Discuss: Revolutions per Minute

Rebecca states “The revolution is in part against the very speedup that has made us all busy, distracted, anxious, and unable even to perceive the tenor of our own times.”

YES - we used to pass the time, now in 2008 we spend the time.

I agree - radical transformation is all around.

Change minds to make the old way obsolete. By teaching through action one can puncture the minds of the old ways- showing a new path.

What do I do?
“...you can’t even trust the air you breathe cause Mother Earth wants us all to leave.”
I ride my bike through Fond du Lac, WI with a respitory mask (one of the small hospital covers). People become curious.
Some sort of change to their minds hopefully…

David Serota spoke last night in San Francisco regarding his book,
The Uprising. In his comments, he made the points that California has the eighth largest economy in the world, and change - particularly food politics, climate policies and transportation impact awareness - such as food miles can happen here.
The responsibility is local, and more so in California, since Reagan and Nixon were from here.

Start here, start now, and start small - farmers’ markets and victory gardens. Restaurants and businesses that reflect and embrace your ideals…  patience, love and understanding.

Bear witness, demand accountability, and be honest. That’s a good place to enter, dwell and a proud place to sustain.

I liked most of Solnit’s article, but I disagree with the conclusions. Kurzweil’s writings have convinced me that change will come faster and faster, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it can be good if we get more thoughtful and loving people involved in the steering process (an issue that Kurzweil says too little about). Rapid change is not, in and of itself, the enemy.

Until recent decades, humans were few in number, and our products were biodegradable, so we were not capable of harming the ecosystem. That changed, and a while afterwards we realized it had changed, and so now the “revolutionary” new concept of sustainability has begun to enter our everyday thinking.

People learn a basic truth only rarely. But they unlearn a basic truth even more rarely, so I think there is gradual progress toward enlightenment. To me, the most conspicuous example is the struggle against racism: we’re still not done, but we’re clearly a lot further along now than 200 years ago. The progress is not steady—we get 2 steps forward and one step back—but in the overall trend, I think there is no going back. Of course, we cannot take the trend for granted—we only are making progress because we continue to push—but seeing what progress we have made immunizes me from despair.

Yes, the time for revolution is now. All these issues and events call for action.

I put the word “revolutionary” in quotes. I do not actually advocate revolution. As I understand it, “reform” means “repair the current system,” while “revolution” means “tear down the current system and start over.” The difference is not just a matter of speed. I am in favor of rapid, massive reform, but not revolution. Revolution is less efficient, and seldom successful. Take a look at Russia in 1917 or Cuba in 1956—two well-intentioned revolutions that got taken over by dictatorships. The essential ingredient for success in revolution or reform is widespread *understanding* of what is going on and of how the social system works and how it is rooted in a culture that needs changing, but revolutionaries are more apt to get caught up in punishing oppressors than in changing the culture. The result is that you just replace one oligarchy with another.

The time has come to change not just government, but all of culture and human nature itself. Any change less than that will be superficial and temporary. Lakoff says that the battle between progressives and conservatives is between empathy and authoritarianism. Lerner says that issues, programs, economic policies are not enough; we must look at the arrangement of *meaning* in our lives. I’ve just begun reading Lerner and I’m having difficulty understanding him, but I think he’s probably right.

Make your stand right where you are, there’s no where else to go, or time to get there. Repentence = a revolution in thinking.