[FRIAM] Can you guess the source.

[Stephen Guerin]

Gus,

As I was reading through the full Port Huron statement at
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111hur.html I was thinking, hmm,
maybe if we actually developed some of the distributed net tools we've been
talking about it could help. But then I cam across this passage near the end: 

"Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and
man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel
management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the
idolatrous worship of things by man."

So I thought, ah, technology may not help...it's a bigger problem.

Then you write:
> There were even technohippies that believed that the new 
> computers could really form a basis for communications and 
> analysis--and this was pre-internet.

This made me think that maybe there is a technological angle...

In your opinion, where's the leverage for a group like ours? Is it what we can
offer in technological / ideological realm, or is it local political action?

-Steve





> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gus Koehler [mailto:rhythm3 at earthlink.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 9:59 PM
> To: stephen.guerin at redfish.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied 
> Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Can you guess the source.
> 
>  
> Lets see, patriot act,
> citizen phone taps without knowledge, bank taps without 
> knowledge, Bush manipulation of fear by terror buggy man, 
> electronic voting subversion resulting from subversion of two 
> presidential elections, "privacy get over it" as the creed of 
> the internet and of all the new video, voice, body fluid MEMS 
> sensors that feed into it, world domination by US navy that 
> controls the seas, air and land preferably with autonomous 
> killer robots (none of our men on the battle field), torture 
> as an acceptable activity without shame for a greater good 
> like the Spanish Inquisition but no saving in an American 
> heaven and supported by our president, pictures of our 
> soldiers in coffins forbidden to be taken, no count of the 
> number of Iraqis or Afghanis killed, loss of most Americans 
> of a retirement, of health care when they are old, and 
> loading up with extreme debt, students graduating from 
> college so in debt that all they can do is work for the man, 
> VA that can't figure out after 4 years that head injuries 
> will be a problem and that urban warfare screws with people's 
> heads, movie marquis that trumpet the most horrible tortures 
> and attacks on women, the disappearance of a black led 
> movement for freedom and dignity replaced with woes and 
> gangsta rap belittle the life and voice of their own people a 
> future dominated by the destruction of our sea side cities, 
> heat waves, death of 30 percent of the world's species, 
> Africa and the poor sent to suffering the most, diseases out 
> of the cut down rainforests that we never expected to emerge 
> because people eat bush meat, a plague that is global and is 
> cutting the foundations out of African societies.....  
> 
> These are all things that the Port Heuron Statement could not 
> anticipate but saw the foundations emerging for. 
> Santa Fe probably won't be much of a place to live in 30 
> years and neither will Sacramento.  
> 
> I remember the Port Heruon Statement well having been a 
> member of the SDS.
> We, for a short while, saw the beast naked and what it could 
> do.  We even had a vision of wholeness of what men and women 
> could become. Read the rest of the statement. 
> 
> There were even technohippies that believed that the new 
> computers could really form a basis for communications and 
> analysis--and this was pre-internet.  
> 
> I think the big difference is how subtle all of this has come 
> about without the direct intervention of 1984 like social 
> structures, even right in our faces. 
> 
> At least we could see our soldiers being wounded, sent home 
> in boxes, and watch the people suffer on fire with napalm or 
> being shot in ditches whom we were killing so effectively.
> 
> In my view the vision came true and we are even more asleep 
> than we know.  
> 
> 
> 
> Gus Koehler, Ph.D.
> President and Principal
> Time Structures, Inc.
> 1545 University Ave.
> Sacramento, CA 95825
> 916-564-8683, Fax: 916-564-7895
> Cell: 916-716-1740
> www.timestructures.com
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com 
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:22 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can you guess the source.
> 
> > Does anyone remember the Port Huron Statement?  I'm 
> reaching here, and 
> > I don't remember the date.  Hell, most of you probably weren't even 
> > BORN yet!
> 
> I cheated with Google and still didn't know who it was. Yep, 
> 6 years before I even saw light.
> 
> Thankfully, things have turned out nothing like what was 
> described there ;-)
> 
> -Steve
> 
> 
> 
>