tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44124496370903468102024-02-24T15:45:15.139-05:00The 21st CommonsIn the 21st Century, the Internet has become the Commons of old. One of the tenets of this blog maintains that the availability of information must be maintained in the common area known as the Internet. Here, the various ideas, musings, poems, stories, etc. become part of the Commons. Like the graffiti artists who provide their art to the world, the writing here will also be available to the world. Enjoy, Comment, Post.JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-27831452567335282072017-06-25T20:47:00.004-04:002024-02-23T21:28:49.880-05:00Anarchy - An Incomplete Description<div style="text-align: justify;">
As an individual who promotes anarchy as an alternative to the system-in-place, I've been contemplating many of the questions, confusions, and excited but doubtful responses to anarchism. From the beginning, it's important to understand the etymology of the term. The Latin root "arch" means structure or rule, which is why we find it in words like monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and in a different vein, architecture. So while many people associate anarchy with chaos and a "Road Warrior" apocalyptic vision, anarchy really means against rule or not disorder but opposed to structure (especially orthodox order). The way to see anarchy is as a process, an organic process rather than a structured, orderly process. <br />The essence of that process is consensus. This is why as many posts have claimed, small groups can be more anarchistic that larger entities. Consensus in an organic manner means that we work with those whom we have consensus, and we work to bring those outside the consensus into the consensus.<br />The second major idea behind anarchy is its voluntary nature. While someone mentioned the connection to libertarianism, there are differences. Most libertarians speak of the individual as being superior to the collective, and this agrees with anarchy, but while libertarians seldom see advantages to organizations of any kind, the anarchist seeks out cooperative efforts that are voluntary in nature and horizontal in organization. This voluntary nature requires a self-interested (as opposed to selfish) and self-reliant individual, who recognizes the opportunity that cooperation provides for projects beyond what an individual can accomplish.<br />This is the third, and most difficult, premise of anarchy: the horizontal nature of the collective organization. Horizontal refers to the levels of authority, or the ideal that there are no levels of authority. How is this possible? I would equate it to what I knew in the Marines, that authority had to be limited and rotational. How does that come from the Marines or any military unit? In the military, the commanding officer cannot be expected to be in command constantly, so when he needs to rest, he assigns an officer of the day. The officer of the day has limited but still official command of the unit for a limited period of time. During that time, he or she makes any decisions about the unit. The officer-of-the-day duty rotated among all the junior officers of the unit. This gave them experience in dealing with the responsibility on a limited and rotational basis. In a horizontal organizing process, any position of leadership would be rotated among all the voluntary members of the collective, each having a specific, but limited authority to act and direct the actions of the organization. <br />How the authority would be limited (both in time and authority) would be determined by consensus, but the idea would be that every volunteer would have the responsibility and opportunity to be in the position of authority.<br />If this cooperative and anarchistic organization were highly specialized or technically detailed, then volunteers would have a process to demonstrate their expertise before they would be put into the rotation. Again like the military, the volunteer who had the responsibility could be accompanied by an apprentice (someone preparing to be ready for such a rotation) to provide on-the-job training. <br />Lastly, each of these point to the uniqueness of every organization based on anarchistic and cooperative processes, that the process (organic, consensus-based, and horizontal) provides the means to establish an organization that is horizontal, voluntary and cooperative. No two anarchistic organizations would have to be alike except in these processes. <br />I don't consider anarchism to be an ideology, because its very name indicates a rejection of ideology, but it is a process that has some very basic premises that individuals must voluntarily practice in order to remain horizontal and organic without a usurpation of the organization by selfish individuals who seek power. <br />Most of the labor movement begins in very anarchistic processes, but at some point, individuals usurp the authority from the voluntary process for their own selfish ends. <br /></div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-26976894758790015282016-09-01T12:20:00.002-04:002016-09-01T12:20:15.498-04:00Cooperative Organizing Principles<div style="text-align: justify;">
As I consider the idea of what it means to be a cooperative organizer, I want to go back to the ideas that I wrote down sometime in 2014. </div>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>1st, I am a free-radical, which means that I keep my arms open to anyone & voluntarily attach myself where cooperation mutually benefits. To do this I must listen with empathy, and I must maintain a distance without seeming to reject. I make compromises for movement toward consensus goals, & I discredit snitches. </li>
<li>2nd, I organize cooperative collaboration, which has the goal of developing a cooperative process that eliminates supervision by a leader, that replaces leader’s initiative with collaborative initiative. To do this I create opportunities to distribute authority & responsibility as horizontally as possible. I promote & focus a rotational process of authority, facilitation & responsibility. I readily pass on authority, and to do so, I develop other cooperative facilitators who can promote these goals. </li>
<li>3rd, I am an educator of collaborative processes. I must become a natural collaborator, who always seeks consensus with those around me. I constantly model the cooperative process by establishing protocols as ‘starting processes’ and develop collaborative, cooperative organizers with the long-term goal of eliminating hierarchic leadership roles by creating new, horizontal, distributive organizations. </li>
<li>4th, I focus discussion. I apply my listening skills and always work to develop democratic, safe, egalitarian processes for discussion along the lines of the circle discussion process. I focus discussion by monitoring everyone’s time to speak, limiting by prioritization the topics to discuss, breaking up large discussion groups by topic into smaller, voluntary groupings that then report back to the larger group. I need to develop other individual's abilities to facilitate discussions. </li>
<li>5th, I produce ideas and suggest them to others, by not dictating or determining them alone. To do this I build consensus around viable ideas whether self-created or ones that I remain open to hearing. Being open to ideas means valuing all ideas as potentials. Ultimately the ideas are facilitated through consensus & democratic discussion from idea creation toward implementation. </li>
<li>6th, my goals & expectations revolve around the idea that collaboration should be practiced when beneficial, but that self-reliance is a standard expectation for those with whom I chose to collaborate. The cooperative process can become the norm and spread without becoming a dominant status quo. The ultimate goal is the elimination of hierarchy & leaders, so that consensus-built cooperation becomes the normal process for accomplishing what cannot be accomplished alone by a self-reliant individual.</li>
</ul>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-56208533671308692012015-04-18T10:58:00.003-04:002024-02-23T21:30:00.691-05:00Movement & Small Unit Tactics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmAtj_nXcm0DnnunId2rU-jD1Lsx-RYM9Q-q22uPiYCCDAtG3Q1OX8fsGdfwRbJIqxHrVrWMr6jwYt-OYI1SQwmsOyuQaC-Vc0WvfzgfkDhCDHiCJrI9miY8b5rQOAv6gb_za8jaq9Wl0/s1600/occupy_wall_street_transport_w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmAtj_nXcm0DnnunId2rU-jD1Lsx-RYM9Q-q22uPiYCCDAtG3Q1OX8fsGdfwRbJIqxHrVrWMr6jwYt-OYI1SQwmsOyuQaC-Vc0WvfzgfkDhCDHiCJrI9miY8b5rQOAv6gb_za8jaq9Wl0/s1600/occupy_wall_street_transport_w.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i class="title">Transport Union workers at <b>Occupy Wall Street</b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What would a movement look like that was cooperative? It would be slow moving, which often doesn’t lend well to struggle, where rapid decisions have to be made. However, a movement that has clearly established objectives, priorities, & targets can act rapidly through small units & individuals. Small unit tactics in war: giving objectives, priorities, targets, no-go zones, & areas of operation. These tactics offer movements a flexible & rapid decision-making process. In war, a small unit can run virtually on their own, reeking havoc behind enemy lines or finding, fixing & engaging the enemy until larger forces can join. In movement, small units & individuals who act based on the consensus can keep the target off-balance & unable to fix & destroy the movement.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
How would this work in a people’s struggle? One way that this would work would be through consensus. The consensus of an organized movement would establish the priorities, the targets, the objectives, & the areas of operation. The movement would have to build consensus on the objective first. The simpler the objective, the easier the consensus would be. So in current times, the focus of the Occupy movement on the 1% was the target, but the objective was more amorphous & vague. If they had focused their objective as exposing inequality to create alternative ways to build a more equitable society, they might have maintained consensus & their actions would have continued past the destruction of the camps & the dissolution that came after the organized response to Sandy. The problem came when the consensus broke down around the objective. There were some who sought to end the fed, to apply a tax on the wealthy, to increase spending on the poor, & more. If the movement had remained around exposing inequality, it might have survived. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is where the consensus process must be aligned to reach a simple, tangible, & popular goal. The #blacklivesmatter movement has done a better job of staying focused on a singular & popular goal: exposing the violent responses of police forces to people of color. More importantly, by staying true to their objective of exposing & protesting this disparity in policing, they have enlarged their movement to include larger and larger populations of individuals from a variety of backgrounds. Not all their tactics have consensus, but they have remained focused on the objective of making Americans more & more aware of the divisive & racist policing policies that occur in our poorest neighborhoods & cities. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I speak of tactics & analyze how to use military tactics in a movement, I am not suggesting violent revolution. Quite the contrary. Only a peaceful movement will ever achieve a real revolution of the human society from government to governance. It will require active, informed, & critical thinking individuals who don’t become ensnared by the illusion of power. The last part will be the hardest to eliminate, the allure of power & control. This is at the heart of the human condition & the very part of our species that must be overcome, to use Nietzsche’s language of overcoming & achieving the Uberman. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The tactics of small units however can be applied to maintain movement at the grassroots level. Let’s explore some of the ways that small unit tactics can be used in movement to achieve the goals of the movement. First, the objective must be established. In military tactics, the objective is a geographic feature, a hill, a river, a city. With a clear objective, the small unit can determine their individual route & methods to take & hold the objective. In movement, the objective is directly related to the target. Taking the #blacklivesmatter movement as a model, the objective is to bear witness, to shed light, & to make the policing practices overt & constantly in the eyes of the public, not letting these racist & misguided policies hide. The movement hasn’t necessarily arrived at an articulated consensus, but the fact that more & more videos of police actions find their way into social media, into mainstream media, & optimally into the courtroom shows that a consensus exists among a large & growing demographic. So the small unit tactic of identifying a clear objective allows small units of the movement, even individuals, to maneuver & engage in unique methods. What I see more & more consistently are people in neighborhoods stopping to watch the actions & policing of the police forces. The most recent case where a man recognized that a situation between police & citizens was escalating & began filming the engagement led to the arrest & arraignment of the policeman who shot Walter Scott in the back. This is successful small unit tactics to achieve the objective. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Once an objective has found consensus, the next area of small unit tactics is priorities. In a military sense, priorities might include speed, minimizing friendly casualties, & conserving ammunition. In a movement priorities might include remaining peaceful, prevention or minimization of violence by the target against members of the movement, & exposure in the public eye. In the #blacklivesmatter movement, these priorities might mean bearing witness & videoing any & all engagements between the police & citizens, remaining peaceful, & preventing the police from perpetrating excessive force by exposing the situation to potential & proximate individuals. Priorities allow small units & individuals to take actions with the objective in mind & the priorities clearly established. Marches & demonstrations develop & organize based on the priorities. Tactics & intermediate objectives can be planned & pursued by small units or individuals. For example the groups that created & practiced the #blackbrunch tactic sought intermediate objectives & maintained the priorities of the larger #blacklivesmatter movement. They exposed the illegitimate policing policies & forced the public to take notice. They remained peaceful & videoed the actions to spread through social media. The success or failure of a particular tactic can be assessed & evaluated by the small unit & the whole movement for repeating or discarding. However any small unit action that focuses on the objective & the priorities of the larger consensus will benefit the movement & not damage the movement. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Next post will discuss the other elements of small unit tactics. This is a rough work, & I welcome feedback & comments!</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-66165571020692161202015-03-21T11:54:00.002-04:002015-03-21T16:43:11.610-04:00Restorative Justice: a Model of Cooperation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUW7Vx76y99Et5ttx6rKSIyK6G8Txio3ud0dop7pcsQrSIOkVqB2UfcXPVvwkGnOfJE4oatT9cZv1FpcbZBFs8LIAy0KOtMazU8TnC1kRmjSZQ-8YpdIInwLdSAy7saKuAVBoNf594vY/s1600/arestorejust.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUW7Vx76y99Et5ttx6rKSIyK6G8Txio3ud0dop7pcsQrSIOkVqB2UfcXPVvwkGnOfJE4oatT9cZv1FpcbZBFs8LIAy0KOtMazU8TnC1kRmjSZQ-8YpdIInwLdSAy7saKuAVBoNf594vY/s1600/arestorejust.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.housing.ucsb.edu/sites/www.housing.ucsb.edu/files/styles/large/public/images/blogs/housing/Picture1.jpg?itok=sm56xpXq"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">http://www.housing.ucsb.edu/sites/www.housing.ucsb.edu/files/styles/large/public/images/blogs/housing/Picture1.jpg?itok=sm56xpXq</span></a> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Restorative Justice, what is it? What is it hyped to be, & what is it really? First let’s identify what it isn’t. Restorative Justice isn’t the school-to-prison pipeline. It isn’t continuing to use violence & force to reduce violence & force. It isn’t putting a bandage on the wages of violence & hoping for the best. It isn’t making the consequence an apology that won’t be taken seriously. It isn’t trying to keep violent kids in the classroom rather than letting the ‘justice system’ have their way with them. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Greatly maligned by the media as another liberal bleeding-heart
non-solution, restorative justice is a process in discovery, a concept
being tested & evaluated. This is the essence of cooperation, that
we don’t have a predetermined method for solving the problem, but that
we seek alternative ways to reach the desired solution. </span></span>It is about keeping kids out of the corrections system as much as possible. It is about finding alternative ways to help students learn to fit into society, finding other ways to deal with conflict & drama. It is about developing alternative consequences that build community, respect, & a sustainable relationship with others. The core values of restorative justice are consensus, cooperation, & compromise.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We
don’t have a complete grasp of what restorative justice involves. We
have developed ideas & working models, but the process of
restorative justice is still in the developing stages. Most importantly, restorative justice seeks to provide a viable & useful alternative to what Michelle Alexander calls the "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595586431/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=1595586431&link_code=as3&tag=jksmure-20&linkId=BLA5I2QJYCP4BTMH" target="_blank">New Jim Crow</a>", an unjust justice system that incarcerates far too many people for far too petty crimes. Crimes that might have been prevented by a successful restorative justice process.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span>The basic process of restorative justice is the circle discussion, where every stakeholder in the situation has voice. Both perpetrator & victim have opportunities to speak to their concerns. Community members also share their needs & concerns. This is the starting place. Restorative justice needs to continue through concerns to acknowledging damage caused by the perpetrator & pain felt by the victim. The circle uses consensus to build consequences that reflect the values of the community to balance the imbalance caused by the violence. The consequences should be based in healing the rifts & damage to the community as well as the individuals. The consequences must have 'bite'. They must deplete & eliminate the desire to use violence to resolve conflict. The consequences must provide methods for dealing with conflict that don't involve violence. Christ's doctrine of patience & non-violence evoked in the phrase "turn the other cheek" shouldn't be the only offered method. Consequences must provide tangible methods & steps to lead to non-violent responses where the perpetrator has not been able to find those responses & implement them. The perpetrator must volunteer for the restorative justice as an alternative consequence to the traditional suspension or harsher. This choice must be seen by the perpetrator as their acceptance of the phases of restorative justice, not simply the circle activity where they might feign remorse.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Restorative justice falls down when the follow-through to make consequences real & holistic doesn’t occur. When practitioners don’t insure that the process’ steps have all been completed, then the desired goal of the process won't be achieved. R</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">estorative justice practitioners </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> tend to do well discussing the problems & hearing the voices of those involved & affected, but we don’t often incorporate systems to establish that the consequences & healing process progress to the desired end. We get busy with our lives, with the work of our pedagogy, with the multitude of other problems that we face. WE have to do better. We have to use cooperative process to do better. Find ways to spread the responsibility for making consequences real, community-building & holistic without being inconsequential enough that the perpetrator simply sees restorative justice as the easy way out.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">With restorative justice, the desired solution must be a reduction of violence & community-based consequences for violent behavior that bring the offender back into the fold of a healthy (or convalescing) community. Ultimately, self-reliant individuals cooperate to build healthy, vibrant communities where they can produce & grow. This means that when we as a community of self-reliant individuals come together to find solutions to problems that we face, we do so with open minds to alternative & radical processes. We can’t do that if we simply rely on the methods of the past: suspension, corporal punishment, incarceration, & the ultimate consequence, capital punishment. While schools in struggling communities pursue a restorative justice to try to change student behavior, we as a society can’t only focus on the failures that occur in experimentation. When we see the damage done to students, we have to remember that incarceration & suspension provide ample evidence of damage to students as well. The current justice system of mass incarceration has an abysmal track record. We need to find ways that students can be helped to fit into society. This is the complete opposite of the hive mentality that drives the corporate world to use spyware & big data to determine every action we take. Where the corporate model profits from a continual failure to really address violence & crime, we need to find solutions that benefit the whole society, not just the 'wise investors' of the corporate model.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Restorative justice is holistic, not quantifiable measurements. Cooperation doesn’t rely on quantification either. Self-reliant individuals rely on quality of life to evaluate their happiness & success, choosing to remove ourselves from any cooperative that no longer provides benefits to our quality of life. That choice is independent & not compelled by anything but our self-reflection. </span></span></div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-33209103397041113752015-03-14T11:50:00.001-04:002015-03-16T22:01:30.408-04:00Cooperation & Anarchy are NOT Ideology<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqh3MFdyLHnA2BV_TmFsc_oXiVg_X8AnFVBrHYRQMKSaAIoQymevT_rfmE1-g82I2cjI5aO9bnx48UbXZ9tgFQvhgGvVyNbK6NQhuBb92hDQXStFOGUI5Phyphenhyphene3qFVfni2kgq4KMqzJ7bg/s1600/aUTOP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqh3MFdyLHnA2BV_TmFsc_oXiVg_X8AnFVBrHYRQMKSaAIoQymevT_rfmE1-g82I2cjI5aO9bnx48UbXZ9tgFQvhgGvVyNbK6NQhuBb92hDQXStFOGUI5Phyphenhyphene3qFVfni2kgq4KMqzJ7bg/s1600/aUTOP.jpg" height="576" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://spainrevolution.com/revolt/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTOP.jpeg" target="_blank">http://spainrevolution.com/revolt/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTOP.jpeg</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For me, anarchy isn’t a system, it’s a negation of the need for
hierarchical systems. I may share concepts with either side of the
right/left dialectic, but I don’t hold myself responsible to either
side. I consider it a false dialectic that continues to divide humanity,
prevents cooperation & perpetuates violent hierarchies in the name of
progress. I’m accosted online by those who condemn my ideas as
‘socialistic’ or ‘libertarian’ or ‘fantasy’ from both sides of the
dialectic. This is because we don’t share a consensus on certain ideas.
The ideas of equality, justice & coercion often become the dividing
points between myself & my detractors when I espouse one of them as
part of an explanation of cooperation. For example when I said that
socialism requires force, a self-proclaimed progressive suggested that
force was “(a)nother stupid libertarian term with no meaning”. He went
further to say that force was “(m)isused, misapplied and silly.” Ask the
victims of Stalin’s 5 Year Plans if force was ‘misapplied and silly.”
