White Barbarian

This is a translation of an essay written in December 2008 by French Wikipedian Poulpy

I'm ten. Every week for French class we are required to select a book from the class library. I already can't stand the classics, so I reach for a gamebook. The searing glare from my teacher confirms that just because I'm allowed to take the book does not mean I can. I take it anyway.

I'm twelve. The RPG moral panic has reached France. We are expected to spend our weekends constructively, with wholesome activities appropriate for our pre-teen stage of development, not being autistically locked in fantasies. I'm starting a Stormbringer campaign with friends.

I'm fourteen. A colleague of my father spots me as I'm idly tapping keys on a demo synthesizer at the local department store. He takes his time to explain how this is worthless; such instruments warrant nothing but contempt and true music requires no amplifiers. I suddenly develop an interest for electronic music.

I'm fifteen. My French teacher would like to see us write reading reports. All subjects and genres are allowed but science fiction is specifically and categorically not. Good timing: I just happen to have a copy of Foundation on the corner of my desk.

I'm sixteen. My physics teacher makes a big fuss out of not teaching us how to use a calculator. He sums it up in a big rant mixing the decadent loss of mental arithmetic, innumerate youth and how physics ought to stand on its own without numbers anyway. He is completely helpless at forcing the sliderule on us and watches, disillusioned, as we punch out 100% accurate results. I can't bother to care and program an artillery game on my Casio.

I'm seventeen. I'm chatting with a few classmates when the teacher suddenly sneers with that condescending grin signaling the knowledge of Good from Evil: "So, talking about video games again?"

I'm twenty, and I committed the mistake of studying something not evidently connected to my actual interests. In this graduate school, the most popular club is the music club, overrun with Nirvana wannabes busy attempting to play Smells Like Teen Spirit on the axe. Annoyed by this seriousness, I spend my time listening to stuff that's anything but serious. I quickly discover that even amongst subcultures people keenly understand the difference between Good and Evil.

I'm twenty-two. The Japanese are little ants working tirelessly to destroy the Occident with sex and violence. I monopolise my friend's Laserdisc readers and actively accelerate my country's descent into ruin by exposing myself to Japanese animation.

I'm twenty-three. An aforementioned friend notices an Autechre CD of mine and can hardly hide his lack of respect for these mind-numbing rhythms that hardly warrant the term "music". I omit mentioning my love of youthful Japanese female singers in an attempt not to compromise our friendship.

I'm twenty-eight. I discover on Wikipedia that tons of people share my unusual knowledge. Some try to convince me that the method is flawed and you can't treat all topics as equal. By nature incapable of listening to such arguments, I ignore the bores. So does everybody else, anyway. The bores get annoyed at this fact and proceed to announce they are Right and everybody else is Wrong. I'm not sure I get that logic.

I am a barbarian. A well-educated barbarian, mind you, who has read and listened to all the right things, but a barbarian nonetheless. Left to my own devices I will always develop completely nonstandard interests, and experience taught me that, no matter what, people expect me to acknowledge what I like to be intrinsically inferior. Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that the world is full of people like me. I can't tell you about the rest of the universe, but to those here that expect me to give way again, I say this: go take a stroll in another encyclopedia.

Wikipedia's Rome wasn't invaded by barbarians. It was built by them. Oftentimes I go for a walk on the city's Forum and hear an orator trying to rally the crowd to his cause and explaining that the barbarians are at the city's doors. I'm still laughing.

