: Sure. But how do you know "lennonian" notions are far-fetched until you have education, a programme of action etc. in place? Discarding such notions and adopting some sort of fashionably-cynical "realism" in their place would be a strategy just as infected by idealist metaphysics, and not as effective in stirring hearts and minds to hope.I don't , by any means, wish to discard utopian notions. Indeed, I think these are necessary for giving people hope and showing them we can make a change and improve the society and environment we are living in. My point is how to build a bridge from where we are know to where the utopian idealist promises we will one day get to. To be honest, it is easy to say we want equality, no discrimination, full control of people over their own lives etc etc. but even these seemingly straight-forward notions do not have common definitions and they remain vague and wooly concepts until the general public develops a shared understanding of these terms. As it stands now, anybody whether socialist, capitalist, environmentalist etc. can claim their ultimate goal is common good and democracy. Look at Mark Da Cunha's message, for example, about capitalism and how it would liberate the society of controls if implemented properly. And this is not a unique view. Many laissez faire capitalists believe this.
It is important to show not only that capitalism has exploited and alienated the public in the past but WHY it is, as a system, incompatible with true democracy and people control. And why any alternative system we advocate is capable of delivering what it promisses.
: The point I wanted to make is that various modes of civic idealism have been progressively discredited in the US and in other countries since the 1960s ended, not because of any scientific proof of the impossibility of global community or anything of that sort, but because of certain specific social and economic trends, some of which are traceable to elite forms of agency.
I don't know what you mean here by scientific proof. There is no scientific theory of social development. Only what people perceive as serving to fulfill their needs better. And this is I think what happened in the 60's. The anti-establisment movement lost it's momentum and was intigrated into the mainstreem. In myopinion because it was not completely incompatible with the mainstream capitalism in the first place.
: So now you have a bunch of people wandering around thinking "there are jerks everywhere you go," which gives them an alibi for themselves whenever they catch themselves acting like jerks, and you have a bunch of people who think of themselves as "hardened realists" who in fact believe in the shoddiest idealisms such as this "greed is good" idea. So how is the world to discredit the fashionable cynicism it has today adopted, and switch to something better?
