lurkette

I don't know that admitting our powerlessness is a negative, hopless outlook (reverse engineering your statement above).

I guess I'd like to finesse the word "powerless" a bit. I'm not sure we're powerless; but I do think the power of "IT" (as ART calls IT - reminds me of the villain from A Wrinkle in Time - very fitting) is pervasive and there's no way to opt out. You could run away and be a hermit but your identity has still been formed within the system. You might be able to re-shape yourself over time and with absence from society, but what fun is that, isolating yourself for the sake of (purported) complete self-definition?

I think a more hopeful outlook starts with being aware of IT, and then asking how we can operate most powerfully within the parameters defined by IT's influence. The frustrating part is that there's no real "outside" of these parameters - for the most part, IT absorbs and co-opts any attempts to operate outside IT, and that, IMHO, is the only influence we have - shifting the discourse by making the system so uncomfortable that it has to expand itself or change directions in order to accommodate opposition.

I'd like to hear your explanation of the "virtually" (as in virtually powerless, but not completely, I'm assuming) in your sentence, ART.

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France