@rhinogrey,
rhinogrey wrote:Well put, well put.
How do you envision the reform? Is a sudden mass paradigm shift possible, or will it be a gradual re-structuring? The latter may be the better way to come up with organic solutions.
Every form is a paradigm, and you cannot expect those who have made their way to the top of one form to ever imagine living without it... So change from the top is impossible...And Jefferson was right in the Declaration of Independence...People grow accustomed to their form, and their natural conservatism resists any change...It is only when people can no longer avoid change, when the force for progress becomes irresistable that old forms are swept away, with haste and violence... But those people resisting change are violent too, and they usually have the army and the heavy weapons...If we were to change America tomorow, and out of necessity became socialist, is it possible to believe the right would not nuke us???I think the ideological purests on the other side of change are more dangerous than a loaded gun...I won't do everything to have change because I think it inevitable... But those people hanging onto the past will do anything, and one only has to look at what they have already done to know this is true.
---------- Post added at 07:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 AM ----------
hue-man wrote:I think that the latter would be the better way, but I'm not so sure if that's how it will happen. All of this seems to reflect the prediction that Karl Marx made about emerging technologies and the capitalist system. It may be a combination of violent revolutions and/or democratic demands for reform.
The violence has long past started...Reactionary violence is real old in this country; but in this latest and let us hope, last failure of form, the poor are shooting first, and fighting the cops to the death...If the government tries to rein in guns they will find they are making enemies of a lot of people on the right who absolutely refuse to be made vicitims, even while, by the time a gun would have any use it is already too late... But, if people fight back rather than going to jail or being thrown into the street, then you know society is ready for change...Certainly, if people are willing to kill their own children they are distressed.... Too many are distressed, and the government and economy as forms cannot address their basic needs... And it cannot fix itself... But the change we need does not demand violence, but a simple understanding... People change their forms all the time, and history, and even the whole story of mankind is the story of changing form... We only have to give up on these forms of ours, remove our trust with out which no form can survive, and begin working on new forms, that will work for us, and in which we can invest our trust...It does not have to be violent; but reactions always are...