Listener comments!

Mon. 5/11/09 7:10pm From: Bad Ronald

Greetz to Douglas et al!
Praxis - Wotagreatwurd!
Yer opener reminds me of a debate I witnessed in the 80's tween Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin re: Change - from within or without...

Mon. 5/11/09 7:10pm From: Brian Oregon

In neomarxist/critical social theory (for what it's worth), praxis is 'theory in action', that is, theory put into practice.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:12pm From: coin of the realm

music please! uh. age of aquarius is here. get real

Mon. 5/11/09 7:13pm From: Brian Oregon

Does Life Inc. encompass the history of the development of modern consumerism (Jackson Lears, Colin Campbell, Stuart Ewen, etc.), which was interwoven with the development of advertising as public culture?

Mon. 5/11/09 7:13pm From: Bad Ronald

You no like-a de Ramones?

Mon. 5/11/09 7:14pm From: Janine

Douglas says 'yes'

Mon. 5/11/09 7:15pm From: Nancy Reagan

Just say no.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:18pm From: Brian Oregon

You can't really say "no" and practice modern lifecraft: individuals are responsible for maintaining a livelihood (making money) and constructing an identity from fields of possibility differentially accessible to a great extent based on ability to pay. That form of self/identity/life was developed at the same time as modernity (industrial consumer capitalism).

Mon. 5/11/09 7:21pm From: Legba Carrefour

I'm pretty sure the Nancy Reagan comment was a joke, but I think your follow up is a legitimate point that should be expanded upon. We should be saying no and yes that does involve a rejection of most of modern life. Refusal of this entire system is what we need at a time when our lives are doing everything but allowing us to live. I'm hoping these are the days where we get the space to start finding alternatives.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:24pm From: Brian Oregon

Legba -- I agree and it's one of the reasons I moved from southern California to rural-ish eastern Oregon. I can see the possibilities more clearly here. A good way to start is to eat food grown as close as possible to yr home.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:27pm From: Doron

I lived for a while in a semi rural environment that is pretty enlightened in some respects (ithaca) but there are cultural exchanges that are possible only in big major cities, that ultimately held more appeal to me. I wonder what the ideas spell for big cities.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:27pm From: Nancy Reagan

Yeah, I was being facetious...

Mon. 5/11/09 7:28pm From: Brian Oregon

Sorry Nancy... PS you have a large head relative to your body.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:29pm From: texas scott

amen,Brian.growing your own food and being more independant is a great start.you made a good move.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:30pm From: Legba Carrefour

I'm hoping people get more willing to fight for control of the city and eventually a subversion of the metropolis as we know it. There's been a lot of talk recently about how the metropolis as we know is just the product of a certain class taking advantage of the cities that we've all produced in common. And I'd like to see the commons reassert itself in the city.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:32pm From: Legba Carrefour

Michael Hardt and Toni Negri have a book coming out called Common Wealth that addresses some of that. You can hear Hardt talk about that here a bit: http://is.gd/yXSN (it's about 15 minutes in).

Mon. 5/11/09 7:33pm From: Brian Oregon

I do miss the cultural activities of the big city. But here, it's more DIY, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think cities can be remade without the overclass in control, but it will necessarily be harder because you have to coordinate more people. For some pretty radical ideas, see the book Toolbox for Sustainable City Living, out recently from South End Press.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:34pm From: Nancy Reagan

No worries Brian, my head prevents my body from blowing away in a strong wind.

btw - I hear OR is a nice place for vineyards.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:34pm From: Legba Carrefour

And there's some neat stuff in this piece called "20 Theses on the Subversion of the Metropolis" that's a bit on the situationist/insurrectionary edge. The PDF is also quite pretty (it's done by the Institute for Experiential Freedom) http://is.gd/yXUE

Mon. 5/11/09 7:38pm From: Brian Oregon

That does look good, Legba -- thanks for the link!
Nancy -- lots of vineyards, mostly in the Willamette and Rogue Valleys, west of the Cascades.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:38pm From: Legba Carrefour

I think it's going to be easier in some ways. Largely because everything that makes the city work was made in common. And I mean the cultural aspects, how people relate to each other, the communities people have built--all of that was part of a commons and the rest of this nonsense was built on top of that structure to extract value from it for someone else.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:46pm From: can't hear your awesome words

TALK TO THE MICROPHONE

Mon. 5/11/09 7:56pm From: Someone who isn't me should talk. :-P

I'm really into this idea of a currency based on valuing a specific kind of labor like community building. For one thing, it seems like it would lend itself to a hyper-local democracy. I'm curious how you could network that globally though.

Mon. 5/11/09 7:57pm From: Someone who isn't me should talk. :-P

Although maybe I should stop always thinking about how we need to globally connect everything. Maybe that's a really modern impulse that's been beaten into by globalization.

Mon. 5/11/09 8:01pm From: Bad Ronald

Let's flout controlled substances laws.

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