Timothy,

I was touched by the passion of your post. Clearly there are ideas
here you cherish and which are worth propagating. However, I am
overwhelmed by the length and breadth of your post. A proper
point-by-point response would take me hours to construct. Instead, let
me offer you my point of view on just a few of the points you make.

1) Western civilization, and U.S. capitalist culture in particular,
overemphasize individual independence. I wholeheartedly agree that
this is the case, but I wonder if the myth of the rugged individualist
is not more something that is constantly hyped (the myth itself serves
capitalist/corporate interests) than actually believed by John Doe? I
don't pretend to have my finger on the pulse of mainstream culture,
but I don't know a single individual who doesn't acknowledge in many
ways, every day, our social interdependence.

There is ongoing debate about "self-sufficiency" in the historical
literature. Let me quote briefly from an essay by Vivienne Pollock
entitled, "The Household Economy in Early Rural America and Ulster:
The Question of Self-Sufficiency."*

Strong notions of self-sufficiency color perceptions of
the rural past on both sides of the Atlantic. Time and again we are
asked by various agencies to accept a historical reality in which
money and markets played a minimal role...household
self-sufficiency represented simplicity, integrity, and security...
it was the hallmark of a vanished golden age...for example,
Benjamin Franklin mused in 1772 about "the happiness of New
England, where every man [sic] is a freeholder, has a vote in
public affairs, lives in a tidy warm house, has plenty of good food
and fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture
perhaps of his own family."

In Ireland, on the other hand, perceived reliance on
self-sufficiency became synonymous with economic retardation: for
example, the observation...that Irish farmers "mainly produce for
their own needs..." led one writer to remark that the "Ulster rural
economy [lay] at an intermediate stage between primitive and
developed economies." If one enjoyed self-sufficiency in America,
one was emancipated and materially secure; if one endured it in
Ulster, one was poor and structurally underdeveloped.

Perhaps you know of serious scientific studies revealing to what
degree this mythology is actually 'consumed' and acted upon by
individuals in society at large?

2) Your characterization of adversity, neutrality and
synergy seems to be at the core of your thinking, yet I am
confused by your definitions of these categories. The examples you use
clearly illustrate what I would call 'prototypical' cases of each
category, but I cannot move away from your examples without feeling
lost. For instance, in your example about the exchange of $5.00 cash
for $5.00 (approximately) worth of 'food' from McDonalds you state
that the clerk is interested in making the exchange and that this is a
neutral exchange. My experience in McDonalds is that the clerk is
actually much more interested in when her shift ends, and is only
participating in this exchange in order to survive in this
dehumanizing culture. In fact the clerk is most likely to be young,
female and a person of color, thus beset by triple oppressions. Even
if the clerk happens to be an adult white male, it seems to me there
is at least a modicum of coercion in their participation in this
exchange. In fact, I would like to hear your thoughts about neutrality
and adversity as it applies to labor markets in general. In what sense
is the worker's exchange for livelihood neutral? What exactly
constitutes coercion?

3) I think your three categories, adversity, neutrality and
synergy are interesting and powerful analytical tools. Taking
these viewpoints highlights important aspects of social relations that
are typically neglected by our policy makers, much to our detriment.
But I would like to see some evidence that they correspond to
historical epochs. It is artistically (rhetorically) neat to propose
they constitute some sort of evolutionary chain, but my own point of
view is not so Darwinian. It seems to me that people have been
cultivating synergistic community relations as long as there have been
people. I too would like to relegate adversity to a remote and
barbaric past, and to believe in a brighter synergistic future
where humans have replaced oppression with cooperation. But what I
actually think is that people exhibit all these characteristics in
greater or lesser degree at various times with different people
throughout their lives.

What we are in danger of loosing to the
corporations is exactly the sense of community that has sustained the
human endeavor throughout history. Unfortunately, if things continue
in the direction our corporate masters and policy makers seem to
intend, far from blossoming into synergy, I foresee us descending
further and further into the twin pits of isolation and alienation,
which, in my view, are the underpinnings of adversarial relations.
Let's not wait for a new epoch! let's have synergy now! And let's
remind people that we already know how to do this, that we have
examples from history, that humans have been doing it all along?

--------------------------
* In "Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the
Scotch-Irish." Ed. by H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood, Jr. 1997,
The University of Alabama Press.