. It may be that I could help come to a compromise over some issue, on the basis of open discussion, but I don’t think I’m going to become some great marketing enterprise for the food industry.
Dutch people usually take great pride in being individuals, and of course they mostly are. A number of people have taken offense with me over the years, when I could predict their behavior based on Dutch stereotypes. However, people hostile to this blog, with the food industry behind them, nearly always have one stereotype in common — racism. This has been unchanged for years.
It’s all about promoting their perfectly genetically uniform food with perfectly genetically uniform, white, ethnic Dutch people. In general, these are the same wealthy families who have been in power here for centuries. It’s all about destroying different opinions, cultures and appearances. It’s all about talking to me and others in racial slurs, as if we are all less than human. It’s all about hiding behind this racism with more and more figureheads of ethnic diversity, mostly invited from abroad, without any fundamental changes to the underlying issues. It’s the same with people as it is with the food they sell us. They are easy to spot from far away, and their behavior is always predictable.
Anyway, these are primarily the voices I work at excluding from this blog, and the food movement in general.
In the case of these people and groups, I spend a lot of time following people, relationships, political campaigns, organizations and so on. In the US there’s a lot more transparency with regards to funding than there is here. Mostly funding of causes and campaigns are secret. I spend a lot of time forming opinions about this sort of thing, and it comes out in the things I write.
Responsible Use
There you have it. This is why this blog is here, and how I do what I do. Like President Obama says, no irresponsible use of this blog.
If anyone depends solely on this blog for any information whatsoever — get a life. Everyone else, go out, read other things from different points of view, and use what’s here to help form your own opinions about things. As a community we are much richer with more information and different points of view.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to use my experiences and opinions, to help sort out fact from fiction on the rest of the Internet. Please help expand on this information, by commenting, emailing me or publishing your own information on the Internet.
