Yesterday I read Robert Paterson's moving book chapter entitled Going Home.
I think that we in the West have been asleep for a long time. An idea put us to sleep.

Social Software is a vector a return to an old culture.

When I say old culture, I mean the culture that fits the essential nature of humans and that fits nature itself. I imagine a return to the custom of being personally authentic, to a definition of work that serves the needs of our community, and to a society where our institutions serve to enhance all life.

I see signs that that we are going home. See if you can see what I can see.

Paterson crystallizes many of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head.

We in the West have been asleep for a long time. An idea put us to sleep.

It was 100 years ago that Henry Ford took the Newtonian idea of a machine-like construction of the universe and made it manifest on Earth.

Now we take it for granted that education is a linear process that leads to a credential. Now we expect that healthcare is an intervention by special people who deliver drugs and procedures. We take it for granted in business that we can have an economy or a healthy biosphere but not both. We take it for granted that work, family and education are separate processes that compete for our time. We think that it is normal to have a job and a manager. We believe that having more things will make us happy. We accept that we have no real say in the governance of our work place. Bombarded by millions of messages telling us what to buy, to eat to wear and to do, we have no confidence in our own innate judgment about what is good for us.

This mechanical model of separation has us gripped so totally that we don’t even know that we live in a kind of Matrix. For most of the last century the success of the Ford Model of mechanical relationships worked. The model delivered a massive increase in overall well being in a material way. We no longer experience this model as anything other than “Normal”.

I'm going to duck out and read this one more time.