Re: [pf] 'Who is the "we" who have made mistakes?'

At 11:15 3/3/2001 -0800, David MacClement wrote:
>> · #1 of 2. I'm posting this to the Positive Futures list in spite of
>> objections about all the negative posts here, because I see knowledge of
>>the mistakes we have (and particularly the US has) made in recent decades
>> as _essential_ for moving away from the current track
>> /towards/ a Positive Future.  D.
>
At 16:34 3/3/2001 -0800, Betsy Barnum wrote:
>I wonder what you mean by using "we" and "the US" here, David. Who is 
>the "we" who have made mistakes? And who do you mean by "the US" that 
>has particularly made mistakes?
>
>I have my own opinions on this, and I think it is quite important that 
>we be clear *who* we are saying is "doing" things when we talk about 
>moving toward or away from a positive future.
>

· As you know from my earlier posts {particularly:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2000/msg06013.html , in which I said: "At
a rough guess, the USA [in 2010-15] would be not greatly different from
Europe in the early 1990s"} , I believe "we", initially the
USA-as-seen-from-outside, and eventually virtually all the OECD
(over-developed) countries, made a serious mistake in the first decade or
two after WW-II, in going for maximizing production-and-consumption.
· You, and some others, don't agree with me about whether we-the-people had
any real option at the time - any real choice - but I've heard /no/
opinions against the view that going in that direction _was_ a mistake.

· I said then, that we can also visualise (quite easily, I think) where we
would have got to in the near future (I proposed 2010-15) if we /had/
continued on the relatively (relative to now) frugal and careful path from
~1950 to that near future, and further, that, starting from now we /could/
choose to start reversing some of those mistakes, at least to a modest
extent, using the above goal as guidance.

· Returning to your question: 'who do you mean by "the US" that has
particularly made mistakes?' :-

· Beginning with its origins in boosting "free enterprise", and made much
worse by the allowing-corporations-to-be-legal-persons (soon copied
elsewhere), the economic system and general ethos of the USA has been the
leader in giving _the_economy_ primacy among all the political forces that
go toward creating a society.

· That was the main mistake, and IMO the USA started it, in the years
around WW-II.

· Note that I don't subscribe to the view that ordinary people are victims
in any way. The nearest I'd go to that is that most people in a society are
brainwashed by whatever is the current view, but _therefore_ they _can_ be
de-programmed, "educated", to see their situation differently.

David
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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