-------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Blum Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:39:02 EDT Subject: Re: A promising new movement! To: •••@••.••• Richard, my friend, I never cease to be surprised at how you can be so brilliant in your historical and political knowledge and analysis and at the same time be such a mushy minded new-ageist. This stuff is beyond satire, it's just plain simple-minded feel-good cliches and platitudes, apolitical, anti-ideological, no mention or even hint of the corporate context which envelops and smothers everything worthwhile. "We all share the same 'boat' called the United States of America. It is more essential now than ever [that we] begin to learn how to row with, rather than against, each other. . . . ---<snip>--- And on and on ... embarrassing. Sorry. Bill --------- Dear Bill, Many thanks.. I imagine many other readers have similar sentiments, which you express with particular clarity. Let's start with the issue of "corporate context". OK, I agree that mega corporations are THE PROBLEM. Their development destroys the world, their influence corrupts democracy, their money controls our lives. They are the evolved robots of capitalism, money machines, amoral evil all-consuming monsters. So, what do we do about them? Do we seek to re-impose stronger regulations? My understanding, based on the relationship between capitalism and 'growth', is that we cannot turn the clock back on globalization and neoliberalism and continue with the capitalist system. If you disagree with this, I'd be happy to discuss it further. But as I see it for now, with my analytical hat on, if we believe that corporations are the problem then we must accept that getting rid of capitalism is a mandatory part of the answer. This implies that any political initiative that criticizes corporate power, but does not take an anti-capitalist stance, is a total waste of time. Worse than that, it wastes the energy of people who might be doing something useful. I'm not saying this would be your initiative, I'm simply tracing one of the branches of thinking that comes out of the question, "What do we do about corporate power?". What this means to me is that an issue-based political movement has very little chance of dealing with the issues that really matter. How many people do you think would support a movement whose agenda called for ending capitalism? In Europe you might get a sizable number, but in the U.S. I don't think you'd get enough to fill a stadium. Well, maybe a stadium or two, but you know what I mean. More than that, an anti-capitalist movement would be an easy target of condescending ridicule across the whole spectrum of the media, particularly the liberal media. And what's the point of an issue-based movement that avoids the real issues? By that path, we have already accepted the dominance of The Beast before we even enter the games. We go into the arena armed only with petitions to The Beast to moderate its own behavior; our swords have been checked at the gates. And capitalism is only one issue. There's also sustainability, which means, among other things, an end to automobiles as a primary transport system. No issue-based movement that ran under a banner of "Ban the Cars" would ever leave the fringe. And then there's militarism, and nuclear power, and bioengineering, ad infinitum. Each of these issues soon becomes unpopular, once you point out what would really need to be done to deal with it. If we try to build a movement by identifying what is bad about the current system, we aren't going to get anywhere. We've been there, we've done that, and things have only gotten drastically worse. And we can't build a movement around an agenda for a new utopia either. Even if we had a sound utopian articulation to offer, the interested constituency would be only about the same as the current Greens, augmented perhaps by science fiction enthusiasts. On the other hand, such a movement would undoubtedly create a dramatic majority reaction, fueled not only by mainstream media, but also by understandable popular distrust of grandiose schemes coming down from ivory towers. Consider again this quote I used in the previous posting: So the real problem, according to Madison, was a majority faction, and there the solution was...to have an "extensive republic", that is, a large nation ranging over thirteen states, for then "it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other... Madison has hit the nail on the head. What we need is to find a way for "all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other". The "it" being in our case "the desire to create a better world". Is it mushy for a movement's agenda to be "Let's create a better world"? Well yes, it is definitely mushy if you are evaluating it within the context of liberal democracy. But the agenda becomes less mushy if you think of the movement as a way to escape from the trap of adversarial politics. If you consider the idea of escaping to be already mushy, then I must plead guilty. But if escaping makes sense at all, then I think there's some solid thinking behind the kind of initiative described in the posting, "A promising new movement!" (http://www.cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?id='823'&lists='cj'). It is important to understand that the conference described in that posting was