Re: [ox-en] Re: Collective Consciousness and Reaching the Utopian Society
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 16:04:25 +0100
Hi Aidan and all!
2 days ago Aidan Delaney wrote:
We also have the concept of Proportional
Representation in parliment elections, which differs from a referendum. I
give candidates 1..n a preference from 1 to n. ie: n=13; Stallman [1],
ANOther[2] ... Bush[13].
I remember I once had the idea of a percent-based voting system. (For
sure I'm not the first one with the idea but I don't know whether this
has a name.) Every voter has 100% to spend arbitrarily on the number
of alternatives available. The interesting effect of such a voting
system is, that given three alternatives one person voting A:100%,
B:0%, C:0% can outvote two persons voting A:20%, B:35%, C:45%. To me
this looks like a softened veto system.
But this only BTW and nonetheless I don't like votes ;-) .
On the point. I have been reading the list. A lot of what we are talking
about is a 'Utopian Society'. I was recently talking to a friend who
believes that it is a naive goal. That the inherent 'badness' in people
means we will never reach it. My contention is that people are not
'bad/evil',
I don't believe human beings are neither "good" nor "evil" when born.
Humans are formed by the society they live in. And whether something
is considered good or bad is decided on the societal rather than on an
individual level. Individuals mainly reflect these decisions.
So talking of "good" and "bad" in a general way to me makes very
little sense. This is all very floating ground.
However, I'm a member of a certain culture. As a German I'm member of
the Northern/Western/"Christian" culture and from this I have some
idea of what I would like to see in society. This is the ground I'm
starting from. Others may have and do have other grounds to start from
- and BTW I guess the concept of a GPL society sounds useful mostly to
people from the same culture group I'm stemming from.
One of the things I'd like to see is doing less harm to individuals as
well as to nature than the current society is doing to them. Sure,
this is floating ground again - but at least I know where I have my
ground ;-) .
So on the one hand I'm looking for mechanisms in our current societies
which may be considered the source of much harm. I for one think that
the basing on exchange is a very fundamental source of harm. This is,
however, only the criticism and unfortunately not the solution to the
problem. I think many, many, many people - leftists or not - are stuck
at this point.
On the other hand I'm looking for ways to organize a society we at
least could imagine doing less harm. In this situation the principles
we find embodied in Free Software to me look like a very sustainable
way of organizing things both, in an effective and less harmful way.
So I'm considering this a way of bringing us - i.e. including me! - at
least closer to a solution - and that's why I'm doing all this here.
they are just uneducated, yes including Hitler/Stalin (not
education in the University sense, but in the Egalitarian society sense), and
we should aim for the Utopian goal through education, even though we may
never reach it. I believe that through iterative
education/positive-social-interaction (each generation is a new iteration) we
can educate individuals in social integration (IMHO an internal concept in
Utopian Society), no-racism, non-violence, etc.... What do you guys/gals
think?
Sure, education has effects. But I think if the framework is not ok
you may educate as long as you want and getting nowhere. For a GPL
society I'd say education must be thought as a help to self-unfold
optimally.
Is the Utopian Society actually reachable? Is it more reasonable to
concentrate on a more reasonable (possibly non perfect) goal for society?
Personally I have been involved in some kinds of (leftist) political
activity for years. Today I think that others may do the job as well
as me, and for me - and I hope for the world - it is more useful to
spend my time and energy in this project :-) .
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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