THESIS STATEMENT - LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS J.W. Ballard Jr., 1.31.1983
Given that the United States of America, with all its shortcomings, is still the nation that is all nations; is a running experiment in providing human beings with unlimited opportunity for personal freedom, expression and creativity; is the light bearer for these qualities of life across the face of the earth. And,
Given that within this great experiment the direct force of public opinion and the focused use of accumulated capital are two massive powers that shape our destiny:-
I choose to be a catalyst for the planning and establishment of economic life support systems built in the spirit of transformation that began this nation 200 years ago. These support systems will be a fusion of public opinion and focused use of accumulated capital into ‘Adhocracies’ that enable the daily personal actions of we in the ‘public’, who so choose, to rigorously and inexorably build into a nation, planet and humanity that realizes the common dream of physical abundance and spiritual freedom.
My parts in this work are:
• To facilitate a participatory design and implementation process that applies wisdom from every shade in the spectrum of human endeavor, and brings it to bear on this challenge.
• To help document the process as an evolving ‘pattern language’, a network of whole concepts, that allows our richness and diversity of understanding to show the way between and through the opposites. Those magnificent differences, which, when respected and embraced, can resolve and challenge or problem human beings can perceive or create. This network of patterns, always tentative, will continue to be refined in its precision and, as it continues to provide a general tool for the participatory creation of anything any group chooses to do together.
• To continue collecting and developing a database of access to, and understanding of, the ground swell of social and technical innovation sweeping across the spectrum of human endeavor.
• To support the development of interactive media as an alternative to the non-adaptive perceptual imperialism of our present mass media.
• To spread an ethic of personal and corporate tithing as an essential element in healing the damage done to the earth, our whole life support system. Whether through action, inaction, or ignorance, none are innocent in the collective suicide made inevitable in continuing and accelerating the destruction of our planetary home.
• To address practically and theoretically address two key issues in human systems functioning: Remuneration and Accountability.
• To continue my personal development in body, mind, and spirit.