look at your own life. at the age of 15, you couldn't have possibly imagined the life you are living today. Had you gone by the technology available at the time, you surely never would have imagined that you'd write a blog, have 1000s of "friends" on facebook, and write rapturously about your rounded corners and drop shadowed iBook. You probably never would have laid out plans for having a kid just four years ago.
At fifteen, I wanted to work the pit on the stock market floor. I imagined I wouldn't get married until my mid-thirties and have a kid in my late 30s. I dreamed of skirted suits and briefcases; escape from podunk and life at Boston University where I'd been accepted.
Had you or I build a blueprint for the life we imagined, you probably never would have met Liza or had Ivan = and I never would have known you or anyone on this list, more than likely.
It's not just that it's unpredictable, it's that planning things out in the detailed way people expect --- like those dudes you don't like but Gar does -- puts too many restrictions on your ability to think on the ground, quickly, and adapt to exigencies.
You can speak in generalities, but the kind of detail most people ask for is more like: HOw areyou going to organized government, the justice system, food production, etc. etc. why should we plan that out when we have no idea what the facts on the ground will be during a revolution?
At 02:22 PM 2/13/2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
>I can understand the position that you could never describe in
>operating-manual detail what a socialist society of the future might
>look like. But you have to have some ideas to guide you in the right
>direction in doing politics today, no? There's a way in which
>revolutionary socialists imagine some sort of Rapture, in which
>everything is transformed through some magical intervention. But
>that's not the way we're likely to get there. It's going to be by
>messing with existing institutions and changing them in a desirable
>direction. Presumably one's idea of what's desirable is informed by a
>set of principles that point to some better, socialist future.
>Otherwise, what are you supposed to do, just hang back and wait
>hopefully?
>
>Doug
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)