That helplessness that you feel Patrick, is not a personal problem. It is built into the system. You have been taught, ever since you were a child, that people knew better than you, your parents knew better, your teacher knew better, your boss knew better, your doctor knew better, the government knows better. That message suits this system, disempowers you. To find your own authentic voice is not easy. But that is what P2P is about. It is sharing, it is collaboration with people on the same level. It is a new way of relating with respect and dignity for each person, friend, stranger, acknowledging we are all part of one family. Maybe what we can accomplish on the global scale is very small, but the feeling we can get from doing what we can is transformative, and can turn that helpless feeling into positive creativity.<br>
<br>anna<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Patrick Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:agnucius@gmail.com" target="_blank">agnucius@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">I think the tragedy of the commons is also<div>partly caused by a feeling of helplessness</div><div>combined with the (partially true) belief</div><div>that things are already so bad and the</div><div>amount we each add, individually, is so</div>
<div>small, that it hardly matters whether each</div><div>of us adds to the problem or not and so</div><div>we choose the short-term benefits over</div><div>the long-term benefits because it seems</div><div>(it feels as though) no matter what we do,</div>
<div>the end result will be the same.</div><div><br></div></div>
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