Lack of imagination by SignyM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I guess I find it kind of weird. This is a website devoted to science fiction fans. People who are supposedly open to new ideas, who were drawn to a show because it opened up an alternate universe. But a lot of peeps here seem determined to cling to old ideas. They cling... feverishly... to certain ideologies. Unable to set aside, even for the purposes of discussion, their fixed viewpoints. I find the lack of imagination both puzzling and stifling. Here, where ideas should be free, they're stifled. I don't get it.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011 6:44 AM

Do you see yourself as an exception?

ETA: This is not a snark. I was just wondering if you are saying "We have no imagination" or "You have no imagination."

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011 7:54 AM

DREAMTROVE

Sig

Carry no debt, sign no contacts. It should be taught in every school, what freedom is, and how you can lose it. A mortgage contract is actually derived from the original slave contracts. The only difference is that you will pay cash from an employer, which you posted, not the lender, but you still had to demonstrate that you would work for the right to have a place to live. The key differences are the first contracts, indentured servitude, were seven years, the mortgage is generally now thirty. Second, it was easier to get out of the servitude contract, by paying off an exit clause, rather than the entire balance of the work of the remaining labor.

Our inability to advance is not dependent on the system of govt. we have, it's dependent on the ignorance of the people to understand the concept of freedom. Our kids grow up and are trained that their goal is to go to college, a goal which will carry them 100,000 into debt. The average savings from a year of work is around $2000 This would mean a lifetime of slavery. The way to get ahead is to get more college, a higher paying job in a city where housing is expensive, and you will need a large mortgage and a reliable car. Now you're on average a quarter million in debt, and clearing an average of around 7,000 a year, that's brought you down to 30 years of slavery.

The issue here is not politics. It's economics and education. Once someone is free, they can create their own career.

Select to view spoiler:

Forcing them to work in another is slavery, and the lucky ones who love their jobs and would do them even if they weren't paid are just like the few slaves who would not leave their masters. Sure, maybe some masters treated slaves like full members of the family, but that sure wasn't how the overall system worked.

CTS

Snark valid, but Sig posed a question, and it's a good one.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011 8:42 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

CTS, I think I have a pretty broad tolerance for different ideas. I've thought about societies with no money, for example, or no unemployment, or no gods. Corporatocracies and cooperatives. Societies of total individualism and societies of syndicates. I've looked at histories which include the militaristic and slave-based society of Sparta and the Mayan empire, and societies which seem to be peaceful and egalitarian, such as the trade-based societies of Mohenjo-Daro and Crete.

What I've come away with is that people are capable of a wide variety of behavior and societies are able to take many different forms.

What I find is that people often pose a PAST structure as a solution to present problems: capitalism, feudalism, frontierism etc. I guess I'm looking for radical brainstorming. It would help MY thinking if others could pose something really new.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011 9:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I guess I'm looking for radical brainstorming. It would help MY thinking if others could pose something really new.

Ah, I see.

I think the kind of Anarchism Frem has proposed has never been done before. A society of mentally healthy adults, with mentally healthy and nonviolent childhoods, who have clear sense of boundaries and armed to the teeth.

HK has added an emphasis on empathy and emotion.

I think such an anarchistic society, in addition, needs to have relatively small communities. Monkeysphere small. It doesn't mean physical separation between every 150 people. I mean the society would be divided into units of self-governing communities, not to exceed, say 150 per community.

So I envision say, Alpha Neighborhood, having 150 members. They meet whenever necessary to resolve disputes or decide on policies for the neighborhood. If Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are about to kill each other over Mr. Smith's accumulation of trash which is attracting rats and Mr. Jones' burning of trash stinking up the neighborhood, it's time to have a neighborhood meeting, with a jury of 150 members. Maybe they'll decide to collectively hire a trash truck to come through and pick up trash. Those who don't pay don't get their trash picked up.

