For those thumbing through the brochures.. by Fremdfirma

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
BTW, while I think that some people are born sociopaths

I delt with a shaken baby case today. Dad and Mom fight, Mom leaves. Baby cries. Dad shakes baby until baby stops. Baby dies. Evidence of prior injuries. Murder.

It was a City ambulance that carried the baby to a City hospital, where doctors called County Children's Services who then called the City police, who called me and now the fella is probably going to State prison.

In the anarchist world the Dad buries the dead baby and tells the neighbors its none of their damn business.

That aint right.

H

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I answered all the questions posed to me by both attorneys and the judge. I never said anything to indicate any bias of any kind, and I did not hear anyone else say anything that was objectionable either.

Yes, but I would guess that neither were you as candid as with us when you said you could not find them guilty. Now they may not get to specifically ask you those questions, but a lot comes across from observation of how you answer and how you react to other questions. Also, I always ask if anybody would have trouble fairly judging the case based on the evidence or if they can't apply the law as instructed by the Judge. Its a general question for the whole panel, raise your hand. If you raise your hand then I follow up specifically.

Quote:

The reality is that they chose mostly young women to be on the juries...in fact, out of 50 jury panelists interviwed for two trials, they picked 10 young women & 2 young men to be jurors. I did not see one "business man" or "professional man", or senior citizen selected. It looks like the defense attorneys representing drug dealers and users had the advantage in jury selection over the prosecutor.

A lot of time its luck of the draw. The case I lost had five of the first ten jurors with prior DUIs from my City. I could only get rid of three of them so I got stuck with two persons on my jury who had been convicted by my City for the same charge the Defendant was charged with. The case before that 4 of the first 10 had been victims of DUI drivers (either themselves or immediate family)...two of them even started crying during Voir Dire (best damn Jury I ever had).

Now I generally prefer middle aged to young. Professional to blue collar. Employed to unemployed (unless a housewife, which I love). Retired and married, but not too old. No prior record to criminal past. Prior jury experiance (even if they found not guilty). And no unemployed young males (inlcuding students). The young ladies I can dazzle, but the men are just wastes of space.

The rest depends on the case and the defendent. For example, an assault or Domestic Violence case is pretty straight foreward, an OVI or drug case can have scientific testimony, so education and professionalism are key (so they can listen and understand what is being told to them).

Lets say a 25 year-old black male, unemplyed, DUI case (with 2 priors), who refused his breath test, and arrested by two white cops. Don't want young black males of either color, don't want blacks with records, and avoid blue collar white males. Ideal juror for me is middle aged, married, black female, mother, and with a job (prefer professional, but any job will do).

Edited to add: All of that theory is well and good, but also some folks you connect with immediately (happened in all of my cases that I got a great feeling from at least one person, almost right away). The opposite is true too...some people turn you off or are turned off by you almost immediately. When this happens theory goes out the window and its all gut instinct.

H

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:59 AM

SERGEANTX

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
In the anarchist world the Dad buries the dead baby and tells the neighbors its none of their damn business.

That aint right.

H

No, it isn't.

But the baby is dead in either case. The difference is, in the anarchist world, the neighbors aren't living under the delusion that an omnipresent state will prevent such atrocities.

And though it makes it easier to argue against the concept of anarchy to ignore the details, please pay attention. The article made it quite clear - we're not against government, not against punishing the wicked, not against protecting the innocent. We're against a compulsory state that tells us we are its property.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:18 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
You may enjoy this kind of heartless antagonism, but I sure don't.

Gross misinterpretation is Rue's modus operandus. But hey, at least you got an apology. That's pretty impressive.

I hope you don't leave RWED. Your posts are one of the few voices of sanity here.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:50 AM

RIGHTEOUS9

Sergeantx,

that is problematic. In your society don't the wicked get to opt out? If they don't want to play by the rules they say so, right? Or do people who don't like the rules have to move, and if they have to move, isn't that government essentially as compulsory as ours is, just with smaller borders?

In the end aren't you just talking about a smaller entity that tells you you're its property? If i'm missing the boat here, tell me.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:05 AM

Speakin of such details, Sarge.

I will note in his example trying to mock the concept, he doesn't seem to quite explain the fact of where said meth gang would have come from.

Unless they were beamed in from the enterprise, or somethin, the only place they coulda come from is your precious little country there, Hero.

Which'd make it an armed attack on a sovereign nation and act of war, wouldn't it just ?

And me shootin em dead wouldn't be something you could bitch about under those circumstances now would it ?

What rooks me is that they just make shit up in these examples that is contrary to, impossible in, or against the very nature of the society being discussed and act like it's commonplace, and don't even SEE that they're doing it, or at least pretend not to.

