Ed, While I understand where you are coming from on this, I'm not sure that I agree about the shift away from ideology. Rather I think that ideology has shifted grounds and moved into the very fabric of our (Western) epistemology as per http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/the-dead-hand-of-western-academe-co mmunity-informatics-in-a-less-developed-country-context/ M
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2011 7:00 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] RE: Musing on the VancouverStanley Cup riot One positive trend that has emerged during recent decades is the diminution of ideological approaches to human betterment and their replacement by problem solving approaches. It is a growing and increasingly universal recognition of the sheer immensity of the problems that humanity will encounter if it is to continue that has fueled this trend. We cannot, for example, turn to Marxism or free-market capitalism or religious fundamentalism of whatever kind to resolve the growing problems arising out of massive population growth, growing resource scarcity, increasing urbanization or global warming. They are problems that need to be solved by looking directly at them, analyzing them, finding solutions and putting the resources needed to deal with them in place. Making fiery speeches or getting down on our knees to pray is no longer helpful. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: michael <mailto:[email protected]> gurstein To: [email protected] Cc: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME <mailto:[email protected]> DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 10:44 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] RE: Musing on the VancouverStanley Cup riot I think we need more than happy talk or doom and gloom... But while there are positive things to add to the mix--the Internet, bio-engineering, accelerating scientific understandings and technical capabilities in a very wide range of fields there is also a lot (and perhaps more) to be gloomy about--accelerating energy use, inceasing social irrationality, accelerating failures in social and political adaptation. I think in the end we will be done in but ultimately because we aren't proving to be particularly good at developing the social and political institutions we need for long term human survival. We have the tools but we as a species don't seem to have the means to develop the widely acceptable, sustainable and humane use of them that will allow us to survive. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 6:46 PM To: [email protected] Cc: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: RE: [Ottawadissenters] RE: [Futurework] Musing on the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot John, Not going to argue with you. But besides being positive and positively giddy about the future what is a broad based positive image for the future. We can all name the various isms that came and went. And about which people were willing to sacrifice since one or another ism held promise for a better future. So from this old man to a somewhat younger man: What is a positive image for the future that can provide a context for social action and social cohesion. Hint: going green doesn't do it. Ditto Facebook or Twitter. Nor does animal rights do it, or name the cause du jour. In the past when growth was good (god?) elections were fought and won on it. Today growth has become a parody: The words competition, innovation, growth, productivity, jobs are just that. Words from the past and are mouthed over and over in election campaigns to cover over the vacuum of a society that needs a new way of organizing itself. A society in need of new goals that resonate with citizens. If we continue to run elections on yesterdays goals we run the risk of alienating still more citizens who will increasingly respond to yet another call to vote and become involved with a sigh and a Whatever. What is that new image? And its not embracing change for the sake of change. I rather like the idea of a Stable State economy and society; one which is sustainable and within which one can find personal meaning and engagement. Where growth happens or not and is not obsessively tracked but where it does happen is a byproduct of positive human activities. What is yours? arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Verdon Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 9:10 PM To: [email protected] Cc: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Ottawadissenters] RE: [Futurework] Musing on the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot Arthur, With great respect - really, but you sound like an old man. I know we are all older. But you sound like there is no-one and no reason for optimism or a possibility of a new and better future. Of course the future is uncertain - uncertainty and impermanence are the eternal reality - made most poignant in this age of post-modernity - with no capacity to grasp the given 'god-made' world of the pre-modern, nor the fated clockwork universe of the modern. But the reality is that human life has always been fragile and any individual's, species' or even ecosystem's lifespan was uncertain. Nostalgia is often simply a type of forgetting of the existential trials and tribulations of the past. Tell the 'Youth of Facebook' that there is no possibility of a better world, tell our youth so heavily involved in the NGO world struggling to implement greener, more equitable, more self-actualizing work and life - that there is no chance or vision of a better world tomorrow. Read Umair Haque's "The New Capitalist Manifesto" (there are many who feel as he does). There is no possibility of a better world without struggle and the need for hope - but that has always been the true human condition. Have become complacent in our affluence that we can no longer imagine a different world? Based on new sciences and a capacity to evolve ourselves? I remember when