On the other side of the coin, I’ve had individuals call me a communist
because I suggest that descendants of the founders of hierarchical
corporations don’t deserve to amass a disproportionate share of the
wealth generated by their employees. They won’t listen to the idea that
in a cooperative organization, competition doesn’t have to be a zero-sum
game. Any attempt at self-reliant individuals sharing the efforts &
benefits of their cooperation is anathema to their ideology of
capitalism. Again ask the people whose pensions have been eviscerated by
the casino mentality of hedge funds managing those pension funds if capitalism trickles down. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We often conflate grass-roots movements with top-down ideas. I overheard a teacher explaining communism as basically sharing with each other. This is grossly oversimplified. For one thing, communism as expounded by the major thinkers, Marx, Engels, Lenin, & Trotsky, is a top down process of installing a communist society on the current society by compulsion. That isn’t sharing. This is redistribution by force. Communism as portrayed by these ideologues demands submission to a state, to the over-rulers who will determine how & why the means & products of production will be distributed & expended. This is just another hierarchy usurping normal human activities for the benefit of those at the top of the hierarchy. Those who place themselves over others always do so in the name of humanity, equality & liberty, but the very nature of hierarchy prevents this from happening. If they want to be in charge, & they want to implement their policies onto a population, then they will use force to compel those who disagree with their policies. Otherwise they will lose power, & someone will usurp their position. No one listens when someone asks for voluntary efforts without being in consensus with the effort. The essence of a police force is to enforce the laws that some members of the public refuse to follow.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Capitalism is also an ideology with a strict dogma to follow. The dogma attempts to justify the abuses & inequities of the hierarchy by implying that those at the top deserve their distribution of the wealth because of their hard work & superior skills or that the meritocracy within capitalism provides opportunity for those willing to accept the challenge of the competition. Again, coercion is used to maintain the upper echelon's position through such non free market policies as copyright, patent & taxation. Just as in the communist ideology, there is a group of individuals who will define the free market, acceptable subsidies, & tax brackets. Those who hold monopoly on the monetary system will control how production & distribution occur. Microsoft build a monopoly by either subsuming creative new ideas or destroying the individuals who competed with Microsoft's products. Both methods used coercion to accomplish the mission. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Those who oppose anarchistic methods immediately point out that if we don’t have enforcement of laws then everyone will start murdering everyone else. This is a reductio ad absurdum argument. First of all in any cooperative community, there would be a broad consensus that murder is wrong & must be prevented & the perpetrators brought to justice. Those who didn’t agree with this consensus would not be members of the community. More to the point, the need for a higher authority to exact justice for murder isn’t a necessary conclusion to the question of how to prevent murder (or any other crime with broad consensus) & bring justice. Those who share the consensus can develop a process for establishing justice that rotates the responsibility, think of the jury of peers that the 6th & 7th Amendments provide. How this justice system would be established would be based on the cooperative communities consensus on their judicial & crime prevention/protection needs. Instead of a group of individuals getting together & writing laws or a incorporating document like a constitution & then implementing it onto the rest of the community, the community would build a consensus on what should be done & how to do it using cooperative methods & processes. No institution would be necessary to establish when self-reliant individuals actively engage in the process. This is why cooperative methods require self-reliant individuals. Hierarchies require uninformed or apathetic individuals who want to leave this hard work to others.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here is the essential dilemma of an anarchist mentality trying to promote cooperation & minimal governance: idealists demand that they explain what the cooperative community would be & how it would provide various communal needs (security, justice, sustenance). Any response to that query given by the anarchist would simply be doing what other ideologies have done: create a system based on their ideas & then attempt to force it onto the community & ‘prove’ that it will work. That would make anarchy & cooperation simply another ideology. That is the opposite of the purpose of the self-reliant individual voluntarily cooperating with others to achieve goals that can’t be achieved alone. The self-reliant individual doesn’t need a hierarchy to develop cooperative communities. She develops these communities by cooperating with other self-reliant individuals voluntarily, equitably & consensually. There is no need for coercion in consensus. Ideologies & the hierarchies they build to enforce their ideas require coercion. If they had consensus, they wouldn’t need coercion. Anarchists don’t create imaginary utopias & then attempt to make those utopias a reality by force. They don’t think in terms of the end result, they pragmatically attempt to build consensus as broadly as possible & work within that consensus to achieve the goals of the consensus by shared effort & creativity. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So an individual doesn’t build a cooperative by starting it himself & then convincing others to join his efforts. This will create a hierarchy that has the founder at the top or the founder’s original ideas instilled as a dogma to be perpetuated & enforced by an insider group. Instead the self-reliant individual identifies a need that he cannot accomplish alone. He seeks out others who share this need & builds a consensus about how to accomplish the goal of meeting this need & then how to implement this goal in a shared, egalitarian & voluntary manner.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think of a road. Let’s say a community needs a road between their various domiciles & work locations. Individuals would get together as a group & determine how to build the road, what materials would be needed & how the community would acquire or produce these materials; how the community would distribute the labor & effort required to build & maintain the road & establish the rules around how the road can be used by consensus. Even if some individuals in the community don’t give consent to the process or refuse to participate, those who have consensus could still complete the project as long as they didn’t impact those outside the consensus (using land of those not in consensus). They might decide to charge those who don’t collaborate in the process, or they might decide that the benefit to those within the consensus outweighs the fact that those who didn’t participate still benefit from the process. Each of these decisions would be decided by consensus before any action was taken. The point of this little thought problem exercise is not to create a model cooperative community, but to show that through cooperative processes that include consensual & voluntary actions, a shared need can be addressed without requiring a hierarchy.<br />
<br />
Ultimately cooperation & anarchy are processes. These processes are fluid, organic & dynamic. There is no utopia at the end of the process, just continued process as a community grows & evolves.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-133459995046717942015-03-07T08:43:00.000-05:002015-03-07T09:35:04.605-05:00Time Allocation to Increase Self-Reliance<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDrdgs6ix2zI_hU_xZhR0PVCYz6YPRFNG4Ze8piHfXjkaUA6LvHgxb3q0TqJkhK_ze_UMsPA2qunPfCxe_tmnEqeqHiSFkgr0iiEJq9bI-op10ApwBv7DzE8MkQvCXsvSfvvXkwV60jnM/s1600/aInfinity-Time1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDrdgs6ix2zI_hU_xZhR0PVCYz6YPRFNG4Ze8piHfXjkaUA6LvHgxb3q0TqJkhK_ze_UMsPA2qunPfCxe_tmnEqeqHiSFkgr0iiEJq9bI-op10ApwBv7DzE8MkQvCXsvSfvvXkwV60jnM/s1600/aInfinity-Time1.jpg" height="380" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> Source: <a href="http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Infinity-Time1.jpg">http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Infinity-Time1.jpg</a></span></div>
Self-reliant individuals must divide their time effectively to become efficient producers. This is especially true of those of us, myself included, who have jobs that tax a great deal of our time. This necessary but futile (feudal) taxing of my time makes it more necessary that I organize my time outside employment efficiently. If I am going to get out of the need for employment to another, then I will have produce the alternative income source during my free time.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So another way of looking at productivity is how we portion our time. All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy. The same is true when we spend too much time on “research” or "learning". We may spend too much time in the company of others. The fact is we need all three. We need to produce, but we have to have down-time & learning time as well as time for collaboration. I for one spend too much time reading books & studying on the Internet. I believe that I could be happy being a monk in the Middle Ages reading & studying throughout the day, except that I’d probably get tired of the available reading material. When we have to divide our time between employment that isn’t production for ourselves & our free time that we work to enjoy, we have to plan our free time to maximize our needs. This taxing of our time to have income is why we remain dependent. Knowing how hard we work at our jobs to maintain them (don’t let me get started on the bureaucratic nightmare that nearly every job, public or private, demands), we can’t be blamed for spending our free time on pleasures. That is exactly why we should re-evaluate our ‘pleasures’. What is a pleasure? Is it really watching media on our television or on our computer? Is it really drinking & watching the seasonal sporting events? Is pleasure going out to restaurants, bars or clubs? It might be. I’m certainly not going to be the judge or jury on what we should value as pleasure. However I think we have to re-evaluate how we perceive the value of pleasure. The modern society has made life very easy for most people living in the so-called First World. Even the majority of the poor in the United States have access to food & shelter most of the time. What I don’t think we have is the necessary attitude to appreciate what we have. What do I mean by that? Well I think that we find pleasure in being numb on various levels. Pleasure for many of us means sitting and being entertained in one form or another. We don’t find pleasure in activities that might require effort. Oh we do sometimes. We take on projects around the house or keep our clothes, rooms, & kitchen clean. It’s always better to come home to a clean home than a cluttered mess. I know that there are various activities that people do to get out and enjoy their neighborhoods & cities, & some of these activities are valuable to the individuals as social & collaborate activities. Personally, because I won’t speak for anyone else, I don’t spend enough time producing when I’m not producing for my job. I’m trying to change that, & in my last post, I spoke about what production should mean outside employment. Here I want to speak about time apportionment. Namely that we need to divide our free time in ways that allow us to be more productive but still find the pleasure & downtime necessary to feel rested enough to go back to the grind the next day or next week. This division of time should produce some of the areas that I discussed last week. I see the division of time as being divided into three areas: research/learning; creation/production; & collaboration/celebration. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Learning & research are a necessary part of life. The teaching profession attempts more than anything else to develop our students into lifetime learners. We should all aspire to that goal. Autodidacts have it much easier with the Internet. We have so much information & knowledge available to us. This is why I call this sight The 21st Commons. The 21st Century Commons provides a place where we can learn & grow together through shared information & ideas. The Internet is making it more & more clear that <a href="http://www.shareable.net/" target="_blank">sharing</a> ideas, rather than copyrighting & occulting, them will not only benefit us more as fully self-reliant individuals but the hoarding of information for profit will continue to be more & more difficult to perpetrate. We need to spend time daily imbibing deeply in this river of knowledge & human possibility, this marketplace of ideas. We will benefit from joining in the commons of mankind & by contributing to it; we will return the benefit for others. Before I’m described as a ‘socialist, communistic freeloader", I want to point out that I mentioned benefiting & producing. I’m not saying that we should just give away everything we make & live on the benevolence of the Internet. First of all, good luck with that. Second, I’m promoting the ideas of self-reliance & cooperation, not some collectivist utopia. Self-reliance & cooperation aren’t an ideology that can be forced onto the masses. They are voluntary behaviors of free, independent individuals. Mostly though, we should enjoy the time we spend learning & researching. The quaffs of information & wisdom that we gulp down should give us some of the pleasure that will sustain us during the employment periods until we can become self-reliant.