[*BCM*] Be the change you want to see in the world.

[Matthew Arcidy]

Is harris cyclery really good?  That guy claims to be all about fixed 
gears and single speeds and stuff, but is it worth the trip out there?


On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, David Hammond wrote:

> Thank you, Turtle, and that brings me back to the SUV question.
> 
> Sometime in the last 500 years, as the influence of the Holy Roman Empire
> waned, technology became TECHNOLOGY. A "clerical" class arose to administer
> the tenets and liturgies of TECHNOLOGY, and assure the propagation and
> expansion of its belief systems over time.  This new human secular religion
> had one overarching commandment, "Thou Shalt Progress." At precisely this
> point in history, the philosophical notions of "free-market" capitalism were
> coalescing into actual human socio-economic behaviors, and the convergence
> produced the 2nd Great Punctuation. (The 1st Great Punctuation was the
> discovery of animal domestication.  All this from Stephen Jay Gould)
> 
> "Free-Market" capitalism, bound together with the religio-cultural belief in
> TECHNOCRACY, allowed unbridled expansion of a single human culture for the
> first time in human history.  We see the results all around us today.  The
> Biosphere of the Earth is dying because of those results.
> 
> If TECHNOCRACY (the worship of technology) helped get us to where we are,
> HOW IN GAIA'S NAME CAN WE EXPECT TECHNOLOGY TO FIX THINGS?  A possible
> answer is: new technology isn't a silver bullet, it's an enabler of cultural
> change.  This implies a primary desire that cultural change happen.  In the
> spirit of "....do not adopt your enemy's tactics.....", we have no power to
> counter the deafening propaganda of World Techno-Capitalism (try shouting in
> the presence of a jet engine); what we CAN do is turn it back on itself.
> HOW?
> 
> 1) Creating the Cognitive Disjunct: Flyers duct-taped to SUV windows, same
> text both sides, will be read, because duct tape takes a while to remove
> from a windshield. The "victim" will have significant anger linked to a
> radically contrary message.  Human psychology 101 - the message will remain
> long after the anger is sublimated. As the truth of the message emerges
> multiple times in multiple contexts (price of gas, traffic jams, etc), its
> value will begin to take mind-space.
> 
> This only a single example of hundreds of tactics that "propaganda-busters"
> can assume.
> 
> 2) Offering the Culture-Change Enabler: Messages taped to the windshield;
> "Shame, shame, shame" chants from cyclist groups; the escalating price of
> fuel, and (Here's where BCM has NO input ... yet ...) burgeoning Print
> evidence of Rapid Climate Disintegration; the street presence of bicycles
> (old fashioned and new) doing car-like things; folks walking with big burlap
> shopping bags in each hand; Folks walking into Cumby's and Tedeschi's and
> saying, "Be like Super Stop-&-Shop".....
> 
> 3) Bringing All The Cultural Enablers Back Home - Establish new,
> locally-oriented businesses to enable the Cultural Change with products and
> services.  To be most effective in reinforcing the cultural change, and to
> rely least on unfavorable and chancy external economic forces, these
> businesses, to the utmost extent possible, should source and sell locally.
> All businesses aligned with the Eco-Millennium paradigm should organize or
> re-organize themselves as democratic workers' cooperatives; and Workers's
> Guilds that protect their members from both perfidious or benign failures in
> the cooperatives, and have an interest in the organization of the
> biographical community, should organize orthogonally w/r/t the worker's
> cooperatives.
> 
> 4) Government of the local Bio-Economic community resulting from this
> paradigm shift MUST avoid both direct and representative democracy.  Both
> processes are frought with error and corruptibility.  The interests of
> Worker - Citizens (gathered in open brainstorming sessions), and the
> interests of Guilds (gathered likewise), can be set orthogonally, with
> intersections affirmed and disjuncts subject to Consensus Voting, in which a
> 1st and a 2nd place result each find legitimacy in a strict rule setting.
> 
> Look at what we walk away from: Media propaganda; "BIGGER IS BETTER", "More
> is better", "Watch TV For The Truth"; "There's No Other Way".
> 
> Sounds like an ideal lifestyle to me.....
> 
> WHO can we win over???
> 
> Dave Hammond
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bostoncriticalmass-bounces at bostoncriticalmass.org
> [mailto:bostoncriticalmass-bounces at bostoncriticalmass.org] On Behalf Of
> turtle
> Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 4:57 PM
> To: Boston Critical Mass
> Subject: RE: [*BCM*] Be the change you want to see in the world.
> 
> 
> 
> Boston Critical Mass <list at bostoncriticalmass.org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Is there a bike forum somewhere around here....?
> >    
> >   - Jon
> 
> Well, while the social atmosphere in Iraq may not seem to have much to
> do with bicycling in Boston, it does.  We don't bike in a vacuum.  We
> bike in the world.  And what's going on in the world, especially
> relating to people's hopes and fears, effects absolutely everything. 
> When people are afraid, they act defensively and selfishly.  On the
> roads, in their homes, and in the voting booth.  
> 
> Remember the Butterfly Effect?  The idea of chaos theory is that a
> butterfly could flap it's wings in China and cause a hurricane in
> Kansas.  Everything relates to everything else.  
> 
> So if you really want a better place to bike, you need to look at what
> is making that place, and the people who inhabit it, so antisocial.
> 
> Certainly, as I mentioned before, there are some people who, for one
> reason or another, honestly want to fight as it gives them a sense of
> purpose and power.  But the vast majority of people, as Anarchist
> Judaism also noticed, really don't want war, and just want to live a
> decent, peaceful life.  Those normal folks are the ones who get sucked
> into war through fear.  And those are the people we can work with and
> help - to be more conscientious roadusers, as well as more pro-social
> people in general.
> 
> -Turtle
> 
> ----------------------------------
> "One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we
> seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.  We must
> pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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> 
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-- 
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(1)	Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2)	Great generals are forewarned.
(3)	Forewarned is forearmed.
(4)	Four is an even number.
(5)	Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6)	The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.

Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
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