X-Sender: bala@...
X-Apparently-To: agathiyar@egroups.com
Received: (EGP: mail-8 0 3 2); 1 Jun 2002 08:20:29 -0000
Received: (qmail 45750 invoked from network); 1 Jun 2002 08:20:29 -0000
Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 1 Jun 2002 08:20:29 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO sydney.net) (203.22.101.2) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 1 Jun 2002 08:20:28 -0000
Received: from bala (nas0ppp00.sydneywerks.com.au [203.22.103.10]) by sydney.net (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-21) with SMTP id SAA27094; Sat, 1 Jun 2002 18:27:22 +1000
X-Authentication-Warning: churchill.sydneywerks.com.au: Host nas0ppp00.sydneywerks.com.au [203.22.103.10] claimed to be bala
Message-ID: <011501c2096a$822150c0$d8bafea9@bala>
To:
Cc:
Subject: The Tamildom Proposition -- The Erumbugal Manifesto
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 18:17:18 +0530
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
From: "Bala Pillai"
X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1292804
X-Yahoo-Profile: bala2pillai
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 18376
Canadian Tamil Congress
1450 Midland Avenue, Suite # 203
Toronto, ON, M1P 4Z8
Canada
Tel: (416) 757 8520
Fax: (416) 757 9987
Anpulla Thamil Nanbargale,
Vanakkam and my personal thanks to the organisers and delegates of this
year's Canadian Tamil Congress begining today, June 1 in Toronto.
http://www.ctconline.ca/events.asp
Given the opportunities that arise from the connectedness available because
of the Internet and other interactive media, I would like to urge that
delegates be made aware of the Tamildom/Erumbugal option as a way forward
for the solving of many of the economic there overall problems faced by
Tamil language and society worldwide.
The first Draft of the Erumbugal Manifesto is below. Look forward to
questions and responses from the organisers and delegates in enabling Tamils
the world over to to get closer and closer to a rough consensus, therefore
thorns to be overcome, on the Tamildom notion.
anpudan../bala
bala@...
Founder, Thamil Innaiyam (since 1995)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erumbugal
http://www.tamil.net
The Erumbugal Manifesto
Draft 0.1
Forging a Collective Consciousness
Bridging the psychological schism
* The greatest tragedy of the modern development era is the perverse
perception that humankind is inherently separate from each other, living
distinct and apart from his/her world, from his/her god, and existing free
from physical, psychological and spiritual linkages between the members of a
community.
* Every human condition that afflicts the world today reeks of the
stench of this disconnectedness. It pervaded the middle ages[i], fueled the
industrial revolution[ii] and became embodied in the proliferation of
systematic forms of human exploitation, which in turn birthed malformed
resistance movements that have thus far failed to find an alternative that
works.
* The creation of a culture of community cooperation for mutual benefit
and human advancement remains a pipe dream[iii] brought on by the loss of
the knowledge and ability to participate in each other. The violence of
humanity is a withdrawal symptom.
* And yet we continue to be tantalized by the ideological g-string of
information technology as the panacea for our societal schizophrenia,
towards achieving a healing, creative, collective consciousness.
* From the coalescence of these two thought-streams of community
cooperation and cross-media networking emerged Erumbugal, a real-world
manifestation of network-enabled community cooperatives, the concept of
which begs the question: What **cannot** a million wired Tamils achieve
towards uplifting the human condition?
Creating an organic intelligence
* Erumbugal are working to create a fertile, self-sustaining, virtual
biosphere that is incubating an organic intelligence. The word they use to
describe this new awareness is Tamildom. When critical mass is achieved,
Tamildom will generate a level of human connectivity that has never before
been attained in all of documented history. The success of the open source
revolution is a good example of the powerful potential of this new form of
cohesive human cognition. Yet, what Tamildom has, which global wiredness has
not yet discovered, is a common motivation to use their collective potential
to satisfy various levels of human need and aspiration. This will lead to
changing behaviour patterns that can drive a digitally-fueled Tamil
Rennaissance.
* In a world in which 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day[iv],
Tamildom offers you T$ 2,000 (1 T$ = 1 USD) for free. This is geared towards
stimulating an economy in which the money is used to buy goods and services
from other Tamildom netizens, and in return, you provide an equivalent
amount of services to the cooperative.
* The key paradigm shift here is that existing systems of socio-economic
organisation are profit-driven, while Tamildom is demand-driven, yet with an
inherent exponential capacity to create profit. The infrastructure of the
network-enabled community cooperative enervates the natural potential
difference which flows between supply and demand, mining the latent talents
and productive capacities of a focused and primed market pool. Erumbugal's
challenge will be to increase effective services exchange until they cross
the event horizon[v] that would spark the realisation of a sustainable,
self-propagating socio-economic symbiosis.
Evolving a higher being
* Tamildom is investing in the intangibles, challenging consumer addicts
of the attention economy to turn away from being mere pawns of an
ineffective and unconscionable system, and instead channel their creativity
and ageographic collective potentials towards becoming the change they wish
to see in the world[vi].
* Human progress will depend not on enhancing what is, but on advancing
toward what will be[vii]. Realising the full human potential of all people,
Tamils included, is not an impossibility, and those who say that it can't be
done should not be surprised if they are rudely interrupted by the sudden
emergence of Tamildom.
~ends~
[i] Refers to the European Middle Ages, and specifically, the effect of
separating the self from the spiritual, especially through the manner and
use of religion in that era. Asia had not imbibed this disconnectedness
until much later, more so during the colonial period. Yet since we
'inherited' the industrial era that arose from a European history of
dichotomy between people and their communities, this point is therefore
relevant to us today.
[ii] Industrialisation put a price tag on an individual's capacity to create
value. Previously, value was more communal in its creation.
Industrialisation also gave rise to the concept of the nuclear family, an
evolution (devolution?) away from community, extended family, etc etc. In
the recent past, the development paradigm discouraged and deconstructed the
concept of family in order to get more women into the workforce, further
reducing the lowest common denominator of social structures towards the
inevitable 1. I am not making a value judgement here on the effect of
industrialization on perceived women's liberation, but purely describing the
impact of the same on social forms.
[iii] This metaphor refers to the halucinations brought on by the intake of
drugs.
[iv] World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. The World Bank.
http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/
[v] Refering to a point where there would be no turning back. Scientific
source: The surface of a black hole is known as the event horizon. An event
horizon is the theorized "one-way ticket" boundary around a black hole from
which nothing, not even light, can escape. By definition a black hole is a
region where matter collapses to infinite density, and where, as a result,
the curvature of spacetime is extreme.
[vi] "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
[vii] "Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what
will be."
-Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"
Notes:
1. Why use the word 'forge' and not 'build' in the title?
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Forge:1. to form or bring into being
especially by an expenditure of effort; 2. to move with a sudden increase of
speed and power.
Why 'consciousness' and not 'conscience'?
Because we're talking about creating a different form of awareness, not
internal but in fact, inclusive of others.
2. The justification of this document is that a manifesto should motivate
people to the cause by giving driving reasons why the initiative is
necessary (first part), expounding a bit on how this is to happen (second
part), and then look into the future of where it could go (final part).
3. The manifesto is NOT a Standard Operational Procedures (SOP) for
Erumbugal or for Tamildom (though one is definately necessary).
4. The manifesto does NOT take the place or the role of a comprehensive FAQ,
which is also necessary. The document does not attempt to answer all
potential questions, it simply aims to fan the flame of interest enough to
STIMULATE MORE QUESTIONS and searching that would hopefully result in
recruitment.
