[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

[Ryan Lanham]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 9:11 PM, j.martin.pedersen <
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
> The real in the struggle lies in solidarity and mutual recognition
> between groups of the oppressed and between a network of the oppressed
> and those in the middle, who can and are able to take a side. That would
> be us. You and me and everyone else on this list. We can show
> solidarity.
>

It's good to believe in something and to use yourself toward some purpose.
I doubt there is one purpose or one set of allied good purposes.  The
trouble with goodness is that it must be collaborative to make any moral
sense.  No one can have the right ideas individually because the right ideas
are necessarily dialogical, situational and path dependent.  Otherwise, we'd
know them and all move toward them.  In other words, Fanon, Marx, Jesus,
Buddha or the Cato Institute or anyone else can't help you.  The answers are
out there in the practice of living, not in the reflections of people who
lived in another time.

You are right to object to fetishes about objects.  But those are not
"technology."  They are instruments.  Technology is the capacity to solve
issues...not an instrument or device in itself.  When people are armed with
skills and capacities and collaborate in civil societies, then the prospect
exists of real progress toward something we all mostly recognize as superior
within a sphere.  That's what, say, the Danes have achieved.  They have
found how to collaborate together to form a worldview that works for Danes.
Does it work for people from Texas?  Probably not.  The Danes themselves
must set their rules for who can collaborate with them...who they will work
with.  At a global level, certain problems demand collaboration across a
broad spectrum of entities.  This is indeed very difficult to
achieve...maybe impossible.  But it cannot be forced and it cannot be
demanded or sloganed.  It simply has to evolve into crises and then
respond.  Otherwise, someone must seize power.

The Economist magazine has an excellent article in the last issue or two
about Chavez destroying Venezuela.  It comes from a point of view.  Indeed,
Matt Ridley was once an editor for the Economist...and a good one in my
view.  But the article is worth reading whether you agree with them or not.
I sometimes don't agree with them.  In this case, I think they are spot on.
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