[p2p-research] Fwd: ... when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their entire society

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:19 AM
Subject: ... when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented
their entire society
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


*
Hi Michel,

Reading the following excerpt reminded me of
 some emails ( and video ) in which you put p2p in a historical perspective
of various organizational developments...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee#Views *
*
*
*" With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of
each in terms of challenge-and-response. Civilizations arose in response to
some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when "creative minorities"
devised solutions that reoriented their entire society. Challenges and
responses were physical, as when the **Sumerians* <http://wiki/Sumer>*
exploited
the intractable swamps of southern **Iraq* <http://wiki/Iraq>* by organizing
the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale
irrigation projects; or social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the
chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a
single religious community. When a civilization responds to challenges, it
grows. Civilisations declined when their leaders stopped responding
creatively, and the civilisations then sank owing to nationalism,
militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority (see
**mimesis*<http://wiki/Mimesis>
*). Toynbee argued that "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." For
Toynbee, civilizations were not intangible or unalterable machines but a
network of social relationships within the border and therefore subject to
both wise and unwise decisions they made. "*



-- 
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http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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