(no subject)
Oct. 21st, 2006 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_foxno_moon requested a tirade. I oblige.Premise One: Cultural Design is Necessary
a - Justice
We can see that our culture has many areas in which it could be improved. I don't just mean unpleasantries (i.e. gravity 24/7). I mean that other cultures have managed to better mitigate certain problems common to ours without causing obviously greater harm in the process, thus proving that desirable alternatives exist. For other problems we can not only see alternatives but enact on a small scale.
b - Inevitabliity and Opportunity.
Cultures change over time. Something must be driving this change. One merely has to identify the sources of change, and adjust them.
c - Catastrophic Alternatives
if we don't come up with something more stable in the long-term, we're going to end up with a new culture anyway - albeit one in the middle of an economic, environmental, psycho-spiritual and social collapse
Premise Two: Cultural Design is Possible
a - To "Design" is not to "Create out of Nothing"
I've been told that you "can't plan culture like you'd plan a building," but I fail to see why not. An architectural firm does not create a building, they 'merely' come up with both literal and figurative blueprints that guide the action of dozens or thousands of labourers, and which shape the lives of those who interact with the structure in question.
b - It's Being Done.
People consciously design and implement cultural plans every day: government; religion; activism. What I proprose is no different, only that it falls outside of these conventional categories
Premise Three: Cultural Design is safe
a - Safe is Relative
How safe is safe? As with solving problems, we should confine ourselves to isues of opportunity cost. The only question is, "Is the new more or less risky than the other alternatives?" Is alternative cultural element A more, or less risky than the status-quo element, or alternative B or C?
b - Safe is Doable
Safety or risk is not some automatic by-product of cultural change, but one that is shaped by the the old culture, the new, and the interaction between the two. Maoism is a violent, revolutionary, simplifying, wholly material, collective and uncompromising phlosophy, and more importantly, it sees change as violent and tumutuous. In coming to be both implemented and reinforced, it created the kind of change one might very well expect. Confer: Peoples' Temple, Third Reich, Pol Pot, Macedonia, The Khans. The solution then is to design a culture that will create the kind of change you can live within, in several senses of the word "live."
Premise Four: Cultural Design is Rewarding
a - Personal Growth
The process of analyzing a culture (typically, one's own), seeing how its problems function, how change occurs, and how to solve problems through change encourages one to be mindful and active, while providing one with a better grasp of how to gain and use power.
b - Empowerment and Resolution
Be a part of trying to solve something provides one with a source of personal definition (you go from "I am a person who dislikes x" to "I am a person who is trying to solve x"). Actually solving it? Much better. Faling to solve it? The effort remains a part of oneself.
This being the case, we are left with the question, "what needs to be solved, and how?"
a - Justice
We can see that our culture has many areas in which it could be improved. I don't just mean unpleasantries (i.e. gravity 24/7). I mean that other cultures have managed to better mitigate certain problems common to ours without causing obviously greater harm in the process, thus proving that desirable alternatives exist. For other problems we can not only see alternatives but enact on a small scale.
b - Inevitabliity and Opportunity.
Cultures change over time. Something must be driving this change. One merely has to identify the sources of change, and adjust them.
c - Catastrophic Alternatives
if we don't come up with something more stable in the long-term, we're going to end up with a new culture anyway - albeit one in the middle of an economic, environmental, psycho-spiritual and social collapse
Premise Two: Cultural Design is Possible
a - To "Design" is not to "Create out of Nothing"
I've been told that you "can't plan culture like you'd plan a building," but I fail to see why not. An architectural firm does not create a building, they 'merely' come up with both literal and figurative blueprints that guide the action of dozens or thousands of labourers, and which shape the lives of those who interact with the structure in question.
b - It's Being Done.
People consciously design and implement cultural plans every day: government; religion; activism. What I proprose is no different, only that it falls outside of these conventional categories
Premise Three: Cultural Design is safe
a - Safe is Relative
How safe is safe? As with solving problems, we should confine ourselves to isues of opportunity cost. The only question is, "Is the new more or less risky than the other alternatives?" Is alternative cultural element A more, or less risky than the status-quo element, or alternative B or C?
b - Safe is Doable
Safety or risk is not some automatic by-product of cultural change, but one that is shaped by the the old culture, the new, and the interaction between the two. Maoism is a violent, revolutionary, simplifying, wholly material, collective and uncompromising phlosophy, and more importantly, it sees change as violent and tumutuous. In coming to be both implemented and reinforced, it created the kind of change one might very well expect. Confer: Peoples' Temple, Third Reich, Pol Pot, Macedonia, The Khans. The solution then is to design a culture that will create the kind of change you can live within, in several senses of the word "live."
Premise Four: Cultural Design is Rewarding
a - Personal Growth
The process of analyzing a culture (typically, one's own), seeing how its problems function, how change occurs, and how to solve problems through change encourages one to be mindful and active, while providing one with a better grasp of how to gain and use power.
b - Empowerment and Resolution
Be a part of trying to solve something provides one with a source of personal definition (you go from "I am a person who dislikes x" to "I am a person who is trying to solve x"). Actually solving it? Much better. Faling to solve it? The effort remains a part of oneself.
This being the case, we are left with the question, "what needs to be solved, and how?"