It seems if one looks at history this problem -- distributed versus centralized consciousness (and therefore implied power relations, judgments, censorships and worse) -- is omnipresent. The technology changes but the basic fabric, the tensions inherent in organizing millions of people, is timeless.
It seems if one looks at history this problem -- distributed versus centralized consciousness (and therefore implied power relations, judgments, censorships and worse) -- is omnipresent. The technology changes but the basic fabric, the tensions inherent in organizing millions of people, is timeless.
Today's technology is new, but that's all that's new.
Paul was arrested for preaching. Jesus was crucified. Roman emporers had secret police. The Church, which inherited Roman governance structure, had it's inquisition. European royal courts had their henchmen. Everyone. I suspect ancient Egypt had police who informed for pharoah and whichever priests were in charge. Ahkenaton's situation.
Pre-history, Joseph Campbell traces the complex organizing myths that regulated societies -- those had their rebels too. His PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY chronicles an especially fascinating situation in Upper Nile Egypt in the 400s or so BC, where a ruling king would not submit to his own expected ritual suicide and instead had his soldiers slay the priests in the temple to a man. The king was evidently inspired by Greek philosophy, which was then percolating in the region.
Well. The power of language? Hello.
This is going to be a long and difficult process and it only will result in permanent change with an evolution in the culture's values-based operating system. The Enlightenment was recent, only a few hundred years old. We're still in it. It's still happening. It won't be over for a few hundred more years, or longer if we backslide.
It seems if one looks at history this problem -- distributed versus centralized consciousness (and therefore implied power relations, judgments, censorships and worse) -- is omnipresent. The technology changes but the basic fabric, the tensions inherent in organizing millions of people, is timeless.
Today's technology is new, but that's all that's new.
Paul was arrested for preaching. Jesus was crucified. Roman emporers had secret police. The Church, which inherited Roman governance structure, had it's inquisition. European royal courts had their henchmen. Everyone. I suspect ancient Egypt had police who informed for pharoah and whichever priests were in charge. Ahkenaton's situation.
Pre-history, Joseph Campbell traces the complex organizing myths that regulated societies -- those had their rebels too. His PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY chronicles an especially fascinating situation in Upper Nile Egypt in the 400s or so BC, where a ruling king would not submit to his own expected ritual suicide and instead had his soldiers slay the priests in the temple to a man. The king was evidently inspired by Greek philosophy, which was then percolating in the region.
Well. The power of language? Hello.
This is going to be a long and difficult process and it only will result in permanent change with an evolution in the culture's values-based operating system. The Enlightenment was recent, only a few hundred years old. We're still in it. It's still happening. It won't be over for a few hundred more years, or longer if we backslide.
Ecce Homo.