Virtual Thinking
Last night I attended one of the virtual telecasts of candidates from moveon.org. I had mixed feelings. First of all, the winner-take-all in my estimation was Gov. Bill Richardson, whose plans to get out of Iraq were grounded in an international vision for cultural inclusiveness and environmentally intelligent energy strategies. He was lucid, specific, modest and clear. Everyone else was vapid, posing and unoriginal at best. Halfway thru, I said outloud that, "he is going to get my money" and he did, this morning. Will he have a chance against the political machines? I don't know. It will be a test of sanity over familiarity I fear.
The good part was the chance to listen without the charisma factor. The bad part was not seeing a more complete webcam display and limited options for follow up input. The question to me, is how will the internet change the plausability factor? If it is no longer just about telegenics or delusions of having beer with a candidate, but humans still being the limted creatures we are, what common denominator will prevail as criteria for judgement?
At the gathering, I referred to the introduction of cahiers to the French peasants before the revolution. The French peasants were taught to read, write and fill in notebooks: cahiers, with thier political thoughts. Then they discussed those thoughts. Et voila, la revolution! Of course, that also trasnlated into the guilloutine. In our own times, the blog-olution has translated into permission to savage our neighbors with excoriating and often totally unmonitored textual assaults. Ann Coulter & Don Imus are the living embodiments. We rest uneasy, however, with these icons of negativity. Witness, Imus losing advertisers. But he still makes $10 000 000. a year and Coulter still sells books. How weary are we of the easy way out?
We will find out soon enuf. I believe it was Theodore Roscak who said that, " for every complex problem, there is a simple solution... and it is the wrong one. "
I have begun saying to people that I am beginning to question whether the very paradigm of framing conflict situations as problems that we can find solutions to, may be outdated. Outdated by what my new friend Dr Jim White of the Instaar Institute in Boulder calls, the (present) "oscillating base line (of global warming)."
Moveon wanted us to vote last night for whether we would keep the pressure on candidates to stay liberal. I am leery of this question because it presumes we are right and "they" are wrong (whomever doesn't agree with us).
What I want, is more attention to the ideas I heard from Richardson last night. It is not unrelated to me, that with constant application of acupuncture, my formerly dying dog continues to steadily improve and become more active. What I mean, is I'm less interested in how we can add another dimension of bullying to the world than how much pressure we can apply towards implementing workable strategies to achieve global health & healing.
The good part was the chance to listen without the charisma factor. The bad part was not seeing a more complete webcam display and limited options for follow up input. The question to me, is how will the internet change the plausability factor? If it is no longer just about telegenics or delusions of having beer with a candidate, but humans still being the limted creatures we are, what common denominator will prevail as criteria for judgement?
At the gathering, I referred to the introduction of cahiers to the French peasants before the revolution. The French peasants were taught to read, write and fill in notebooks: cahiers, with thier political thoughts. Then they discussed those thoughts. Et voila, la revolution! Of course, that also trasnlated into the guilloutine. In our own times, the blog-olution has translated into permission to savage our neighbors with excoriating and often totally unmonitored textual assaults. Ann Coulter & Don Imus are the living embodiments. We rest uneasy, however, with these icons of negativity. Witness, Imus losing advertisers. But he still makes $10 000 000. a year and Coulter still sells books. How weary are we of the easy way out?
We will find out soon enuf. I believe it was Theodore Roscak who said that, " for every complex problem, there is a simple solution... and it is the wrong one. "
I have begun saying to people that I am beginning to question whether the very paradigm of framing conflict situations as problems that we can find solutions to, may be outdated. Outdated by what my new friend Dr Jim White of the Instaar Institute in Boulder calls, the (present) "oscillating base line (of global warming)."
Moveon wanted us to vote last night for whether we would keep the pressure on candidates to stay liberal. I am leery of this question because it presumes we are right and "they" are wrong (whomever doesn't agree with us).
What I want, is more attention to the ideas I heard from Richardson last night. It is not unrelated to me, that with constant application of acupuncture, my formerly dying dog continues to steadily improve and become more active. What I mean, is I'm less interested in how we can add another dimension of bullying to the world than how much pressure we can apply towards implementing workable strategies to achieve global health & healing.
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