I want to point Ya'll to this excellent article about the Internet. It's from the Real Change Newspaper. a link and short excerpt:

Gaining the Web but Losing Our Souls, an interview with Jaron Lanier by Robert Alford

Tech pioneer Jaron Lanier says the seemingly liberating new technologies of the computer age are trapping users in a cyber world “that just cheapens everybody.”

I would really like to see people from the various social and environmental justice movements working along more of a unified front.

The root causes of environmental degradation and ecological unsustainability; imperialism and wars of aggression; exploitative labor practices; societal oppression; and poverty and any other social injustice are the same.

I would like to see a broad based, inclusive and supportive movement - a movement that is accessible to everyone regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, ability, creed, and/or any other distinguishing feature - in order to effectively and successfully challenge the status quo: a status quo which is currently doing so much harm to all people.

Please imagine a movement to challenge the current establishment's enablement of a degrading and dehumanizing status quo of economic instability, ecological unsustainability, and social injustice...

Further thoughts and avenues for consideration on this topic include, but are not limited to, potential solutions and responses such as 1) permaculture: a resilient, sustainable and independent local/regional economic infrastructure, 2) socio-economic egalitarianism, 3) making health care a central and foundational economic feature ...and etc....

[larger image: first they ignore you, then then laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win]

While downtown earlier today I talked with a friend who works downtown. After exchanging greetings, and during a brief ensuing conversation, I asked my friend, so what are you up to.

My friend replied in a discernibly disconsolate tone, "work."

Our conversation ended, and I went away. And I thought about my friend's statement and position some more. After a while, I returned and asked my friend what it would take to make work enjoyable.

My friend's response was that it would take a living wage, and health care benefits. That seemed reasonable enough to me. It seems reasonable that a person should be able make enough to support a family (if they should choose to have one) and to have health care in exchange for their work - no matter what kind of work they're engaged in. What do you think?

I told my friend not to feel too bad, because I think the truth is that there are a lot of people working in our economy today who have similar complaints. (After all, our economy is set up to serve the interests of capital, rather than the interests of life and of a healthy society.)

On another hand, I was also treated to an awesome visual and auditory experience when someone walked past me while playing an electric guitar. The guitar was hooked up to an amplifier, which went unseen. It was hidden underneath a jacket. This was totally awesome. Hooray for downtown Olympia.

View a larger version of the above photo: Miraculous Mud

Quote by Gandhi
Photo from Pacific Ocean Beach at Ocean Shores, December 2009

OK, well Paula says it & lives it better than I do:

reprint:

The View from Here