[p2p-research] Google celebrates Mahatma Gandhi's 140th birthday; related sci-fi

[Nathan Cravens]

Care for yourself and you will care for me
If individuals are unable to care for themselves they are not likely to
treat others well. Therefore, meet individual needs by making them
manageable by small self selected groups, so many can remain unaware of how
the processes work if they so choose, near the point of need as
appropriate, beginning with the simplicity of the village toward the
complexity of the megacities of the world, while working to make these
habitats easily observable on the web. This vision, better explored
and applied by each of us, put to practice, is then protected from special
interest or proprietary monopolization and narrow professional
specialization by ensuring everyone access to how the world around them
works to meet the most basic needs onward, thus increasing the ability to
automate any function when it is known better how it works, and without
special interest insisting exchange trade and the veil of ignorance and
private property that must be achieved to continue such compromises. Most
everyone has the ability to revise these means if they are less than
adequate. Today that takes some work and imagination, but it is more than
possible.

He knew
Gandhi, even immersed in the overwhelming socialization of vast webs of
ignorance and tyranny, understood these ideas well, even if he was
distracted with vast arrays of autocratic protocol. Its unfortunate to our
history that his variety of other methods to achieve swadeshi or self
reliance as he lived them overshadowed the underlying, most fundamental
cause of civil rights: lack of care giving knowledge and the material rights
to meet most basic needs.

We have the ability to apply what works, better than ever
With affordable computers and the web they have helped to surface, after
endless hours of explored curiosity, we now have the ability to observe how
human operations work in a way that's easy to understand. It only makes
common sense to begin with basic needs: air, food, water, shelter, clothing,
and the ability to nurture what really matters to each of us. There's more
than enough adequate knowledge on basic needs on the web today, at least in
terms of the self sufficient village model, it is just a matter of
aggregating all manufacturing knowledge, including basic needs, to a single
point of web access and aggregating materials locations to that same point
to viably produce the outcome.

Legos and Wikipedia
We already have interface cues from Lego model instructions and Wikipedia's
political process on how to manage common property which can provide a rough
template to apply to design, manufacturing, architecture, and so on. Lego
instructions are simple: block A goes to block B, add block C, then block D,
and so on, until the desired outcome is achieved. Tyranny of the one-way
"Lego model" is avoided when we observe how Wikipedia works. (unlike Lego
instructions which are simple problem to solve, Wikipedia could use some
improvement, like in terms of better authenticating accuracies and
fallacies) So if a previous method is not in place you do not like how it is
going, can change it without affecting others that prefer a different
setting; but in doing so; the process must either be fully automated, self
maintainable, or have a community to support its complexity where it cannot
otherwise automate or self maintain.

The Challenge
This means in some cases, even if a preferable option is desired: like
having watermelons instead of apples: if no one in the community
wants watermelons but you, it is then up to you to grow watermelons yourself
and for the community to support your knowledge and the materials and
spacial rights for such novelty. We assume here that all the community must
do to support this is by not restricting access to how to
grow watermelons and the space, soil, sun, and water to nurture them; with
room as you decide for a few more in an attempt to persuade the community by
gifting the fruit of your harvest during a potluck. That approach may not be
achieved for every known artifact, infrastructure, or outcome world-wide,
but we can assume its safe to say individual choice in terms of the basic
needs outlined above can be done: we have Gandhi's self sufficient community
and many others like it to prove this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi
""
Gandhi lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential
community<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabarmati_Ashram> and
wore the traditional Indian *dhoti <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhoti>* and
shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a
*charkha<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charkha>
*. He ate simple vegetarian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian> food,
""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#Champaran_and_Kheda
""
Now in the throes of a devastating famine, the British levied a tax which
they insisted on increasing. The situation was desperate. In
Kheda<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kheda>
in Gujarat <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat>, the problem was the same.
Gandhi established an ashram <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashram> there,
organizing scores of his veteran supporters and fresh volunteers from the
region. He organized a detailed study and survey of the villages, accounting
for the atrocities and terrible episodes of suffering, including the general
state of degenerate living. Building on the confidence of villagers, he
began leading the clean-up of villages, building of schools and hospitals
""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#Non-cooperation
""
Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the *swadeshi*
policy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadeshi_movement> —
the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this
was his advocacy that *khadi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadi>*(homespun
cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi
exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day
spinning *khadi* in support of the independence
movement.[19]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#cite_note-18>
This
was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication to weed out the
unwilling and ambitious, and to include women in the movement at a time when
many thought that such activities were not respectable activities for women.
In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged the people to
boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to resign from
government employment, and to forsake British titles and
honours<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_honours_system>
.
""

