you’re supposed to be chronically predisposed to facing up to reality. chronically. you have all the ecology here. all the ecology, to facilitate concentration — you don’t have to go to the cleaners, you don’t have to go to an outside fast food restaurant, you got japanese toilets that take care of everything — you know — so you concentrate. you don’t have hierarchical offices. you have space, you have light.
to free the mind.
but the mind is the greatest source of deception — if you’re not careful.
even if you think you’re being creative, you can be creative in a — smaller and smaller — more and more specialized — whirlpool.
but the thing that keeps you going, in a larger frame of reference, is saying,
- “what are the main problems in the world?
- “and what can we do, beyond providing easy retrieval of information?
- “and how are our policies creating new problems?”
privacy, for example. how are they creating new problems. how do you have to deal with communist china, on tiananmen square, for example. [...]
you have unleashed enormous freedom to think dynamically, creatively, independently. but the forces of power will come on you, the way they’ve come on all creative thinkers, if you’re not careful.
and if you do break through, and what you’ve created becomes the conventional wisdom, guess what? that may be the very biggest obstacle… to the next breakthrough.
i don’t know if you should, in the capra form, call this “mr nader goes to techie central,” or “mr/s google goes to other-washington,” or what. it’s about an hour long.
it’s accompanied by a youtube inteview.
and i got it straight from the dark horse’s mouth.
ps. “knowledge for what?”
pps. fun sand to throw in the face of your local bloviating wingnut. tell him you agree with stopping judicial activism, and you want to start with 1886, and the supreme court interpreting fictitious entities — corporations — into actual personhood, since that’s obviously one of the most influential and corrosive acts of judicial overreach in american history. tell him, if stripping property of rights meant for people is off the table, or is anywhere else than top and center of the pile, then the campaign against “legislating from the bench” is plutocratic and partisan bullshit.
ppps. of course, “to know and not to do, is not to know,” he said, but the concept he most emphasized was ____-__________.
pppps. what keeps coming back to mind.
Q: so given your frustration, then, with modern american politics, why would you want to be president? you’ve accomplished so much outside the white house — outside congress — why would you want to enter?
A: because i interpret the constitution as liberating the political and civic energies of the american people.
one of the government’s roles is not just to set standards and distribute services and build the public works, it’s also to affirmatively liberate the civic and political energies of the people, by providing ways, very easy ways, for all kinds of people to band together:
- insurance policy holders, let’s say, in the health insurance area;
- taxpayers, to deal with the grotesque tax system in this country;
- renters, banding together;
there are thousands of groups that would band together to redress the imbalance of power in this country, vis-à-vis insensitive government and giant corporations, that— there’s no facilities to do so.
we talk a lot about rights and remedies — i mean, a right without a remedy is a weak right. you have a right to go to court if someone wrongfully injures you. you should have a remedy. you should be able to get damages, etc, provide evidence.
but i would go one step further: a right without a remedy, without facilities to organize and deal with preventive action, and foreseeing and forestalling injustice and problems — there’s not much of a right without a facility.
labor unions are a facility. collective bargaining, for example, in the industrial age. we don’t have many facilities. and the real disappointment is the internet has been lousy in that respect.
This guy is the pit of the pit of the pit of the pits.
not to worry, he’s only on the internet. he’s not on reality TV.
and he’s on the internet because the internet wants all of humanity poor and living in the dark ages without the comforts and conveniences. that’s why there are so many futurist websites devoted to making your own soap and why google interviews ralph nader.
whereas everyone on television knows the only path to inevitable prosperity is via the broken promises of the past finally being kept because we all got perfect grades and had a perfect attendance record.
even so, you might get a cookie or a trip to the zoo, instead of fair pay and an un-venus-like future, hard to say. promises are more an art than a science.
So long as he sticks to his own little corner of the pit of the pit of the pit of the pits - I’m OK with him.
But if acts on any of his ideas on how to bring American down, I will be first one to heckle him. Yes, I will be the first - the very first - yes, you heard me right - the first.
And unless the Moslem Crusader and his paster and The Wife #2 had better come out clearly and categorically against Cuban plans to invade America. If they are not willing to do that, well then that shows the kind of UNAmericans they all are.
President McCain has proved himself an excellent statesman and man of integrity. The Moslem Crusader and The Wife has yet to do this…
his proof is as made of pudding as his brain.
(i’m ready to defend against the cuban invasion. i’ve enrolled for dance lessons.)
Forget Cuban Invasion, we got State Funded TV of our sworn you know what invading our living rooms!
Why do we tolerate all this?
I mean I understand that our Western Civilization is highly tolerant - but still are there no limits?
This is the thing, they never tolerate our freedom loving values -they censor everything - but we allow everything from their values - we even got some of their people living in our midst. Why?
more pudding — how sad that i’m a zombie flower and eat but fresh, young minds
well we had some good news today, The Wife soundly defeated The Moslem Crusader and his anti-American companions today.
This will help get America back on track.
good news is the political parties are sick of this shit and want us to vote next week so we can get on with the business at hand which is scarily huge
True president mccain has a lot of work to do
picking out the cabinets for his retirement home, you mean
The race for the nomination is wide open, you me anyone could be the nominee.
But the race for the presidency was closed back in the ice cold snowy days of January when President McCain was formally chosen as the President of The Free World USA USA USA.
so he’s the incumbent? why hasn’t he started bringing home the troops?
No President McCain is not the incumbent, he is the President. The troops will come home once we have achieved our objectives and consilidated our victory.