[xpost to OurCultureOurCapitol--that list, please scroll down to UPDATE]

I'm up for meeting in two days, especially if we can meet at State or
at the Living Room, or at the Egyptian Tea House.

At State we could meet in the lobby for Montezuma Hall.
This is right near the trolley station.
http://as.sdsu.edu/aztec/mh.html

Montezuma hall is on red on that map and there are couches and good
places to sit in the lobby.

If for some reason we cannot meet in the lobby we could meet in the
Starbucks or in the Food Court (Monty's) both of which can also be
seen on that map.

It is a good location for those taking the bus or the trolley. For
those driving--I imagine you'd have to pay for parking, though finding
a spot is probably not as hard in the evening.

(Loxie might have a better idea)

The bus ride to Kensington is really short from State, so if Brad
wants to suggest a meeting place there I could make that pretty
easily.

The car drivers could also park at a trolley station near State and
take the trolley the rest of the way.

If you're up for meeting at state, let's give that a try. If not, lets
choose (by Monday at 7pm) to meet either in Kensington or back at the
living room.

(That was an attempt to be decisive).

Colin

I'm working on something I'd love to have people be able to think
about prior to the meeting. . . but I'm having trouble with my web
site, and we're running out of time. By six pm I should manage to send
out another email with information about that. Right now it is in
plain text form and it is long so I think it would be even less likely
to be read. I'll let you know . . .

I suppose I could always attempt to tell it to you in person. . . what an idea.

Yes Brad I'd like to know more books you recommend!

What the heck, here it is, unformatted, white space probably eaten,
and probably not like I would have it if I considered it more
carefully. If I manage to get a web version, and a version good for
printing, up later--perhaps better revized, I'll let you know.

It started out as a brainstorm about what we might do at earthfair and
then went beyond that. Now the earthfair stuff is at the end.

[UPDATE: I managed make a pdf with at least some formatting that you
could print out and read away from the computer. I've attached it. It
is also here:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~leath/cfu/visionpost01.pdf
or here:http://tinyurl.com/cwl9t
If you're printing it, don't let it shrink or resize it. . . if the
printer cuts anything off it will just be the page numbers.
By the way, here's the myspace group I refer to:
http://groups.myspace.com/sdishmael/
(I can't figure out how to make my profile list it!!)
]


-------------------------------------------------------

Contents:

Introduction
The Story
Personal Example
I have the following faiths
Why American Culture is Dying, and why Mormon culture is strong,
and also, perhaps, dying. Why Our Culture is strong.
Vision for EarthFair (brainstorm)
Vision for group (brainstorm)

Introduction

to: sdishmael@yahoogroups.com
, ourcultureourcapitol@yahoogroups.com
asunto: Brainstorms on Earthfair, and on A larger vision of what our
group could be, plus commentary.

Hello,
I typed in the thoughts I had and written down on the first and second
of February, last Wednesday and Thursday morning.

I don't expect the rest of you to embrace these ideas, but they could
help lead to ideas and plans of action that _would_ interest you.

The first part of this focuses on what we might do at the SD
EarthFair, if we decide to have a table or booth there. The idea was
partly inspired by what I found on Myspace.com.

The second part focuses on a larger vision and philosophy of what our
group is doing and what it means. This was partly inspired by the fact
that almost all of the women who have attended our meetings have
myspace pages, and they all seem to be in various stages of defining
themselves and their lovers in a world that has been hostile to them,
making it harder for them to love themselves, life, and the world, and
making it harder for them to find the ones they can love and who will
love them.

If it isn't apparent, that statement about them is a statement about
me, and may be (or probably is) only accurate about me--and what they
would say they are doing may be entirely different. . . . I don't
expect you to have studied my web pages. . . but reading their stories
about themselves has helped me fill in missing parts of my story.

In particular, if you read http://carfreeuniverse.org/Members/colin/vision002/
, one of the first things a speaker says is:

---
3 Where are the women?

4 I've not been introduced
to one
who broods
in this way,
and who wished to be here,
now.

----

I knew they existed, but I didn't know any personally, and that
vision002 is essentially a dialog with myselves.


So here is my story about women in the United States, and why the US
Culture is dying, and why by the dialogue we may have in the future in
this group we may have the opportunity to create great love.

For gays & others representing varying points on the gender and
orientation scale (like all of us, I'm willing to bet), I still think
this is relevant, though I use a heterosexual frame.

I like to be grandiose, but I'm sure what I'm saying here has been
said by others, and rebutted and redefined by other women, and that
for many of you this will seem old news, stereotyping,
over-simplified, . . . but we all need to do this again and again
until we're all clear on what the new story (Our Story) is, and until
that new story becomes tacitly understood by anyone raised in our
culture--so that there won't be people like me who remain ignorant.


