Good morning, everyone,
Today's news from the BBC brought two interesting snippets. First: Bush 'berates' NATO allies for lack of troops in Afghanistan. My sense is that the world's countries, generally, are finding ways to undermine US domination, some openly, some covertly; some by omission, some by commission. 'Berating' them," of course, will only accelerate the phenomenon. But it again led me to the realization that the fate of human well-beings is heavily dependent on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of their governments. We are gathered here to consider the future of work, and must reckon with the reality that this future is to a great extent in the hands of people of don't themselves think much about it, or understand it. One of the attractive elements of the commune movement was the sense of isolation, that one could on a small scale do things that were relatively free from governmental stupidity or ignorance - isolatable utopias. But at least in the US the commune movement ran into the realities of a culture in which individualism and selfishness were not only accepted but promoted, and so the social attitudes of those who tried communal living impeded communal success. How then do we resolve this quandary? How do we engage with the vital issue of work in the face of its domination by extraneous political realities and dysfunctional leaders? Second: Have you read Peter Mathiessen's (sp?) superb SNOW LEOPARD? An allegorical account of his search for the elusive creature, it evoked both the beauty of the Himalayas with the journey-like nature of our coming to grips with our own uncertainties, frailties, hopes, courage, and mistakes in life. Now I read that a GPS tracker has been planted on a snow leopard. And it leaves me with a sense of sadness: have we gone too far in subordinating our mystical, spiritual, explorative selves to the demands of knowledge and certainty? Why did I have, though less intensely, a reaction to this news similar to how I felt as I saw the numbers, sitting in a ballroom in Ohio in 2004, turn against John Kerry? Lawry, in search
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
