I'm sure there are any number of you who immediate responded to what I've been advancing that this is what you've been saying all along. The Internet, the Web, changes everything. Free access to information and the wider distribution of technology is going to save us all. Actually, it isn't. It's not even about the technology. It's about what you do with it. TPTB, of course, are trying to bend it to their advantage, and there are lots and lots of folks going along, but the momentum is actually with the rest of us.
Yes, it is becoming more and more difficult for TPTB to keep things secret. Yes, there are more and more people communicating with each other. And yes, much too much of this communication takes place simply via the technology. But that is changing. There is a growing number of people who are using the technology simply to find new ideas and then are communicating them in good old-fashioned manner -- that is, face-to-face -- with people in their communities. We learn about the power of mass movements on the Internet (for example, Occupy or Arab Spring) and we start wondering if that wouldn't work in downtown Topeka or in Dresden or in Milan, or in Smalltown or Kleinstadt. We become aware of the massive influence of huge international corporations, how politics here, there, and everywhere are more or less corrupt and we start asking ourselves if it is worth the effort to get involved at all. We start to see that while the problems of the others are not exactly the same, they are terribly similar, that there are analogies than can be made, and that maybe, just maybe, the others are more like us than we thought. We ask ourselves whether what they've done maybe we could do too.
Obviously, I'm not talking about mass movements (yet) or mind-changing attitudes (yet) or illuminating insights (yet). I'm merely pointing out that in addition to the widespread apathy that so many complain about, there are a good number of people, everywhere, who are simply acting as if the system as it is and the mainstays of that system (that would be TPTB) don't matter. They don't want to fight city hall nor do they want a new herd of do-nothing politicians in Washington or Paris or Berlin. No, they simply want to get on with their lives the best they can and they are finding others of like mind and interests, not halfway around the world, but down the block, if not simply next door.
There is a growing number of people who realize that here and now is more important than then and there, that we should have more say in what affects us directly. There is a growing realization that if my neighbors are doing OK, I'm probably doing OK, too. That there is more than enough to do right here where we are that has a bigger impact on their lives than hollow political promises and self-centered and self-interested entities far away.
The upside to our modern communication technologies is that we can be inspired by the successes of others who may be far away, and we can also learn from the mistakes and failures that others make. This access helps us realize that we are not alone with our problems, but the only ones that can solve them is us. The downside is that we might think that we can use these technologies to affect things far away, but we can't, nor should we. We humans were built and programmed for small-scale, near-environment success. We can handle groups of probably not more than 150 individuals, our families counted among them. But, we have larger overlaps between our groups than we realize, but we're awakening to that fact as well.
Maybe small is beautiful after all.
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