historycircus

Exellent post Z and EpiphaMe.

Notions of "fairness" and equity will be the filters through which we share ideas and engage in economic activity. It is what we know/been programmed to believe as truth. Some may be able to operate without those filters, but most will be forced to walk that fine line between the old paradigm and the new - a thought I haven't really considered EpiphaMe, and for that I thank you.

Communites of only a few families and individuals might be so preoccupied by subsistence, especially at the outset of whatever events might necessitate such a radical shift in economic behavior, that such filters of concern will be moot. As an optomist (despite allegations on other threads accusing me of being a peddaler of doom), I think that no matter what comes, the human race will survive and prosper. Eventually these smaller communities will reach out and find each other, and despite the vulgar blight our modern cities have become, and collectivization will naturally happen. Specialization in labor and mass production need not be negative, for if done with a conscious respect for both the environment and the producers, it leads to efficient production and lesiure time - the latter being essetial to the building of culture. After all, a future of all work and no play will breed resentment. I'm not suggesting bread and circuses for control (the current paradigm), I'm suggesting that the artists and poets of the future will need a little down time to practice their crafts. Chances are, when a few hundred people get together, a division and specialization of labor will allow for efficient resource management and foster individual sovereignty.

But what do we do when one chooses to excercise personal sovereignty in such a way as to harm members of the group (rape, robbery, murder, etc.)? Successful economic production in a free society will undoubtedly, over time, give individuals a lot more time to find ways to exercise free will, and we cannot assume that everyone, at all times, will act in a way that is neutral or beneficial to society. To have poets, one must brace for rapists. What does that say about our fundamental nature as a species? Does that mean that becuase some at the top of the social pyramid have hijacked our mechanisms of economy, crime and punishment, politics, and culture, that the whole or parts of our system are irrelevent and should be abandoned? If society reemerges with the collective experiences of collapse, and consciously rebuilds with a new and more enlightened mindset, could we not rinse, if not repeat?