Quote of the day, yay!

'... the material of subjectivity is indeed raw, and its significance is lost without a public world that can structure it and give it expression. For our private experience to mean anything, for its value to be realized, it has to be accommodated within a 'commons' - within public space - that recognizes it as a contribution. In order for this to happen, public space has to be sufficiently structured, sufficiently attuned to the enormously wide scale of human experience and the ways of human embodiment, to receive, make sense of and use constructively what each of us has to offer.

A life is given meaning and value not by being 'enjoyed' in private, but by being lived and appreciated in public. Even the most tortured private experience can find dignity as well as worth if there exists to receive it a convivial social world where human beings act with and for each other. This is not what happens when the overriding principle of social life is profit.'

-- David Smail, 'The Technology of Profit, 3. Inside-out', Power, Responsibility and Freedom: An Internet Publication, davidsmail.info/intpub.htm