Then let's say the only two who decide not to pay are, not surpringly, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, who continue their ratfest and stinkfest. So now the community has to put on their working gloves. Why don't they want to pay for trash pickup? Is it money? Is it mental illness? Whatever it is, the community gets involved. It isn't about drawing a line in the sand, and punishing those who cross it. It is about understanding WHY a problem exists, then connecting with one another and solving problems collectively and creatively. Deliberative direct democracy.

When a community is small, you can afford to do that. It becomes the proverbial "tribal village" or the "extended family." Community is the antidote to the anomie and recklessness, fostered by chronic isolation and neglect. In my view, Loughner would have never happened in a working community.

Human beings are pack animals. It's time to bring back the pack.

Sure, sometimes packs will have wars. But if there is a pack-war, it would be because everyone in the pack is willing to fight, kill, and die for the cause. It isn't because some stranger who calls himself an "authority" tells everyone to fight, kill, and die for reasons no one understands.

Sure, sometimes the pack will decide to kill one of its own. But if it does, it will be a result of individual decisions based on the individual circumstance. It won't be perfunctory "I'm just doing my job" actions based on other people's prefabricated decisions.

That is the world I imagine, that I hope my kids can have.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011 8:08 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I guess it has to be plausible. Small communities mean primitive communities. One thing people have never done voluntarily is step backward to a harder life.

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I had a dream once. It was of a man who woke up in the future. Small communities of healthy people. Grown houses... bubbles of self-regulating plant-type things that formed beds, windows and even toilets... the waste was shuttled right down to the roots as food.

One of the traditions that held all of society together was a performance called sonyagohing. (Yes, I made the name up in my dream). Sonyagohing was a performance competition between several teams. But the constraint was that each team HAD to use every single person who volunteered. That was the point: being inclusive in the cleverest way possible. Because that was the point of the society.

So our protagonist from the past is invited to a sonyagohing. It was set up on a temporary stage on the shore of a small lake. The day was waning, the sky was clear. The first dance was an energetic dance... the men jumped high in the air, the women linked arms and swirled, the old folks clapped and the children sang and twirled paper ribbons. The audience smiled and clapped and tapped their feet appreciatively.

The next dance- at twilight- was inspiring. As the old people walked towards the stage with candled paper lanterns in their hands and children wandered through the audience scattering fragrant petals, men and women slowly gathered singing. It was a song of longing and peace and love, and when the last note had risen into the darkening sky the audience was silent with joy.

Finally, the last group straggled onstage, split somewhat unevenly into two groups. Some people on one group started singing, a person in another group told them to stop, they weren't ready. There was a heated discussion on stage... one person tried to take charge, others objected to his behavior. The kids looked uncertainly from one group to another, a few of the older people tried to calm down the argument, a third group tried to start the song all over again, hoping to gain traction. The audience began to murmur and shift around, and our protagonist from the past was acutely embarrassed for the people onstage. But the murmuring turned to laughter, and the laughter to applause...

...because THAT was the performance!

I woke up with a wonderful glow from that dream. What a wonderful society... wise and compassionate. So I tried to turn it into a story, but I couldn't because I couldn't place it in any kind of economy. They had advanced communication... but where were the devices made? Where did the food and clothes come from. Who did the research on growing houses?

Alternate societies are interesting but they have to be plausible.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Small communities mean primitive communities.

Not if there are 40,000,000 small communities.

Well, I find it plausible. Maybe if you don't, your imagination is too wedded to existing systems?

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:11 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I think if you want a plausible system that is radically different from current systems... and yet can't plausibly evolve from current systems...

You need a colony.

1 or a handful of wealthy, crazy philanthropists willing to fund the colony.

100-1000 crazy, dedicated colonists willing to surrender everything they know and embrace the colony.

The resources and research needed to make the colony work will have to come from the inferior precursor society, built or acquired with the money from the crazed, wealthy philanthropist.

Then, once the colony is set up as a proper arcology with everything it needs, people will have to leave it alone. So it's best if the colony is distant so it can develop unhindered for a time.

This is why you usually see such madness as new, strange societies represented on Sci-Fi shows. The colonies are in space.

