Who is fooling who here?

[Jackpine Radical]

17. There is no doubt that only systemic change will mitigate the corruption in the system.

And I say "mitigate" because I know that unscrupulous people always find a way to subvert every system.

In fact, it was that recognition that caused various Communist theorists to talk about the "permanent revolution," which they envisioned as self-cleaning. But of course nobody ever came up with a way to keep that process of "permanent revolution" from itself being corrupted.

Sometimes I despair of humans, as we are presently constituted, ever building a system that is better than we, in our venal little souls, manage to be. Therefore I think the only path to real change lies in a massive transformation of our values.

While that sounds impossible to attain, I do see some signs of such processes starting to take form. I would point to the Occupy movement as one of those signs. I'm particularly interested in its leaderless nature. However, such an entity is something like an organism in itself, and I imagine that any capacity it has for focusing on a specific goal must arise from the consensus process.

I keep bringing up a fascinating book in this context--Brafman & Beckstrom's The Starfish and the Spider.

http://www.amazon.com/Starfish-Spider-Unstoppable-Leaderless-Organizations/dp/1591841836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379599679&sr=1-1&keywords=brafman+starfish+spider

If you cut off a spider?s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish?s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What?s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women?s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths?

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders and reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success.