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The next third of our time should be spent producing. I’ve already discussed ways to be productive, but we have to recognize that our time away from the employment must be productive for a portion of the time. Why do I separate production from research & learning? Isn’t that a productive activity? No. It may lead to productivity, & it is a valuable use of our time, but it doesn’t produce tangible goods. I’m talking about tangible production here. This production should be focused around making ourselves more self-reliant. The ultimate goal of this production is to produce something that can sustain our lives without continuing to go to the daily grind. So while it may be some of the more basic <a href="http://the21stcommons.blogspot.com/2015/03/self-reliant-production.html" target="_blank">production</a> of clothing, food, & shelter, it should eventually be about producing our passions. This is the production that I’m doing here. I don’t know right now where or how my writing will lead to producing an income stream that will allow me to be more independent but this productivity aims for that target. I’m also producing a better domicile & hopefully a functioning, if limited garden. I have plans as big as Alaska for my tiny backyard, but I’m made realistic by my spouse about what I can accomplish with the free time that I have (mostly by the Honey Dew List & an 1/8th of an acre lot). Again as we produce what will make us more self-reliant, we have to take pleasure in these gains. I know that I get great pleasure from watching my garden & home bloom into my big as Alaska dreams.The ultimate goal of our productive time must be to become completely self-reliant & capable of walking away from the feudal employment that continues to swallow more & more of our life. Once we can be truly self-reliant, this division of time becomes even easier to accomplish & more fruitful for ourselves & our loved ones.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
The final third of our time should be in collaboration & celebration with others. Collaborate by discussing what we’ve learned today during our learning time with our spouse & friends. Hear what they’ve accomplished, & if they can’t provide any ideas outside of their work, challenge them to do so. Most importantly, celebrate the time with those you care about. This is the third that I probably don’t practice as fully as the other two. In fact if I tallied my time, I‘d probably find that I spend way too much time researching & reading. Yet a large part of learning & retaining that learning requires that we communicate that information to others. If I spend a bit of time trying to explain what I’ve just learned to my friends or loved ones, I'm more likely to retain that information permanently. The shared information & wisdom that we gain in this collaboration/celebration time grows exponentially through our community of friends & loved ones. Celebrate with friends by having gatherings that seek to find ways to be more independent & cooperative together. Do our friends share our dreams & desires for more self-reliant independence? We must nurture that relationship through cooperation. We should collaborate & cooperate with people that we trust & love. That makes cooperation less risky & more enjoyable. Find ways to celebrate our productivity together, to share our abundance. As we become more prolific, we must share our abundance & take pleasure in the enjoyment of our abundance with others. Sharing comes from strength & self-reliance. We can celebrate our independence & self-reliance as we grow with our cooperative community that we build.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is no reason that some of these time allotments can't be combined in meaningful ways. For instance our collaboration time might be spent learning together or producing something together. The thrill of working with friends on a shared project provides joy & becomes the impetus to cooperate again. The cooperative spirit flows naturally from self-reliance. People who feel self-reliant seek the opportunity to cooperate on projects that they can't do alone. We need to dispel our fears that cooperation will lead to one side or the other taking advantage. A self-reliant individual doesn't fear cooperation, because they know that they have voluntarily entered into the process & can leave that process at any time that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits & a resolution of that imbalance can't be found with the cooperating group or individual. Every cooperative activity has risk, just as life has risk. We shouldn't be afraid to cooperate, because when we cooperate with those whom we love & treasure, we build lasting & vital relationships that make us stronger, wiser & better humans. Rather than thinking that cooperation is something new, we need to recognize that cooperation is an innate part of the human spirit. Community is the result of cooperation with our friends & family. Cooperative communities aren't new, they've simply been usurped by hierarchies that have taken them into places that devalued or denied the natural human trait of cooperation.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-22469501307195364112015-03-01T09:22:00.000-05:002015-03-01T09:22:30.729-05:00Self-Reliant Production<blockquote class="rg_standalone_container" data-src="//genius.com/annotations/2065919/standalone_embed">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-iibyd_1tWOxs9Ve6nEinFw6Bqub-symFnTLsewkp6SUsJLHIlwsS9w0YaCin9HiycrTl7RNQ4rjDVWBghxkJMK5MDRoTVy5sgNKfdfcAboMvKaxqs3yzY4LLD6dsxDMT8Mhe9xy1ro/s1600/1375649705_jack_of_all_trades-1cfahdf.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-iibyd_1tWOxs9Ve6nEinFw6Bqub-symFnTLsewkp6SUsJLHIlwsS9w0YaCin9HiycrTl7RNQ4rjDVWBghxkJMK5MDRoTVy5sgNKfdfcAboMvKaxqs3yzY4LLD6dsxDMT8Mhe9xy1ro/s1600/1375649705_jack_of_all_trades-1cfahdf.gif" height="400" width="278" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://genius.com/Beach-house-master-of-none-lyrics">“Master of None” by Beach House</a></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Becoming self-reliant means becoming a producer. We must produce on this earth again, in order to remain self-reliant. Most of us, myself included, don't produce as self-reliant individuals & certainly don't produce enough. One of the vital ways that we contribute to our self-reliance is by producing. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most of us <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/produce" target="_blank">produce</a> at our jobs in some manner, but a job is not self-reliant production. It is production for the benefit of the employer. As a teacher, I produce lesson plans, worksheets, lectures, mini-lessons, assessments for the benefit of my employer. My students receive these productions, & they produce work in response (homework, essays, texts). However, the employer benefits the most from this. Most importantly, other than the wage that I receive, my production does nothing for my self-reliance. Once my employer no longer pays for my production, I have few resources to remain self-reliant. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So how do we produce in ways that provide self-reliance? First the majority of our production should be primarily for our personal benefit. We should think of our production in terms of what we need to remain self-reliant. How do we do this?<br />
<br />
The first area where we should focus production would be our selves. Mentally & physically. We need to produce human beings prepared to meet all challenges. Productive lives need bodies that can accomplish necessary physical tasks & minds that can create beyond ourselves. This means exercising our minds & bodies daily.<br />
<br />
Providing security for ourselves, our family & our property is next. A self-reliant individual will produce the necessary security by becoming proficient in self-defense & constantly upgrading the security defenses of our home (windows, doors, safe-rooms, emergency supplies, surveillance, weapons, etc.). The best security is one that is tested constantly. Try to break into your home. How challenging is it? If you can find ways to enter, so can a perpetrator. Security should defend against blood-sucking zombie attacks. We should produce plans for a variety of emergencies & contingencies based on various situations. Make sure that all members of our family know the plan. Prepare emergency packs that can be loaded into the car or carried on the back in truly dire situations. Keep emergency supplies in our safe room. Develop alternative energy sources beginning with a generator & storage batteries.<br />
<br />
Produce food to supply our family's nutritional needs. If we have garden space, we must maximize what we can grow. Use inside planters as well to produce herbs & greens. Grow fruits & vegetables that can be canned or pickled. Learn to pickle, ferment, dry, & smoke foods for long term storage. Build increased storage space. Make relationships with local farms & animal husbandry to get the foodstuffs that we can't grow ourselves. <br />
<br />
Repair clothing rather than just throw it out. Learn to knit & crochet, sew & stitch to make our own clothes. Again find local producers that provide the raw materials for clothing & house fabric needs. Refurbish our own furniture.<br />
<br />
Learn to be a plumber & an electrician. Learn basic carpentry skills. When our house needs repairs learn to do it ourselves with our own labor. Every task that we take on ourselves rather than hiring 'professionals' improves our self-reliance & builds self-confidence in our ability to accomplish every challenge presented. Learn how to repair electronics ourselves rather than just throwing away the old electronics & buying new ones. Learn to write programs on computers. <br />
<br />
Find a way to produce our passions into tangible goods as additional income initially & expand it to establish truly self-reliant income. The more self-reliant we have become in the areas listed above before we attain self-reliant income, the less income we'll actually have to produce. For many of us, we have never considered our passions as realistic means toward self-reliance, but that is because we have been sold the idea that self-reliance comes from a steady income stream first, rather than being self-reliant to produce a steady income stream. As long as we place the income first, the effort to attain self-reliance will be dependent on that stream of income.<br />
<br />
As long as we are expending our energy to produce for the benefit of others in order to gain a steady income stream, we will be dependent & will only have superficial self-reliance. In order to imagine a more just & egalitarian society, we must promote self-reliance rather than dependence on corporate or government jobs. We must begin to produce for ourselves rather than for others.<br />
<br />
I've spent a career working for the government & corporations. I've come to the realization that I can't continue this career & be self-reliant. So I intend to implement & explore each of these areas to produce increased self-reliance. The long-term goal is to be self-reliant & have a steady self-generated income stream rather than continue to depend on others for that income. It isn't an overnight process, & I don't expect to be self-reliant by next week or even next year. I do expect to accomplish it. Before I can be a cooperative individual, I have to be a self-reliant individual. I hope you'll join me in this journey toward self-reliance. We can cooperate & share ideas on how to be more self-reliant & establish a more cooperative way to co-exist than the competitive zero-sum game that society promotes.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-4106577592141452722015-02-21T09:57:00.002-05:002015-02-21T13:43:38.569-05:00Self-Reliance & the Trivium<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwnC8BhkU6EFNroixo-UXYjza5D1AzCRpRD__ugyopwVCDLNH9STOx0ixBK56xZ6oe9godDigCT5FlxhPrx8lxybntcC2H6yezq-IqZ5VlFRH5H3CV-OS3bM8F3-5mVWpkV1jbbRbh5c/s1600/SelfReliance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwnC8BhkU6EFNroixo-UXYjza5D1AzCRpRD__ugyopwVCDLNH9STOx0ixBK56xZ6oe9godDigCT5FlxhPrx8lxybntcC2H6yezq-IqZ5VlFRH5H3CV-OS3bM8F3-5mVWpkV1jbbRbh5c/s1600/SelfReliance.jpg" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">downloaded from <a href="http://jimbenton.com/" target="_blank">jimbenton.com</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One of the first ways that we can become more self-reliant is honing our critical thinking skills & ability to decipher others ideas while communicating our own clearly. Self-reliant individuals are autodidacts who never give up the love of learning. Learning remains our best skill, and we must constantly strive to learn better & faster. The Internet provides so many paths to learning. I’ve used <a href="http://youtube.com/">YouTube.com</a> to learn how to do many of the repairs that I’ve done myself on my home. It’s amazing, & I’ve been able to save money by doing it myself, besides the sense of confidence that I’ve gained once I know how to make repairs that would cost a fortune if I hired a contractor to complete them. As an educator, I’ve spent my career trying to teach students to develop the skills necessary to be life-time learners with varying degrees of success. I’ve developed several skill sets that they need to learn & apply in order to become autodidactic. Self-reliance demands that we practice learning throughout our lives, & I want to share some of the skills & methods that I’ve assembled from a variety of sources to help people learn adeptly. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTuopPtq1BNvPN1R377ZHAD4LIHp40xsYyarR_uWK1waHds3_yUY90ZPfcYaTUm62_UMV-FRjFZgQ19Hz10KXhDkZYtv8Ezm9bPjPVZeGQDsKixK_pIYiCdBHxOxX1Aj2SmbE9z0IpCM0/s1600/512px-Blooms_rose.