Re: [-empyre-] Free cooperation

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@uiah.fi>]

Trebor...

>  >I would position the 'underground' as the site of what Martin Buber
> > termed "genuine dialogue" -- the site of inspiring and inspired /
> > energized exchange between two human beings -- or in the case of
> > larger communities, the distributed/collective sites of exchange
> > between each individual (a network).
>
> "Genuine dialogue" is quite a fascinating soul-full concept by the Jewish
> theologian Martin Buber. And yes, meetings among friends should have this

It is one model that resonated with my experiences of inter-human 
dynamic.  Although I find that other models more fully circumscribe 
the phenomena of human presence and interaction -- phenomena that, 
once stripped of soul (or whatever you want to call it), IMHO are 
empty of most everything...

> aspect of a human encounter full of presence, guided by a creative mind
> instead of a reactive one. But honesty, transparency and centered presence
> is a lot to ask of a dialogue and is a little bit burdened by religious
> connotations. There is a difference between friends meeting each other and a
> group of people cooperating on a project.

what do you propose to be the difference?    the human exchange I am 
talking about is not limited to 'friends' and 'not-friends.'  Whether 
or not you acknowledge it, as you pass the stranger in the street, 
you are transmitting and receiving energies.  That they don't enter 
into your sensibilities is more related to socially-induced filtering 
on your part than proposing that the dialogue (or energy exchange) 
doesn't exist...  I admit that dominant social systems makes 
open-ness a region full of fear for most all of us, but in that space 
of facing the unknown in the Other with an open-ness to change, is 
the root of all energized collaboration.

And, based in the phenomena where two can come together, engage, and 
both become, literally "inspired" (filled with energy) --  a network, 
as the site of collaboration, is a series of energized exchanges and 
become the site for massive creative potential...

>  >confronted by.  "Experiences" attenuated (and largely amplified) by a
> > heirarchic social structure whose existence is based on a process of
> > concentration of energies and a consequent re-distribution of those
> >  energies in a 'collectively' mandated form such as (Guy DeBord's)
> >  spectacle -- the hollow amplified social event...
>
>  This is an interesting connection, John. How would a non-hierarchical
> investment of energies look like, one that refuses the bombastic event?

ones that seek balanced pathways of transit between the participating 
individuals.  it is in that seeking where the open-ness to change 
(being changed by the Other), and creative potential lies.  Social 
heirarchies are 'built' by the ordering and prescribing of pathways 
of energy transfer between people.  The concept of 'chain-of-command" 
is specific example.  Of course even the most rigid structures have 
elements of 'leakage' -- the difusion of energies between individuals 
that occur not along the prescribed pathways.  But, at it's core, 
each situation of two humans coming to interaction holds the 
potential for, in your words, a "non-hierarchical investment of 
energies."  though I would deny the fiscal wording and substitute 
"exchange" or "movement" for "investment."

> Spontaneous celebrations, random kinds of energy bursts
> unrelated to any material interactions? I'm really curious, troubled and
> excited about your implicit fusion of cooperation and religious morality. I
> was deeply moved by G. Hage last week at Transmediale in Berlin who talked
> about the politics of hope for migrants who should see the full
> potentialities of their lives: deeply exacerbating but at least as
> intriguing.

I don't understand your identifying religion and morality in these 
statements.  Or your refusal of any connection between energy and 
other model systems that use other words for the same thing (Light, 
spirit, chi).  Religion is the social outcome of collective 
organization of model descriptive systems of individual lived 
experience.  I am talking about lived experience, not the 
re-creations based on that...

If you hold tightly onto material systems, then what I am talking 
about will make no sense.  It just seems to me that a materialist 
point of view is spent.    What is described in a mechanistic 
physical framework as 'material interactions' has little or no 
meaning from a quantum point of view where "things" are fields of 
energy to begin with...

jh