"It has been said that everyone has one secret. This is not true.
Everyone has many secrets, many faces, many masks. All humans...are the sum of their masks.
It is what you do in life, not what torments you in your soul that matters."
"It is not what you feel that makes you evil. Feelings are natural...It is what you do with them that decides if you are a villain or a hero." -John Ringo in There Will Be Dragons
"Utopia is the imaginary society in which humankind's deepest yearnings, noblest dreams and highest aspirations come to fulfillment, where all physical, social and spiritual forces work together, in harmony, to permit the attainment of everything people find necessary and desirable. In the imagined utopia, people work and live together closely and cooperatively, in a social order that is self-created and self-chosen rather than externally imposed, yet one that also operates according to a higher order of natural and spiritual laws. Utopia is held together by commitment rather than coercion, for in utopia what people want to do is the same thing as what they have to do; the interests of the individuals are congruent with the interests of the group; and personal growth and freedom entail responsibility for others. Underlying the vision of utopia is the assumption that harmony, cooperation and mutuality of interests are natural to human existence rather than conflict, competition and exploitation, which arise only in imperfect societies. By providing material and psychological safety and security, the utopian social order eliminates the need for divisive competition or self-serving actions which elevate some people to the disadvantage of others; it ensures instead the flowering of mutual responsibility and trust to the advantage of all." -Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book Commitment and Community which examined Utopian societies from the 1800s.
Growing up, most two-parent families with kids below age 12 came pretty close those the Utopian Ideals.
Good quotes, ERJ.
ReplyDeleteAt least for myself, that description of a family applied, and applied well into high school.
That family paradigm only works because the parents control ALL the money and the kids have no agency, especially when they are under 12. As soon as you have all adults in the group things always go sideways.
ReplyDeleteIt is an unacknowledged miracle to me that the Plymouth colony could move from socialist/communist control of the common fields to individual ownership without open warfare between the groups. I guess the death toll the first winter was enough to drive the point home.
One factor to consider is the age that "agency" is presumed to be a birthright.
DeleteI watched a nineteen year-old Amish man be extremely respectful and deferential to his father-in-law. They were in business together and the younger man had the wits to realize that it would crash-and-burn without the steady hand of the older man.
Modern methods stratify or "silo" age groups. The amount of rapport with groups +5 or -5 years from your cohort are shaky. That is because we subcontracted education to strangers who have a vested interest in telling their students that everybody who came before them were idiots and the only TRUE knowledge was what they were delivering from the podium in the lecture hall.
I have to agree with Rick on this one.
ReplyDeleteREST IN PEACE Frank Beard!
ReplyDeleteOff topic but don't care.
Maybe off-topic, but timely.
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