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTuopPtq1BNvPN1R377ZHAD4LIHp40xsYyarR_uWK1waHds3_yUY90ZPfcYaTUm62_UMV-FRjFZgQ19Hz10KXhDkZYtv8Ezm9bPjPVZeGQDsKixK_pIYiCdBHxOxX1Aj2SmbE9z0IpCM0/s400/512px-Blooms_rose.svg.png" /></a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">"<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blooms_rose.svg#mediaviewer/File:Blooms_rose.svg">Blooms rose</a>" by <a class="new" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:K._Aainsqatsi&action=edit&redlink=1" title="User:K. Aainsqatsi (page does not exist)">K. Aainsqatsi</a> - <span class="int-own-work">Own work</span>. Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/">Wikimedia Commons</a>.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First, let’s understand the path of learning through what’s known in education as Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. This taxonomy portrays a hierarchy of learning from the most basic to the most complex. The path begins with basic ‘knowledge’ followed by ‘comprehension’, ‘application’, ‘analysis’, ‘synthesis’, & ‘evaluation’. This stair-step progression helps to develop a process of learning that should be applied to any learning endeavor. Going from terminology & information to utilizing the information, analyzing the information then creating an interpretation of that information & finally evaluating the information & your interpretation. Educators strive to apply each of these levels of cognition to their lessons & longer plans. It is a process that self-reliant individuals should constantly apply to their learning. If we aren’t learning & evaluating our learning, we aren’t progressing. Self-reliant individuals don’t become complacent with their position, they constantly seek progress (Does that make us progressives?). This is how I interpret Nietzsche’s call for overcoming. We must overcome what we are in order to become what we can be. Humanity must overcome its limitations by a constant effort to progress & not retard that progress. I digress.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While Bloom’s taxonomy has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> page that explains it more fully, I want to direct your attention to another method of learning that has been developed quite fully by Gene Odening & Jan Irvin on a website called <a href="http://www.gnosticmedia.com/" target="_blank">gnosticmedia</a>. This method is called the <a href="http://www.triviumeducation.com/" target="_blank">Trivium</a>, & it places Bloom’s taxonomy into three categories that autodidacts can use to hone & apply their learning skills. The Trivium applies three levels of thinking: Grammar, Logic, & Rhetoric. Tying these levels to Bloom’s taxonomy means that Grammar represents the knowledge & comprehension levels, Logic is the application & analysis levels, & rhetoric is the synthesis & evaluation levels.<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Grammar isn’t your English teacher correcting your syntax & usage. Grammar in the concept of the Trivium refers to the first four words of the age-old comprehension questions that teachers use: the "5w’s & h". Grammar focuses on the who, the what, the when, & the where. In the Trivium, we cannot progress until we know & comprehend these. Grammar is the terminology, the facts, the details & the quotes that we are studying. This is the first two levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.<br />
<br />
Logic refers to the next two levels of the taxonomy: application & analysis. Here the learner takes the Grammar & applies that next "w" question, Why? by applying the knowledge to experience & analyzing its value. Why do we need this knowledge? Why does the source put this knowledge out there? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Rhetoric applies the next two levels through the how question. How doe this compare to my experience? How can I use this knowledge? How does the source use this knowledge? How well or accurately am I portraying the knowledge? How accurately does the source apply this knowledge? This is the highest levels of learning, & where we actually build our learning into wisdom. I created a chart for my students to help them analyze literature, although I use different terms for Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric:<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsw1mIcoSAoJYvkj3ZTAt4zqE3Y1W4VGW1UlbqGUCJTL2k8X58Nb0e9nAoSa2OscLC5VaHO84lO4qXylxu9_kdoCz1J6rOBODGsMna7c9NcOt8bQpbUioTXIFsgQit0TmH9ERHuRBQ6tg/s1600/expimpintchart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsw1mIcoSAoJYvkj3ZTAt4zqE3Y1W4VGW1UlbqGUCJTL2k8X58Nb0e9nAoSa2OscLC5VaHO84lO4qXylxu9_kdoCz1J6rOBODGsMna7c9NcOt8bQpbUioTXIFsgQit0TmH9ERHuRBQ6tg/s1600/expimpintchart.jpg" height="307" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license"><img alt="Creative Commons License" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage" property="dct:title" rel="dct:type" style="font-size: xx-small;" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">Proficiency Chart</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> by <span property="cc:attributionName" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#">J K Van Nort</span> is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. </span></div>
<br />
Another way of seeing the Trivium is to think of the Grammar as absorbing information verbatim, then Logic as analyzing that information for accuracy, fallacious thoughts, & utility, then Rhetoric as evaluating & communicating that information to others. As we say in the education profession: the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to others. A self-reliant individual isn’t afraid to communicate their learning to others. This is why ultimately self-reliant individuals cooperate readily & successfully. How can I make such a bold assumption. Well let’s put the Trivium to work on this rhetoric:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A self-reliant individual isn’t afraid to communicate their learning to others. This is why ultimately self-reliant individuals cooperate readily & successfully. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’d begin by ensuring that I understand completely all the terms in the statement. Words that need agreement on the definition should be comprehended first. The autodidact would probably identify ‘self-reliant’, ‘individual’, & ‘cooperate’ as words that might be defined differently by different people. So self-reliance - The capacity to rely on one's own capabilities, and to manage one's own affairs; independence not to be dependent; cooperate - Association for mutual benefit, such as for purposes of production or purchase; & individual - A person considered alone, rather than as belonging to a group of people<br />
<br />
The basic argument that I comprehend is that independent people (who?) don’t fear sharing their learning (what?) with others which implies that independent people associate for mutual benefit better (when? & where?). So I’ve done my Grammar, I’ve ensured that I have completely comprehended the ‘knowledge’ & ‘information’ in the statement.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Next I’m going to apply logic to the argument. Why does the statement make the claim that self-reliant individuals cooperate better? The author attempts to demonstrate that independence & autonomy lead to cooperation. His agenda is to convince others that self-reliance produces opportunities for cooperation. Why does he think this? First he sees someone with self-reliance as independent & capable, who won’t be harmed by cooperation significantly. Why is he making this argument? He’s making the argument to convince others that cooperation is possible between independent people, & in fact he’s arguing that self-reliant individuals make the best individuals in associations for mutual benefit. Why can he make that claim? He claims that self-reliance makes one less susceptible to being violated, & he also claims that independent people tend to cooperate more frequently & successfully. Why would I disagree with this statement? Well, I know that independent people can still be fooled or harmed by others. I also know that just because one is independent, it doesn’t mean that they will be willing to cooperate. They may very well seek to remain alone & without involving themselves in any associations with others. This doesn’t negate the statement; the statement remains possible & even probable when we consider that self-reliant individuals would likely have the confidence to associate with other self-reliant individuals to accomplish what they cannot accomplish alone.<br />
<br />
The third step of the Trivium is rhetoric, where we ask the question how? How does this relate to the world around me? I know that cooperation is not an easy process, & that if I were personally going to create associations for mutual benefit, I would want to pick the people with whom I associated rather than just associate with anyone. How would this work? Well, let’s say that I wanted to develop a business to repair & re-purpose items that I’ve found. I might start the business by myself, then slowly adding individuals who want to do the same thing, build a cooperative that works together for mutual benefit. The association could determine how one becomes a member of the cooperative, & how the mutually shared tools & supplies are maintained & replaced or expanded. How would the cooperative remove members who didn’t fulfill or didn’t participate according to cooperative guidelines? The cooperative would have to establish rules for membership that must be fulfilled or the membership could be revoked. If a member didn’t participate according to the rules but made it difficult to remove him, then the whole association could be disbanded & the shared items distributed according to who provided them or in an equitable manner. Then a new cooperative could be established that didn’t include the non-cooperative member. How valuable is associating with other self-reliant individuals for mutual benefit? I’d value it highly because it offers ways to accomplish more than I could by myself. How should I go about engaging in cooperative associations? Carefully & with the full knowledge that I have to be actively engaged in the process at all levels to ensure that my concerns & interests are protected. That active engagement is what makes me a self-reliant individual, & if I associate with other self-reliant individuals, I am less likely to be abused by cooperating.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
As you can see, this process is simply to gain mastery of the information that has been studied. The purpose of the Trivium isn’t to provide a fool-proof method for learning as much as a process for learning that increases the ability of the individual to determine the value & utility of information. The Trivium method can be applied to any learning effort. If I want to learn how to program computers, I’d follow the same procedure. This means that when I’m learning something new, I need to always follow the same procedure. The consistency of applying the Trivium process will make the process more natural for the individual & increase the ability of the individual to learn assuredly & efficiently. The Trivium should be applied to anything we decide to add to our understanding of the world. If we are shopping for siding for our house, we should apply the Trivium process to establish the best siding, the best contractor to install the siding, whether siding is our best option, whether we could install the siding ourselves, how much value would siding provide to our house, how much will it insulate our home? If we are going to answer these questions, we must use every level of the Trivium to learn about siding & make an informed & educated decision. This is the value & utility of the Trivium: to provide the self-reliant individual with the means to educate themselves on whatever area they deem necessary to function as a self-reliant individual. Self-reliance demands that we continuously educate ourselves on the world around us, & the Trivium is an excellent tool to accomplish that demand.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-12442934953349524422015-02-14T09:14:00.000-05:002015-02-14T09:18:27.967-05:00Non-aggression & Cooperation (Anethema to the Collectivist)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgM0mbIGVVDqVSakX02oV3PlyjlbkAKycIDPuoBIi4r4sJXeISlaC9iOT9JBDeMgbith8dDYAo9F3EiQjcCPQQX-oXcJQao4TUTw2Yu-Op2hpawCe8DJo8lnJLQLsRpW2VqgIJyOzC59w/s1600/1591833.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgM0mbIGVVDqVSakX02oV3PlyjlbkAKycIDPuoBIi4r4sJXeISlaC9iOT9JBDeMgbith8dDYAo9F3EiQjcCPQQX-oXcJQao4TUTw2Yu-Op2hpawCe8DJo8lnJLQLsRpW2VqgIJyOzC59w/s1600/1591833.jpg" height="300" width="500" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Downloaded from: http://pichost.me/1591833/ </span></div>
