New Model For Grassroots Social Change?

[ulTRAX]

Some of you have already read the proposal for a DU Think Tank...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2744460 a project to rethink and reinvent the Progressive movement and America from the bottom up. By that I mean from core assumptions upward.

But I see that as one piece of the puzzle in building not just a new majority but working toward a vision of where Progressives REALLY want to take America.

I've always been interested in what prevents dysfunctional belief systems, be they religious or secular, from changing. At its simplest I believe these belief systems are self-contained and self-justifying... which means those adherents deprive themselves of the intellectual tools to ever disprove their own belief system. I dare say that MOST belief systems are of this nature and the dynamic of even the secular variety is little different from religion. Adherents can be very defensive when their core values are threatened.

If true then political change must be done one person at a time operating WITHIN their overall belief system so not to cause a defensive reaction. Contrast this to belief systems that are open-ended and self-correcting where individuals, themselves, seek to question their own beliefs. So are these people incapable of change? Or is it just a matter of finding the hole in their ideological armor? I believe the latter.

Now maybe this is already being done, but about 15 years ago I had an idea of promoting social change though the grassroots level. Organizers would work on the community level understanding the issues people care most about. Organizers would work within existing belief systems in a non-threatening manner, but would ALWAYS seek to introduce new ideas... and this is the crucial element of the concept.... ideas that would allow people to place their issue in a broader common-sense ideological framework... a Progressive one, of course. In fact THIS would be the main goal of the project while the specific issues would be secondary.

For example concerns about pollution should NOT be thought of just as a battle with a company or a city council, but of a greater government failure to bring such costs into the market with regulations. The loss of jobs or depressed wages has to be seen in the context of free trade and how the Right believes capital has more rights than people. OK... not the best examples but you get the idea.

I never worked on the idea, of course, but I wanted to call them Wildfire Groups.... because the goal was to spread these ideas in a similar to how a wildfire grows, to make these new ideas contagious. On some level the Wildfire Groups concept could work hand in hand with the Rethink America (think tank) proposal. The latter would provide that coherent paradigm that grassroots organizers would work toward.

[sam sarrha]

1. i once wrote a paper for the Juvenile Parole Office in Nevada, entitled..

"Apriori and Inductive Logic as perceptual dysfunctional and a stalemate in the counseling process".

Apriori Logic has a phenomena of becoming circular in nature. always coming up with the same conclusion regardless of the input..

this is because the conclusion comes first and the premise follows.
the system doesn't not actually work very well in the long run and the problems this system causes get 'externalized' as someone else's doing. if you try to tell them the source of the problem you quickly become 'the problem'. these guys are like talking to a brick wall with a serious BAD Attitude... they get seriously pissed off. a great example of DENIAL !!!!

the only way out is 'art, music, repetitious exercise, or MEDITATION.

or hitting Rock Bottom... and by some miracle you change...which rarely happens, they have to change the actual structure of the way their brain works... Meditation can work in about 30 to 60 days.. i used it to quit drinking.. and it ended up changing the rest of my life...

i think Apriori Logic is actually the major difference between Right wing and Liberal. open or closed mind.

[ulTRAX]

3. I love it.....

Since you probably have given this more thought than I, perhaps you can better restate what's needed.

So is "Apriori and Inductive Logic as perceptual dysfunctional and a stalemate in the counseling process" available for reading on line?

[ulTRAX]

4. right vs liberals

"i think Apriori Logic is actually the major difference between Right wing and Liberal. open or closed mind."

Not sure we agree on this. I see BOTH the Right and Liberals as suffering from the same sabotaging of the intellect.

[ulTRAX]

2. Fox News or Rush are NOT the real enemy

Having been to numerous MeetUps and a few days ago a MoveOn meeting what I see are Progressives who already pretty much agree with each other talking in an echo chamber. There's little thought given on how developing new ideas or to where the rubber meets the road: selling our ideas to Americans who may not agree with us. Improving our ideas alone won't accomplish much unless we come up with an effective model to understand that resistance and to overcome it.

Remember... Fox News or Rush are NOT the real enemy. It's that people have sabotaged their intelligence enough to want to watch and believe it. Creating a better Progressive infrastructure will help Progressives become more united and informed.... but just as we tune out the Right, our target group will tune us out.

All the good ideas and infrastructure alone won't help encourage a deep ideological shift that is needed to create a Progressive majority.