rational cynicism vs spiritual fatalism The main problems w/ rational cynicism..

If Gug's a fair representative of the group, i have some major issues of contention w/ them.. They seem overly materialistic and preoccupied w/ well.. money. Sure i have some great ideas and all ideas seem to require some kind of financing but maybe i should talk about business models to illustrate.. Gug seems to believe in 'free enterprise' and the profit model. i firmly believe in cooperatives :) He feels there's no motivation in a communist structure for individuals to excel/produce; he's absolutely right. Cooperatives resemble communism but are NOT the same. Individual families/groups are independent; it's the collective that mutually supports and exchanges :) i'm sure he still can't see a difference between a collective of independent families and his 'free enterprise profit model' but there IS. Let me try to discriminate overtly :) i believe the main difference between a community of rational cynics and a cooperative collective is the spirit of the group :) A community of rational cynics has no mutual interests except their eight common values (see last article). There's no reason in 'heaven or hell' for them to cooperate on ANYthing.. It's simply a group of like-minded individuals w/ common values.. If they organize on some common theme, sure there's cohesion based on that theme.. But that's a far cry from a cooperative. In a well designed cooperative, there's a 'code of honor' (for lack of a better expression) that commits individual/family efforts, at least a portion of the time, to the group :) That's one of the qualifying concepts of a cooperative :) And i propose the most important common value in a cooperative is that individuals/families CARE for the group as a whole :) This critical difference relates to my past article on cities as unsustainable systems.. ^^ Sure.. many of my ideas require enormous financing and perhaps only in Gug's free enterprise system would those kinds of resources be available.. But not necessarily. i firmly believe in the 'distributed theme-based cooperative village' concept. Many of the villages would produce enormous surpluses based on popularity of theme. There would still be money as medium of exchange between villages but much less emphasis would be placed on it :) (THANK GOD.) ..It's taken me a LONG time to come up w/ workable solutions to major problems facing the world today: profit corporations going bankrupt, governments going bankrupt, focus on inappropriate values, lack of support for education and healthcare, lack of basic resources, lack of good-will sharing Earth's resources,.. ALL of these major problems facing humanity can be addressed by concepts introduced above and in previous articles.. ALL of them. IF we fully embrace the spirit of the cooperative at the local level and commit to the theme-based cooperative model, MOST of our problems would simply disappear .. What are the enemies? Human arrogance, greed, and selfishness.. Conquer those and save the planet :) Part 2: what belongs in government? Critical infrastructure belongs in government: airlines, airports, energy supply and distribution, water and sanitation, roads and ferries, healthcare, and education. In the very least, they should be municipalized to co-op form. In the future, spaceports and interplanetary ferries should be part of government. i'm NOT saying there can't be independent villages based on any of these themes.. It's just that there should be a minimal baseline infrastructure connecting all villages belonging to a cooperative government. This would be a 'method of transition' toward a cooperative mode of living.. Governments

would enlarge to encompass the services listed above.. They would change structure to adapt to the cooperative model. During this period, cities would grow smaller and villages would grow larger.. People would be attracted to particular themes :) These they would call 'home' :) Favorite villages to visit would be 'homes away from home' he.. A spirit of cooperation (over hostility and selfishness) would permeate civilization :) It's not a bad vision :) It's not perfect but .. u have to admit not bad :) A video version of this article can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tmsOD5icE