A system of cooperation needs to follow the ways that people already cooperate, Saul Alinsky’s meeting people where they are. Any system of cooperation must find ways to incorporate cooperation into everyday life without making it into a doctrine. There is no doctrine in cooperation, there is only process. The process is not fixed as doctrine is fixed. Process is organic & malleable. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I study systems by their organization, I find that organic systems come closest to portraying human cooperation. Bear with my analogy here: A plant sends out feelers & branches in multiple directions. When those feelers find sunlight or space or whatever the plant seeks, the feeler prospers & grows. When it finds an impediment or an obstacle, it either stops movement or changes direction. Either result is based on the needs of the plant. Now before this starts to look like collectivism, the organic structure is a model of cooperation based on a consensus, so the root & main trunk of the plant in the organic structure represent the consensus. The feelers are individuals or small groups who push the consensus to where it needs to go. If the consensus is that we need to have better security, then each feeler is seeking the places that need to be protected. If the consensus is to build a barter system that provides needs to individuals, then the feelers are attempts to create needed commodities for the consensus to barter & exchange. The idea or the consensus must be continuously part of all the members of the organic cooperative, their actions are determined by the consensus. Anything they do outside the consensus is based on the self-reliant individual’s volition. It doesn’t reflect on the consensus unless it violates or goes against the consensus. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So for instance in the case of the bartering cooperative, individual volunteers can barter within the cooperative but also sell or trade outside the cooperative as well. They cannot be coerced into bartering only with the cooperative. They can volunteer to do so, but they can not be compelled. If coercion is used, cooperation has vanished. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is the gist: cooperation only exists voluntarily between self-reliant individuals. Cooperation cannot be coerced. That would be turning cooperation into collectivism. That is not the nature of cooperation. Cooperation is a natural human function that negates the need for coercion & force. When people speak of eliminating the state, they shouldn’t envision a new hierarchy. Instead, anarchists envision cooperation. The building of cooperation comes through consensus. A consensus is only as large as its constituency. If consensus is only between two people, that is the extent of its constituency. No coercion can force another person to join the consensus in good faith. Anytime someone attempts to claim the authority to coerce another, they have committed a crime against humanity (I don't use that term lightly. The claim of authority has always been at the center of the worst crimes against humanity, & those crimes would not have been committed without the claim to authority). As equals, we cannot claim authority over another. Because the moment that we claim that authority, we have to use coercion & force to hold that authority. This violates the basic premise that we all have equal rights to life & liberty. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What seems like a given - this basic premise of equal right to life & liberty - is not a consensus. Those who promote collectivism do not concede this basic premise. They are always willing to use force to compel others to their beliefs. This isn’t cooperation. Cooperation isn’t an ideology, it is a process. Cooperation is a human action that requires empathy, imagination, communication & shared values. Consensus develops the shared values. Only the values that have consensus can be part of any cooperative effort. The empathy required for cooperation is the ability to see one’s self in others. By doing so, an individual can imagine opportunities to share work, play, creation, anything, once they can empathize with another individual. Without empathy, cooperation is a non-starter & collectivism finds the ground to purchase. Let me phrase that another way: without empathy, it is easy to seek collectivist means to achieve one’s ends. When we don’t feel empathy for others, we can do some really horrendous acts in the name of doing good. This is why Jesus’ command to love your enemy as yourself is a cooperative statement & not a collectivist statement. With empathy, we can find ways to work together in cooperation rather than coercion.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We need imagination in cooperation because imagination leads to the new ideas that can become the advances that benefit all. Imagination comes in many guises & generally creates both innovative & mundane ideas. Some make life better, some simply provide entertainment. Some imagination leads to collectivism, which inherently leads to violence, once the individual has determined that their imagined idea should be put into place by force.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Individuals have violent imaginations. What needs to occur for those within proximity of that individual is to not build consensus with this violence except the consensus that violent imagination must remain in the abstract & never become actionable. With empathy & imagination, cooperative individuals may find ways to build consensus with even someone who has violent tendencies & channel those tendencies into other arenas. Violence has a source. At the heart of violence is the nature of the world we inhabit. Violence is perpetrated by larger creatures onto smaller creatures to fulfill dietary needs. There is no end to violence. There is only purposing of violence. How do we purpose violence into positive needs? Hunting for food is one. Sports is another. Video games could be an outlet for violence, but an outlet isn’t necessarily a positive outcome. Violence is not self-defense, but violence can be channeled toward self-defense through martial arts that practice the martial art in non-aggressive methods. So there are ways to channel violence into self-defense & non-aggression. Do I need to explain here that non-aggression is not pacifism. Non-aggression incorporates self-defense. Self-defense is not violence. Collectivists always blur the lines between violence & self-defense to perpetrate war. The real issue is preventing violence from being a means to accomplish agendas that demand coercion & compulsory acceptance. Cooperatives have agendas (by consensus only), but these agendas focus on the needs of the volunteers of the cooperative & never seek to force these agendas on anyone, especially people who don’t share the consensus of the cooperative volunteers. In the collective mentality, the agenda is always to promote those at the top & enforce their ideas on the rest. In opposition to the collectivist, cooperation requires a non-aggression stance.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The United States has fought multiple wars claiming to fight for democracy & freedom. As these wars clearly demonstrate, violence & force will never bring democracy or freedom to others. War will continue to provide the excuses for limiting our freedoms. War will continue to degrade the limited democracy we now have. Aggression will never lead to democratic societies & will never extend freedom. Only through non-aggression can society become democratic & free.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-85956359094789046482015-02-07T11:17:00.000-05:002015-03-02T23:07:13.249-05:00The War on Imagination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIn3mBvRVrnN_Ib_f6Y0fGNRkAVw3t21gAjtFjxEEyC5QPasM9xbmEFrDTZm5oFApDX4SsSkKK8xgRcC-1mZHPhaT4JWFAwEibR3xb8WNhtG4uDQNa8I-JrZ2mUJun252FPzWSprJJQ0/s1600/994px-El_Tres_de_Mayo,_by_Francisco_de_Goya,_from_Prado_thin_black_margin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIn3mBvRVrnN_Ib_f6Y0fGNRkAVw3t21gAjtFjxEEyC5QPasM9xbmEFrDTZm5oFApDX4SsSkKK8xgRcC-1mZHPhaT4JWFAwEibR3xb8WNhtG4uDQNa8I-JrZ2mUJun252FPzWSprJJQ0/s1600/994px-El_Tres_de_Mayo,_by_Francisco_de_Goya,_from_Prado_thin_black_margin.jpg" height="300" width="500" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="description en" lang="en"><i>This work is in the <b><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_domain" title="Public domain">public domain</a></b> in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus <b>100</b> years or less.</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it” Diane di Prima.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
The relationship between cooperation & imagination runs deep. Imagination creates possibility allowing humans to hope & dream. Imagination introduces empathy, allowing humans to recognize themselves in others. Imagination produces innovation which gives humans the ability to work their way out of their problems. Imagination enlivens communication that builds connections between individual dreams & hopes. Imagination visualizes communities in positive, productive networks that share responsibilities & cooperative actions. Imagination allows self-reliance in the individual without compromising their membership in the family of man. Without imagination, man is an island, alone in a sea of indifference.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
So when Ms. di Prima says that the war on imagination is the most important war, I have to agree. I have this quote posted front & center of my classroom because I fight this war daily. The imagination is under attack by the system-in-place that controls the majority. The system-in-place sees imagination as uniquely under its control & doesn’t want imagination cropping up in places that where it might question or deny the systems authority to control. This system must weed out the imagination where it sprouts in the orderly garden. If the system can’t eliminate alternative imagination, the system must co-opt it, corrupting it before it can flower into revolution.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Who comprises this system-in-place? Everyone & no one. This system continues because the imagination to see an alternative system or process being possible doesn't have mass exposure. When imagination envisions alternate ways of interacting as humans, the herd criminalizes those ideas. Nietzsche says in <i>Thus Spake Zarathustra</i>, that “He who seeks may easily become lost himself. It is a crime to go apart & be alone. Thus speaks the herd.” That quote has always meant for me that the herd denounces anything that doesn’t compute in the herd mind. The herd will always seek to denounce those who find ways to travel outside the herd. Fear & complacency, two potent weapons against the imagination, reign in the herd, acting as sheep dogs to keep the flock together. Yet, even for those who do attempt to think outside the box, Nietzsche also points out that the herd’s voice still rings in their ears, & they must be constantly on guard themselves of these weapons in the war on imagination: what if I’m not accepted? what if people denounce me? what if I’m wrong? what if I’m exiled from humanity by my thoughts?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Plato’s analogy of the cave offers an image of that individual who ‘seeks to go apart’ when the individual who has been in the cave watching the images on the wall finds his way out of the cave & into the sunlight. In the sunlight, he finds a whole new world, one which isn’t simply flickering shadows across a darkened wall. He must ask himself: do I stay here & enjoy this new found place? or do I go back & bring others with me? Plato’s character returns & like the herd, those whom he seeks to enlighten, rebuke & eventually kill him. This is not a positive way to think about imagination being shared with others.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
However, Socrates, who is often equated as the lonely seeker of the sunlight & was executed by the Athenians for misguiding the youth, created beyond himself & inseminated the Greek philosophy that is a benchmark of western civilization. We are all part of the herd, living in the world of humanity. We must be willing to risk imagining alternative ways of living together in peace & cooperation. We must accept the “slings & arrows of outrageous fortune” by empathizing with our fellow humans & seeking to communicate alternatives that don’t attempt to coerce others to accept. We must strive to be self-reliant without being misanthropes. We must imagine that others seek this self-reliance & peaceful cooperation as much as we do. We need to nurture collaboration between other self-reliant individuals. We need to recognize failure to communicate as merely a lesson in how to improve that communication so that we can build an alternative to the competitive, materialistic & nihilistic system that currently controls the way humans interact. Instead of pointing fingers at those whom we believe control the system, we need to point to those who find alternative ways to be productive & self-reliant without harming those around them. We need to model self-reliance by constantly seeking to be more self-reliant, & we need to model cooperation by not being afraid to cooperate with others to produce what we cannot produce alone. The fear of being cheated or disadvantaged by our cooperation must be overcome by attempts to develop ways to minimize those risks rather than denying that self-reliant voluntary cooperation can be benevolent & equitable. Possibly devolving into sloganeering, I reference the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine” where he simply asks people to imagine something other than what is. If enough imagine a better way to live together in peace, we stand a chance of getting out from under the system-in-place.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
