politics

Man, if I could write run-on paragraphs like my man RBF, I’d be stoked.  If you haven’t read him before, enjoy…A timely excerpt from Grunch of Giants by R. Buckminster Fuller:

“Greater justice and economic improvement for the many is not always the result of social revolution. The Europeans’ guns overwhelming of the American Indian bow-and-arrow weapons was in most ways a retrogressive social revolution implemented by design-science revolution. It is always the design revolution that tips the social scales one way or the other. However, sum totally the combined design and social revolutions ultimately favor the many. Between 1900 and today, 60 percent of humans in the U.S.A. have attained a standard of living far in advance of those of the greatest potentates of 1900 while concurrently doubling the life-span of that fortunate 60 percent.

“Never before in all history have the inequities and the momentums of unthinking money-power been more glaringly evident to so vastly large a number of now literate, competent, and constructively thinking all-around-the-world humans. There’s a soon-to-occur critical-mass moment when the intuition of the responsibly inspired majority of humanity, in contradistinction to the angered Luddites and avenging Robin Hoods, faced with comprehensive functional discontinuity of nationally contained techno-economic system, will call for and accomplish a world-around reorientation of our planetary affairs. At this critical moment will occur a realization by the responsibly inspired majority that the adequate capacity of the invisible technology to sustainingly support all humanity depends on all the resources, physical and metaphysical, being always and only employed for all of world-around humanity as a completely integrated techno-economic system operating entirely on its daily income principally of Sun-emanating energy.”

“To those who would tear this world down, we will defeat you.  To those who seek peace and security, we will support you.”

This was my favorite part of the speech.  It is a subtle, but significant, change from the rhetoric of convervative America.  It also shows that Obama has been thinking about soft power in planning his first couple of years.

The BBC offers this compilation of footage from around the world on election night.  Worth watching, especially as it grows more serious towards the end.

The BBC compilation of quotes is worth reading, too.  One of Obama’s key challenges will be his approach to global Islam.  The spokesperson of the Muslim Council of Britain is guardedly optimistic:

“Obama is seen as a person who will hopefully be more inclined to take into consideration the views of other people. We hope Obama will work with other countries.”

My take on the situation: Trust that Obama can’t be too overt about healing these particular wounds with Islam, given the continued strength of the ‘reptilian right’ here in the US.  He will ‘politely step away from’ the Bush coalition method over the next 18 months, but expect oblique, and forceful, soft power moves first: flashy steps towards global cooperation on the environment and the economy.

Just a quick link to the Radio Open Source overview of PK’s ideas (for those of us suckers who can’t find the time to read his book cover to cover!) plus some good discussion in the comments section.  Here’s the link.