A good debate re PoL

I read the 'response' to this Flash and found it wanting. If the author doesn't know what to "Own Yourself" means then what can anyone do with this? How "asleep" can anyone get?

Hey! Is anyone awake there?

Let's see if we can wake anyone up.

That in itself will be telling.

Don Newman

 6/26/2010

Shepard, Thanks for providing the link to the post.  I believe that all comments should be welcome and the best way to form opinions is with honest discourse.  I found the analysis interesting but of little value.  I am more favorably impressed with PoL as a holistic document that seeks to provoke thought in a culture that has been indoctrinated to seek opinions from television.

Deconstructing each line and statement is of little value when your context is limited to the statement itself.  I guess there is value if you are conjugating verbs or learning how a sentence should be structured, but not if you are seeking to understand a document that is naturally contextual.  There are great bodies of work where men have explained the natural world or passed on values through stories of how other men have behaved or met and overcome their own weaknesses.  These myths, or fables, or stories, both oral and written, have served as a means to communicate values to entire civilizations.  If the context of the PoL is put back into the epilog of the book then it is a very apropos "moral of the story".  And if it is taken as a thought proving document that seeks to promote holding one's self accountable for their actions, it has laudable merit.

If just a few people pick up on the theme of personal accountability and start championing it on the new conformance media of the internet, real change can actually take place.  I agree that there is danger in blindly embracing any single belief system and that no utopia exists.  I also believe that civilization changed when people declared their independence in America in 1776 and told the leaders with fine hats that freedom was a right.  150 years ago it was legal in almost every country to own other human beings.  In many countries it was normal. There is still far too many places where people with fine hats take what is not theirs (ask the people of Tibet if you don’t believe me.) Civilization evolves slowly but it does evolve.  This document would have had no proponents a thousand years ago and very few 300 years ago.  If more people understood it then they would not be allowing so many rights of self determination be usurped by their governments.   If the Declaration of Independence had been deconstructed the same way, your friend analysed the PoL then we probably wouldn’t even have a seat in the British Parliament let alone a government (as non-functional as it is) of our own.