Dear Raffi
I updated your World Map profile with the new picture you just sent,
have a look
> http://www.openspaceworldmap.org/worker/raffi-aftandelian
This great picture will help folks walking down Villa La Jolla Drive in
La Jolla to spot you... or see you in the Mediterranean Restaurant
across the street.
For you others in the World Map: The new version has a Content
Management System that allows you to edit your entry all by yourself.
And, if you dont have a profiel there yet you are invited to include
yourself, here is the entry
http://www.openspaceworldmap.org/inclusion
Have a great day
mmp
Am 07.09.2017 um 16:59 schrieb Michael M Pannwitz:
Dear Raffi,
reading your last two lines it seems you are out of cents!
Good to hear from you and from Birgitt at just about the same time.
For 60 years I have been reading "The Progressive"... and for many years
I have the yearly "Hidden History of the United States" calendar on my
desk. Yesterday, it tells me, Jane Addams was born (1860), today the
Women protest Miss America Pageant took place (1968) and tomorrow the
Delano, CA, grape workers strike began (1965) which I vividly remember
as a consumer boycotting table grapes in my neighborhood Safeway in Los
Angeles (there is a writeup on the Delano grape strike in wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delano_grape_strike
So, thats my context, at least part of it.
Having lived in Europe again since 1972 I am amazed about the
rediscovery of regional and local context... some of it age old but
attaining new attention and concrete shape such as currently in the
secession movement in Spain which the central government is trying to
stop with all means available.
From an ost point of view, looking at the preconditions for a favorable
climate for selforganisation to unfold, I think - among others - of
"diversity". Regularly, I observed that ost events that I was a part of
benefited in often amazing wayys when diversity was high. Of course,
folks planning such events were sensitive to this aspect.
Different contexts being part of (any) event are very beneficial if not
necessary. That, and the other preconditions, make ost events not only
unique but successful. As far as I can tell, there is no substitute or
surrogate.
Back to your books etc.: Whatever happens anywhere, it needs those
different contexts, such as the "11 different regional cultures" in the
USA or the 12 City Districts of Berlin, or the influx of migrants (a
centuries old characterictic of Berlin, for instance) --- without
differences the systems we create evaporate.
Greetings from Berlin
Hope you make it here some day
cheers
mmp
PS: Please have a look at yourself here in the World Map
http://www.openspaceworldmap.org/worker/raffi-aftandelian
You are hard to recognize! With the selforganized Content Management
System you can have a new picture in the Map, in a jiffy.
Am 07.09.2017 um 15:22 schrieb Raffi Aftandelian via OSList:
Hi Lucas, hi all!
I´ve been following this conversation with interest and my curiousity
is taking me in a different direction, hence a changed subject line-
¨On context.¨
First off, hats off to you, Lucas, for initiating these conversations.
Much needed!
One question that comes up for me when these types of public
conversations are offered is if the matter of context needs to be
visited, and if so how is best to do so.
I think there can be many, many assumptions- uncovered assumptions-
that may end up not being aired. Assumptions like- ¨this is a
democracy, we lost our way, and we need to find our way back.¨ Or,
that Rodney King line, ¨Can´t we all get along?¨
On this question of context- as to who are we (here in the USA) and
where are we, there are two points I´d want to make.
The first one-- by way of a story-- Back in my college days, I took a
course in Soviet history. Our main text was a book titled Utopia in
Power by dissident historians Nekrich and Geller. All (or many?) of
the darkest chapters of Soviet history were right there, in gory
detail. I remember thinking at the time- oh, those poor Soviets, too
bad they don´t know the truth of their own history. And in my time
living in Russia, I had the sense that most people- even educated
people- had little knowledge of this history.
Fast forward twenty-five years. My book club read a work titled
American Nations (by Colin Woodard) late last year- and as the
coincidental timing would have it- we discussed the book the day after
the election. Woodard identifies 11 different regional cultures in the
USA, each with its own distinctive values, often clashing with those
of other regional cultures. While I was reading the book, I realized
how little I knew of ¨my¨ own country, how little I knew its history,
how little I understood the cultural and value context of each of
these regions, and gained a much clearer sense of why we these
so-called culture wars and other kinds of social and political
conflict. My takeaway was that it really didn´t make sense for all of
these cultures to exist under one flag. I also realized that, no, we
*can´t* get along (if couples can divorce, why can´t
states/cities/communities divorce from the USA???)
So, the book had me flashing to that Soviet history class-- and in a
way, I had my own comeuppance- ¨us poor Americans, if we only really
knew our own context! I really wish that book - for all its own
shortcomings- had a wider audience as it could really help us
understand our own context much more clearly. And without a
consideration of context, we are having these conversations without
unpacking what *are* our respective worldviews anyway. And they are
quite different.
The other aspect of context is surfacing assumptions about our current
political system. As best as I can tell, the USA never was a
democracy, nor even a republic. The best way I could describe it is as
an inverted totalitarian apartheid state with a not insignificant
amount of democratic window dressing.
Let me unpack this. Sheldon Wolin, a political philosopher at
Princeton, who passed a few years ago, coined the term ¨inverted
totalitarianism¨ to describe the political system we have here-- a web
of corporations and other entities together exerting total control on
the political system without the need for a person at the top (no need
for a Stalin or Hitler). Journalist Chris Hedges breaks this concept
down in an engaging three hour interview he gave to C-Span (it´s
online) in 2012.
And, historian Gerald Horne in his recent Counter-revolution of 1776
makes a strong argument that the so-called Revolution of 1776 was
really a counter-revolution, a reactionary attempt to maintain the
institution of slavery. He states that really the US was the first
apartheid state.
And others would say that slavery never really ended, it just
evolved...(I first heard of the institution of neo-slavery that
existed from the end of the Civil War until the end of World War II
and still don´t know much about it) So, when people say, ¨That´s not
who we are (we aren´t racist, sexist, etc.)¨-- I find that maddening.
We are all those things!
So, to be an inverted totalitarian apartheid state with a not
insignificant amount of democratic window dressing isn´t bad. But, it
would be too bad, I think, not to recognize that this is our base
point. And what´s important is that there is some democratic window
dressing-- there is some space to change things, some space for
conversation, but perhaps not in the ways we would like to think.
So, I don´t know how or if what I´m bringing up here is useful. But, I
do believe it needs to be part of these conversations somehow.
My two kopecks/rials/dinars/pesos,
raffi
**************
What blocks gratitude in this moment?
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Michael M Pannwitz
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