The Story

(1) More women are more free and empowered in the US than have ever
been before.

(2) With their new power, the women seek success--in many cases far
more successfully than men now do.

(3) This success, for the most part, but certainly not entirely, they
seek within the same channels that men had established for centuries
before them.

(All the women (but one) about my age I have had close longer-term
relationships with are in this category, though I have had glimpses of
the others here and there.)

(4) _Now_ the younger women, having seen the traditional success the
older women have achieved, are questioning that path. . .


(5) Following (
http://carfreeuniverse.org/Members/colin/neoprimitive/#conform ), The
greatest force in our lives that causes us to conform to existing
culturally-channeled behavior, instead of developing creative
approaches to love and living, is our desire for (after survival,
sometimes) relationships with others--coming down to, in the end, love
relationships, but extending to all relationships, including
employer-employee relationships.

In other words, and to use Ishmael vocabulary, what keeps Taker
culture in place is our desire to love and to be loved.

Here, in this group, we already have at least two examples of people
who have attempted to define--for the public--who their lover will be.
And, in doing so, the writer also tries to define who s/he is.

It is, perhaps, the traditions surrounding the female-male love
relationship that lock so much of our consumer, taker culture in
place, preventing or hindering the development of new, creativity-,
and life-enhancing alternatives.

0933

I have the sense that some men are ready to act more creatively, but
persist in trying to fit themselves into a mold that they think good,
successful women will value. But on both sides of that relationship
many characteristics of that mold are just a guess!

And vice versa.

And I feel like mentioning now (at this point only to recognize their
existence) the people who call themselves Asexual--not desiring and
not missing an intimate physical relationship, but still having
friends and people they can love.

Personal Example

I, for example, am doing what I do: going to school, so I could make
money as a teacher (perhaps--who knows?), in a large part so I could
be a potentially attractive mate. Nearly penniless and living with my
grandmother, with no immediate plans or desire to try to earn enough
to support an independent household for me and a wife, I know I can't
top anyone's list, however much she might like me as a person. There
are practical impossibilities.

My only hope is that by doing what I like (more or less), money
(survival success) will come without much compromise on my part (more
or less), so that a woman could see me. . . (but this may be only
wishful thinking as survival is based in the Earth, ultimately, not in
teaching writing composition to a dying culture. . . so I can see
already that what I want/like may take me away from where I appear to
be headed).

On the other hand--I may just keep doing what I like and being poor,
and I do have women friends, and I do remain skeptical of the ideal of
the husband-wife or other partnership relationship--while also
appreciating the immense value it has for some. And the value and
longing the Ideal often retains for me when I get the feeling or the
hint it might be possible with someone.

On yet another hand, it seems I have lived half my life with old,
elderly single women, and one woman with six cats headed that way. I
know how life can be and end for many of them. And how they too
sometimes find love.

Before that, I lived with parents, who are not divorced. . .

Now, I visit once a month with my mom's parents who are not divorced. . .

And I think that what is more important than the relationship then,
than _any_ relationship, is the community in which it occurs.

And so, asking myself what is the greatest possible change for the
better that could occur in the world to make better communities, more
responsive environments in which to love and live. . . and my answer
is that we not arrange our communities around the car. (There are
other elements to a great community, but that is perhaps the one
element we are most missing).


I have the following faiths:

(1)I can create love with almost anyone who has at least some interest
in spending time with me.

(2)I am broken and need help growing and in our love and friend
relationships we are helping each other heal and grow.

(3)I live in a broken community with broken people, but by living
carfree in it, and working with the friends I find there, I can help
heal the others, I heal myself, I heal the community. (communication,
community = making common, sharing).

(4)We all, even an evil person, do the best we can with what we're
given (socially, biologically), and our lives are very often made from
decisions (or non-decisions) about how we can best cope as individuals
with a past of harm and a world that may continue to harm, rather than
from decisions about how to create a world in which people can grow
from joy rather than from a need to cope with harm.

The characteristics of today's American urban and suburban landscape
which lead us to want to isolate & insulate ourselves are a product of
individual coping, rather than creativity- & joy-enabling community
design.

Why American Culture is Dying, and why Mormon culture is strong, and
also, perhaps, dying. Why Our Culture is strong.

Mormon culture is strong because it empowers each man to be a priest
in his own house. Mormons believe in continuing revelation and vision.
Joseph Smith was a prophet, and there have been and will be more.