That would be like me prefacing an example in modern, contemporary Detroit with "So there you are, walking your slave coffle to health inspector..." and expecting the assumption that this event COULD and WOULD occur in that society.

It's bullshit, is what it is.

All I got time for, at the moment, I gotta set of back to back runs all up north today, and there just ain't too many unsecured wifi nodes up there.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:10 AM

SERGEANTX

Quote:
Originally posted by Righteous9:
what is the slow weaining process? While I might grant, with plenty of trepidation, the possibility that Anarchism is the next eveolution of the free society, I'm having a hard time buying that the way to wean into it is to regress in the area of governmental supervision.

Any such step in that direction has to be seen as how it will impact us based upon how things work now, not on some alternate plane where all perfect conditions were met from the get-go and lo, there was relative peace and proseperity in a completely unregulated world.

You're presenting by far the most sensible objections to the anarchist line. This one gives me pause as well.

Nearly all of the anarchist brochures are disappointingly lacking in detail. But part of the reason for that is that so little serious consideration of the ideas takes place. And the reasons for that are deeply embedded in centuries of statist PR.

The biggest step in "our" direction has been the initiation of the American experiment. And it didn't take long at all for that vector to reverse. Many of Robert Heinlein's books work in and around these ideas. But he has the luxury of science fiction and mostly posits such developments on the wide-open expanse of an interstellar frontier (mirroring in many ways the beginning of the US).

It may be that there can't be a gradual transition. It may be that some radical change in the political landscape would be required.

Quote:
Scaling back regulation now, rolling back government's role in enforcing laws, regulating(or deragulating) companies, etc. might change the players slightly, but it certainly won't change the game.

One note here. The most egregious abuses of the public trust come, not from privately held business, but from publicly owned corporations - which exist solely at the discretion and decree of the state. That doesn't invalidate your concern entirely, but it's worth noting that the corporate excesses held up as justification for a strong regulatory state government happen on the state's watch, and with its implicit approval.

Quote:
Expecting vigilante justice to cow the right people and elevate the right people in our current world, with the current status of the American mentality is also something I doubt anybody can seriously entertain.

Hmmm... "with the current status of American mentality" - yeah, I'll grant you that. But with a different attitude toward community and family it's possible. I'm not sure 'vigilante justice' accurately captures it, but self-government is viable. It happens.

Several years ago, I read a story about a crime committed on and Aboriginal reservation in Australia. Government agents happened upon a fight outside a bar. Some men were attacking a man from another tribe. The agents put a stop to it, and, after some investigation, gleaned that the 'victim' was a man from another tribe that the men had overheard bragging about raping one of their sisters.

After being treated at a hospital for minor injuries, the police decided to release the man to the custody of his own tribe, pending an official investigation and hearing. The man became agitated when told this and, oddly enough, insisted that he be held in jail until the hearing. The police assured him that they'd keep the men from the other tribe in check and that he'd be safe.

Well, they released him, and sure enough, the next day he turned up in the hospital, this time beaten nearly to death. Serious surgery was required just to save his live, and he suffered permanent injury regardless. When they investigated how this had happened it turned out that his own tribe, even members of his own family, had administered the beating.

The point of this is that, even in a pre-civilized, barbaric kind of anarchy, there exist powerful incentives for families and communities, and individuals, to practice self-government. Over the centuries the aboriginal tribes had developed customs that acknowledged this need. It was pragmatic and necessary for the tribes to punish their own rather than risk conflict with the broader community.

Now, as I've stated elsewhere, I'm not suggesting returning to such barbarism. But I think this story points out that self-government within involved communities is viable. I think it's possible to update this sort of thing for the new millennium. It could point the way for the kind of society we're talking about.

Quote:
it seems to me like there's only two paths to the Anarchist's ideal.......
Or is there a third way I haven't considred? This is one of those posts I started when I wasn't so tired, but i've been nodding off for like the last 2 or 3 paragraphs, so forgive any nonsense.

These are the questions that we proto-anarchists must answer before we can expect to be taken seriously, and I appreciate you asking them. It will help if we can get more serious scholarship happening along such lines. This is made all the more difficult by the direction of our current society which is decidedly NOT in the direction of greater freedom.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
\we're not against government, not against punishing the wicked, not against protecting the innocent. We're against a compulsory state that tells us we are its property.

So we agree. There must be laws, taxes, services, etc.

I note for the record that if the "wicked" often see any form of "punishing" as evidence of a "compulsory" State. Simply put, in your world you would seek to exercise State power when its convenient of benefits you and ignore the laws you don't agree with. Drug dealers and murders see the world the same way.

H

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Unless they were beamed in from the enterprise, or somethin, the only place they coulda come from is your precious little country there, Hero.

Which'd make it an armed attack on a sovereign nation and act of war, wouldn't it just ?

No. In my example he is his own sorviegn acting on behalf of his nation. The gang is an illegal criminal element fleeing my territory for yours. Unless we negotiated some sort of agreement I could not legally pursue them into your territory. If a gun battle erupted on our 'border' then my police and govt would be liable for injury or damage to his country. In attacking him they are acting on their own behalf, in fighting back he is acting on behalf of his nation and a higher responsibility then simple self-defense is imposed. A fine example are drug gangs on the Mexican border.

Likewise, while self-defense is legal in all fifty states, every state would prosecute you if you accidently killed an innocent bystander while defending yourself (and even if found not guilty, civil liability would likely bankrupt you).

Now in my example you could declare them terrorists and invade my country to root them out and exterminate them. While such actions are within the rights of soveriegn nations, invading a large and powerful nation might have consequences unrelated to your simple act of self-defense.

Quote:

What rooks me is that they just make shit up in these examples that is contrary to, impossible in, or against the very nature of the society being discussed and act like it's commonplace, and don't even SEE that they're doing it, or at least pretend not to.

What, you think this kind of thing does not happen. Go hang out with the Border Patrol sometime...

That reminds me of a fun true State soveriengty case from the late 1800s involving a man in Georgia who shot a man in Tennessee when they were on either side of the border. He could not be extradited because of a Constitutional loophole...he never FLED across state lines, cause he was never in Tennessee. That aint right, so the Tennessee Sheriff gets a posse and goes to Georgia and gets him. The man is tried and executed for murder in Tennesee. The Sheriff and posse are charged with assault and kidnapping, extradited to Georgia and are sent to prison.

I loved that case...filled half a blue book on in for the Constitutional Law I final.

H

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:14 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
An ancient Jewish scripture makes what I deem to be an accurate observation, that "one man rules over another to his hurt.”

This is about ONE MAN. not a state. So it's not a good intro. Nonetheless, I take his point: People intimidate each other with violence, or they buy eachother, or claim a kinship to God, or gain power over others in a myriad of ways, and indeed, it is most often to the detriment of others.

Quote:
At every time and at every place throughout history is found the same story: man's states achieve the subjugation of the masses under the control of the rich and powerful.

And the anarchist immediately focuses on "states" as the source of the problem ignoring actors like religion, money, or even technology. That is anarchy's big flaw.

Quote:
War is routine. Tyranny runs rampant. Minorities are oppressed. Men are conscripted and enslaved. The belongings of the poor are plundered to pay for greater and greater extravagancies by those who enjoy the reins of power. The masses starve while a few live in shameful luxury. Justice is perverted, and people live under constant threat that their security will be undermined. We tolerate this depravity for one reason, and one reason only: We are convinced that, for as bad as the State

Or religion. Or economic system. Or custom. Or technology

Quote:
may be, it is better than the chaos of anarchy.

But it seems to me that a great lie has been perpetrated on mankind. Every war that has ever been fought was created and nurtured by states.

Well, I've seen tribes go to war, and they had nothing like the modern state. Religions have been a huge driving factor is wars as well. Some of the largest migrations/ invasions were precipitated by climate change. I think CJ is a monomaniac. I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But it would be helpful if he at least defined "state", because wars have been going on for a long, long time.

Quote:
This situation is as puzzling as it is disturbing. It would seem that every man, seeing as he does that the state is, at best, an imperfect solution, would incline his ear to see what alternatives present themselves, hoping that the situation might improve.

If anarchists had details, substance, a more fleshed-out altermnative to offer, people might listen. But anarchists seem to be defined more by what they DON'T want. All people have offered here so far is not anarchism but anarchy, and that's flat-out unattractive to most people.

Quote:
For all of mankind's experience speaks to the fact that by far the single most common aggressor against the rights of mankind is, and always will be, states.

I think religion historically is more damaging. And I think corporations are more evil at present.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:26 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

BTW, I HAVE offered alternatives that are designed to reduce power structures altogther (not just "the state"). Power structures evolve on many nexuses: control of a vital resource, critical technology, information, weapons, land, religion, money, the desire to cooperate ...

And while I greatly agree with the broadly stated goal of anarchism (eliminate power structures) I think the anarchist viewpoint if far too narrow; it can't possibly work because it doesn't encompass enough of reality.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:30 PM

HKCAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
HKC

First, let me sincerely and humbly apologize. I intended no rudeness to anyone, least of all you. I was expressing my understanding as I knew it.

Hey Rue,

Thanks for the apology. It means a lot to me in this cybernetic wilderness.

Quote:
This is my understanding. Last we talked, I proposed either socially-restricted capitalism or some version of UK Le Guin's anarchy. Frem, CTS, SergX and Geezer seemed to support 'anarcho-capitalism', with the exception that Frem occasionally expressed a desire to get rid of money. And to me you seemed less critical of that (as being at least a form of anarchism) than of the idea of laws and regulations.

So, how am I doing so far ? Bass-ackwards ?

The main thing I discovered in that thread was that Geezer and I have some common ground when it comes to defining "the problem." That was a really big deal to me. I've had difficulty understanding Geezer's premises over the years here. He has tended, in my view, to be be rather long on attitude and short on context. I've not wanted to dismiss his point of view but his posts have tended often to be so dismissive in themselves that I struggle to understand what he's about a lot of the time. I think you share this struggle, but I think you blame him for it and label him dishonest where I might be more inclined to say he was guarded. So, when he started talking seriously about anarchism, in terms I could immediately understand, I felt I had a real clue about where the man stood at last.

All of which is to say, yes, I was being more generous toward the "anarcho-capitalist" line in that thread than I might otherwise have been. I felt Geezer was being present in that thread in a way I hadn't seen and I wanted to return the courtesy.

Furthermore, I've come to perceive the authoritarian/libertarian conflict to be in some ways far more meaningful in this country than the vaunted left/right dance. Again, both "anarcho-capitalists" and "anarcho-communists" recognize "the problem," it's just that they have different notions of what form the solution would take.

To further complicate my response to your question I perceive that the primary transition anyone has to make into an anarchist society is internal. So seeing the problem clearly (authoritarianism: the fantasy that violence/force can legitimately solve one's problems) is, to my way of thinking, the real heavy lifting here--the shape one's life takes after that point is of far less importance.

So if my fellow anarchist thinkers recognize and commit wholly to this premise, what they decide to do with their time is really up to them. If Geezer is sufficiently committed to the fundamental precept that force is inherently illegitimate, then the problems many ascribe to capitalism would not become problems through his actions.

I tend to see capitalism as an amoral engine, dangerous primarily when it is mistaken for an ideology/social system. It's like calling alcohol a social system. Alcohol has many uses in society (some good, a lot not so good, many dispicable), but when a community identifies the drug AS their society, well, you're talking about a dive bar at that point. Our country has become a capitalist dive bar with expensive federal drying out programs which never really cure the problem, just keep us drunk and in denial of how truly horrible things have gotten.

In internet terms this is already a long post and I've barely scratched the surface of my thoughts on this subject.

Quote:
added - oh yeah, and at that time you were working a killer schedule of double shifts. I hope that has stopped by now.

Actually, two things have altered the situation for the moment: one, I've found ways to make more efficient use of my time and: two, my contact lenses gave out about a week and a half ago and I've been unable to work at my second job (I'm painting a mural) for about a week and a half.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 6:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Gonna add to my post, which sounded pejorative but wasn't meant to be.

The problem I have with anarchism- or at least the versions most often posted here- is that I think there is a lot more going on than "the evils of The State". That so many succumb so often to the injustice of a few speaks to factors which are both more fundamental and harder to grasp, and which will not be eliminated even if "the State" is destroyed. I think "the State" is just one of the latest examples of the tendency for power concentration in human societies, just as capitalism and religion are other examples.

All I can do is point to two things that "indicate" the scope of the problem because, hell... if I could fully elucidate the cause of human injustice and it's widespread acceptance I'd be a multi-Nobel prize winner by now. Bear with me because this is going to be a long story.

I saw a very interesting show on what separates us from the other apes. Clearly, not only do apes communicate, they make and use tools, have feelings for each other, have a "theory of mind", understand justice, learn by example, have "cultures" that vary from place to place. And of course they have hands, which allow them to manipulate objects in a complex fashion. All of the elements seem to be there for chimps, bonobos, and gorillas to emerge as we did.

BUT. There is one difference. If you train a bonobo and a child to open a wooden box to get a treat by using a complex series of actions (three taps on the top, poke in the hole, two taps on the side, dig in another hole) they both use those actions. However, if you substitute an acrylic box for wood, where it becomes clear that the taps are irrelevant, bonobos will immediately eliminate the useless taps. Children will not.

There seems to be an innate HUMAN preference to accept what is taught over direct observation, even when the two contradict each other. On the one hand, that allows us to learn and build on ideas about electrons and other invisibilities. On the other hand, that allows us to pass on silly ideas too, like the idea of a rain god or "your parents love you" even if they're abusing you.

Another example of anarchism's failure to encompass certain aspects of reality is the simple obervation that the larger organizations will roll over little ones. There just seems to be something intrinsic in larger organizations... I don't know if it's productivity or diversity or what... that seem to give them an inherent advantage. Attempting to reverse it doesn't derail what appears to be a universal, powerful process - which BTW doesn't appear to have any relationship at all to humans and "human nature" (and wouldn't benefit from any sort of internal journey) but is simply a "systems" process (which might benefit from studying energy flow through ecologies.)

I hope I've given you some insight as to why I think anarchism, although it does a good job of describing the problem, doesn't seem to get at the nub of WHY these problems keep recurring. And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over, irrespective of of whether "the State" exists or not.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 7:55 AM

Quote:
However, if you substitute an acrylic box for wood, where it becomes clear that the taps are irrelevant, bonobos will immediately eliminate the useless taps. Children will not.

Age of children ?
Sample size ?

Not everyone is cursed with or trained to that type of thought process, and you know, this is a right unpleasant world for those people, I should know.

Quote:
I hope I've given you some insight as to why I think anarchism, although it does a good job of describing the problem, doesn't seem to get at the nub of WHY these problems keep recurring. And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over.

But how could you miss it ?

It's the end result of what we do to children under the guise of raising them to survive in the society we have created.

Sit down, shut up, obey, do as your told, ignore your humanity.

Trained obediance to things that make no SENSE, like the experiment above.

It never occured to you that my two pet peeves are to intimately related to each other ?

Our society and it's childrearing and educational practices actively function, and mostly succeed, at suppressing, diverting or eliminating the innate humanity of our young - and as I have said repeatedly, the more divergent that becomes from natural instinct, the more aberrant the response behavior becomes, as the harder it is suppressed, the more warped the form in which it finally expresses.

Although, I am beginning to suspect that it's not JUST that the message of natural instinct and what we try to force on them are so much further apart, I think nature might be playing a hand in this as well, cause if you overuse an antibiotic, that strain eventually becomes resistant, right ?

I suspect nature may be pushing back against our doctrine, and this might be why we seem to be facing more and more children resistant to it, and as we have turned to Big Pharma and medication to enforce it, I suspect within two generations we'll start seeing drug-resistant kids too.

What we have, is a social model designed to protect and support the status quo at the cost of spiking our own natural instincts, an entirely artificial stunting of mental, social and emotional evolution in order to ensure the current balance of power.

Derail THAT process, all at once, and you're looking down the barrel of all manner of unintended consequences that can and will bite you on the ass, hard.

Look at most folk these days, they're far more compliant than nature ever intended - you offer threat to them, they kneel, you give an order, they obey.

This is an absolute necessity for our current society to function as it does, but you start messing with that, you'd better know what you're doing if you wanna avoid a wholesale disaster - do the job halfway, and you're talking about the equivalent of releasing pirahna in the goldfish tank, folks who are neither obedient nor compliant, but nor are they emotionally evolved enough to see harm and exploitation as repugnant...

That is the result I fear most of all, mother nature beating us to the punch by producing a "resistant strain" and a darwinian process that will lead us right back to square one cause once they take power, they'll damn well secure it, and more than likely in exactly the same kind of social engineering processes that have lead us here in the first place.

It's like a boat in heavy swells headed for a reef, yeah, you can see the reef, sure, but if you pull too hard in trying to turn, you'll broach and roll over, which is every bit as bad.

That bein said, we DO need to start changin course, gradually, and the sooner the better - but I don't see it happening, there's just not *enough* folks who understand, and even less who care.

So me, imma take cover and hope not to get scored as a collateral.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, March 21, 2008 8:21 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Frem, I think we will have to agree to disagree.

Not everything is derived from how we're raised. In fact, not everything relates to "humans". Whether you look at ecologies, PC-based "evolution"; the development of memes; relationships within human societies; or how cells cooperate in a body the same themes keep coming up over and over and over: the relationships of primary producers to the concentration of power (energy); the development of cooperation and the division of labor; the necessity of diversity for robustness; and (perhaps the most instructive) the dissolution of systems.

I don't think that changing "people" will change those processes at all. As long as humans are capable of forming large-scale organizations we will continue to do so. And as long as large-scale organization exists then we will continue to see toxic processes... not human-driven, for the most part... evolve within the environment that our cooperation has created. That is not to say that "nothing can be done". But getting rid of "the state" is like killing off one germ, which allows a superinfection with something else. I just think more insight is needed than anarchism currently offers.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 8:57 AM

HKCAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
And IMHO unless you can figure out WHY the same stupid sh*t happens over and over and over, and either fundamentally derail these processes or harness them to create a system with the right internal feedbacks, the same stupid sh*t will continue to hapen over and over, irrespective of of whether "the State" exists or not.

Signy, I couldn't agree with this statement more. The "state" is really "absolute authoritarianism" in secular form ("God" is absolute authoritarianism in spiritual form and capitalISM is absolute authoritarianism in the form of desire/greed/consumerism--amusingly, these three parallel the Freudian concept of mind: ego=state, superego=god, id=capitalism/consumerism).

Furthermore, what you've done here is describe the process of psychotherapy to a "T!" A process which absolutely can, on an individual basis (and therefore, I believe, in the long run, culturally), derail the process of compulsive repetition and give you the tools to harness your freed up energy and emotion to create exactly the right internal feedback in the form of self-esteem and self-trust (intuition and discernment). Yay!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 9:16 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, if psychotherapy and philosophy would allow someone to fully parse why we seem to be so universally effed up that's a good thing.

But I still think that you can't change society by ONLY changing individuals. Yes, there has to be some sort of large-scale This isn't working moment before change will even be considered, but by itself it isn't going to effect economies of scale any more than knowing diabetes is bad isn't going to affect how your pancreas works. In addition to psychotherapy I think we have to bring in a whole 'nother realm of investigation.

So I think I agree with you, but I'm also inclined to look at non-human, non-psychologic, non-individual factors as well.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 9:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
derail the process of compulsive repetition and give you the tools to harness your freed up energy and emotion to create exactly the right internal feedback in the form of self-esteem and self-trust (intuition and discernment)

You've given me food for thought here. Compulsive repetition not only exists within individuals, it also exists within societies. Our technology, our customs, our economy, and our language reintroduce and reinforce and re-reintroduce old behaviors even if we've been individually freed. The simple existance of money, the car... even trash collection... pattern our behavior and thought.

So... can there be something like "cultural psychotherapy"? Hmmm...

Quote:
The "state" is really "absolute authoritarianism" in secular form ("God" is absolute authoritarianism in spiritual form and capitalISM is absolute authoritarianism in the form of desire/greed/consumerism--amusingly, these three parallel the Freudian concept of mind: ego=state, superego=god, id=capitalism/consumerism).

THANK YOU JEHESUS!

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Friday, March 21, 2008 5:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
You've given me food for thought here. Compulsive repetition not only exists within individuals, it also exists within societies. Our technology, our customs, our economy, and our language reintroduce and reinforce and re-reintroduce old behaviors even if we've been individually freed. The simple existance of money, the car... even trash collection... pattern our behavior and thought.

Oh, and the clock. Don't forget the clock as a promoter of compulsive cultural repetition.

You see what I mean Frem? Anarchism misses this. It's too focused on "the state" to see this other stuff.

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Friday, March 21, 2008 11:10 PM

Mayhaps you just ain't gettin what I am sayin then, cause HKC and me are saying much the same things but he seems to get it across way better.

One reason I have started using State instead of Government is for the exact reasons you've already gone over - not all the power structures having such a negative impact are Governments, although with some corporations and their level of influence you could make a case here and there.

As for behavioral conditioning, I've done said it dozens of ways, gone over it in the most explicit and microscopic detail, chapter and verse, again and again but no one seems to make the hookup on how the two things are intricately related to each other.

Everywhere around you the conditioning process that is socially engineered to preserve and protect this balance of power, this status quo, is right there for the looking, you only have to be willing to SEE it.

Then you must somehow develop and practice the ability to ignore and defy it - something a bit harder to do than it sounds on the face of it, but once you have, it's very presence becomes an irritant if not a downright annoyance.

Look to me and Sarge and how we feel about television as an example - someone turns one on, and shortly, I will leave the room, the pressure and conditioning is so bloody obvious in every respect of it that it's downright nauseating, almost subconsciously insulting.

I've gone over this, through this, day after day, and and I find it pretty hard to conceive that anyone could have possibly missed it...

Either I am utterly terrible at getting it across, or you were too busy dismissing my arguments to really read them, go back and look, you'll see that this root cause, a lot of which *is* based in how we are raised - and I focus there cause that is what we have the most control over individually - is a very large part of the problem in my eyes.

Cause it is a wholly artificial roadblock, deliberately stunting and preventing the social, mental and emotional evolution of us as a people.

Seriously though, go back and read some old threads and look for this stuff, it's all there, laid out piece by piece, just that no one seemed to mentally "get it" at the time I was sayin it, I guess.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, March 22, 2008 5:56 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I understand your point Frem, but you don't understand mine.

Some things happen not from individual conditioning, and even if you could change individual behavior on a mass scale they would continue to happen. Why do I know this? Because it happens with cells, with animals and plants, with computer bytes, with particles.

Quantitative chnage leads to qualitative change.

The behavior of a million individual is not the average behavior of a million individuals.

Get your mind OUT of the psyche, not all of the answers are there.

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Saturday, March 22, 2008 7:46 AM

Yes they are.

And all the passionate "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" "DANGER" "DO NOT ENTER" "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" "STAY AWAY FROM THERE!" that I catch from established systems and their protectors when I delve into that turf just ever more firmly convinces me I am looking in the right place.

What you are essentially saying to me, is...

"All people are bad, we have an evil nature and must be controlled for our own good."

What I am saying to you is...

"That is a myth handed down through the ages by those who wish us to believe it so we hand them the reigns of power over us, people are not evil natured or they would never fall for this in the first place."

Or at least that is how I am seeing the disagreement, and sure, I could be wrong in that respect - our thought processes are so radically different it's a wonder that we comprehend each other at all...

But in the end I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree, but you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that I don't care to hear possible solutions from you neither - there's more aspects than just the one we're disagreein on here to the problem, and that's a fact.

And maybe a lot of it is just plain not understanding the other, their concepts, or expression - cause seems to me that HKC can take these things and get them across when I cannot even in spite of months of trying.

As for your expressed theory, I counter that humans are self-aware and sentient as none of those other things are, and that will affect the results, unless you remove that which makes them human in the first place - empathy.

Which is what we have done, and are doing.
But those who have it are not so easily quantified, predicted, or pigeonholed.

Which is why we and systems do not get along.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, March 22, 2008 9:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
"All people are bad, we have an evil nature and must be controlled for our own good."

OH PUHLEEZ, FREM!!!!!

Are electrons "bad"? Are bytes "bad"? Are plants and animals "bad"?

PLEASE!!!!! STOP, for god's sake, trying to fit my argument into your human-centric categories! Think Hari Seldon. Think "The Cookbook" (Lady in the Water). Think physics! Think ANYTHING but what you keep coming back to over and over!

Humans are not be be-all and end-all of everything, not even in human society. Forces are at work that are larger and smaller than us, longer-lived and shorter. We stand as much chance of understanding these forces as a mouse kidney does of understanding the body. But to deny that forces are at work that are beyond us, above us, beneath and through us but are NOT US is the epitome of arrogance.

It's been said that animals are just the gene's way of preserving itself. Flip your thinking around.
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Saturday, March 22, 2008 10:06 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I don't have time to delve into posting, but I'd like to note that not ALL rules are just b/c some mean SOB wanted to have some power.

Some rules are found in every culture like -
don't touch - hot
don't eat - poison (btw nature makes a lot of poisons that'll kill you in days - most mushrooms for example)
don't jump in the icy water - it's deadly cold
don't jump off the tall cliff - you'll die
look both ways before crossing the street
don't poop upstream of the village, poop downstream (also don't poop in the bed, tent, yurt, hut, foodbowl or water jug)

Peeing and pooping (urinating and defecating for the more medically minded) rules are so deep in our biologies that we are the only primates that can control when and where. For the others it just all falls down to the forest floor somewhere and so evolution pays no mind. So control over excretion is a biologiocal universality among humans - and one of the means used across cultures to determine when someone is too scrambled (schizophrenic) to follow such innate rules.

Many rules are harmless superstitious behavior - that are carried generation to generation especially in more primitive economies b/c they are very conservative - they think: we've survived for millennia this way and it may be fatal to do things some other way. But I've read an interesting study that was an odd combination of game-theory/anthropology/psychology and one of the things the researchers noticed (though it wasn't what they were studying) was that the same environment gave rise to many, many different forms of economy, family and society. For example a low resource density forest economy could give rise to many small scattered but close-knit families competitive with and hostile to other families OR cooperative and communal village living. So, many of these approaches are 'good enough' for survival across a wide variety of environments. But each society has claimed that they do things a certain way because 'it's human nature' and 'that’s what people do'. (Sounds like a lot of pro-capitalism voodoo on the board - rattle them rattles y'all !) In sum, they've taken often fairly harmless superstitious behavior and codified it into general rules of human nature.

As discussed above, some rules are implicit in our language and tools.

SOME rules come from concentrations of power - ie a powerful elite - and are simply there to reinforce the power structures of the elite.

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Saturday, March 22, 2008 10:02 PM

Don't like it much, do you, when someone does it to you ?

How do you think I feel every time I try to discuss anything with you ?

That being said, I have absolutely zero idea of what you are trying to express -
What forces ?

Why don't we understand them ?

What the heck are you talking about ?

Is it, or is it not a religious or faith aspect ?

Are we talkin scientific X-factor here ?

You come down on others with both boots over and over for saying much the same thing in the other direction, that means you don't get a pass.

And I am still waiting for the sample size and age of children involved in yon experiment above.

It's starting to look like that you only see the systems, and disregard the people, whilst I see only the people, and disregard the systems.

It's possible somewhere in there lies the problem, if not the understanding of it, but it would help if you communicated something other than hostility simply because our viewpoints on the world around us are so different.

I think that very lack of tolerence is why you just never seem to "get" what I am trying to express, and that's fine, but your all fired pressing need to attack the entire concept at every opportunity makes me wonder why you feel the need to.

I go after the current status quo and that which preserves it because I feel it's a danger to us both individually and as a species, and presents an active risk of rendering large sections of our only little planet here unusable for very long periods of time - my reasons are up front, fully admitted and explained in detail upon request.

Now quid pro quo - why do you feel the need to attack any concept of altering or removing elements hostile to the human psyche from our society ?

-Frem
EDIT: Yes Rue, that's obvious, but those are social and cultural "rules", even Anarchists have those!

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Sunday, March 23, 2008 5:35 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Like I said Frem, if I could show you from point A to point Z where where problems are coming from I'd be a multi-Nobel prize winner.

Let me try to give you an example 'cause that's all I can do.

A hundred people are operating well within the "monkey sphere". Deviants can be observed and punished directly, and the possibility of extremes of wealth and injustice is fairly low. You could in theory eliminate violence and intimidation by eliminating the most violent and intimidating members (like the chimp tribe where all the bullies died out) and create a different, lasting culture.

But a million people? Well, that's a different story! More wealth can be accumulated, there is a greater division of labor, and interactions among people are mostly indirect. Also, interactions among people are more coordinated (eg. time keeping) and regulated (eg. traffic regulations). But this million-person aggregate has a dark side: With all of that accumulated wealth and enhanced technology there is the possibility of great injustice. It seems to be a fact of human history that the greater the number of people, the taller and narrower the pyramid at the top. Why? Because power concentrates. Because it can

Now, if people have a chance to choose one over the other- and they do- why do they continue to choose urban life, with all of it's ills and injustice? Why do people flock from the country to the city, and stay there?

Because it's an easier life. It's an economic decision. There is more productivity, more "free energy", more technology in the city. People will give up their "freedom" for a chance at an easier life. Aggregation isn't forced by "the State", but "the State" does have an opportunity to grow under those conditions, just like a bacteria in the correct medium in a petri dish.

Looking towards our biology, how does "human nature" fit into this? Well, human nature is extremely adaptable, but the one thing we can say for sure is that humans are, for the most part, social creatures. If we were solitary, like the tiger, you'd never get more than 100 people into one space let alone a million.

The other is that enough people are capable of abstract thought to learn and carry forward advanced technology. They'll sit still long enough to hear about things they can't see or feel or hear and then they'll use those concepts to create even more useful tools. That makes the development of advanced technology possible. Without it, there would be no reason to gather together beyond a "monkeysphere": People would accumulate to a certain point and then break apart as the group became too unweildy.

The third is that most humans are relatively short-sighted. Most people pay attention to their monkey-sphere, but tend to accept the larger social and economic milieu as natural and inevitable, just as most people operate on a fairly short time-frame- a year, at most. That prevents recognition of the fact that organizations, governments, businesses, memes, languages, and technology have a life of their own... their life-span is often far beyond ours, and they eat, reproduce, and have motivations that are only partially visible to us. Altogether I find that "human nature" is necessary, but not sufficient explanation of the whys and wherefores of our social condition.

"The State" is just ONE of those memes. We've created dozens, if not hundreds, of these things accidentally (the alphabet, super-germs, corporations) and we haven't the faintest clue (for the most part) that they exist, and their function in our systems. Because of that, we've given up control of the most important elements of our environment.

I think it's possible to understand and control these 'things' but first we have to see them and know them. What is their function? How long do they live? What is their energy source? How do they reproduce and change? How do they die?

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Sunday, March 23, 2008 5:42 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

BTW- If I was hostile you to, I apologize.

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Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:05 PM

S'awright - mostly I was asking about your hostility to the concept, not to me.

I can see a scientific need to poke holes in something not fully explored, but since it hasn't ever really been on any kind of scale, it's mostly theory to begin with, which always has holes in it.

As for the explaination, ok, yeah, NOW we're getting somewhere, it kinda makes sense to me and imma have to chew on it a bit here for a while, just pulled a cursed long shift without anything like a break and i'm fried and frazzled, damn gas prices anyways...

This is the details I wanted for a while, and finally in a form I can process, imma just need time, and sleep and food to do it.

Get back with ya, once after.

-F

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008 7:09 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Frem, I'm gonna duck outta this conversation. I have some ideas to pursue but they need quiet time to grow.

Sorry about that.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008 10:14 PM