* Aligning With Purpose's Our Future page typifies what makes me grow very quiet and introspective from a sense of strained solidarity.
"With the decline of corporate control over thought and information, we have entered a new era of exploration and discovery. During this time, many of our old assumptions are being challenged and replaced with more rational conclusions." Rational?! ... I wish I could read this with an optimistic attitude, but I'm afraid that would be naive. When I read the documentation from World Bank or G8 or USAID, I'm awash in a rationality that is anything but sane, the sort of rationality that spins produces conclusions effectively because it proceeds reductively ... no messy human factors here, all problems can be managed and all conflicts mediated.
I would be far more heartened if we aligned with purpose inspired by a disgust for the machinations of greed and a gut-felt revulsion at the grotesque scale of daily injustice. When it occurs to me that hundreds of thousands of well intentioned bodies are rallying with the purpose of "figuring out" how to apply the newest technologies to our age-old problems it makes me slump in despair (and I've been a com-tech geek since 1972).
Visions of a new world may inspire, but so too, and better, can the prospect simply breaking modest bread in comfort and comraderie with collaborators who we've come to regard as peers. The cult of expertise and optimization thrives on the dope of excellence. I'd say we need the integrity that is bred from a humble acceptance of constraints and limits; maybe that would re-invigorate our need for human community.
"With the decline of corporate control over thought and information, we have entered a new era of exploration and discovery. During this time, many of our old assumptions are being challenged and replaced with more rational conclusions." Rational?! ... I wish I could read this with an optimistic attitude, but I'm afraid that would be naive. When I read the documentation from World Bank or G8 or USAID, I'm awash in a rationality that is anything but sane, the sort of rationality that spins produces conclusions effectively because it proceeds reductively ... no messy human factors here, all problems can be managed and all conflicts mediated.
I would be far more heartened if we aligned with purpose inspired by a disgust for the machinations of greed and a gut-felt revulsion at the grotesque scale of daily injustice. When it occurs to me that hundreds of thousands of well intentioned bodies are rallying with the purpose of "figuring out" how to apply the newest technologies to our age-old problems it makes me slump in despair (and I've been a com-tech geek since 1972).
Visions of a new world may inspire, but so too, and better, can the prospect simply breaking modest bread in comfort and comraderie with collaborators who we've come to regard as peers. The cult of expertise and optimization thrives on the dope of excellence. I'd say we need the integrity that is bred from a humble acceptance of constraints and limits; maybe that would re-invigorate our need for human community.
