From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 08 Dec 2002 - 22:16:06 GMT
>On Sunday, December 8, 2002, at 04:21 PM, Lawrence DeBivort wrote:
>
>>A meta-goal, I suppose, is that all participants become mutually
>>influential.
>>
>>And yes, there are strong trends also favoring this, which is, of course,
>>what brings us to the point of considering such an initiative. I am
>>thinking
>>now of how the Net might be used to support the initiative: the Net itself
>>reflects and drives such an initiative.
>
>Once we become mutually accessed to knowledge, this meta-goal might be
>reachable.
>
>The internet, while an agent of dissemination unequaled in any history, has
>yet to be accessible to and for and by all.
>
>But, yes, the egalitarianism of influence would be a huge step.
>
>>Perhaps the biggest obstacle is simple cynicism.
>
>The biggest obstacle is local power.
>
>- Wade
>
India is the poster country for that theme. Here is a country with so much
grain they can afford to export it and hundreds of thousands of people are
starving because of local power. That's also the problem in most of Africa
and South America. Local power feeds its cronies first and to hell with the
rest. Look at Zimbabwe, where the government took the land away from the
only people who knew how to use it to feed the people and gave it to people
who don't because they voted for the boss man.
It's going to take more than ideas to change the entrenched memes of people
who don't feel like they are part of any world but their own. Even people
in first world countries will defend their culture to the death and find
reasons to look down on their neighbors.
Integration has been the theme of change in America for the last 30 years
but when black students were admitted to major universities in large
numbers, the first thing they did was start hanging around with each other
to the exclusion of most non-black students. Of course, that made them feel
more comfortable and they spoke the same language, but it made a mockery of
what people were doing to try and help them get integrated.
I've read a few sci-fi stories that explored the theme of what would happen
if we thought there was an alien force coming to take over our planet. That
may be the only thing that might bring us together -- fear of something
bigger than ourselves. I guess that's what God was created for. Now that
nobody really believes in Him anymore, what can we invent to take His place?
Grant
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