On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >I'm curious - let's suppose the answer to your question is no. Suppose
> >that along with high tech comes statist and hierarchical societies. And
> >suppose egalitarianism requires a much simpler society, one which cannot
> >produce these types of widgets. Which would you choose to live in?
> >
> >This might be a false choice, but the historical evidence suggests that it
> >isn't. Anyway, I'm interested in how you'd answer your own question.
>
> I'm hoping that complexity could come without authoritarianism and
> hierarchy. I would not like to live in a "simpler" society, if that
> meant no antibiotics or fiber optics. So, I guess I'm trying to evade
> the forced binary, though I really wonder if I can.
>
> Doug
>
This is kind of a silly thought exercise: of course people socialized into certain specific forms of material and nonmaterial culture prefer them to other forms! If we grew up in a society without fiber optics, we wouldn't miss them much, would we?
People "want" and even "need" what the existing social relations make possible; thus it doesn't matter much what people socialized into our hypercapitalist culture prefer. In any case, it shouldn't limit our imaginations about how social relations can be organized (how's that for dodging the binary?).
Miles