Pretty pictures
http://groups.google.com/group/media-ecology-workshop-09/files


On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> Just an archival note that today is Mahatma Gandhi's 140th birthday, and
> Google has changed its logo in his honor, which goes to this search:
>  http://www.google.com/search?q=gandhi&ct=gandhi09&oi=ddle
>
> I don't know how to make a permanent link to the image currently here:
>  http://www.google.com/
>
> From a Wikipedia article on Gandhi's life, quoting some parts of relevance
> to issues discussed on the p2p list:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi
> """
> Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the
> pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian
> independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha -- resistance to
> tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total
> non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for
> civil rights and freedom across the world. ... After assuming leadership of
> the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to
> ease poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic amity, end
> untouchability, and increase economic self-reliance ...
>  As a practitioner of ahimsa, he swore to speak the truth and advocated
> that others do the same. Gandhi lived modestly in a self-sufficient
> residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven
> with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and
> also undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and social
> protest. ...
>  Gandhi was a self-described philosophical anarchist, and his vision of
> India meant India without an underlying government. He once said that "the
> ideally nonviolent state would be an ordered anarchy." While political
> systems are largely hierarchical, with each layer of authority from the
> individual to the central government have increasing levels of authority
> over the layer below, Gandhi believed that society should be the exact
> opposite, where nothing is done without the consent of anyone, down to the
> individual. His idea was that true self-rule in a country means that every
> person rules his or herself and that there is no state which enforces laws
> upon the people. This would be achieved over time with nonviolent conflict
> mediation, as power is divested from layers of hierarchical authorities,
> ultimately to the individual, which would come to embody the ethic of
> nonviolence. Rather than a system where rights are enforced by a higher
> authority, people are self-governed by mutual responsibilities. On returning
> from South Africa, when Gandhi received a letter asking for his
> participation in writing a world charter for human rights, he responded
> saying, "in my experience, it is far more important to have a charter for
> human duties." A free India for him meant the existence of thousands of self
> sufficient small communities (an idea possibly from Tolstoy) who rule
> themselves without hindering others. It did not mean merely transferring a
> British established administrative structure into Indian hands which he said
> was just making Hindustan into Englistan. He wanted to ultimately dissolve
> the Congress Party after independence and establish a system of direct
> democracy in India, having no faith in the British styled parliamentary
> system.
> """
>
> If Gandhi were around today, I would ask him what he thought of Manuel de
> Landa's points about the need for a balance between meshworks and
> hierarchies, which it seems to me much of Gandhi life might have involved in
> practice:
>  http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
> "To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding
> meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to
> make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because,
> as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real
> life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot
> be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. ...
> But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but diversity
> articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution.
> After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do
> not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property
> that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence,
> demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to
> all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude towards
> the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of
> reality itself seems to call for."
>
> This sci-fi story has a section on a world run by Gandhian-inspired ideas:
>  "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell
>  http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
>
> James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" has related themes as well, and
> he has some amusing comments on that:
>  "Summary of Voyage From Yesteryear by the author"
>  http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
> """
>  ...
>  In the meantime, Earth went through a dodgy period, but managed in the end
> to muddle through. The fun begins when a generation ship housing a
> population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the
> repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period.
> The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for
> bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power
> structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the
> promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious
> presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails,
> armed military force to compel. But what happens when these methods
> encounter a population that has never been conditioned to respond?
>  The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I
> received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an
> underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the
> publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name
> there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would
> be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that
> time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern
> Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there,
> apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an
> oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later,
> they were all doing it!
>  So I claim the credit. Forget all the tales you hear about the
> contradictions of Marxist economics, truth getting past the Iron Curtain via
> satellites and the Internet, Reagan's Star Wars program, and so on.
>  In 1989, after communist rule and the Wall came tumbling down, the annual
> European s.f. convention was held at Krakow in southern Poland, and I was
> invited as one of the Western guests. On the way home, I spent a few days in
> Warsaw and at last was able to meet the people who had published that
> original magazine. "Well, fine," I told them. "Finally, I can draw out all
> that money that you stashed away for me back in '85. One of the remarked-too
> hastily--that "It was worth something when we put it in the bank." (There
> had been two years of ruinous inflation following the outgoing regime's
> policy of sabotaging everything in order to be able to prove that the new
> ideas wouldn't work.) I said, resignedly, "Okay. How much are we talking
> about?" The one with a calculator tapped away for a few seconds, looked
> embarrassed, and announced, "Eight dollars and forty-three cents." So after
> the U.S. had spent trillions on its B-52s, Trident submarines, NSA, CIA, and
> the rest--all of it.
> """
>
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>
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