Participatory Spirituality for the 21st Century
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I have listened with interest to a few things on the news but haven't sufficiently informed myself yet on this issue, so I've been keeping silent in this discussion so far. I'll check out some of the discussions and articles you've highlighted later this evening. At the moment, my (slightly paranoid) suspicion is that Wikileaks' tactics will end up, not (idealistically) inspiring more transparency in world governments, but leading to greater secrecy and perhaps even tightened policing and control of the internet. Perhaps indirectly, and in the long run, they will have a positive effect, just by highlighting these issues and initiating a worldwide discussion; but more directly and immediately, I expect we might instead experience unpleasant reactionary responses and increased opacity.
I am not sure myself, Balder. You may be right. I am also a bit nervous about this. But it may also be that they only expose a reactonarity that is there anyway, and that we now just sees it more clearly. And that they behave the way they behave anyway. The hope would be that people would start to elect more concious and moral people. But so far it seems that most people in Norway are still supporting the same kind of people. And it is still seemingly going in a more conservative direction. The Norwegian Labour-party, which is in powe for the moment, are seemingly going to the right, and it looks like the conservatives will win next time, together with the more populistic far right. I still have a hope that Wikileaks, together with å hopefully greater ecological awareness may bring in more green thinking. People like Eva Joly may point in that direction, but it is hard to be sure.
Robb Smith is infected with kennilingus, the remarkable ability to parrot Wilber verbatim without a hint of independent thought. Said condition is a requirement of being part of the "brand." Remember though that this movement now goes far beyond (i.e., transcends) that one brand. Mark Edwards blogged on the wishy-washy character of this brand of integral in relation to climate change. It also applies to politics and every other domain. He said:
"Should metatheorising try to include all views even when those views may be endangering human sustainability? Is the task of integration endangering the responsibility to advocate particualr visions? And what does that mean for the goals and methods of doing metatheory? Are our ideals of being 'integral' rendering us impotent to present a particular way forward? Is the maxim of 'true but partial' reducing integral visions to 'balanced and irrelevant'"?
Uh-huh. Nothing like a sophisticated mindmap to dismiss inconvenient truths. Again, Integral is stabilizing a failing system, indirectly supporting and enabling the status quo. I feel very helpless about this. this is so... perverted. How can something with so good initial intentions can get so twisted and confused??? God help us all.
Hi All
To be fair to Robb, he does go into much greater detail on his facebook page about his own thinking with regard to wikileaks. However, I find even these fuller expositions well short of convincing. I think he needs to do more research and see what kind of things Assange is helping blow the whistle on - he kind of admits this himself.
I think I caught a glimpse of Assange's possible shadow(?) aspects in an interview aired on John Stewart's Daily Show when he was asked about his motivations and he said something along the lines of (and I paraphrase here, but it's a close paraphrase) - "I get a deep personal satisfaction out of crushing bastards".
Wow, OK. At least you're honest Julian!
But to me this phrase simply points to a righteous green anger. For too long most people in the UK have been simply shrugging their shoulders at outrageous behaviour by the people in positions of power. It was only through the brave actions of a whistleblower that we found out our MPs were using tax payers money to clean out their moats - I kid you not! After huge amounts of righteous public anger, the law was changed. All down to the this act of whistleblowing, and it would have happened sooner if there had been a channel for other whistleblowers like WL around earlier in the decade.
Personally I think WL is an example of extremely healthy and brave green. The world needs more of it, not less. Many people in power abuse that power on a regular basis. If WL is one way to regulate it then let's use it.
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