Re: MD Is Society Making Progress?

hey wim,

thanks for the kind words

i do have faith in human progress but not blind faith. what i mean is that i sense the good in everyone (and am learning not to dwell on the not-so-good) but i know that this isn't enough - yet. it would be enough if we lived our lives directly, but we don't. we (society) live our lives spectacularly - separated from each other and life itself. this alienation is a metaphysical ailment - it is due to the replacement of the real (quality) with the abstract (SOM). the map has obliterated the territory.

that is why the MoQ is so promising and important - it can pull back the screens that blind us into accepting this false and dehumanizing culture of faux individualism.

but a culture doesn't die quickly, or quietly. neither does a culture change from above - the brujo example illustrates this. a culture 'feeds' on people. individuals are the life blood of any culture - take the people away and the culture falters and eventually fails. this is old  ground from the 60s and earlier (Thoreau for instance), but it is the only way i can see social change happening. from a practical viewpoint

our energies - at university for instance - should be focussed on the creation and development of self-sufficient, autonomous communities that will be coordinated from the ground up rather than top down. a quote from mae-wan ho is apt here. she asserts that organisms are not hierarchical in organization, rather each part is as much in control and as responsive as every other part: "maximal local freedom *and* maximal global cohesion". paradoxical in SOM; elementary in MoQ. this model of the organism can be extrapolated to provide a template for the organization of the next society: maximal local freedom = grassroots democracy; maximal global cohesion = a *real* UN

geez i go on.......

cheers

gav