Ant,
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Ant McWatt <[email protected]> wrote: > John McConnell said to Ant McWatt, March 4th 2014 (off-line): > > "There's no point igniting a God-bomb in that bunch of theophobes on MD. > Here at least you and I understand each other. You know I'm not out to > evangelize you, and you are at least tolerant of my faith." > > John: eek. I've been chastised in the past for posting offline comments online, but nothing as egregiously incendiary. JohnT must hold some very unpopular views to be treated so. > > Ant McWatt continues: > > Well, I wouldn't worry about this too much. As I said to Paco > recently, Horse (being rather political AND a pragmatist is rather like > me and I think Paco too). If someone is helping out the vulnerable of > this world then they can call themselves the Pope, the Czar of Russia or > even the "Queen of England" (aka Grayson Perry ;-) ) as far as I'm > concerned as long as they are helping out with this critical objective > especially with the recent dominance in recent decades of multi-nationals, > right-wing governments and a rather corrupt and "loaded" (especially > against the poor) global banking system!!! > John: An interesting point in light of recent developments with Russia and the Crimea. Would you call Putin's government "right wing", Ant? I'd certainly say it was an intellectually - guided government. They've been very smart. We didn't realize it at the time but when we granted the powers of global banking and free market capitalism to the Russian mindset - they just love a good strong hegemony - we were opening up a pandora's box of infinite future trouble. I was at dinner the other night with my old friend Steve and his Russian wife Oxsana and I asked her what she thought about Putin's power grabs. Even tho she's adapted well to this country and wouldn't go back for anything, she's proud of Russian resurgence on the world scene and told an anecdote of her home country - Kyrgyzstan, which has persecuted the Russians ever since it broke away and I imagine this pattern has repeated in the other Asian republics that were freed from Russian control. All this creates a backlash and now we are seeing that backlash in action with Russians longing for the time when they ruled half the world. America with it's openness and freedom is so open-minded that it has little strength to counteract such power grabs as we're all witnessing in Ukraine by the Russians and our political leaders are so obsessed with social popularity necessary to get elected that they can't have a long-term view that a dictator can have. Ant: > Finally, to address your substantive point, do keep in mind that any > values statement based on the MOQ will also be guided by Dynamic Quality as > well as intellectual values (which, as I said in my earlier MD post) are > considered as "real" as any other static pattern. The latter point is > important to keep in mind because then these intellectual values are not > just seen as purely subjective (as found in SOM) and therefore relatively > unimportant (or something just for a "PR" exercise) but something to > genuinely guide every person at every level in an organization (whether > that be a church, corporation, residents association, university or > charity) at every level AND at every moment! > > We are back to debating my main point earlier: If an enlightened populace in favor of freedom and DQ is countered by a self-interested but highly intellectual hegemony, then the enlightened are doomed. SOM is strong and overpowering because it's materialistic and power-grabbing. John the Worried Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