only a beginning. It demonstrated that a deep kind of dialog was possible among a radically diverse group of people with strong ideas. The participants were not mushy-minded "new ageists" and yet they came away believing they could work together and that it was important to do so. That was quite a bit to accomplish in one meeting. Remember that the participants included many who devote their full time to their various causes. If they get together again, they would be motivated to get beyond the "mutual admiration society" stage. They'd want to talk about how their diversity could enable them to address issues in ways they've never been addressed before. The success of this meeting was not unexpected. It took some very special people to pull of the logistics, and the facilitators were top rank, but the basic dynamics of these kinds of sessions follow a known pattern. In a facilitated space where people are able to really listen to one another, amazing things happen. People get beyond defending their "positions" and learn to share their ideas openly in what becomes an exercise in group creativity. It is not unusual for breakthrough solutions to be found for very difficult problems. In such a situation, the greater the diversity of the group, then the more perspectives are brought to bear, and the better the solutions. It's a "two heads are better than one" kind of thing. Before We the People can talk about corporate power or anything else, We the People needs to exist. We need to exist in the very form that Madison feared: discovering our own strength and acting in unison. Again, it may be mushy to think about We the People being a real possibility, and again I'd plead guilty. But if the pursuit is sensible at all, then I believe this kind of listening-based dialog is the basic tool that can get us there. It's a tool that for millennia was used by all of humanity. The organizers of this conference are part of a leading edge of democracy-through-dialog activists, who are seeking ways to bring dialog into the culture. In my own limited way, I count myself among them. All of us, I believe, are motivated in this direction not by the new-age, feel-good-in-groups factor, but rather by an understanding that the political processes of our society are failing us. Most of us have engaged in other forms of political activism, and have found that every road has been systematically blocked. The motivation of the movement is not apolitical, but ironically the movement itself must be in some sense apolitical. Its activists are not without ideologies, but their ideologies are not part of their activism. What these people have learned, through experience with dialog, is that The People can be trusted. There is no need to try to pre-program them with an agenda, and to attempt that would be anti-democratic. I can see how these words might seem mushy. It might be the case that these kinds of ideas can only seem real to someone after they've experienced this kind of dialog for themselves. People report that they experience a change of consciousness. I experienced that change of consciousness inadvertently, when I invited a group of activists and writers to a session in Berkeley a few years back. I had some half-baked process in mind, and thought that I was going to lead this group through some ideas in a certain way. It wasn't too long before the whole thing went horribly wrong. I found myself at loggerheads with one of the participants, and the whole tone of the meeting evaporated, such as it was. It was that kind of embarrassing silence when someone says totally the wrong thing at the wrong time, which is more or less what did happen. And then a woman stepped in and created a whole different space, a gentle space, and suddenly the meeting was moved to a higher level. She defused the immediate conflict but that was the least of it. As I looked around the room, everyone was somehow more present, and I felt more present as well. The political topics I had in mind no longer seemed relevant. A spirit of mutual support was somehow permeating the room. I had used the slogan, "We are all in this together" in my writing, but I had never felt what that really meant in a face-to-face gathering. That particular set of circumstance, for me personally, led to a kind of satori about what is possible in a group of people. The events themselves were not particularly profound, but they opened me to looking at that kind of phenomenon with a more open mind, and with a "knowledge" that there was real gold at the end of the rainbow, because I had tasted it. Hope some of this makes sense, rkm -------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:31:07 +0600 Subject: Re: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION: The Harmonization Imperative From: thomas brinson <> To: <•••@••.