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Re: [ox-en] goal of oekonux, theory vs. practice, the new social movements and the left




[snippety-chop]

     is "study" meant in a sense of "producing theory" or is the notion of
    "applied science" included here as well? is our interest in the question
    whether free software can be a model for a new society only a
    theoretical one or are we interested in building such a society? (even
    if we only vaguely know how it could look like..)

Well, as you can see from the link list there are already a lot of
people from very different areas are practicing. Oekonux is practicing
these things as well - as you may see in the extremely open structure
we are maintaining.


For some of us, we're hoping to find people who's idea of practice is
our idea of theory. For others, the reverse is true.

A1: my personal answer to this question: i guess most people who are
    thinking about alternatives to our current society are driven by their
    dislike for the current world

**BZZZT**

Not the current world.

Current political, social and economic structures with dominant
positions in the world at the moment, yes.


    but i think there is more to this question. even if someone is not so
    much interested in changing the world then there are the following
    things to consider: a theory (and especially one that is about a
    "different society") can not exist in a complete void. theory must be
    aplied to practice to test it, find errors, correct it, etc..

I think we are doing this all the time. Right now I'm hoping to find
some time to carefully work through the Debian Constitution - just for
instance.

I suspect you might want to do that [*], but for everyone else: If you've
read the Debian Social Contract, and grokked it, and you're vaguely
familiar with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, then you probably
just want to dip into some of the longer threads on the Debian Legal
mailing list to observe how the underlying process works.


[*]: I was going to say: wanting to read the Debian Constitution
carefully is like wanting to read the source of the Gnu Compiler
Collection - then I remembered how pleased I am every time I get to read
source I am interested in. Make time to read it, Stefan.


    actually: without a plan of how to transform society all plans for a
    "new society" are pretty much idle. what is this "new society" good for
    if there is no path leading to it?

The *path* to a new society is the most difficult thing at all. IMHO
the transformation of a society is one of the most complex things
mankind can experience at all. I wonder how this can be predicted
seriously at all.

I think it makes sense to try to think of the things that could go
*wrong* with our possible goal states - then we can build in mechanisms
to avoid them. But we must not expect to engineer out all flaws.

What we have to do is to find *new system dynamics* where the emergent
states of those dynamics are societies in which we can live. Our current
system dynamics include such lovely properties as
public-relations-for-the-wealthy, private-ownership-of-mass-media,
state-right-to-use-of-lethal-force, incarceration-not-rehabilitation,
success-measured-by-wealth, and a whole bunch of similar chains whose
emergent properties are non-benevolent.

In fact, producing a catalogue of these causal chains would be an
interesting exercise for anyone with degree-students who need work...

In order not to be negative for another paragraph, I'll mention the idea
of "the Zen of Global Transformation" that Richard K. Moore describes on
the www.cyberjournal.org website, and recommend it as an interesting
idea of a positive chain.

[chop chop]

cheers, Rich

-- 
rich walker | technical person | Shadow Robot Company | rw shadow.org.uk
front-of-tshirt space to let     251 Liverpool Road   |
                                 London  N1 1LX       | +UK 20 7700 2487
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/



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