Part I.
Four Freedoms
...freedom of speech and expression --everywhere in the world....
freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world...
freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means...
to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants --everywhere in the world....
freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means...
that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the world....
Delivered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 6, 1941, eleven months before Pearl Harbor.
Part II.
Free Secular Literacy for All
"Asked about the biggest threat to their groups' survival, a militant says that
'free secular education for all' leading to an 'increase in the literacy rate'
is the gravest threat to the survival of the jihadi groups in Pakistan."
Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill
by Jessica Stern (NY: HarperCollins, 2003), page 230
"Free secular education for all."
Why not an ad hoc, all media, open source push
to make literacy possible for everybody in the world?
When Google can announce that it will digitize the NY Public Library,
why not free secular education for all,
teaching literacy in local languages available through
cell phone, Web/Net, radio, video, hard copy, and word of mouth?
Why not universal availability of learning materials
by every means possible, taking into account
the varieties of learning intelligences and
the concept of literacy beyond the written word, rune, and ideogram,
beyond numeracy?
What about providing universal global access
to the world's libraries to balance those who teach only
the One Holy Book, be it Koran, Bible, or little red book,
only by rote, and always
the only one
allowed?
Part III.
In 1988 I visited China.
One evening, I walked out of the White Crane Hotel
on Shamian Island and crossed the bridge
into the city of Guangzhou.
There I saw a line of men
standing behind small folding tables
in closed shop doorways.
Coming closer, I saw that they were rebuilding and
reselling
plastic "disposable" lighters.
I want a solar rechargeable reading light
just like that,
some combination of a
solar electric chip, LED and button battery
as cheap, adaptable, and readily available
as a disposable cigarette lighter.
We need to make it possible
for every child around the world
to read in bed
and dream.
Part IV.
the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.
Diane Di Prima
"Rant"
Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous behaviors that will avoid extinction.
R. Buckminster Fuller
We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all.
Lew Welch
The way to subvert the dominant paradigm is to have more fun than they do and make sure they know it.
David Elfstrom
http://www.treehugger.com/...