The war on imagination seeks to maintain the status quo. We must be the forces of change that imagine the possible & work to make it the probable until it can be the reality.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-62225711474501370742015-01-31T10:00:00.002-05:002015-01-31T10:10:48.072-05:00Creativity & Cooperation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMp20XXE-JPNmMICccX5mSfbxBswkVLVKRHHsOO9JdRCb2mzrzuhvsHYSf-eqxlp872-oseG8qYNAlA1W5U7li8QHYI7fCP3hHrxzam98pJhRoWIo-Wm9IqZki_7WbX1LkdhdxTXOHF48/s1600/Digging+Heidegger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMp20XXE-JPNmMICccX5mSfbxBswkVLVKRHHsOO9JdRCb2mzrzuhvsHYSf-eqxlp872-oseG8qYNAlA1W5U7li8QHYI7fCP3hHrxzam98pJhRoWIo-Wm9IqZki_7WbX1LkdhdxTXOHF48/s1600/Digging+Heidegger.jpg" height="300" width="500" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’ve been reading Heidegger’s <i>Discourse on Thinking</i> which has elicited ideas regarding the concept of creativity & where that aligns with what Heidegger says. First let’s summarize the <i>Discourse</i>'s ideas as I see it. Heidegger makes the point that there are two ways of thinking, the scientific way & the meditative way. The scientific way delves in facts & experience of physical presence, but doesn’t explore below the surface of reality. The meditative way looks deeper into the experience & the evidence to think about some underlying meaning behind the visible experience. These two ways of thinking & observing are part of being, but they also represent our subjective & voyeuristic observation of the world around us. Many choose merely to observe the surface of this world, to explore only what is available to the five senses without asking the more pertinent questions of why & how. They aren’t interested in implication or interpretation. Others want to explore the deeper comprehensions, to analyze these experiences & contemplate their implications in this world. These individuals become the synthesizers of the results of their analysis & meditation. They create beyond their experience. They will no longer seek to meet the expectations of others. This is what Emerson means by what he says in <i>Self-Reliance</i>: “that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion” and begin to plow his own field & reap his own harvest. This is the person who goes beyond the surface knowledge of understanding & the scientific knowledge to the deeper field under the surface, where the world will produce for those who till the soil. For those who simply see the soil as surface, as path, there is a limit to their harvest. It is the person who doesn’t simply exist, who doesn’t simply follow the example of others & find the job that pays the bills. It is the person who goes beyond, whether that beyond is profitable or not is not the point. If she can be self-reliant, then she can go where she likes. As I sat proctoring the mind-numbing Regents tests, I sat in meditation of the sort that I hope emulated the ideas that Heidegger was suggesting, that there was a horizon that had to be coaxed out with waiting, that if I simply existed while existence spoke to me, it would reveal at least for a moment what that meant. What that moment of existence became was the sound of violence, violence in the humming of the radiator & the electrical current, the violence of the scratching of pencils on paper or pages being turned, pages & paper that attacked the students, damaged them with the mirror to their ignorance & the education system that had developed that ignorance by dampening their flame of imagination, that had salted their fertile soil with meaningless & disconnected trivial information that had no connections to the things around them. Heidegger wanted to move people beyond the surface & into the
violence that is often perpetrated upon them as they only look at the
surface of their existence.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
These tests inflicted punishment for the student's attempts to maintain their independence & creativity. It exposed them to the cruel world of quantification that values only measured results, that without quantification, their ideas & creations lack meaning, lack value. This is the core of the damage that has been done. This is the same damage that has quantified value into monetary value. The conflating of values with money leads to the place where everyone is measured by their monetary value to the system. Productivity becomes a quantifiable, monetary measure. Intelligence becomes a quantifiable, monetary measure. Individual thoughts only have value if they can be quantified by money. Look at how education level is valued only by the average salary that can be gained by pursuing the education level. This nullifies creativity unless creativity can be monetarily measured.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When we speak of creativity, it is necessary to discuss what creation involves. It involves taking the materials of the current world & compounding them into something new, something that hasn’t been on the earth before in the same form. How does this manifest? It manifests in the completed product, that may not be completely new (what really is new?) but new enough & unique enough to make it different from what has come before. It may not really do anything that impressive, but even using the waste of our current world to make a bottle opener is a start. Creativity may simply be producing a garden that wasn’t there before, or repairing a house to fit the needs of a family. These are creative acts that are self-reliant. This is the key to the creative necessity of life: creativity is a strong plank in the house of self-reliance. Self-reliance & cooperation nurture creativity. This creativity comes from necessity & innovation, innovation that seeks to solve problems with one’s own abilities. The more that someone attempts to create beyond their current abilities, the more they establish themselves in self-reliance. The more self-reliant they become the more creative they become, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have seen individuals who have build their own homes from scratch by learning how to do it & then challenging themselves to accomplish the mission or goal they’ve set. This is the reason why cooperation requires self-reliant individuals, who don’t depend on others, but who recognize that sometimes cooperation yields benefits for a group of self-reliant individuals willing to cooperate to accomplish a larger task beyond the scope of even the most self-reliant individual’s capacity.<br />
<br />
This is precisely what the Regents don't promote. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) won't promote this either. The education that prepares students to pass either of these tests won't develop students' creativity, self-reliance or cooperation. Where is the creativity in regurgitating trivia? Where is the creativity in writing essays that prevent individuality because the rubrics demand specific formation & content? How is self-reliance developed when the CCSS implies that if a student can't pass this test, he must not be capable of anything society might value? Where is the cooperative spirit? Only in conspiring to cheat on the test, which students across the country have demonstrated great imagination & cooperation to achieve. Power to their efforts!<br />
<br />
Creativity comes from necessity, & the self-reliant individual meets necessity with innovation & creativity as much as determination & confidence. In fact, it is the failures & corrections of the failed behaviors & efforts that lead to the innovation & creativity that develops the increasingly self-reliant individual. This goes for any skill or activity. Cooperation amidst self-reliant individuals will be competitive in trying to be the individual who discovers or creates the successful innovation that benefits the group or solves the problem faced by the community. These cooperative efforts can be seen in a basketball team. Everyone must learn to work together, to try new plays & rehearse the routine skills like dribbling & shooting & passing. The better & more adept that each member of the team becomes at using these routine skills improves the deadliness of the team’s attack. The more they trust each other, the more they can push each other to innovate & create situations that exploit the enemy’s weakness. The more they compete with each other to be better & better, the more their competitiveness becomes a driving force against their opponents. In the individual the need to improve their skills becomes a competition with one’s self to achieve more than had been accomplished before.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Creativity has been usurped by the corporate world into the marketing/advertising realm. Many creative people become marketing specialists, creating the commercials & advertising that influences their fellow individuals. So much of creativity is being utilized to manipulate others rather than to create utility & innovation. Even when creativity begins as an honest attempt to make something new, it is often usurped by manipulation or the desire to manipulate.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Creation doesn’t have to be on the Picasso level, it can be as simple as creating a new way of doing something. Whether I’m working on my garden & making it not only functional but also individual & beautiful, I’m creating. When I’m establishing contacts & cooperation between disparate people or neighbors, I’m creating a network that wasn’t there before. We have this notion in the world that somehow creativity is the purview of artists only. Only those who have been ‘recognized’ and have ‘attention’ deserve the adjective, creative. This is a fallacy. There is creativity happening everywhere. The sooner society begins to recognize folk art & people’s arts, the sooner it destroys the notion that the only important art is that which comes from corporations or exists in museums. This is one of the ways that the value of art is put ahead of the value of productivity.<br />
<br />
The same is true in athletics. There is no doubt that a great athlete has creativity in their discipline and mastery of their game, but should such an athlete be making outrageous salaries for that? Should they be crowned as something so special that we need to treat them as superior beings or classes?<br />
<br />
Celebrity has been one of the greatest of the efforts at trying to demean the average person. Because he's not creative like Bobo here, he should be glad that he's getting anything in this world. What does he expect?<br />
<br />
Are we to be satisfied with mediocrity? No. We shouldn’t be satisfied with mediocrity, but the way to dispel mediocrity from our lives is not to shame those whose behavior has been mediocre, but to applaud every effort to rise above mediocrity. Rather than compete for the small pedestal that recognizes only one or a few as being worthy, why not work to make everyone worthy? Why do we feel that if others succeed it lessens our success? Why do we think that if everyone were capable of independence that would somehow infringe on our independence? This is the error in judgement that leads to the ‘zero-sum game’ mentality of the current culture. In a cooperative society, the zero-sum game would have no place. Instead of the mentality that I only win if others lose, the mentality would become (not initially be, but become) 'as everyone gets better, the situation gets better'. Another way of thinking about this is to compare it to the open-source programming versus the Microsoft/Apple nexus of corporate control of source programming. The Linux software becomes better & better as more & more individuals contribute to the programs, which means that many bugs in programming get worked out by everyone to the benefit of everyone. In the corporate model, we must wait for the ‘Genius’ to come along and save us. We are dependent on the ‘Genius’ to solve the problem, leaving us at their mercy & in their ‘debt’.<br />
<br />
Cooperation versus competition leads to more not less creativity.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-72652204593753791952015-01-24T13:22:00.001-05:002015-01-24T13:28:02.819-05:00The Temporary Nature of Cooperation<div style="text-align: justify;">
Rotation is the means to temporary authority, but the purpose of temporary authority is more than just prevention of usurpation or permanent hierarchical structures. Instead temporary also defines the length of the actual authority itself. Most collective actions should be temporary as a rule, self-eliminating when the need no longer exists. The best example that I have to support this would be the modern union. Collective bargaining is a necessity for workers in a capitalist society, & the workers need to negotiate directly with the corporation as a collective for the power to negotiate as equals with the corporate power. Even a few hundred workers need an individual or a committee to represent them in negotiations. What often begins as a grassroots, cooperative effort among the workers, becomes a stepping stone or a position to gain power & prestige by collectivists who seek to control others for their personal gain using the "good of the whole" mantra.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the earliest efforts of union-building toward collective bargaining, the grassroots efforts had leaders & individuals who pressed the majority toward the necessary steps to make the collective bargaining effort possible. Again, let’s differentiate between collective action & collectivism. Getting together to watch a movie is a collective action. Workers joining together to demand better pay, working conditions, respect is a collective action. They are not collectivism necessarily. If the individuals get together & support what is ‘best for the whole group’ because they are told to do so, then willingly sacrifice some individuals to the whole, that is collectivism. If workers begin to offer up some members of the union as sacrifices for the good of the whole, say let’s give the corporation power to fire the older/younger workers so that the whole group gets a pay raise, this is collectivism.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is the problem with the current unionism in this country. For the most part, the leaders tend to protect certain constituencies within the union that are either the most vocal or the largest in numbers. Unions become part of the hierarchy of the corporate world, standing between the workers & the corporate executives. This role, which appears as one of protection, becomes a place of power maintained by coercion & propaganda. The head of the union almost always doles out prized positions in the union structure that provide it with vocal supporters & useful idiots. Both protect & support the union leadership. The union leadership has to find justification for its existence when the collective bargaining process has ended. They generally get heavily into political efforts to elect candidates that they ‘evaluate’ as being ‘pro-union’ or ‘pro-worker’. They promote the union as benevolent & philanthropic. They provide the legal advice regarding due process & work to keep teachers from being fired unfairly or ‘not by the contract’. They also spend time promoting the union process to the membership, demonstrating why the union dues must be collected & why these dues are so important to the good of the whole. This occurs because workers within the union are led to believe that the union must be protected over everything else, that any attack on the union was an attack on them, & that they must be ready to sacrifice for the union.