Re: [ox-en] Food production and Free Software (was: Re: Leftist project?)
- From: "I. Claude Harper" <tekell swbell.net>
- Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 21:55:42 -0600
However, this view overlooks important aspects. In short: The
important point in Free Software is, that for first time in history
"self-unfolding" becomes a relevant factor on the societal level.
well I don't know what is the societal level and if Free Software is closer
to being there than anything else, but I will offer some food for thought on
examples of self-enfolding.
what about primitive societies?
Self-enfolding is the natural state of things. It's religion and government
that has prevented it.
what about the arts? I see self-enfolding there at times.
I just remembered, a period when I was into experimental noise. Even before
the internet, there were artists who create collage music together through
the mail. No plans really, somebody sends a track to someone they add a
track and pass it on. Some friends of mine recently did a similar project,
starting with a doll that they decorated and pass on around the world and
eventually came back to them with all kinds of weird decorations, tatooes
and alterations.
Then there is the basic "jamming" in music, both jazz and rock. Often loved
by stoners for it's self-enfolding quality.
We have a holiday in Austin here now called Eyore's birthday - Eyore from
Winnie the Pooh. It started out be people getting together on some blustery
day in spring and having fun. It wasn't a scheduled event originally, it
just happened when the whether was right in the spring. Now of course, it's
a planned and scheduled.
I have been apart of many festivities and gathers where temporary automous
zones arose to create a whole self-enfolding culture. Thousands of people
gathered in the woods cooking and living together with no rules or
governments, just a self-enfolding.
Then there's all those interest moments in history, does one count the
Spanish Revolution? Or the anarchists during the Russion Revolution?
Argentina is pretty interesting right now.
Anyway, I could go on and on....
There may be some unique things about Free Software, but it's not the
self-enfolding itself. This is way of nature, the Tao, or whatever. My
hope is that Free Software will help break the damn that has been built up
against it.
As far as I can tell, self-enfolding is just the positive expression of the
concept of anarchy. Whereas to use the word "anarchy" emphasizes and what's
not there, using "self-enfolding" emphasizes what is there.
One doesn't have to coerce a tree to grow. What religion, governments and
other institutions do with society is like convincing you a tree is suppose
to grow a certain way and match some ideal form and we must go out there
bend it, shape it, and manipulate it constantly to make it fit their ideal
form of it. And then when the tree is sick as a result, they even pervert
this into an argument for greater control.
What anarchy/self-enfolding is saying, is that we don't have some specific
ideal form of society in mind that we are going to force society to fit
into, but that if we just liberate society from this bondage it will enfold
by itself, into whatever it "should" be.
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