This post is a continued discussion thread from a conversation on Facebook that I joined. For the background, read the whole thread here. (Hat tip to Josh V. for hooking me into the discussion)

I thought I might interject to bring it back to two essential points of contention that I've gathered thus far:

1) Is live and let live a bullshit philosophy? ie. should we philosopher kings take back the hill and course correct this slow planetary suicide man calls progress?

2) Are we truly free? Without opening the 40oz can that is the free choice vs. determinism debate, I think it's a good discussion to start with the idea that we must agree that freedom is a schizophrenic ideal that is abused and must be redefined. Here's something Goethe, Hegel and Sartre can all agree on: Freedom is not the maximum availability of choices, else even a slave is free. Freedom can only be obtained by creating the self through acts of identification. It's an ideal, a journey, we're continually reinventing ourselves -- yet one we should strive for if we give up the bullshit about us being born with a self. We're simply a shell that constructs.

And I'll posit a third:
3) Every revolution in history has become the antithesis of the ideals for which they originally sought. What would your vision of the future look like that allows for more people to participate in history? And how would you break the vicious cycle of revolutions turning on their head.
I think we don't need a revolution. What we need is paradigm change in modern political economic social theory akin to the scientific revolution (Kuhn). And more humor.