•••> Thank you, Richard. I have been an avid "lurker" on your list for several years, learning much from your work, which crystallizes most effectively much of what I have intuited and believed about "American" politics and the domination of corporate elites since I became an avid peace activist on April 4, 1968, when I flew back from a year's duty in the illegal, illegitimate, ignoble war of our generation, Vietnam, landing in National (It shall never be Reagan for me) Airport in Washington, D.C., much of which was burning, about three hours after Martin Luther King had been assassinated. One potential flaw in your mostly flawless work let me point out -- I wonder how complete a fascist takeover of the media could be in the event of a Code Red condition, which I fully expect to happen if the Bushites believe there is any way that Kerry is likely to repeat what Clinton did to Daddy Bush in '92, with the Internet and digital means of communication as alternative, independent work arounds to mainstream media. Much reliable information, even today, is occurring through blogs and email lists such as your own. Though I suppose it is theoretically possible, I don't belief the federal government would be able to shut down completely the Internet and other means of digital communication. Or, am I being naively optimistic? What do you think? In peace, love, light & forgiveness for all, thomas --------- Dear Thomas, Suppose we go into Code Red conditions, and we get the equivalent of marshal law, whether or not it's called that. One can imagine many kinds of scenarios. Perhaps our Internet dialog would continue unmolested, and we'd compare notes about horrendous events, as we did after each of the anti-globalization protests. Perhaps they won't give a damn about our exchanges of gripes and ideas, just as our leaders don't seem to give a damn now. But if the Internet was actually causing problems for them, then you better believe that they can shut it down, as far as we're concerned. There are two obvious approaches, one technological and one legalistic, and both rapidly effective. Technologically, you simply close down all the domains you don't like, prune all the yahoo-type email lists you don't like, and delete email addresses of folks you don't like. They have agencies devoted to tracking what's happening on the net, and they probably already have a database of targets prepared, in case of emergency. More likely perhaps, would be the legalistic approach. As part of the Code Red, you announce that the Internet is being used to spread "ideological terrorism". "People are trying to destroy everything we believe in by attacking capitalism and our political system. They're worse than Bin Laden because our youth are listening to them! And besides that, there are bomb recipes on line!" This is followed by a few dramatic arrests of well-known on line voices, and we never hear from them again. Our ISPs send us all-cap messages announcing that the terms of our license do not allow us to publish anti-establishment terrorist "incitements". The technological approach would presumably be used in parallel, but demonization and criminalization prior to annihilation is the trademark of our neo-fascist, sorry neocon, regime. Another reason to move toward face-to-face dialog. all the best, rkm -------------------------------------------------------- From: Tony To: •••@••.••• Subject: Re: The Harmonization Imperative Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 16:37:26 +0100 Richard, Really enjoyed this chapter, it's great. It's the best chapter so far, I think. You say 'We are all human beings who want a better and saner world'. How true. I can see that I want a better and saner world. 'We' can see that WE want a better and saner world. The problem, as you point out, is the 'them and us' attitude. 'We' can't see that 'THEY' want a better and saner world. In fact, 'we' think THEY are insane and THEY want to destroy us! Again, it comes back to the word trust. Trust in humanity. Trust in people, trust in strangers. Keep up the fabulous work. Tony, Cork. ------- Tony - thanks and nice to hear from you - rkm -------------------------------------------------------- From: "Brian Hill" <> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION: The Harmonization Imperative Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 07:12:33 -0700 Organization: Institute for Cultural Ecology Richard; This is good. If you don't plan to use footnotes and you would like educated people to participate in these efforts, I would suggest that you at least list the book references you have used for each chapter. And, I hope you include means for joining diverse interests which have formerly polarized grass roots groups in your dialog chapter, e.g., industries which are good for the environment and the local community like restoration forestry, ecological mining and organic agriculture, because these are real things diverse people are doing to unite diverse life styles into new common efforts. --------------- Dear Brian, I suppose I'll footnote quotations and append an annotated reading list, and an annotated list of links. Suggestions welcome. cheers, rkm -- ============================================================ If you find this material useful, you might want to check out our website (http://cyberjournal.org) or try out our low-traffic, moderated email list by sending a message to: •••@••.••• You are encouraged to forward any material from the lists or the website, provided it is for non-commercial use and you include the source and this disclaimer. Richard Moore (rkm) Wexford, Ireland _____________________________ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs. _____________________________ "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog _____________________________ Informative links: http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================
Share: