plur and whatever
P.L.U.R. (PLUR) - it's a beautiful starting point for approaching life. Kind of like... basic morality founded on the social contract.
But... in my opinion... as far as implementation into a traditional American lifestyle, PLUR has too little structure to have real appeal for a majority of this population. PLUR idealism may require a person to fight a lot of his/her individual human instincts, which is problematic on some levels. Also, the kind of internal biases that people get from growing up in a wide variety of situations will reveal themselves as any belief system moves from ideology to reality... and then, disagreements begin within the details... but can become misunderstood as opinions are abstracted for simplicity. Of course, compromise is generally difficult on a large-scale anyways. A culture based so heavily on MDMA (rightfully or not) is just going to be too "out there" to port over to the rest of civilization.
People get jaded when they grow up. How does one drive towards a state of peace, love, understanding, and respect then?
A comment from a jaded partier: And to be honest, I just don't get that feeling of oneness and unity like I used too before... just about every other permitted party or party with more than 400 people attending, I just get chaos, drunkeness, and unruly behavior.
Response: I apologize if this comes off as rude, but isn't that just part of growing up... becoming more jaded - the more you know, the worse it gets? Maybe the first party you go to is amazing, it's new and fresh and nothing bad happens. But the more parties you go to, the more likely something bad is going to happen at a party, and over time your view changes - and as you mentioned, the more people at a party the more likely it becomes harder to maintain that cohesiveness.
So, we don't have this oneness/unification that USED to be there. 10,000 ravers all vibing together? It's hard to believe it even happened, honestly. I wouldn't know - I wasn't there.
PLUR is not something that is seemingly feasible on a universal scale, because it's not structured enough to be implemented in reality (pretty sure I've typed that before). But is it worth our time to pursue that idealism, and to what degree? Everyone's got a different answer.
Maybe, we should get to know the people who party with us and then strengthen relationships with them over time... and sure, there will be conflicts - that's inevitable.
Would you go up to a stranger who is alone, slumped on a couch and rolling out of their brains, and try to see if they need water or some help? Would you to talk to a random person who has a sour look on their face and see how they're doing? Actually, it could be really awkward for some of us to do this. How do we deal with this?
Truth is, I'd guess that most of us are not going to devote all our time to spreading this form of "plur" around or actually being "plurry" in every single life situation. Furthermore, when someone in the community brings bad vibes, how much effort are people going to put into working on those vibes until there's a collective "I give up" from the group...
Has the party lost its glow? I suggest "giving back" as an implementation of "plur" - but how can we get people to do this, and to reinforce this "giving back" mentality? It's really about building relationships and teaching. Don't forget that some of us may have time to advance "plur" more than others. The "giving back" mentality might not last forever - many people have lives beyond their nightlives.
However - some people that met in the party-lifestyle 10+ years ago still keep in touch. How beautiful would it be if, in 10 (15-20 for some?) years, a core group of partiers you go out with now would still be tight? In my experience - while some ravers you won't ever hear from again in a couple years - it's possible that some will be lifelong friends (maybe even partners!), and your children might even be playing together :)
One thing to think about - does the community need to work on its own internal relationships, or try to extend the family to strange and unfamiliar newcomers?
Whether people want to extend their hands out to new folks or not... here's an advantage we have now compared to 15 years ago. Today, we have lots of information on so many things - example: identity verification - I can potentially get a lot of information from Facebook/Myspace in addition to just a phone # and conversation. Imagine raving in 1996, using dial-up/couple brief phone calls to figure out who you were picking up that night and where... could've been a serial killer for all you knew!
Another comment from someone else: Nobody taught the noobs, and that includes me, too caught up in whatever I was doing to pay attention to the new faces flooding in. Instead of a rave culture, they latched onto hyphy BECAUSE WE GAVE THEM NOTHING... but now... that's how you do good in the world homie, you pour your heart out and ask for nothing in return, then get nothing in return. Your reward is dying with a smile on your face. Not for everybody amirite. Still, people did this for us so we could get our kicks and be different people from the curious assholes who first walked through the doors of home base or whatever. You kind of ... um... OWE it to the new people. Not to talk about anything so verboten as ethics or karma, but come on.