In the old days, the colonies were on the shores of the New World.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
1 or a handful of wealthy, crazy philanthropists willing to fund the colony.

Someone might even find this implausible. Or someone might find space colonies implausible.

Plausibility is quite subjective, isn't it?

Imagination is when you start with the end product, and reverse engineer the mechanisms back to current states.

Plausibility is when you start with current states and engineer your way forward in a general direction, but to an unknown destination.

I am not sure which Sig is asking for.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:44 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Not if there are 40,000,000 small communities. Well, I find it plausible. Maybe if you don't, your imagination is too wedded to existing systems?

Nope. My imagination, alas, is wedded to reality. Fatal flaw, I guess.

Small communities which ONLY reproduce self-support can only exist on a primitive level: food, shelter. In order for society to advance, there has to be a very wide division of labor and trade: for tantalum for capacitors for computers and other electronics; chromium for advanced corrosion-resistant metals; fiberoptic switches (trust me, a bear to make) to connect fiberoptic communication lines; nitrogen pentaoxide, a critical fuel for communication satellites; antibiotics; genetic sequencing. I think ppl should know more about technology. Frem talks about a society where ppl know how to repair small motors... but who makes the motors (and gasoline; and guns and ammunition; and nails, cloth,hoes, plows...) to being with?

Once you introduce long-range and widespread trade/ division of labor you introduce the snake into the garden of Eden: a universal exchange medium- money. Once you introduce money, you introduce the commoditization of money: savings, loans, interest rates, alien ownership of people's time (wage slavery). Really, it's a conundrum. A conundrum which brought down the Roman empire and the French kings and the Chinese emperors alike. A conundrum: a genie which makes all things possible which people have YET to control. A conundrum our ppl here could solve, if they would put their minds to it.

Quote:
Imagination is when you start with the end product, and reverse engineer the mechanisms back to current states.

This is what I'm looking for. But so far nobody has been able to plausibly bridge the gap between "small self-directed community" and "advanced technology which makes life comfortable"

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:50 AM

KANEMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Why are we so wedded to a system that promises a better life for all but screws over 99% of us? Is it just failure to imagine that we can build a future?

99%? From what ass did you pull that number? I'm all for one talking out of his/her ass with conviction, but sometimes you come off as...well, dumb........

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
My imagination, alas, is wedded to reality. Fatal flaw, I guess.

Ah, so first, we (apparently, not you) are not imaginative enough, esp for sci-fi fans. Then, I am not realistic enough.

Since you appear to be the authority on the perfect balance between imagination and realism, why don't you share your vision, o wise one. So, you know, the rest of us unimaginative, yet unrealistic folk can see an example of what you are looking for.

Quote:
Small communities which ONLY reproduce self-support can only exist on a primitive level:

Yeah, but I never said these communities should ONLY reproduce self-support. I specifically said these community units are units of self-governance, NOT communities which are physically separate.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:59 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

I think there's plenty of imagination, (maybe even too much), the main thing lacking is Will, the desire to make the changes that our imaginations come up with. I know plenty of people with good ideas - ideas are easy, putting them into action is damn near impossible for most people.
Also Theory, The Lab, they aren't Real Life. Real Life tends to make these kinds of theoretical ideals look foolish, "in our test model we hadn't anticipated xy or z... or a, or b, or..."
Plus, all of your speculation and imagination and "a colony" has built in fail because they all depend on people. We screw every theory up. I remember - with some joy - at how BioSphere 2 turned into a ruttin' soap opera, full of sabotage and infidelity.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 7:04 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

CTS: HOW does these small communities interact? By trading goods? On what basis? Barter? How do they make known they have excess to trade? How do they set an exchange rate? Who supports the widescale communication which makes this possible? Maybe "information" becomes the next currency? But then how do the communication-providers not become a technocracy? Maybe the online gaming community shows the way? (Shudder!

) There are nubs which need to be worked out in ANY imaginative community. Survival nubs. If I knew how to work them out, I wouldn't be asking. Sorry if the questions are difficult, but I don't think they're trivial.