In this issue

28 September 2009 (all comments)

Opinion essay

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Circeus, thanks for translating this. It's an engrossing little essay.--ragesoss (talk) 23:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This essay rings with the Schumann resonance of truth. Merci, Poulpy. Paradoctor (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Wikipedia's Rome wasn't invaded by barbarians. It was built by them." great tag line.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 10:31, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I have to say it was really that line that made me want to translate it. Circeus (talk) 17:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I always found it interesting that Ian Angell, the world's first techno-barbarian, says he is interested in wikis. [1]
Nice essay, while I didn't understand the last bit... it was still a good read. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 09:50, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of quotes from the intro to The New Barbarian Manifesto

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

“

We all have two choices: follow 'new barbarians' and advance to an uncertain future, or obey 'old barbarians' and their fundamentalist gospel of a false past. The new barbarians represent the winners in the new economic reality, leaving the losers to circle their wagons around old values and rituals, easy prey for the old barbarians. The outcome of their coming battle will be a world of three zones. The first world is the libertarian realm of new barbarians that supports the rights of the individual, not of the tribe. The second world is an uneasy compromise between old barbarian ideologies and the modern world; its mode of governance focuses exclusively on the rights of the collective. Might is right in the third world, a place of terror and repression. Putting it simply, the three worlds are an open society, a closed society and no society.

[...]

Information technology and other new technologies have provoked profound structural changes in the world economy, and these are concocting unimaginable levels of complexity. This complexity is manifesting itself as market instability, political turmoil and civil unrest, increasing rage and violent actions amongst previously passive people, as well as 'immoral' behaviour on a gigantic scale. In fact we are witnissing the possibility of a wide-ranging and complete systemic breakdown in many societies. As the problems run totally out of control, we will need to identify the trends if we are to have any chance of stopping the rot, let alone of prospering in these totally unstable conditions.

[...]

This book will not look further into [the collapse of the old order]. But will this degeneracy lead to decline and fall, a collapse into anarchy? No! The future will work, for some.

[...]

Information systems running along the superhighway will change everything, which is why politicians see it as so important to control the superhighway — a vain hope. Is it any wonder the US vice-president Al Gore led the developed world's politicians in a scramble to ensure that their own particular countries were ahead of the game? Ministers from G7, the group of the world's seven leading industrial nations, met in Brussels in February 1995, at the invitation of the European Union, to raise awareness of the superhighway. Their aim was to create an international (that is G7) strategy that would ensure that political short-terrorism, meddling and indecision would not block development. And who would achieve this? Why the very same indecisive short-termist politicians meddling in its development.

[...]

Pious words abounded, concerning the availability of public information on the Net and the democratic nature of the information society. The rest of the G7 countries are likely to imitate the US attempt at bridging the 'information gap' between the political centre, in the US's case Washington, and the rest of the country. By supplying the population with electronic access to the data, politicians believe that 'the people' will be lining up to read what the politicians want them to see.

[...]

However, all such attempts to control technological development are misguided, as are the politicians' attitudes. What a splendid shame that the consequences of their best intentions will be the end of their own political power: but much more of that later.

”

Ottre 12:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've been translated! Thank you! :) — Poulpy (talk) 16:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
wow Poulpy, you're a celebrity now. DarkoNeko x 20:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And for good reason too. Well written. :) bibliomaniac 1 5 01:22, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well written, Poulpy, and thank you for translating, Circeus! Very good opener, for both the edition, and the segment itself. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, a very nice opinion piece. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I like this. It's summed up basically everything I've been trying to say to someone for weeks now. --Thejadefalcon ^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 10:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nice little diatribe. To wax philosophical, realize that without the abhorent social structures, you cannot be outside them. — BQZip01 — ^talk 14:45, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
*goes into full-on recruit mode for WP:ANIME* =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 16:16, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Did you had a livejournal account awhile ago? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.142.253.78 (talk) 04:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get it. Matthewedwards : Chat 00:35, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

