CONVERSATIONS

Federation through Conversations

Conversations that make a difference

Don't be deceived by this seemingly innocent word, "conversations". Here is where the real action begins.

If you, like us, consider another news about Donald Trump or a terrorist threat to be no news at all, then you might be thirsting for some real and new and really good news. These conversations are designed to not only provide such news, but also to create them. And also and most importantly, they will also engage you in creating the good news, so you'lll no longer be an observer of the de-volution of our public sphere, but a participant in creating a whole new one!

This new kind of news that will emerge in this public sphere will not be a single bit boring; on the contrary! Just think, to name an example, of the news that there's been a huge and exotic invisible animal omnipresent in our lecture halls, in our media news and our in our conversations. Present in our university labs and auditoriums; present in both our concern about the "global issues" and in our lack of concern; present in our media reports and in our coffee house conversations about our world, which were about everything else except this sensationally spectacular creature that so much wants to be seen!

Every century in history had its challenges and its opportunities, which were often only seen from a historical distance. The 19th century changed our industry, family, culture and values. The 20th century accelerated this change, and led to an accelerated or "exponential" growth of our important variables. The 20th century also created the knowledge by which the nature of our new situation could be understood – and handled – in an entirely new way. But we remained stuck in the paradigm that the 19th century left us, and in subtle power relationships and institutionalized practices and values by which we are made subservient to it. Recall once again the image of Galilei in prison. Today no Inquisition, no imprisonment and even no censorship is required. As Italo Calvino observed already while it was still only the printed text that was competing for our attention, the overabundance of our unstructured information will do just as well – and probably better.

When in Federation through Images we talked about the mirror existing at every university, we may have made it seem like an entrance to something – to an academic underground perhaps, or an underworld. You may now perceive the mirror as an exit – from an academic and more generally creative reality where our creativity is confined to updating an outdated paradigm, to an incomparably freer and yet more responsible and responsive one – where we are empowered to see and to change this paradigm. And where we will begin to evolve culturally and socially in an entirely new way and new direction.

This new news that we are about to make visible or create together in conversations will of course bring to the forefront entirely new heroes. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, whose talents took him from a village in the Pyrenees to the forefront of the French academia. And who became a sociologist by observing the Algerian war and the transformation of the Kabyle traditional society in the late 1950s, and understanding the power relationships in a new way, and how they shaped the Modernity, and our evolution. Or Buddhadasa, Thailand's enlightened monk and scholar, who understood that at the core of the teachings of the Buddha – and the essence of all world religions – was an insight about ourselves from which an entirely new set of values, and a new way of evolving, most naturally follows. We will then easily see how this worst kept secret in the history of mankind was rediscovered throughout our history – and then efficiently erased from our collective awareness and memory by that very de-volutionary dynamics that Bourdieu wrote about. We will then easily understand the vision and the contribution of Douglas Engelbart, who perceived how "digital technology" could enable us to develop "a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms" – and developed both the technological and the organizational details. And Erich Jantsch who designed the structure of our society's new "headlights and steering", and lobbied at our leading universities that the university take on its pivotal new role, of enabling and streamlining this new phase in our evolution. And of course many other true heroes of the 20th century, which to a vast majority of us have remained entirely unknown.

The nature of our conversations

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