29-01-2010, 04:04 AM
Well, folks, I'm working through this stuff slowly, and it's delicious.
I want to thank Peter for that James Macgregor bit which is juicy, agreeable, and eminently useful when broken into chunks and dropped into discussion threads. Magda, I haven't even gotten to your stuff yet, but I promise I will. Right now, I'm still working through the "198", and I will have to do the listening at a time when audio playback conditions in my domestic arena are more suitable.
Here's a quick question for Bruce: Are all those Force More Powerful books, DVD's and PC games still available? Those tools look mighty intriguing, being an old game-player and game-designer myself. I sense what you were talking about in terms of their potential as group training tools, certainly in a face-to-face setting or a seminar/colloquium but perhaps even online.
I'd like to spend some time talking about this in depth: "Most of the people we will encounter have to learn that they are oppressed, or have to be made to understand that oppression is coming." How? Where? With what tools (written, videos, audio, podcasts, pre-packaged documentaries -- there's a good library here -- )? Some of this is obvious: I guess what I'm asking for is some better understanding of how to approach and enroll someone into that discussion when they clearly are disinterested, unmotivated, zoned out, comfortable amongst the herd, or -- egads! -- involved or complicit. Well, those last ones are hopeless. If we are the wolves, how do we identify those lambs who are open to learning more? How do and where do we drop hints, tags, leaflets, or whatever?
Okay, so moving on... What struck me from within the list of "the 198" that we could work on easily even in a displaced global asynchronous discussion is the development of slogans, caricatures and symbols. How and where they would be used in fairly obvious, but "coining" a powerful phrase can work. Some call it memetic engineering. I'd rather focus on giving someone a good transformative or eye-opening experience; perhaps that's what those Force More Powerful tools do.
Street and guerrilla theater (43 and 178) always appealed to me as being effective. The use of swarming, particularly for items 144, 1622 ff, 175-176 seem to be pretty powerful if well-aimed. Social non-cooperation, withdrawal, renunciation and withholding allegiance are where some are now, but we need to sell more of it.
We clearly have some people who can and like to write, so perhaps we ought to fashion some plays, scripts or videos of mock trials or reverse trials, something easily done in an asynchronous digital world.
I'd envisioned briefly a Post-It notes campaign since apparently the FBI has been ordering up surveillance of journalists with Post-It note requests; maybe we ought to devise a Post-It note campaign to ask for what we want.
The delivery of symbolic objects seems to offer up a lot of promise; someone has already envisioned a campaign involving children, diapers and the Pentagon; it'd probably be more legal if the diapers weren't pre-loaded.
On that note, I'll leave you with these two quotes that have been sitting on my desk, written down from a source at least momentarily forgotten, although my brain is telling me it's connected to a movie made in the Derrick Jensen milieu....
"We've been too busy pretending that the system will willingly undergo some kind of magical transformation....
The task of the activist is not to navigate the systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible; the task is to dismantle the system."
Or at least slow it down and make it think and feel and acknowledge humanity, soul, sanity et al.
More later...
I want to thank Peter for that James Macgregor bit which is juicy, agreeable, and eminently useful when broken into chunks and dropped into discussion threads. Magda, I haven't even gotten to your stuff yet, but I promise I will. Right now, I'm still working through the "198", and I will have to do the listening at a time when audio playback conditions in my domestic arena are more suitable.
Here's a quick question for Bruce: Are all those Force More Powerful books, DVD's and PC games still available? Those tools look mighty intriguing, being an old game-player and game-designer myself. I sense what you were talking about in terms of their potential as group training tools, certainly in a face-to-face setting or a seminar/colloquium but perhaps even online.
I'd like to spend some time talking about this in depth: "Most of the people we will encounter have to learn that they are oppressed, or have to be made to understand that oppression is coming." How? Where? With what tools (written, videos, audio, podcasts, pre-packaged documentaries -- there's a good library here -- )? Some of this is obvious: I guess what I'm asking for is some better understanding of how to approach and enroll someone into that discussion when they clearly are disinterested, unmotivated, zoned out, comfortable amongst the herd, or -- egads! -- involved or complicit. Well, those last ones are hopeless. If we are the wolves, how do we identify those lambs who are open to learning more? How do and where do we drop hints, tags, leaflets, or whatever?
Okay, so moving on... What struck me from within the list of "the 198" that we could work on easily even in a displaced global asynchronous discussion is the development of slogans, caricatures and symbols. How and where they would be used in fairly obvious, but "coining" a powerful phrase can work. Some call it memetic engineering. I'd rather focus on giving someone a good transformative or eye-opening experience; perhaps that's what those Force More Powerful tools do.
Street and guerrilla theater (43 and 178) always appealed to me as being effective. The use of swarming, particularly for items 144, 1622 ff, 175-176 seem to be pretty powerful if well-aimed. Social non-cooperation, withdrawal, renunciation and withholding allegiance are where some are now, but we need to sell more of it.
We clearly have some people who can and like to write, so perhaps we ought to fashion some plays, scripts or videos of mock trials or reverse trials, something easily done in an asynchronous digital world.
I'd envisioned briefly a Post-It notes campaign since apparently the FBI has been ordering up surveillance of journalists with Post-It note requests; maybe we ought to devise a Post-It note campaign to ask for what we want.
The delivery of symbolic objects seems to offer up a lot of promise; someone has already envisioned a campaign involving children, diapers and the Pentagon; it'd probably be more legal if the diapers weren't pre-loaded.
On that note, I'll leave you with these two quotes that have been sitting on my desk, written down from a source at least momentarily forgotten, although my brain is telling me it's connected to a movie made in the Derrick Jensen milieu....
"We've been too busy pretending that the system will willingly undergo some kind of magical transformation....
The task of the activist is not to navigate the systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible; the task is to dismantle the system."
Or at least slow it down and make it think and feel and acknowledge humanity, soul, sanity et al.
More later...
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"