The following article is by author Reed Camacho Kinney.
Christian Values and Society
We know Christian values well enough, because they reflect the truths of
our corporal condition in nature.
Christianity is symbiosis in relation to both human interaction and human
interaction with nature, or life in general.
The gladiatorial coliseum of ancient Rome is a microcosmic representation
of the societal conditions imposed on people through the centralization of
power. A modern version of that is the back stabbing television game
called Survivor. In neither case, can Christian values flourish in either of
those arenas.
In capitalistic society, people are trapped by forcing their dependence on
the impersonal conglomerates of centralized mass production and
distribution systems. The executive branch of the American government
is either the “lap dog” of the monopolized, impersonal mega-consortiums
of capital interests, or it is their unwilling “valet.” The American Federal
Government levies tax, in part, to keep abreast of interest laden loan
payments.
I need not predict what the imminent outcomes of this “house of cards”
will be, which are self-evident. The toll in human suffering is building.
Christianity is about people and their well being. The Christian challenge is
to build a Christian society.
The way to those ends is through a participatory, structured, dialogical based,
consensus-based civil society.
Decentralization
Participatory, DECENTRALIZED appropriate-industry, agricultural
production, consensus-based civic organization, education, health care,
and community fiscal organization are the components of Christian society!
Christianity is contingent on the actualization of maximum community
with maximum individuation; survival with growth. The vehicle of growth
is art in genuine community, and art is the source of science and the
scientific method.
Genuine, participatory community is structured so that each member
receives community support for all of her productive endeavourers;
particularly, each and every child who expands her knowledge and skills
with community support. There are no grade levels, nor demotions in
community education, and no tests, per se. An ongoing record of
attainment, a résumé of sorts, is kept by each learner, and an abbreviated,
updated copy is maintained in the education department. The education
department, education through art, is participatory, and is managed by
adult, teacher learners and by learner teachers. And, when children reach
the stage of ego stability somewhere between the ages of twelve through
fifteen, perhaps younger in some cases, at their discretion, they can
participate in the community’s civil culture, and in its civic-economic
organizations (more on that below).
Genuine community has core Public Productive Enterprises, which provide
members with gainful occupations and, at once, provide members with
their minimum guaranteed standard of service. It is a generative circle.
HUMAN DIGNITY is structured into its civil culture. And, each community
Public Productive Enterprise contains an office of the community
educational department, which is itself included among the public
productive enterprises, as is the community health department,
community agricultural and related industries department, community
intermediate industrial department, the water and sanitation department,
the community construction company, the community renewable energy
department, the community department of public safety, the community
personnel office, the community mutual community bank, the community
coordinating committee, the community mutualistic family groups –
mutual voting blocks – which are the smallest voting units, and so on. The
community’s civil culture and its civic-economic organization “dovetail”
with and are fully integrated with, are interdependent with, the
community’s educational department. (1)
In decentralized economic social organization the cultural metaphor has
shifted from, “Society is composed of winners and losers,” the cultural
metaphor of mass centralized society, to that of decentralized society’s
cultural metaphor, “No one is less important than the group.”
And, that “No one is less important than the group.” is Christian!
It is a structural proposition!
CHRISTIANITY IS A STRUCTURAL PROPOSITION!
1. The concepts of education in community developed in my mind from
when I attended the talks we had with John Holt, Paul Goodman, and Ivan
Illich …when I attended Ivan Illiche’s CIDOC, International Center of
Documentation, in Cuernavaca, Mexico in the summer of 1969.
See: http://reedckinney.com/ AND
http://decentralizationblog.wordpress.com