Our culture is strong because it believes in continuing revelation.
Sacred texts continue to be written, again, and again. Many timeless
ideas and some new ones are re-presented by the great teachers of the
day, some of whom become great teachers of the century, some of whom
become great teachers of millennia.

Our culture is strong because it embraces the spectrum of gender and
sexual orientation. The homosexuals (and other non-heterosexuals) are
among those contributing the most creativity and energy to the new
culture because they, as individuals and as lovers, have had to
redefine and create new traditions, new cultural practices, new ways
of loving and of fostering love.

Mormon culture is strong because it creates a belief framework and
social environment where men and women can mate, love, and raise
children with joy, as, and since, they are raising souls for God's
kingdom.

American culture is dying because it has succeeded in creating
environments people are ashamed to love in and to raise children in
and to grow old in. There is little love inspired by the suburbs
surrounding San Diego State. There are few places you would want to
walk and linger with a lover or with your children or by yourself. But
I do, any way, find those times and places and people with whom that
love is possible even though we are hindered by our environment. (and
sometimes helped--there is good and bad).

Mormon culture is strong because it encourages propagation of the
culture and preparedness and survival for the future.

Our culture is strong because because it encourages creativity and
questioning about how to live best in tune with timeless principles.

Our culture is strong because it is creating beautiful places and new
cultural ways that foster life and encourage feelings of love and
community, on ecovillages and in cities, through permaculture design,
Open Space Technology, and many other new approaches.

I don't want to shut down debate--I encourage critical responses to
what I have written here--and I also encourage you to consider the
appreciative approach suggested by Peter Elbow in his _Writing Without
Teachers_. Appreciate the good parts of this story, and write a better
story with the weakest parts of this one remedied by better visions.


The Augie March quote:

". . . he was really singlemindedly and grimly fixed on the one thing,
ultimately *the* thing, for which men and women came together. . . He
looked and hoped for this in every woman." (_The Adventures of Augie
March_ by Saul Bellow p. 78 -- not entirely appropriate, but
definitely related)

1355
and a link to Death of a Salesman paper.

1413
P.S. I also recommend _The World's Religions_ by Huston Smith. The
chapter "Confucianism" at least is relevant to this discussion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Vision for EarthFair (brainstorm)

What we communicate:

(1) We are supporting each other as we question how to live more timelessly.

(2) Display & focus:
Each of us (sort of following myspace) has a photo and a short
statement of ways we address and approach the question of how to live
more timelessly.

(3) Goal:

(a) To increase people in local network--to have more
local/neighborhood meetings.

(b) To each develop in our own approach to timeless living.

(c) To further develop the communication and social support that
helps us to lead ourselves (and, thereby, to lead others).

II. Improve communication and encouragement in group. Appreciative
approach to evaluation of alternatives. (from Elbow, _Writing Without
Teachers_.

III. Limiting to focus on personal/individual change as catalyst for
social change. . . the search for individual voice . . . can be
limiting and disempowering. (larger cultural and institutional change,
and working together with focus on creating a quality community and
social environment is necessary).


SPECIFICS:
Print and fill out paperwork.
Money?
Creating the display.

To ask: What lasts? and live consistently with our answer and our conscience.

The Next Day::

"We know that more than individual change is necessary. Institutions
and cultural practices and traditions need to be redesigned to be
consistent with a long-term vision.

"Our group supports institutional change by encouraging individuals to
become leaders of themseves and others in addressing the areas of
cultural change they find themselves most passionately motivated to
work within.

ART:

The contrast of our timeless and universal goal

with the time/place-bound and unique manners of approaching the
universal and timeless. (of our individual statements)


A list of the timeless and universal that this group came up with.

The booth as a Show & Tell--something we may learn more from creating
than many of those seeing it might learn. . .

Vision for group (brainstorm)

------------------------------

Life as placeholder for new energy channels.

-------

The most important things we work on are those that establish
frameworks for channelling of human energy that did not exist before.
[?]

Keeping our eyes and ears open - using existing energy-channelling
frameworks to support ourselves and help us grow.

So that we are able to create the new ones (the new energy frameworks).

--------------------------

Relationship & marriage, angst---

-------------

Strengths, weaknesses of American culture, Mormonism.

------------

Creating the people whom you will love, and who will be able to love you.

-----------

Creating your lovers, and environment for love, & why US culture dies,
& Mormonism, too.

----------

Coping vs. Living

-----------

Is the US Cult really working for some ?

-----------

on love, coping, love & ideals -

------------

Rewriting our Ideal love relationship

Continual || In culture reinvention?

Gov't the last to change. ??

------------

Creativity infusing more

-----------

self love

Love of being human and of having a body

Yoga ballet ITP

no talk

---
bodymind that can act, witness.