Steph Kent

i think simpler is better....it's someone else's movie...people will like you in it and then come learn more, discovering Your Irreverent Dukeness in due time.

Great job Cassie!

Sorry we didn't meet up. I laid pretty low, following currents, growing the niche where I (believe I) can make the most/best difference.

Your energy is terrific and your feedback Spot On.

Keep it up!

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

Today is also a good day to share about someone most of us have never heard of: Bayard Rustin.

FREE Today only (it seems) you can watch Brother Outsider courtesy of free streaming from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/povdocs/2015/01/documentary-streaming-free-for-mlk-day-brother-outsider-the-life-of-bayard-rustin/#.VL1nrWTF_kk

I'm going to watch it!

Excellent reading, Paul.

Whatever folks do or don't know about the history, I'd like to suggest it's worth seeing Selma.

Frere, thanks for raising some criticism and concerns. I think it's a disservice to label Soros a neo-con but, be that as it may, the point is we need a diversity of means to acquire and disseminate information.

All of these alternative services (as listed by you and Allan) are variations on themes of freedom from surveillance and private exploration & growth from shared, collective knowledge.

I watched Citizenfour yesterday. If you don't think you're one of the 1.2million people already categorized within some level of the watch hierarchy, that's either a naivete worse than mine (which is deliberately pretty high) or an obtuse looking the other way. Privilege will protect us only so long.

I'm pretty sure everyone here has glimmerings about the stakes of successful permaculture movements around the world. Not only is this the only feasible path for saving the planet, its the greatest threat to the powers that be.

So, I'm all for Lantern and every other attempt to break out of the panopticon. Meshnet seems awesome - that's what protestors in Hong Kong were using, right? Connecting a series of smartphones to generate their own independent connection to the internet? I don't have any idea how surveillance-safe that is, but I do have the sense it requires more tech savvy than I've got.

Flat is only as strong as navigation is easy. Information flows are currently directed by advertising and expressed interests. Like to like, rare are the currents connecting at intersections where similarity momentarily exceeds difference. Until we have the social will to value the complex intersections more than the easy flows, no technological system can turn the accumulated momentum.

I hope at least some of that makes sense, and that this is an appropriate place for dialogue.

I would like this project to succeed. Of course there are questions and concerns about onboarding, control, various vulnerabilities... but an independent means to get online would be a gamechanger.

Just sayin'.

...and I want to keep living in Massachusetts, too!

My people are here.

I like new people. I'm not averse to throwing my lot in with new people.

What I am averse to is leaving my 'old' people, my chosen family people, behind.

If you ever decide to support outposts, please keep me in mind.

Meanwhile, you look great, Paul, in the video Diego made of sentiments from PV1.

Hugs,
steph

I popped over here from the F-Word thread (https://permies.com/t/37252/md/Word) because Paul offered the link and it makes sense to me that language use is a dimension of diversity. It's actually my personal favorite form of diversity, because I think if more people learned how to communicate well interculturally -- specifically, among people using different languages with interpreters -- then all kinds of communication skills would improve and we'd have more people in more places solving serious problems - and, as Paul points out, creating art.

Interesting to read Jonathan's critique of the intention in intentional communities....would you describe the need to use an interpreter for communication as a contrived or otherwise detrimental rule-bound structure?

How one defines intentional is the same kind of 'meaningless drivel' debate as that happening over use or non-use of the F-word. Towns are communal, for instance, intentionally so - how do we draw the line against all the agreements of civil society? I am coming to appreciate the barrier that values of independence and autonomy pose to making wise decisions for the collective good. When Paul talks about governance (like above), it seems he's referring more to constitutive actions -- those that determine future possibilities -- than to day-to-day living arrangements, but maybe these categories are too artificial.

Hi Paul and all ya'all Permies,

I love that this thread is categorized under "meaningless drivel." The utility of every word requires contextual awareness.

What happens in conversation is people supply their own contexts: sometimes these overlap and mutual, shared comprehension is harmonious. Other times they don't overlap and discord arises, as has occurred here - then discourse takes over. Discourses are patterned and relatively predictable, which makes them amenable to analysis but not necessarily to intervention!

Paul's hint that diversity might be one of the stakes implicated by the discourse, clued me in to read the rest of his (and other's) comments as seeds for a potential dialogue. Dialogue, in contrast with discourse, allows the possibility of growth and change. Where discourse insists that positions are fixed and immutable (e.g., Paul will ALWAYS retain the right to use the F-word; Vaughn and Matu will NEVER use the F-word), dialogue suggests that these apparently opposed positions could be tempered or - more radically - actually used as the basis for connection rather than a reason for disconnection.

For instance, Paul's example of Jocelyn saying "fudge" instead of "fuck" gave me the idea that the heart of this matter is one of range and scope more than use or non-use. Judith's third category of people who don't say it often but are comfortable with those who do is an example. During the week that I was so lucky to hang out with Paul and Jocelyn and other permies during the Permaculture Voices conference, I got the sense that Jocelyn can quite comfortably say "fuck" when/if she felt it suitable, but not as many things would rise (or sink, hehe) to the level of fuckability warranting the actual utterance.

Paul has a big, deep and wide multidimensional space that allows just about anything to be 'fuckable' (that is, to warrant being associated with one or another of the dimensions of the word 'fuck"). This is what good comedians do -- the clips are fantastic! -- and probably is a reason for the popularity of Permies. Paul packages his permaculture knowledge and mission for world domination with plenty of spice. If we're willing to allow the application of lessons from mass media to ourselves, people stay tuned for the entertainment as well as the controversy.

Can you imagine Paul on Jon Stewart? Or the Tonight Show with Steve Colbert? I can!