Project Description
Welcome to the Reimagining Society Project
Reimagining Society participants are generating a vast outpouring of content bearing upon vision for a new society and strategy to attain the aims. This includes:
- brief introductions by a great many participants summarizing their histories and their hopes and desires for the project
- initial essays provided by many participants which serve as the starting point of the project discussions
- discussion among participants of the essays
- comments on the essays by many readers of the site
- itemized proposals extracted from the essays and discussions
- polls tallying participants' and readers' reactions to the proposals
- concluding essays by participants assessing the overall project, and
- a brief accounting of possible future directions for the project.
The Project is hosted by Z Communiations but the contents are freely available for linking or posting on any site that wishes to reproduce all or part of the contents.
Links in the menu to the left provide more information...as follows...
- Home - links back to this explanatory top page
- Purpose / Invitation - links to a brief statement of purpose of the project and a copy of the invitation initially sent to participants soliciting their involvement
- Schedule/Method - links to a stage by stage schedule of the project and some infomation about process.
- Participants - links to a list of people participating, organized by country - including, for each individual, a list of links to their contributions, as well.
- Opening Essays by Topic - links to the major opening essays voluntarily provided by a subset of the participants, arranged by topic. Under each essay there also appear links to reaction articles.
- Opening Essays by Author - links to the major opening essays voluntarily provided by a subset of the participants, all in one table, arranged by author.
- Comments - links to comments by ReEsoc participants, and to ensuing discussion, for the opening essays, with the content also appended at the bottom of each essay. See also Resoc Comments and also all comments in the top page of ZNet left menu.
- Itemized Proposals - links to a list of very briefly defined proposals for movements aims and strategy culled from the opening essays and ensuing discussions and all linking back to their source essays and related discussion.
- Polls - links to extensive polls - of the participants and of Z Sustainer readers of the site - displaying attitudes to the itemized proposals.
- Societal Visions - links to set of full societal visions offered by teams of participants, to some degree overlapping, but at least in part contradictory. The visions are in essense compendiums of itemized proposals with some descriptive text.
- Concluding Essays - links to essays by the participants commenting on the whole project, overall, at completion of the above aspects
- Future Projects - links to ideas for possible future projects of the participants, as these emerge from discussions
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" I would like to believe that people have an instinct for freedom, that they really want to control their own affairs. They don?t want to be pushed around, ordered, oppressed, etc., and they want a chance to do things that make sense, like constructive work in a way they control, or maybe control together with others. I don?t know any way to prove this. It?s really a hope about what human beings are like, a hope that if social structures change sufficiently, those aspects of human nature will be realized."
-- Noam Chomsky
"In this situation, with both long-term biological and day-to-day economic survival in doubt, the only relevant question is: do we have a plan, people? Can we see our way out of this and into a just, democratic, sustainable (add your own favorite adjectives) future? ... Let's just put it right out on the table: we don't.... But...the absence of a plan, or at least some sort of deliberative process for figuring out what to do, is no longer an option."
-- Barbara Ehrenreich
& Bill Fletcher
"Do it!"
-- Abbie Hoffman
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