Welcome to the 'About' section of CEAV.
This is not your usual kind of 'About Page', though
it will be a place for information about the
assemblages we call CA21c and 'CEAV'; and the locus
of people, places and objects that that we intersect
with.
This is because CA21c set out, most of all, to
try to describe and act upon our belief that the
21st century can be a very different place than
all the centuries that have come before it. We are
not just being vaguely wishy-washy about this. It is
plain to see that questions are being asked about the
way we have done business (and each other) in the 20th century
that have never been asked before. Our sciences, our communications,
our awareness of planetary distress, our penchant for war and weaponry,
our questioning some of the very foundations of law and
justice we have used for centuries, along with some of the tools we now
have to examine these matters are quite different from any we have
had before. Most of all, the minds and mindsets of this new millennium
(at least the younger, more supple ones) seem to be grappling with
with idea that maybe they don't want to raise their children in
a world that has done so much damage and caused so much pain as
the ones of preceeding generations.
Not that the outcome is certain, or that our species will
be able to leverage a better world into existence. But things
do seem to be different and we can only hope that difference
will make all the difference for those that follow us.
So, for CA21c, we were faced with this question almost as
soon as we realized it would take many people, working
together, to bring about some of the changes and realizations
that we advocate.
It was simple, if ill-defined, to know that our effort would
engage only in things we felt resembled stuff that people of
a more enlightened and less hostile world might appreciate.
How to define and select/imagine those things, of course, presents
difficult challenges. But, with a bit of luck, we feel we might muddle
through and, at least, do our best.
What followed on the heels of that was that we began by describing
an "organization" with the usual appendages; one that might take on
the tasks we had in mind. But, as we went through that process, we quickly realized
that what we were describing, its structure, hierarchy, roles, financing and
and tasks, was very much a rendering of way the twentieth century, and long before,
has gone about "organizing" itself and its endeavors. "Could that," we asked, "be
part of the problem?" There's the old joke about what an 'organization'
is made of, that goes: "It is made of at least three people - a president, to
decide things; a treasurer, to collect dues; and, someone to keep out."
What's funniest (laugh causing) about that joke is that it is most funny (peculiar)
precisely because it happens to be true. When it comes down to it, those are the fundamental
assumptions underlying all collections of people who set out to accomplish some mutual task
they've set for themselves. Who decides? Who handles the money? Whose in and, whose out?
It doesn't matter if its a giant corporation, an ad hoc grass-roots organization;
the Amish of Pennsylvania, Physicians for Social Responsibility or your local PTA.
It is so internalized in our way of waying, that we assume that's the only way it
can be. How could it be otherwise?
Well, we got to thinking about this, and saw that it certainly could be otherwise.
Not only could it be otherwise, but it became clear that some of the source of
our impotence in leveraging a better world into being comes from the very way we
go about trying to do it. It was at that point (about a week after looking at
the matter) CA21c decided to consider another way of going about this project.
Something that might model our best ideas of what the locus of activity might look
like if it were created to resemble the world it wished to help birth.
Keeping all that in mind, the small submenu bar items (when their pages are installed)
will take you to some of the usual and unusual places our attempt to construct
a 21st century locus of human energy might go. We hope the idea will fascinate
you as much as it does us. More, we hope it will provoke your imagination to
contribute your own ideas; ones we haven't even considered, pro or con, to help
us on this little journey at the outset of the new millennium.