Caesar

Paradoctor (talk) 04:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, too funny. I was raised in France and at 16 wrote an artillery game on my casio too (a PB-700 with 12K of RAM). I thankfully left France shortly after my 17th birthday. This story rings very true for the French attitude. Now for the bit about the barbarians: We are the barbarians. Those who think they are not are in denial. And I happen to be listening to Ayumi Hamasaki's Voyage as I type this. Gaijin indeed! Christopher Mahan (talk) 11:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The poignancy of this comment on fuddy-duddyism is enhanced by the irony of characterizing an interest in popular culture as "unusual" and "nonstandard" ("Let's all be different same as me."—John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider), for it underscores the sense of alienation often engendered, against all evidence, by those who promote one interest by attacking others. As a fuddy-duddy who thinks Wikipedia places undue emphasis on entertainment (and who remembers how to use a slide rule, thank you very much), I am nevertheless quite pleased by this charming essay. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:08, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What evidence? I don't understand how an attack on my interests could be seen as an integrative effort. And I never understood what slide rules were good for. Doing the math in my head was always quicker and more reliable for me. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 18:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Evidence: Strategy:Quality/Content#Data on content breadth and composition (by article count), and Strategy:Quality/Content#Data on content usage/affinity (by page view – scroll to bottom of section). ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

??? Ok, I'll probably regret this, but I'm a glutton for punishment: Just how does the fact that, by some metric or another, about a third of the English Wikipedia's articles are about pop culture support your contention that this is too high? The "average hits per day" graph would seem to indicate that this percentage is still too low. Looking at the other wiikipedias the idea of prescribing some "optimal" percentage for this topic or another becomes patently absurd. From the page you consider evidence: "Adding more content while the number of" ... "editors" ... "stagnates means" ... "the community is not longer able to guarantee the reliability of the content (vandalism free); the online-ecosystem gets out of control." It is quite ironic that you seem to think Wikipedia stands to profit from constraining (pop-) cultural content. After all, barbarians are generally understood to lack culture, rather than being overbred. ^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 18:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We digress, but I will attempt to clarify. I cited the evidence to support the proposition that those who share such interests need hardly feel alienated: they are in good company. My intent in supporting this essay was to chide those who belittle such interests. Even though I happen to feel that Wikipedia stands to profit from relatively more coverage of other topics, it is only a matter of degree. Expressing hostility towards such interests in ways that engender feelings of alienation is just plain wrong. ~ Ningauble (talk) 11:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IC, thx for the clarification. Nice to see that communication across the f-d divide is possible. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 19:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant. That sounded like what William Gibson was writing twenty years ago, except it is happening now. Technology, mind, culture. Video games, run on powerful reality machines, that have already changed young minds almost beyond the comprehension of adults. The master stroke is putting the finger on the attack by misdirection currently levelled at WP. How many times have I seen the story about everything being taken over my "elite editors". I guess if you can't shut something up then it's time to turn nasty and try and make everyone go away (I know, just ignore them). DJ Barney (talk) 21:46, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Totally absorbing! As for slide rules, I sported one in physics class, alright (before calcs.) What's it good for? Well, one day the yearbook photogs entered the classroom. Holding my slide rule in my right hand, I slowly brought the other end up to my cheek and held it there, intensely following 'teach' as he lectured. Got my pic in the yearbook! Ya gotta be ready for every op! BTW, I've visited Paris and Cannes, two of the most beautiful places in the world!

— ^.`^) Paine Ellsworth ^diss`cuss (^^`. 10:02, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Beautiful essay; to take nothing away from the translation, I look forward to reading the original. (Working on my French here). With the often delightful, but sometimes downright disturbing, sense of serendipity that's increasingly affecting me here, I landed on this page almost at random, having clicked just out of curiosity on the second half of a signature (still don't know how people do that stuff) of an editor who had kindly helped me with a question via IRC. What seemed odd about it is, I've been reading headache-inducing stuff in meta-wikipedia (or whatever it's called) relating to the dreaded term "Deletionist". I don't dare tell the supporters of this essayist's views what my take (as a long time reader, not active editor) on the specific points either there or here is, but even though there's not much in the author's perspective for me to share, I'm extremely grateful that Wikipedia permits people to share so many perspectives. Bacrito (talk) 16:16, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, took me awhile to make the connection: Does this essay imply we need more Vandalism? ;) Paradoctor (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well written, and well translated too, it seems. I have always wondered how many lives including mine would have gone were there more sane teachers and other adults in my childhood. Thanks to all concerned for putting it here, and leaving it here. Am surprised more people have not noticed this. Jusdafax 02:41, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]