I was a young man - a hippie with dreams and a believe in the power of love - I met many an old person who felt we were already well on the way to hell in a handbasket - and there were many justifiable indications (including an impending Ice Age). Human existed before that last Ice Age arrived. How did we survive? What do I know? Not much frankly. But I do know that the future is full of possibilities and that while 'hype' always under-performs it is always a lack of imagination in anticipating a positive future that fails us. I know - This will post will meet with glib disdain for those well reasoned folk harboring an apocalypse-wish. We do in fact live in an age with a Zeitgeist of deep immanence and it is true that the past will truly suffer apocalyptic devastation - just as living as hunter-gatherers felt the move to agriculture was apocalyptic, as agriculturalists felt the move to industrial society was apocalyptic and as industrial society feel the move to the information age and a digital economy is apocalyptic. Each society cannot imagine a new type of world and society and fear the death that is inherent within all transformations. Humans as we think of ourselves may not survive just as Neanderthal did not survive. But as I said at the beginning - to see life as it really is - means we must all accept and embrace impermanence and uncertainty - that is what it means to be alive. my two cents john On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 8:39 PM, Arthur Cordell <[email protected]> wrote: I originally posted this last Fall, 2010. It was in the thread "why the revolution will not be tweeted" (thanks to Barry Randall for resuscitating it). I think it is relevant to the current thread. ------------------------------------- The growth of social movements requires a positive image of the future. Something that is lacking today. There is much finger pointing at what can be done here and there but there is no over arching image of what is worth working for. The past was about growth is good. When the economy stalled the positive image was to get the economy growing. It was about getting a job and staying with one company. It was about settling down, having a family etc. etc. Now we realize that growth uses resources, pollutes, leads to global warming, etc. Now working for one firm is long gone, as are pensions, as is the stability that comes from family formation. There is nostalgia for some aspects of the past but dread for most aspects of the future. We seem to be stuck between a past that brought us here but may not bring us further and a future which is wrought with uncertainty and, at times, images of danger. Society is in a hyper self conscious state and while there is much criticism there is (aside from some fundamentalists on the right and the left) little in the way of a positive image of the future about which coalitions can be built. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 2:17 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Musing on the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot The area in which the rioting took place is still vaguely familiar. It was 1949 or '50. I had a small, cheap downtown room on Homer Street. I was going to become the world's greatest artist. Seventeen or eighteen at the time, I'd dropped out of high school, spent fourteen months working in a sawmill to put some money together, and registered at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr School). I stayed for a year, long enough to learn that there were plenty of other kids more equipped to become the world's greatest artist than I was. When I now look back, my greatest accomplishment was having a ten minute conversation with Lauren Harris, who came to visit us at the school. If there had been a Stanley Cup riot at the time, would I have joined in? Well, there was no riot. There couldn't have been. I and all of the kids I knew felt a part of Vancouver. It was our city; ours to live in; ours to enjoy and keep in good shape. I think that young people generally felt that way at the time. Move on to 1957. I had just graduated from the Faculty of Commerce at UBC with an economics degree. I had several firm job offers; even the dumbest kid in the class had a job offer or two. The world was ours to make the best of. Would we have taken part in a riot? No, why would we? There was no point. Fast forward to the present. Jobs are much harder to get now than they were back in the 1950s. Many young and not so young people are out on the street no longer looking for jobs because they just aren't there. Universities are packed with young people because they have nowhere else to go and because they hope a degree will help them get a job when they graduate - if they can afford to graduate and if the jobs are there. The world that I felt so good about back in the 1950s because it was my world and so full of promise has now become, as Barbara Ehrenreich puts it, their world - a world which young people feel they have no real part in and no control over. It doesn't belong to them, it belongs to government or the corporate world or to someone you can't reach, touch or control. Whoever is in charge can put a fence around themselves and keep you out, as was done in Toronto at the G20 summit. And if you try to do something about it, you can be sure the cops will be there. This doesn't excuse the kind of behavior we saw in Vancouver, but it may in part explain it. If I were a young person in Vancouver in the world of now would I not jump up and down when I saw a cop car in flames? Might I not want to break a window? I simply don't know, but I do know that I'm not going to be too hardheaded about what happened in Vancouver on Wednesday night. Ed -- John Verdon 4 Ashbury Place Ottawa, ON K1M1H3 voice 613-744-4278 searching for the pattern which connects.... knowing the difference that makes a difference... Sapere Aude - The true is the whole. 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