Wisdom of ...... Dude

[BikerDude]

The words of the Dude.
Words to Abide by for sure.

Values

Making values explicit -- an initial task in establishing alternatives -

    is an activity that has been devalued and corrupted. The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities -- "free world", "people's democracies" -- reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles. But neither has our experience in the universities brought as moral enlightenment. Our professors and administrators sacrifice controversy to public relations; their curriculums change more slowly than the living events of the world; their skills and silence are purchased by investors in the arms race; passion is called unscholastic. The questions we might want raised -- what is really important? can we live in a different and better way? if we wanted to change society, how would we do it? -- are not thought to be questions of a "fruitful, empirical nature", and thus are brushed aside.

In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles:

    that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings;
    that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations;
    that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life;
    that the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices and facilities the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to related men to knowledge and to power so that private problems -- from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation -- are formulated as general issues.

The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:

    that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; selfdirect, not manipulated, encouraging independence; a respect for others, a sense of dignity and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics;
    that the economic experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination;
    that the economy itself is of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic social regulation.

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html