forbes leslie's blog

I'm contemplating summarizing Forming Tribalized Communities. I have more than one interest and it might help to weave them together. The book Forming Tribalized Communities sets out a large view of where we are now as a culture and goes on to describe the emerging culture. There is a lot to read and perhaps it is best thought of as a resource or reference. This is why a summary will allow a reader to have an overall view and gives the option to focus down to a particular chapter or commentary.
Communitas is an ongoing commentary and likely to be more of a series of blog entries. Perhaps it is more of a reflective discussion and will address other related aspects such as Western Buddhism or consumerism. I'll work on supplying an overarching statement or description of both these blogs.

I have, I hope, added Chapter 14 to FTC.
I intend to add a chapter each day until completed. Then I will turn my attention to the whole site and attempt to make it easier to understand for me and new readers. It seems an awful messy business right now. My experience has been that projects only make sense when used and that is what I intend to do.
Forbes.

I have filed another book page. Has it ended up where it was supposed to be?
Forbes.

I believe I have posted Chapter 11,The partitioning of Power, and everything is complete up to the end of that chapter. Somehow the logic behind the blog is not obvious to me. It is not usually clear to me where I am from how I read the blog. For example I cannot go directly to Forming Tribalized Communities and see what is completed - or if it is there I cannot understand what the text is telling me. For example I re-wrote the end of Chapter 9 and then found it was already posted. I did not know it was completed the first time I looked.
When I talk about strategy what I am saying is that sections need to be clearer so that visitors know what is available and can go there directly. Perhaps it is me, but in blog entries I am not sure if I am in a thread or not, - is it a blog entry on a topic by Augustin, or by me, or by someone else?

The newspaper article Love and Human Nature arose from a lead article in the February 2006 edition of the National Geographic. The National Geographic interviewed Helen Fisher, whose research indicates that neurochemicals dictate sexual behaviour - that chemical passion lasts only a few years and is replaced by the bonding chemical oxytocin. Faced with this, the reporter, Christin Geall, felt her romantic spirit begining to wither.
Christin's response to the idea that sexuality is governed by biology is to argue that some of the best relationships are born, not only out of passion, but also out of a deeper connection with nature. That is ducking the issue. Assuming sexuality is governed by biology, what is the role of sex in love?

Homelessness and the Social Economy

Homelessness – ‘they’ are not going away – ‘they’ are ‘in your face’. ‘They’ are downtown, annoying business owners, depressing property values, and hassling pedestrians. If you drive ‘them’ out of one locality they will settle in another. The homeless, like all humans, have followed the food, their addictions, or the availability of people to support them. Bottom line - it is likely the hard core homeless, will always be with us. What are we going to do with ‘them’?
What’s got our attention are the visible homeless - the ten per cent hard core chronically homeless and chronically ill - the heavy users of expensive public systems, hospital, jails, and detoxification centers – those who require long term subsidization. Visible homelessness gets our attention but it is only the tapering end of a spectrum of poverty.

Are Blogs Communities?

Being geographically separate would, at first glance, seem to preclude blogs from being categorized as a community. From the blog point of view this is too restrictive an interpretation of what it means to be ‘in community’. Discussion on a blog is where a relatively large number of people co-operate in a process leading to an action or attitude based on the collective intelligence. This collective intelligence, based on the freely given thoughts of anyone joining the blog, is very enticing. Collective intelligence is one of the signs of community. Reading a blog discussion gives a validity to personal thought often missing in the day to day world – it is approval from one’s peers – a tribal stamp of significance and self worth.