Back to AtD 'collective thinking' p. 941

[Paul Mackin]

On 7/28/2012 9:22 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> p. 941 "So the idea---whose 'idea' was a meaningless question around 
> here."  Here still being Yves-les-Bain,
> anarchist utopia, one might say.
> Seems there is similarly labeled notion in modern anarchism 
> reflection: "collective thinking", a form of
> thinking "diametrically opposed to the kind of thinking propounded by 
> the present system. When faced
> with a decision, the normal response of two people with differing 
> opinions tends to be confrontational. ....
> [......state, defend, convince OR compromise...I paraphrase......]
> "The aim of collective thinking on the other hand is to construct. 
> ..Two people w differing ideas work
> to build something new. ...the onus is not on my idea or yours; rather 
> it is the notion that two ideas
> together will produce something new, something that neither of us 
> envisaged beforehand."
> "This focus requires of us that we actively listen." ---
> ---from James Miller's essay in The Occupy Handbook
> He links this concept to the direct democracy of the General Assembly 
> process of the Occupy movement
> and says it goes back to the direct democracy efforts of the sixties, 
> early SNCC and SDS [right from the Port Huron Statement itself]
>  and further back echoing Gandhi's injunction to "be the change you 
> want to see"......
> It also seems, despite all efforts to keep inititatives the result of 
> group decisions, the man I cited in
> an earlier post, one David Graeber, is the one who convinced the 
> earliest small gathering to conduct
> their General Assembly under the principle of direct democratic 
> consensus.
> ---all according to James Miller, IBID.
> Miller is a cultural/political historian at the New School, former 
> editor of Daedalus, who has written other books on this shit..



"Collective thinking" CAN sometimes produce something big--spontaneously.

An "idea" can be so compelling opportune that it just materializes out 
of thin air, without central direction.

A lonely-guy Harvard student, proficient in computer programing, sets up 
a web site.  But  it isn't HIS idea that ten zillion people will end up 
logging on to it   It's truly some sort of Universal Consciousness at 
work.  (the monetization phase is a different matter but never mind . . . .)

Does it occur to anyone that the song gathers deployed into Thrace are CIA?

P


> ....

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120728/3bbc51ce/attachment.html>