Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1999 02:44:09 -0500 From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespags-AT-stlnet.com> Subject: Re: The next best thing... At 01:13 AM 7/4/99 -0400, OOTSONATI-AT-aol.com wrote: > Maybe instead of shooting for the perfect society we should aim for a >mediocre society. That way our expectations could be easier met and possibly >eventually lead to the perfect society. As long as people believe the system >is perfected, there will be no room for the critic. Well, we're halfway there then. We've got the mediocre society. Unfortunately though, we'll (not just us, the human species in general) never get the perfect society. One of the mistakes of the 19th century was the belief in the perfectability of mankind. We could be much better than we are to each other and ourselves, but what does being 'perfect' even mean? And with flawed people comes flawed society. Even when I dream of genuine Anarchy, with my great-great grandchildren thinking of our time as being as barbaric as we think of the dark ages, even then there will be conflict, and people who don't like each other, and maybe even pissed off minorities. It'll be much better, just as few of us would tolerate serfdom or slavery today, so they'll haughtily think that they would never suffer the life of a wage slave, but unless they adapt to the point of seeing constant social change as normal, they'll instead have found some new servitude that they surrender to, and it might be for a very long time because it is less obviously evil, before they rebel against the new servitude. I have a pet idea that power is a conceptual virus. It uses us as a means to replicate and multiply itself independent of how we like to think we can use it. It's natural tendancy is to collect itself into a smaller and smaller group of hosts, and like biological viruses, it doesn't know that it can overcome and kill it's hosts and be destroyed along with them. Unfortunately for us, it's also a symbiotic virus, in that without some power, the power of our individual hands and minds, nothing can happen, there can be no communes, no poems, no houses. Since we can't wipe out power all together without taking us with it, the best we can do is live in constant struggle to keep it as spread and diminished as possible. And at times, societies, groups will be more up to the challenge than at others, but the challenge, the struggle will always remain, and there doesn't seem to be room for that struggle in any of the Utopias I've been informed about. Anyway, I could be wrong, but as I see it, it's the struggle against power and against priviledge, towards liberty and equality where the real importance of anarchism lies, because that's where a real, honest, worthwhile life is to be found. And although I believe in the possibility of a better humanity, it's the egoistic, selfish desire for a genuine moral and intellectual life that primarily motivates me. again, incoherantly yours, scott --------------------------------------------------------- Be it never forgotten that the cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression. -Alexander Berkman Piston Ported Vespas: http://www.piston-ported.com words http://home.stlnet.com/~vespags/words.html ----------------------------------------------------------
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