For instance with real flocking - birds, say - there is a narrow range of speeds at which a flock can move as a self-organized aggregation. It is partly dependent on the physical abilities of the individuals/species, but also dependent on the speed of interaction as individuals visually adjust their position relative to the flock - in order to remain part of the flock.

Up until the widespread use of mobile phones, the speed at which people with a grievance against say, government, could organize themselves into a 'flock' was slow enough that 'authorities' could discover the organization and timing of the process, and take measures to protect themselves.

After group SMS, a 'flock' could organize very rapidly. Not by mass messaging, but by the principle that if you text 10 people within 2 minutes, and each of those 10 people text another 10, then a lot of people will know about it within 30 minutes. So may the authorities  find out (there is always leakage), but it will be too short a time for them to react.

This is the connecting up of local 'cells' -a cell being friends, family, colleagues, neighbours etc. A 'bird' maybe ;-)

And yes, one cell may initiate the messaging, but it might be any cell - group 'sense' is in operation. The bird that spots the corn on the ground and turns to fly toward it, is a momentary leader among a flock of potential leaders.

Your 'patterns of reality' are seen here.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Even with very tame- supine, in fact- media, reality leakage is washing away the old illusions fast. That's our job, I think.

"I am convinced that, as you put it, the whole fantasy structure is collapsing."

Yes, but it's also bifurcating, at least, and the residual pieces threaten to take down the whole house.
The collapse was the Republic collapsing, and it's over, done, dead.
The fragments look to me to be encasing themselves in a bubble- the Obamanauts seem likely to develop a dingbat core that's just as impervious to that inward reality leakage as the right wing, and perhaps as dangerous.
The Empire is doing just what history suggests is the frequent outcome for such predators- metastasizing into a nation of warrior-predators, flailing about trying to halt history, and eventually stripping the treasury of resources and/or the field of combat of useful prey. As you point out, might just get it's ass kicked, too, by a Chinese boot.

War is an ultimately understandable story, however false. And a story dear to the American heart. Particularly since nobody has carpet-bombed us recently.

I see a plethora of new enemies- the Bolivarian attempt to rebel, the Yemeni front, and many new ones such as a rebellious Mexico if the US grip on the perfumadoes slips further.
I anticipate a return of the draft and a wartime command economy, perhaps after the next crash.
Consider that the American People may welcome such comforting discipline, such clear-cut cartoon villains.

Chris, your ideas, which are close to mine in many ways, have their best chance in the Latin world, if it lives. The energy is there, the political ossification so advanced that the old structures and power groups seem to me quite fragile.
The FMLN still controls nearly 80% of the land area of Colombia, and all those new bases are a clear response to the Bolivarian revolution's very real successes.  

As for action, my life has been filled with lots of it. I'm swamped at present with just saving my ass and my family. I'm afraid I'll have to leave that to the rest of you for the present. Don't misunderstand--I'm not done yet. Just gotta write that big-selling book, or take up subsistence farming- and that leaves little time. You, and the rest of the ETopians gotta save the world, I think.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

 "So if the topiaries laugh at any of us, as they will, it really has no sting, as they are the topiaries, rooted in place, and we can move on."

The key is to pick up your feet now and again, just to make sure there aint none of them little rootlets sprouting out, whenever you stand still a bit too long.

Thanks.


Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

BAI

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Abstractions of reality (if you believe in reality) are necessarily noisy. But there IS a connection to reality, or not very much of our shit would work.
I'll allow as how totally twist-based stuff can work for a while, if belief is strong and widespread enough, but reality leakage will still bring it down, if it's far enough out there. The American Republic, as envisioned in the declaration of independence for example. Died pretty much right away. Took ill with the constitution for the wealthy landowners, and truly died when the corporation was declared a person. See there? Nested twist, again.
A zombie empire.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

The Original Affluent Society -by Marshall Sahlins

Hunter-gatherers

Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.

There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent goods" become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty - with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their "prodigality" for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters' economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own.

Destutt de Tracy, "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire" though he might have been, at least forced Marx to agree that "in poor nations the people are comfortable", whereas in rich nations, "they are generally poor".

Paradise Lost? Since Jacob stole Esau's birthright? Charles Sellers, in The Market Revolution, noted that while there were numerous stories of whites running away to join Native American societies, there were no stories of Native Americans running away to join white society, and rural, frontier aspects of that white society were far less oppressive in the early and mid 19th century than any that can now be found, save for those that are doing the oppressing.

Talk about twistedness!  

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."