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Re: what is worse?



gregory, john, others

> i agree with this, but what do you suppose can be
> done?

quite a lot can be done, although it will be a long slow road which may in
the end not amount to much. stillwe can go on, even if there is no hope of
an ultimate victory...

1. educate yourself
read books. there are thousands of good ones. don't waste time on the
millions of useless ones.
seek out alternative information sources. indymedia.org is one. there are
others. but forget tv.
realise that a thoughtful and questioning attitude will go a long way.

2. implement what you learn.
if you are an artist, then think about how you can channel your art in a
useful way. i would suggest notype and tiln as examples of a movement which
can be productive (although free mp3 distro is not fundamentally different
to tape trading). such endeavours can make us realise that the ways we are
used to thinking come not from ourselves, but from powerful people whose
interests are served if we keep our heads down and think only of the bills,
as john said.

3. educate others
share your new-found insights with friends and family. use news events like
the recent attacks in the US as a reason to talk about other related issues.
(the mass media will never take interest in thoughful and reasoned arguments
which go against their interests, so we need to stop thinking in terms of
mass media. in any case, even if we could make use of a mass media outlet
for progressive views, this still wouldn't amount to real dialogue or
democracy.)

none of this will lead to a "mass insurgence". but small local changes are
usually all that small people can achieve. communications technologies allow
us to connect with like-minded people the world over, yet one shouldn't
forget the power of personal contact.

marc.

-- 
marc hiatt
mark@xxxxxxxxxxxx
soba |||) : http://skyboom.com/soba/
--


> this problem plagues me... i think that there is
> obvious changes which need to be made, and even a fair
> amount of people who seem able to agree that these
> changes must be instated, but how do you go about
> convincing the rest of the people?
....
> there needs to be either some kind of mass insurgence
> of people who want to affect meaningful and reasonable
> changes and who are willing to (perhaps drastically)
> alter their lifestyle in order to accomodate these
> changes, or their needs to be a concentrated group of
> activists who have a novel and positive way of
> attracting the media and sparking the interest of the
> voting public.
....