To whom it may concern:


I feel the list owner is doing fine as people are able to express their
ideas. This is what this this is for I thought to express ones views in
relation to Noam Chomsky. There are many people who have much
items too discuss. I am not sure what agenda your on and what your
infering?

Chances can only be made when those abused become involved in
their government process. Charlotte

        brian j. callahan[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Monday, May 05, 1997 10:07 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Chomsky list

Juan writes:
>I repeat, what are we doing on this list? Just chatting as we were
>having five o'clock tea.

>I see no proposals to set something into action and submit them to
>discussion.

I see this sort of post on many lists.  It's really sad when it comes from
the list owner.  I thought this list was for disccusion of the ideas of Noam
Chomsky and we have engaged those ideas and then, inevitably, branched out
into discussion of the basis of those ideas and their validity.  A list
concerned only with action would have to be, IMHO, local, because that's
where people are.  They get together with people who live near them and
demonstrate and agitate etc.  I can't get together with people in California
for a demo, but I can discuss the ideas of NC with them.  And I can, although
this really didn't seem like the list for it, discuss these actions and how
they went and what others could learn from them.  For anarchists, at any
rate, there's a list that deals specifically with such things: ORGANISE.

>My own posts about maternal care have been ignored when they did
>propose a series of complex material actions to be considered, at the
>very least; since whatever organization we may find fit to make our
>lives better will inevitably carried out by humans, and we can't have
>mentally deranged persons occupying crucial social positions in a
>truly democratic society. As to how this should be implemented, it is
>an open question, a matter of debate, a matter of seeking the
>opinions of the few specialists we have left, after the general
>corruption in psychology during the last 2 decades razed what had
>been started in the sixties. We need to organize multidsiciplinary
>groups, to set the bases of strategies with the aim to give rise to
>social change.

Well, first of all, Juan, maybe nobody felt they could add anything to what
you said because they really weren't conversant with the topic.   I think
your phrase "...it is an open question, a matter of debate, a matter of
seeking the opinions of the few specialists we have left..."  Well, I'm not
one of those specialists.  I studied political science in college, not
psychology.  If you want to start a discussion of this topic amongst non-
specialists, maybe you could post your ideas in a form that is more suited to
the non-specialist.  I can't give the exact quote or cite (I'm not a scholar,
just a computer worker with some free time), but I believe NC said something
like "all ideas in the social sciences are either obvious or untrue when
stripped of their jargon."  If he didn't say that, then he should have,
because I think it's true.

So let's stop complaining about the quality of posts (my ego is fragile
enough) and start posting things we want to say.  If others engage us, fine.
If they don't, then that's their prerogative.

There's certainly no reason why several different threads that interest
different people can't coexist.  That, to me, is a truly democratic forum.