My drafting notes
editFirst things first---a Principle
editSteve Covie's book is a treatise on the above, but I value those three words as an accessible "rule of thumb".
This principle is mostly a truism in the physical world. But in the world of discourse about abstract realities it is needed much more. It is obvious to every healthy person that if one wants to go to a restaurant, for example, the first thing is to leave the house. But when it comes to social change, to pick an important area of "activism, idiocy often reigns.
Big, threatening issues like environmental abuse are rife with "putting-the-cart-before-the horse" errors.
Youth Demand
editA new movement with the above name hit the headlines recently—March 2024; https://youthdemand.org/
Effective activism—activism that changes things in favour of its aims.
editActivism needs to be complemented by sound theory.
Currently, the main objective of activism is to raise awareness of issues the public should be concerned about. However, being aware of problems, however serious, does not necessarily lead to corrective action.
Knowing that a territory is under attack is not much help without the ability to prevent that attack.
- ====an aside about using military metaphors====
- It is not a physical battle that needs to be contemplated but a battle of truth versus error/deception.
History and failures of "Classic Activism"
editActivism is a perennial part of social history. It can be likened to biological evolution with the difference that it involves human beings with reasoning and imaginative capacities.
This draft essay explores the reasons for the frequent failures of activism to achieve intended changes.
The chief failures, in brief, are due to the belief that awareness of a problem leads to correct actions that eliminate or minimise it.
The operative reason is more complex: failure to understand the complex interaction of causal factors that define the nature of a big problem. It is necessary, first of all, to distinguish the symptomatic part from the causative part (a building on fire is the symptom, but why did the fire start?).
[Root cause analysis] is a well-developed discipline in the physical and social sciences. In activism, however, it is hardly acknowledged. And this is the main shortcoming of common activism (effective firefighting is important but if an arsonist is setting the fires it is actually ineffective).
The distinction between classic activism and Analytical Activism
editThis is thoroughly documented at the website Classic Activism Analytical Activism
Synopsys of M J Adler's How to think About War and Peace
editMortimer Adler writes in his introduction: "In thinking about war and peace, as in thinking about other basic practical problems, the man who brings general ideas and principles to bear upon particular problems and formulations has a unique advantage. He can make effective contact with the concrete and the immediate without losing a dispassionate vision of the universal and the timeless. He can exercise that critical detachment necessary for a thoughtful, rather than an emotional, judgement upon the conflicting policies which solicit his adherance." How to think About War and Peace discusses immediate issues in terms of eternal principles, viewing present problems in the large perspectives that history and philosophy can provide. This book engages in a timeless project not contingenton current events, but cumulated from a continuing history of the battle between war and peace. Written in the midst of the Second World War, Adler's purpose was not to proffer how to make peace after the end of the war, but rather to instruct how to think about peace and war and how to continue this process to maintain peace, or, how to effect its establishment.
A longer synopsis is here: https://globalsolutions.org/portfolio/how-to-think-about-war-and-peace-by-mortimer-j-adler/
For a 24 page summary of this book by David C Oughton, PhD, click here: https://globalsolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Oughtons-summary-of-Adlers-How-to-Think-about-War-and-Peace.pdf
Learning to use Article Wizard
edit- A comment on the prehistory of the internet: I first got the taste for linked text long before the advent of interned and hypertext.
- In those days there were printed versions of this, called Programmed Text (also referred to as Basically Branching). One of the most accomplished trademarks was TutorText.
- Three substantial volumes of these, Precalculus Mathematics (Algebra, Trigonometry, Functions And Relations) did for me what two years at the Open University failed to do...
Factors of production in economics
editLinking to existing pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics) Land Labour Capital
This copied code will teach me by example to create more sophisticated pages. —