The Renaissance of New Communalism
Nathan Cravens
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-renaissance-of-new-communalism/2009/04/22
"We are as gods and we might as well get good at it.”[1] In the 1969 issue, that was the first line to instill the purpose of the Whole Earth Catalog. Stewart Brand, with a network of people with various views, launched a medium to network readers with others. It presented the necessary tools, used broadly, to support the needs of the rising commune movement of the time. With a readership of millions, a social movement Fred Turner calls ‘NewCommunalism’ was born. New Communalism is a term created to distinguish a group of folk during the 60s-70s that believed in forming a community of like-minded grounded in self sufficiency.
Here we describe New Communalism and the Whole Earth Catalog. Afterward, we discuss how the Whole Earth Catalog and New Communalism failed and where the gems of this movement can find a home at Open Manufacturing, a conception under discussion as a form of physical commons-based peer production at best.[2]"
This guy sounds like a prude!!
Nathan Cravens
Effortless Economy
Nick Taylor
> Afterward, we discuss how the Whole Earth Catalog and New Communalism failed
Nobody wanted to do the dishes.
Which I thought was fairly funny when I first heard it, and it's not as
glib as it seems.
Did the Whole Earth Catalogue fail? Maybe it ran out of money, maybe it
went out of fashion, I don't know... I'd be inclined to say that "the
80s happened, and they lasted for 30 years", but I think that the 80s
were a blip... and the age of The Whole Earth Catalogue is well and
truly back... in the form of a couple of hundred thousand blogs. The
Whole Earth Catalogue was kindof before it's time.
The thing that created the 30 year blip is still in full effect, still
well-funded, still well organised - but it's degenerated into a
caricature to a fairly large extent. The Internet keeps laughing at it.
Samantha Atkins
- samantha
Nick Taylor
> approximately hinted at set of ideas and practices for unclear
> "everybody reasonable knows" unreasons continues unabated. That
> meta-pattern does not make me at all hopeful of any realy change.
>
> - samantha
If you want me to be more specific? Read these:
http://mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=21
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
*"Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30
years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in
language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful
memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best
students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that
we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting
wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on
and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative
business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole
thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the
Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the
American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford,
which date from the 1940s.]*
*And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who
started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk
show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand
their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and
they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating
their research on how best to express their ideas."*
The US has been the victim of a massive unsolicited experiment in
social-engineering in the last 30 years... and the ugliness and waste
that you see before you now, is a direct result of this.
And to a large degree, it's worked. People should be incredibly angry,
but instead they're merely conservative.
That is what I'm talking about, and to quote Hunter S Thompson:
"You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...And that,
I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the
forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in
fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were
riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...So now, less than five
years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West,
and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark –
that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
The high beautiful wave was a renaissance. The 80s and the 30 years that
followed were characterised by a well funded, well organised campaign by
American Savonarolas.
And today, it's all falling apart, and the legacy is as ugly as fuck.
As Kevin Kelly (?) recently observed - The Whole Earth Catalogue was in
many senses a blog... before the technology for blogging had turned up.
It shared many of the principles/approaches of blogging... and there
probably won't be a large paperback "The Whole Earth Catalogue" ever
again, because it's progeny are everywhere and they're changing the world.
Most of the people on this list are now the writers and editors of their
own Whole Earth Catalogues.
That is why I think the 80s were a blip - if we survive (that is) the
damage that Reaganite/Thatcherite/free-market-as-social-policy has done.
--
I can be as specific and detailed as you want. I happen to know quite a
lot about this - I would warn you off your snide reproaches though
because I'm also quite happy and capable of being a lot more aggressive
than you are.
ok?
Nick
Paul D. Fernhout
> I can be as specific and detailed as you want. I happen to know quite a
> lot about this - I would warn you off your snide reproaches though
> because I'm also quite happy and capable of being a lot more aggressive
> than you are.
Nick-
You make really good points, and then IMHO you shoot yourself in the foot
with a statement like the above.
Can anyone be more aggressive than the million plus people in the US
military put together who have a bankroll approaching one trillion dollars a
year for weaponry? If you play their game on their home turf, playing a
finite game, you will almost certainly lose. The military is trained to
shoot first and ask questions later (if ever). As a movement, aggression
(even just verbally) is a sure route to disaster.
The best way to deal with potential "enemies" is to turn them into
"friends". Or to try to play an infinite game where the main objective is
just to keep the game going.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Carse
From:
http://www.reelclassics.com/Actors/Jimmy/jimmy2.htm
"""
My mother used to say to me, 'Elwood' -- she always called me Elwood --
'Elwood, in this world you must be oh-so clever, or oh-so pleasant.' For
years I was clever. I'd recommend pleasant -- and you may quote me." --Jimmy
Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in HARVEY.
"""
Or:
http://www.kvaekerne.dk/personal/HFH/humorquaker.html
"""
One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional
wrestler. Once when he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in
Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some
local youths, who insisted that only force could change the German's views.
