From: BabblePreacher-AT-aol.com Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 00:18:45 EDT Subject: Re: Clarifying Essentialism's Relation to Anarchism In a message dated 6/7/2003 9:47:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, JessEcoh-AT-cs.com writes: > and that means that some sort > of decentralized federation, a "commune of communes," is going to be the > sort > of structure most compatible with human freedom, because that alone will > allow > the maximum degree of real participation in decision-making by everyone I recently had a conversation that fell, at one point, into this idea of a "decentralized federation", which a friend pondered as something similar to the US if every state were to break off into self-governance (a rather comical example, but let's toy with it, anyway). We wondered if this would be possible or if, instead, a slew of micro-wars would break out, in which each "commune" was pining for the land, resources, flora, fauna, weather patterns, etc. of another "commune". My apologies for treading so close to an essentialist perspective here, but, is decentralization "actually" possible? or do (collective)we yearn for a more populous unity? or, if we scrap the latter, how does decentralization take up the problems of geography and cultural dispersion (how is the center fractured, without creating dissonant "nodes")? how, in a word, do we handle the problem of plurality once it is actually acheived? do all that feel as "type A" feels shuffle into "node 1", all that feel as "type B" into "node 2", and so on? or would the antagonism of the extremes evaporate along with the abolition of the center? It almost seems as if the lack of any "universal tendency" requires us to posit one as the backdrop upon which to fashion a method of succesful decentralization, so that it may be expected. On the other hand, this lack also warrants an experimentation in the creative -- in the biblical sense -- faculties of chaos. But what of those who crave order? Can we polish up any of these conundrums? > in this sense, we want forms of social organization (undoubtedly many such > kinds are possible) which are compatible with the "laws" of our nature and > which > help us to realize the best that we are capable of in terms of pleasure, > creativity, excitement, tranquility, diversity, and all the other kinds of > happiness there are. > > > --jesse. So this would be our concern, I believe: 1) Define the "laws". 2) List as many of these forms of social organization that we find possible, so that, 3) We can use this list to discover our limitations, and 4) Go beyond them, since it seems that only the un-thinkable, at this point, is going to survive our "desire" for self-destruction. Or, something entirely different. -phil. "To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it." -t. adorno. --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html ---
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