n' has been traded in
for 'retirement' as the new ultimate goal for which Westerners suspend
their lives and their ethics. (People work for companies they hate,
and then invest in corporations whose ethics they detest, in order to
guarantee a good retirement). We see the artificial obstacles to
appropriate energy policy, international relations, urban planning and
affordable healthcare as what they are: artificial. Meanwhile, what we
can accomplish presents itself on a much more realistic scale when we
engage with it in the moment and on a local level.

Yes, political structures do need to be changed. But we may have to
let their replacements emerge from the myriad of new relationships
that begin to spawn once people are acting and communicating in the
present, and on a realistic scale, instead of talking about a
fictional future.

The underlying premise is still dependent on the notion of progress.
Indeed, things must get better or there's no point to any of it. But
our understanding of progress must be disengaged from the false goal
of growth, or the even more dangerous ideal of salvation. Our
understanding must be reconnected with the very basic measure of
social justice: how many people are able to participate?

Our marketing experts tell us that they are failing in their efforts
to advertise to internet users and cultural progressives because this
new and resistant psychographic simply wants to engage, authentically,
in social experiences. This should sound like good news to anyone who
authentically wants to extend our collective autonomy. This population
is made up not of customers to whom you must sell, or even
constituents to whom you must pander, but partners on whom you can
rely and with whom you can act.

Treat them as such, and you might be surprised by how much you get
done together.

1 Karen Armstrong, A History of God, (London: Vintage, 1999)

2 First Monday, The High-Tech Gift Economy, Richard Barbrook., 1998,
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/)

3 Douglas Rushkoff, Cyeria: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace,
(Flamingo, 1994)

4 Wired Magazine, Jul 1997 (see
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.07/longboom_pr.html)

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