In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local
boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then
asked the youth,
"Now do you believe that force won't change people's views?"
"Heck no!" the local boy hollered back.
"That's exactly my point," said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left.
"""
For more on that theme:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
"Studies of social movements in the United States also show that the
necessary social disruption has to be created through the principled use of
strategic nonviolence. Any form of violence, whether property damage or
physical battles with opponents and police, will turn off the great majority
of Americans and bring down overwhelming police and military repression. ...
To be effective, nonviolence must be maintained in the face of great
provocations, even beatings and murders by the opponents. If there is no
retaliation, the perpetrators may be prosecuted, or public sentiment may
switch to the side of the challengers. This is in fact in part what happened
when police and vigilantes attacked civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s.
Those unprovoked actions swung whites outside the South against police
violence despite their continuing feelings of racial superiority, and forced
the president and leaders in Congress to condemn elected officials and law
enforcement personnel in the South. Once nonviolence is taken seriously as
the only and ideal strategy for egalitarians in a democratic society, it
quickly leads to new ways of thinking about issues of social change.
Although advocates of strategic nonviolence have published catalogues of
successful tactics, they stress that each movement invents new methods
within the context of their situation. Since outsiders do not know this
context, they cannot offer many suggestions or make predictions in advance
of what will work. The successful tactics of the Civil Rights Movement are
well known through dozens of books and stunning documentaries like Eyes on
the Prize, but they are always worth recalling as evidence for what
strategic nonviolence can accomplish in the hands of a value-based movement
with clear objectives. ..."
Anyway, if you can't handle a little wordy banter ("sophomoric") without
retaliation, how are you going to handle seeing your best friends murdered
by the state or by "conservative" vigilantes over a cause? Sadly, it may
well get pretty ugly before it is over (the US population is already getting
pretty stressed over job losses, even though they don't see the big picture
yet like Marshall Brain outlines in "Manna").
Millions of young people beaten and jailed for sharing music or growing
plants or making their own consumer items might be just the start.
Many were beaten and jailed for making their own salt in India:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
"The Salt Satyagraha campaign was based upon Gandhi's principles of
non-violent protest called satyagraha, which he loosely translated as
"truth-force." In early 1930 the Indian National Congress chose satyagraha
as their main tactic for winning Indian independence from British rule and
appointed Gandhi to organize the campaign. Gandhi chose the 1882 British
Salt Act as the first target of satyagraha. The Salt March to Dandi, and the
beating of hundreds of non-violent protesters in Dharasana, demonstrated the
effective use of civil disobedience as a technique for fighting social and
political injustice. The satyagraha teachings of Gandhi and the March to
Dandi had a significant influence on American civil rights activist Martin
Luther King, Jr., and his fight for civil rights for blacks and other
minority groups in the 1960s."
One can disagree without being disagreeable. Like many skills, it might take
years of practice. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
Nathan Cravens
Did the Whole Earth Catalogue fail?
the age of The Whole Earth Catalogue is well and
truly back... in the form of a couple of hundred thousand blogs. The
Whole Earth Catalogue was kindof before it's time.
I defined failure in blog commentary. In short, I say the Whole Earth and the hundreds of blogs and lists like this one are failures until the digital reflects the physical, that is, Open Manufacturing in practice. See how useful suitcase words are? ;)
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-renaissance-of-new-communalism/2009/04/22
> approximately hinted at set of ideas and practices for unclear
> "everybody reasonable knows" unreasons continues unabated. That
> meta-pattern does not make me at all hopeful of any realy change.
>
> - samantha
I don't understand your message, Samantha. My cognitive capacities fail to memorize in detail the model of the material I wrote in a manner that contrasts with your words.
I can be as specific and detailed as you want. I happen to know quite a
lot about this - I would warn you off your snide reproaches though
because I'm also quite happy and capable of being a lot more aggressive
than you are.
ok?
[meta-talk]
As much as I find this entertaining, here you, Nick, are talking to Samantha's sassiness. If I have modeled Samantha's general behavior correctly, she would be likely to respond to that commentary, if at all, in the same aggressive manner your "counter-aggressive" manner highlights.
Hi Paul, I see you cut me to the chase on this one. ;p
Nathan
Nick Taylor
>> I can be as specific and detailed as you want. I happen to know quite a
>> lot about this - I would warn you off your snide reproaches though
>> because I'm also quite happy and capable of being a lot more aggressive
>> than you are.
>
> You make really good points, and then IMHO you shoot yourself in the foot
> with a statement like the above.
>
> Can anyone be more aggressive than the million plus people in the US
> military put together who have a bankroll approaching one trillion dollars a
> year for weaponry? If you play their game on their home turf, playing a
> finite game, you will almost certainly lose. The military is trained to
> shoot first and ask questions later (if ever). As a movement, aggression
> (even just verbally) is a sure route to disaster.
Taking on the entire US military is in no way analogous to responding in
kind to someone who is snide/patronising - and you're shooting yourself
in the foot trying to make out that it is.
n