PIZMO: Ppl often don't take the next step forward unless they can SEE (envision) the next step forward. Most ppl have to be truly desperate to give up on what they know (have an explanatory/ predictive mental model of) before they jump to the complete unknown. I think this has a lot to do with our strength (social species' ability to learn) and our weakness (social species inability to strike out). I don't think it is necessary to have a complete model... which will of course be modified by experience... but it is necessary to have a glimmer, if you're talking about survival.

Anyway, let the games begin!

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 2:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS: HOW does these small communities interact? By trading goods? On what basis? Barter? How do they make known they have excess to trade? How do they set an exchange rate? Who supports the widescale communication which makes this possible? Maybe "information" becomes the next currency? But then how do the communication-providers not become a technocracy?

All good questions. I wish you had just asked them to begin with, instead of throwing out a reaction like not "plausible." It felt dismissive to me, after I'd taken the time to answer your question.

Kids are clamoring, so I'm gonna address this when they're in bed. Be back later.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:39 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I freely admit to being a student, not an inventor or teacher. I don't have much to say except I've been thinking about the role of technology and its ability to form human society. I still think agriculture is to humans as the large fruit pile was to the chimpanzees, or the hotel dump was to the baboons. Other technologies that harness resources to be amassed in a small area have a tendency to do the same thing. The problem I don't think is the technology, or the government per se, but something that's closer to the economy, the system to distribute resources. Some societies seem like they sidestepped that economic consequence of technology, while others leaned into it hard and flamed out early, like Cahokia.

Something else you brought up a long time ago is the human tendency to substitute words for reality, to believe the words of others rather than our own senses.

The third thing I think is that people are primarily emotional creatures, not rational ones.

But I haven't put this together into anything useful

BTW what you are looking for is a plausible utopia, something that has occupied the greatest minds throughout history.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 4:33 PM

DREAMTROVE

Sig

You *should* turn the dream into a story.

This is the sort of thing I find fascinating, when scion fiction *forces* invention. Thats what made the golden age great. Sure, it was primitive, from a character-story fiction perspective, but from a science fiction perspective, it was awesome, because the writers solved problems by innovating.

That's what you need to do here, is innovate until the story works. Not just in an ideal world, but in a real world. Get all the criticism you can get until it works.

Here are my first two thoughts off the bat:

1. Maybe this culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, there are cultures out there that produce. I was just looking at the satellite earth again, and theres no denying it, the greenest inhabited place on the earth is Japan, hands down. There's a society that works, and is technological. Maybe this world your small communities are in co-exist with other societies that also work, but are more industrious, and these smaller societies trade with them or something.

One thing that gets me about most scifi is that people tend to assume that a culture is a planet and that each planet has one culture. These people may relate to other cultures. Think about it, there are many countries on earth where people have cell phones, which now are at least as powerful as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and yet, there are agrarian third world nations where common people have them, because you can get them for under a hundred bucks. Thats something the average third worlder can now afford. Its different economy than any of us here grew up in. A world can exist like this with peaceful balance. Perhaps an economic balance exists because the small communities have something the other society wants, maybe they have medicines that cure diseases we tend to think of as incurable, even old age. Who knows. But it probably can work.

2. The big problem I see for these small societies is that they don't stand a chance against a giant invading army of death in search of unobtanium. There has to be a very real solution to this, or the future world of the story is going to look grim.

Remember Frem's post about Avatar, the Cameron movie: the Earth people were allowed to leave with all their knowleddge of Pandora, its defenses, resources, and you know damn well they're going to come back some day with bigger guns.

Yes, and this will happen to your society unless it has a really well defined defense against this sort of thing.

Whatever these small societies do to protect themselves, they need some decentralized defense. If they have one overarching govt. Defending them, then nothing defends them agains that govt. Maybe something like the Greek alliance against the Persians, only more modern and sophisticated. I don't know, I just know they need one for the story to work.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 4:44 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

I'm kind of interested in how you bring about any change to society for those of you who only favour individual choice.

I'm thinking of another thread here, the Norfolk Island experiment, where a small island community decided to implement some stategies to promote and encourage greener living through economic incentive. There was general outrage by some here as it was seen as social engineering. I think that was the term.

Organically, if left unhindered by any social planning or engineering, the population will continue to increase, communities will get larger rather than smaller as the trend of people moving away from the land to cities continues. Organic changes will occur with dramatic changes to climate, pandemics, and the drying up of resources.

But how can you implement change for the many if there is only individual choice?

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
There was general outrage by some here as it was seen as social engineering.

There was no outrage. There was a comparison of the ATTITUDES of certain proponents of the Norfolk Island Experiment (not the participants, but some academics) to those of Miranda: the attitude that one can make people "better." It was more of a disturbed feeling than outrage.

Quote:
But how can you implement change for the many if there is only individual choice?

You don't "implement" change. There is no supervisory design from "on high" over other people. That is Miranda.

You find people of like minds, and you live the way you want to live. If things work out the way everyone hopes, it will result in a nice community. Others will join if they wish. Not to be trite, but "you must be the change you wish to see."

That is one reason I stopped voting. I want freedom, a LOT of freedom. But others don't. If I am consistent with my core values, it would be wrong of me to impose my desire for freedom on people who don't desire it, wouldn't it?

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:24 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"You don't "implement" change. There is no supervisory design from "on high" over other people."

Well, ah, yes, you do. All the time. Listen to some old WWI patriotic war songs. SOMEbody decided it would be a good idea to get a lot of people on-board with war, and very clearly decided to engineer hate (in this case against 'The Huns'), patriotism and self-righteousness. Rush Limbaugh does the same for business reasons - it's good for his ratings. Any hierarchy is to some extent imposed from on high for the good of those on high - a supervisory design from "on high" over other people, as it were. It's just easier to see it when we point to the Medieval Church or the Mayans priest/ rulers. But do you really think the people in power AREN'T engineering our world to their benefit?

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:59 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
You don't "implement" change. There is no supervisory design from "on high" over other people. That is Miranda.

CTS

Yes. Well said. That's a pretty good definition of social engineering.

Kiki

A song even if it is propaganda, is still an individual exercising free speech. That song isn't policy, its opinion. It doesn't force anyone to do anything.

Everyone,

If there's going to be a thread jack to discuss the merits of a social engineering system among supporters, could it kindly move to a different thread? Im sort of interested in sig's idea here. I think shes getting at a new idea here.

Socialism and social engineering are not, theyre old ides, that none of us are about to debate. Some of us who oppose have very good reason: many people related to me on all sides died under that system. I just read an estimate that including RTL passes a billion. I'm not interested in the merits of returning to it. Doesn't mean I like or support the current system, I don't, I think its a very weak and rapidly decaying system.

I'm interested in hearing new ideas, and I think thats what sig was aiming at.

Don't want to stifle a debate, I just think if this turns into an argument on the merits of socialism an opportunity for the exploration of new ideas will be lost to another pointless divisive argument. Why'd you guys think I posted that abortion thread? To show just how easily everyone is sent into a tailspin on a divisive argument. I am purposefully undermining my own thread, repeatedly, by telling people what they are doing, so I am losing to a similar thread on 2nd a.

And its much worse than that. I just looked through the entire history of RWED threads. You know how many of them fell into pointless divisive arguments on about a dozen topics on which no one is ever going to be convinced? Most of them. It was the majority of what we spent the last five years here doing, it depressed me. So I posted the abortion thread to see if, given clear warning that this was a minefield if people would bring themselves to not walk into it, the answer was no.

So, sorry about this, but topic? I mean, if I understood the thread correctly, sig said were wedded to failed systems, and as a result, we don't get ahead. The systems I knew that people grew up under were socialism and capitalism, and those are two failed systems in which no one ever gets ahead, Then she proposed this dream world of tiny colonies. Thats a new idea.

Okay, I'm done now. I just want to know where this can lead, and if we get into it on socialism vs, capitalism, the result will look like the abortion thread, or the one which is outpacing it, the 2a thread, neither of which are real world events. Hell, they're not even interesting.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Well, ah, yes, you do.

Magon's question to me was about how an anarchist implements change. My answer is, in MY ideal anarchistic scenario, you don't.

I didn't say other people don't implement change from "on high." Of course they do.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
HOW does these small communities interact? By trading goods? On what basis? Barter?

I don't know. However they want to. Some communities may want some commodity on a fairly consistent basis, which they could turn into a currency. Others may prefer barter. I see each community deciding what fits for them. That is the point of small, self-governing communities: to get away from one size fits all.

Quote:
How do they make known they have excess to trade?

They talk. In person, by phone, by email, by texting, by telegram, by internet markets, whatever.

Quote:
How do they set an exchange rate?

They negotiate.

Quote:
Who supports the widescale communication which makes this possible?

Communication companies and businesses.

Quote:
But then how do the communication-providers not become a technocracy?

The weakness of specialization is that you're the master of none. You need others for everything you're not an expert in.

The smallness of each community makes it hard for any community to gain expertise in enough things to have leverage over others.

Say we got Gamma Community, which has decided to collectively own and operate a communication business. Alpha, Beta, and Delta Communities are nearby, and they work out some sort of payment in exchange for communication services. Alpha is a farming community, and they exchange food. Beta owns a waste treatment plant, and provides water. Delta runs the power plant. They all need each other.

Anarchy is about absence of hierarchy, which can only be achieved by interdependence.

The real question is, how do you keep the communities small? If the community is committed to self-governance, small is the only way that can work.

If a community really wants to abandon self-governance, band in with a bunch of other communities, and opt for a government, well, freedom dictates you let them. People should have exactly the kind of government they want to have.

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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:59 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Just a marker

There are two opposite notions and NEITHER is valid: 1) men are biologically driven to unencumbered predatory sex, and 2) we are geared to monogamy.

The facts are these: Humans are no longer sexually dimorphic, which indicates we are no longer the harem species we were 3M+ years ago, despite any claims made. And the relative size of male ‘junk’ compared to other species indicates sperm competition, hence, during our evolution females were promiscuous, not monogamous. Finally, our extreme infant helplessness is unique among the apes, making our social structures unique as well. Why? Infant mortality negates virility: despite male sexual aggressiveness the only genes that get passed on are those of OFFSPRING who survive long enough to themselves have offspring. Burdened females and helpless children would not have survived competing against aggressive marauding males, or supporting them. For helpless offspring to survive, males would have to be resources to females and children, not competitors or parasites.

All indications are that due to larger brain size leading to infant helplessness we evolved from a highly dimorphic harem species where males are at least twice the size of females - like gorillas, to a more equally sized group-living species with equal numbers of both breeding adult females and breeding adult males - like chimpanzees, with both females and males mating with many partners, and males contributing to female and child survival.

The vaunted male sex drive is a result of intense selection for highly sexed males because FEMALES were promiscuous. A male not energetically mating with available females would not reproduce well compared to other more sexually energetic males.

And as scavenger/ gatherers during our recent evolutionary past, societies were relatively egalitarian b/c resources were widely scattered and no single individual could dominate them.

All that changed with herding and agriculture (Cain and Abel, as it were), which concentrated access to survival itself – food - into physically small areas easily dominated by a single aggressive male. That led to male hierarchy being imposed over whole groups as the price of survival for the dominated, in conflict with evolutionary sexual and economic egalitarianism and altruistic drives. But b/c technologies like herding and farming increased resources overall, those technologies survived despite their socially pathological results. But that’s a topic for another day.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 7:14 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I'll have comment on this, but you'll have to wait for it, in the process of doing security rounds, and it's bloody cold out there...

-F

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 7:15 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"A song even if it is propaganda, is still an individual exercising free speech."

No, it's not an individual exercising free speech. It's government-directed, bought and paid for. There's nothing individual or free about it.

"That song isn't policy, its opinion. It doesn't force anyone to do anything."

Ever wonder what made the Mayans give up people for sacrifice? What made the serfs toil for their short miserable lives on land that wasn't theirs for the benefit of nobility instead of themselves? A widely shared opinion is all the force you need to bring the nonconformists into line. And without it, no policy on earth would be able to force people to do anything. It's like that old slogan - what if they called a war and nobody came?

I'm not arguing for socialism BTW. All I was doing was pointing out that people throughout history are managed from day 1 to go along with the system, even when it obviously is to their detriment.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 7:20 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Well, since that kind of society seems pretty rare, maybe the thing to do is to figure out how the ones that were like that were constructed. What I see is that those societies we might want to be more like were very flat - no hierarchies we can detect. OTOH the societies that seem the furthest opposite had very steep hierarchies.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 8:32 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Dt, I'm a little sick of the way you try and dictate how discussions take place on this board. I asked a question about how change would take place without so called social engineering, not a term I would use, and I get accused of a threadjack because it isn't where you want the discussion to go???? what the f&*k is that about?

What if the majority of people don't want to live the way you propose, and continue to live in conurbations and accumulate wealth....what have you achieved?

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Sunday, January 30, 2011 10:14 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Takin it from the top here, and hammering out on a wireless laptop in the frozen wastes, mind you...

CTS: Thing is, best way to scale it up is interlocked, overlapping spheres, based on a model that actually has worked well in practice, by folk who in the end, much to their peril, proved out more "civilized" than supposedly-civilized folk.

Kin-> Clan-> Tribe-> Nation

Layer it, you see, like a Monkeysphere+Plus, you might do things for say, a fellow Clansman, that you might not for a member of your Tribe, a simple prioritization, yes ?

As for how to keep potentially oppressive structures from forming, what CoTL uses is what I call sand-castle-heirarchies.

When a situation evolves that needs an organized response, the whole of em nominates the one most likely to be able to solve it and puts them nominally "in charge", at which point they can, if the situation is large enough to need em, delegate assistants, but as a rule at that point EVERYONE else is prettymuch spear-carrier, you see ?
Only, the instant the situation is resolved, so too is the response setup dissolved, washed away like a sand castle by the tide, and everyone is just folk again - my response to the notion of dependance, mental lazyness causing them to always nominate the same person was, if the situation isn't really critical, to simply pretend (no matter HOW un-credible) ignorance, my way of sayin "No.", as it were.
Plus they don't actually HAVE force-type authority, just that their suggestions take precedence.

And all that is as easy as figuring out who goes through a door first when multiple people reach it at the same time, something which happens everywhere, every day, without one whit of government intervention or rules.

Again, people keep forgetting that dissolving the LEGAL bonds between folk will not dissolve the social ones, if anything it'd strengthen them because people wouldn't be so afraid of crossing some bizarre, inexplicable, mala prohibita legal code, getting ratted for such, or slammed with guilt-by-association due to such.
And please, don't try to shovel me that you've never avoided someone just because of that - blew off some friend who smoked pot, for example, cause YOU didn't wanna get accused of something, neh ?

Now, in the short term there might be a technological setback, sure - but not as much of one a people perceive, because frankly a lot of modern tech is needlessly overcomplex for legal and other reasons, I mean, in a community based on the free expression of ideas, the notion of DRM for example, would rate somewhere between sacrelige, pure meanness, and laughable, wouldn't it ?
And look how overcomplex most cars are, due to regulations which have more to do with keeping foreign competitors out of the market than they do safety or efficiency ?
Sure, there ARE things that require a massive, and massively *EXPLOITIVE* infrastructure, often bordering on slave labor, to produce - which raises the moral question of why you would want them, save for this...
(Especially with the notion that a lot of that labor and resources come from tyrants we propped up and allow/assist to commit atrocities in order to get that labor/resource.)

With the community as a whole doing education, with lots of hands-on stuff, and no "government" to take the lions share of every single effort of anyone, while hamstringing or hindering it at every turn and corner - people would have a LOT more free time on their hands, and would be far more willing to spare it even at something that didn't directly profit them immediately cause it was either interesting, or it would help someone down the line, kinda like pass-it-forward, you understand ?

See, Anarchists in general, social ones mind you - not the destructive nihilists the media likes to hold up as a strawman, have a very strong sense of civic responsibility, because they feel PEOPLE should help others rather than a "government" forcing people to help others under threat of force or via theft of income, and so in order to not be complete friggin hypocrites (which you got in any philosophy in plenty) they kind of HAVE to step up, but it's more than in order to hold a philosophy you do kinda have to believe in it in the first place, right ?

In fact, I rather suspect that once the tremendous amount of artificial controls pinning the status quo in place, which I rather enjoy pointing out to folk who otherwise couldn't see the bars...
That within a generation or two technological progress, which has all but stagnated due to our society crushing out creativity, critical thinking, and original thought in addition to humanity/empathy, will suddenly leap forward in a rush - something with it's own significant dangers, mind you, but ones folks like me who actually think things through have prepared for - not to mention the notion of harming someone being so anathema would also be a factor.

Btw: It's far easier to make small engines than one thinks - no harder than a machinegun, and how many times have third-world "primitives" cranked THOSE out against an invader under low-tech conditions, neh ?

As far as plausibility goes, hell, I don't consider our CURRENT system either plausible OR sustainable, so where does that leave me ?

Also, remember, again, that study many years ago which freaked out the powers-that-be, since it revealed that even if 70% of the population was die-hard ringers, the chances of a space colony declaring independance within five minutes of reaching self-sufficiency was 100%...
I still think there was a correlation between that and re-prioritizing the space program for near-earth orbit missions only.
So hell no, TPTB aren't gonna even *allow* a colony effort outside of orbit unless they had some way to kill the lot of em by remote or something (which could be conveniently sabotaged, if you're diggin for ideas here) cause otherwise they'd face the horror of people out of REACH of their ability to apply force, who were above their gravity well with plenty of rocks.

Siggy, I luvs ya when I ain't wanting to strangle ya, so here's the rub - as a scientist, when it comes to linear and logical analysis, you and Rue are definately the go-to people...
But when it comes to the kinda sideways third-option thinking that this kind of thing REQUIRES, your brain just can't turn in those directions of it's own, so much - however, being an open minded sort of person, when someone else who can connects A-to-B *for* you, there's not so much problem in accepting it, right ?

It's the "I don't know yet" aspect which is grinding your gears, and yeah verily, it grinds mine too cause folks who don't UNDERSTAND the consequences of actions are so eager to leap right in, and frankly a lot of them folks are Anarchists - you know *why* "Who picks up the trash" ever became an issue way back when Anarchism started getting seriously discussed ?
Cause a damn lot of would-be Anarchists just ASSUMED that they would put it on the curb, and it would disappear, without one thought to the notion of HOW THAT WORKED, they were totally blind it to, taking it for granted, you see ?
Me, I don't do that.

And again, the valid point of defenses has been raised, one I have already addressed by pointing out the simple fact that you make attacking an Anarchist community an absolute no-win position, if you lose, you get chased out and those who don't run fast enough have their throats slit and go into the compost heap - and if you "win" all you get is complete scorched earth and a heap of bodies...
Only problem is "governments" are run by nutters with ideologies which cannot simply ACCEPT that other people might WANT to live another way, and see such as a *threat* to themselves, with damn good reason, a lot of em.

As for how to "get there from here", the FIRST step is producing folk who could survive and function in such a community without trying to wreck it in a fit of pique, trying to take it over and turn it into a tinpot dictatorship, or falling on their sides in a form of learned helplessness taught to them since birth, begging for "government" to come save em, giving power to the would-be dictator...

And you think about it long enough, that's also a large part of what I *AM* doing, while also depriving the "governments" who would wreck it of folks willing to slaughter others just cause some goon with perceived legitimacy and authority says so.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, January 31, 2011 3:27 AM