False consciousness awake!
[UPDATE] Tim Bonnemann writes a terrific piece about consensus decision making at OccupySanJose and recommends Tree Bresson’s process tips about avoiding pitfalls (pdf).
I’ll have my young daughters in tow this coming weekend, so I’m in two minds about dragging them into the CBD for the #occupymelbourne gathering. With over 1200 cities around the world (as of this minute) preparing to convene, it’s a participatory miracle that I would really like to be a part of. I was about five years too young to be a part of the sixties scene of angst towards elitism, but did get involved during the early seventies at the dawn of the environmental movement. Now there is political numbness everywhere, especially at the university. My daughters are still too young to appreciate the re-awakening that occupytogether symbolises. They might be too freaked out by the crowd.
Following the flagship OccupyWallStreet event, each city is calling for facilitators to guide consensus-seeking forums. I’m excited about this because they are advocating dialogue formats like Open Space that really work to inclusively bubble good ideas to the top. I hope that the conversation can expand over the next days and years to bring tolerance and understanding between those who travel under different ethical and ideological banners. I hope there are enough people who would believe in democratic systems that need both political representatives and deliberating citizens.
I’m not a conspiratorialist, and unlike many of the young occupiers I don’t condemn all business interests or all government power for the mess we face today. What I do lament is what critical theorists refer to as the false consciousness that pervades so much of our lives. You watch the ads and you believe in them. You’ve been sucked in. The meek will inherit zip.
If George Carlin were still alive, he’d get you fired up:
But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.
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