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’m not well-educated on the history of the UFT, but I’m fully aware of the UNITY faction & its control of the union hierarchy. First let’s point out that every district representative & all the leadership of the UFT are members of the UNITY Faction. The faction gives out those positions as rewards for loyalty & productivity. This gives the UNITY leadership great power to wield & determines that those in positions below remain loyal to the collective. Delegate Assemblies are blatant examples of this, where any proposal not approved by the UNITY faction will be voted down in lock-step fashion. UNITY uses collective mentality that guarantees that some membership will be sacrificed for the the good of the whole. Let me be fair: no other faction in the UFT has a platform for cooperative, consensus-based organization either.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First, there is always some segment of the membership that has to be sacrificed, currently the ATRs are the sacrificial lambs to the UNITY collective. The most outspoken & active segment of the union, as well as the ones most capable of putting in the time for activity & speaking are the retirees. The retirees hold sway currently. This has not always been the case. Now however, as the baby-boomer generation retires, they represent the largest segment. Demographics is one reason for their larger position, but the other is perhaps the most insidious part of the NCLB/RTTT Common Core examinpolooza that the reform movement is perpetrating against teachers. With each of their efforts to quantify education, as if an annual test could possibly quantify the education & knowledge of anyone on any more than a snapshot, the reformers seek to discredit collective bargaining & due process. More to the point as these younger teachers are attacked, it is the retirement segment that sacrifices new teachers & allows such damage to our contract as changing the process to receive tenure & allowing certification to be called ‘professional’, hiding the fact that professional means a re-certification process every five (5) years. The old ‘permanent’ certificate meant much more even if it didn’t sound as economically viable as ‘professional’. The 3-year period where teachers can be let go without the level of due process that longer serving teachers escaped is another sacrifice. New teachers face increasingly difficult standards to teach & prepare students for the mindless testing process known as Common Core. These sacrifices lead to lower retention rates for new teachers. UNITY tells teachers that they want the testing challenge as a way to quantify good work. Again, a year's worth of effort to educate a child cannot be quantified by a high-stakes test.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As to the reformers, let me end the idea that Bill Gates & his foundation have any honest desire to improve education: Where, in any of the ideas presented by the reform movement, is it suggested that computer programming should be taught from kindergarten? If they really wanted to prepare the American children for competing in the 21st century, that would be common sense (especially from a software ‘genius’). They should probably also be learning Chinese or some foreign language from that age as well. Instead, the reformers promote more testing that numbs the minds of students beyond repair.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Back to collectivism in unions, the leadership of any union will be controlled by a faction if it is allowed to become a permanent part of the community. The long-term goal should be to put those who put their work & effort into the production in control of the means of production. For that to happen, the workers would have to be cooperative & based completely on voluntary consent to the organizing of a collective bargaining union for negotiations. It won’t happen with the traditional hierarchical system that currently occupy unions.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As factions gain control, they work for the good of the individuals with the most clout. In the 1970s during the Brownsville/Ocean Hill conflict between the parent boards & the union, this became clear by the Jewish contingents ability to force the union to fight the will of the public & the parents. They took a very unpopular stance to protect something vital to the union (due process), but as a leadership they did it without consensus, without a process that demonstrated that the union leadership actually spoke as the whole union. It must have been a very difficult decision, one that shouldn’t have been made by a small committee. The committee might come up with the suggested decision, but ultimately the union should have to come to a consensus on what that decision would be. Perhaps they would have all recognized the good reason for standing against the parents, namely due process. Unfortunately the leadership made a decision which became a division between the union & the parents/public. This division still haunts the teaching profession, as hedge fund backed 'parent organizations' exploit that divide. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ultimately in a consensus-based organization, the sharing with all members of the union might have brought out options that hadn’t been explored by the committee. Consensus unifies the individuals participating; they feel empowered. They feel informed, justified by the consensus of their peers, invested. These are reasons why consensus is preferable to democracy. While there is the ability to disagree with the majority in a democracy, it always creates riffs, riffs that allow those in charge to remain in charge (divide & conquer). Collectivism at work. Now if the union were temporary, only established when negotiations needed to occur, usurpation by collectivists would be less likely. In the case of cooperative-ownership (through the cooperative process) responsibilities & authorities would be rotated among the individuals & temporary by rotation. Again, a union doesn’t have to disappear in a cooperative, but until that is in place, it should disappear between contracts as an authority-wielding entity. The membership would need to be & would be informed & comprehending of the contract language (since they had given their consensus to the contract), so that advocacy (the bread & butter of the union hierarchy) remains at the individual level, only large violations require committees, which again can be filled by all individuals on a rotational basis. What this means is that a ‘permanent’ union becomes the cooperative of individuals actually owning the means of production. Until that happens by peaceful means, then the union must be a temporary union, brought together when necessary to negotiate or strike.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Temporary cooperative actions of a community would best serve the community. This is because the cooperative actions would have specific goals to reach or problems to solve. Once the problem has been solved or the goal reached, the need for the action disappears. In my previous post I mentioned the mythology of the barn raising cooperative efforts in the pioneering west. This is an example of a temporary cooperative action of a community. Once each member of the community had a barn, the organization would self-eliminate. As such, the need for cooperation would never be a permanent fixture like a union, a corporation, or a state. Instead, the cooperative process would simply be structured & modified to fit the temporary goal until the goal was met. Certainly the community could come together to evaluate the success & necessary improvements to the cooperative processes (evaluation being a part of the cooperative process). However few cooperatives need to be permanent. Individuals who cooperate to provide a service or product for the community might be permanent, but the leadership roles & responsibilities would be temporary. This means that the temporary nature of cooperation has two facets - temporary in goal orientation & temporary in responsibilities/authorities. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let me explain: the temporary goal orientation means that most cooperative actions don’t require a permanent or long term structure. Cooperative processes to reach a specific goal would be temporarily established to achieve the goal. Once the goal had been met, the need for the cooperative would be eliminated & therefore superfluous. This is one of the significant differences between cooperation & collectivism as I discussed in my previous blog post. So for instance if a cooperative community decided to establish more energy autonomy by installing solar panels onto all the roofs of the community, once the solar panels were installed, the need for the cooperative would vanish. Any necessary maintenance could be done by the self-reliant individuals who belong to the community. Since they had worked together to establish the solar panels, they would have received the necessary training to maintain the solar panels. If some permanent maintenance rotation needed to be established, this could be a cooperative of some of the individuals to provide that service, each individual sharing in the responsibilities & labor as well as the benefits of providing a service (i.e. charging a fee to those who are not part of the maintenance cooperative). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The
argument is becoming stronger everyday that the local is going to be
the way to get things done in this world. There is no simply occupying
the current system: it’s crumbling. What we can do is stay out of the
way of the ruin & survive the accompanying disaster, whether that
disaster is war or just economic or environmental disaster. What will
the future look like? I suppose that it will be much bleaker than today.
I don’t have an especially positive attitude toward the future. In
every direction I see strife & difficulties. As such I don’t know
whether I’ll have a struggle with my fellow man or a struggle with
nature. Neither will be pleasant, & both will not have great
difficulties delivered randomly & meaninglessly. When does it begin?
I hope that this continues to be a slow decline into epic fail, but I’m
afraid that it won’t be like that.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-48935985176234697382015-01-17T10:18:00.000-05:002015-01-17T10:18:43.627-05:00Collectivism vs. Cooperation<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've been told that my cooperative processes sound like socialism or communism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cooperation is not an ideology, like socialism or communism or capitalism for that matter. These ideologies are just collectivism in action. Cooperation is a process. A process that promotes voluntary consensus. Collectivism demands coercion to enforce the ideology of the collective. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What does it mean to act collectively? We do it all the time. A corporation is a collective. A football team is a collective. Much like other loaded language in the political arena, a collectivist has come to be equated with communism, nanny states, & totalitarianism. These are forms of collectivism, but they are not the only examples of collectivism. If we think of a collectivist mentality, it is one where the individual’s needs & rights are subordinate to the needs & authority of the collective. Take a football team where the coach yells to his players “sacrifice your body.” What is more collectivist than this? The military is the ultimate collectivist organization, teaching its recruits to literally die for the greater good. Besides taking the good of the whole as being more valuable than the good of the individual, the collectivist sees the world as an either-or dilemma: as George W. Bush’s famous quote after September 11th, “You’re either with us or against us”. This is collectivism at its core. Everyone must be coerced into the collective, or they become the enemy (those who refuse or resist the coercion). War is collectivism in action.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Propaganda is necessary to keep collectivism going. The corporate collective spends a great deal of time proving how the corporation is providing “value” to its shareholders, workers, & the public at large. If the workers don't continue to be more productive, then the company cannot continue to provide them with jobs: economic coercion. The state, the highest form of collectivism, always requires propaganda to support its abuses in the name of collectivism. The benefits of collectivism are coerced & unnaturally delivered. Let’s just take the fact that social security payments are taxed as income. The wealthiest individuals in this country will receive social security benefits that they don’t need, that wouldn’t sustain their ‘lifestyle’ for a day. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just let individuals keep their money & provide for their own social security? Not according to a collectivist. We are told by propaganda that social security protects the elderly from poverty & tragedy. Naturally poverty is real. Poverty should be eliminated, if such a thing is possible. However, after 80 years of social security, poverty has not been eliminated or even lessened. The only difference between then & now is that our poor can actually afford goods that don’t support them (TVs, cellphones, etc.). They still struggle to pay their rent, feed their family & themselves, and struggle to survive, even when holding more than one job with a collectivist corporation. Categorically the efforts of a state to maintain their collectivist paradigm means suffering for those coerced into the collective.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is coercion even for those who think they support it. They have swallowed the propaganda of the collectivist that they are better off if the state is better off. The collectivist applauds the coercion of the police to enforce taxation & adherence to laws based on the superiority of the good of the collective over the individual. The collectivist mentality that is created by propaganda creates such lovely slogans as: “America, Love it or Leave it” or “If you don’t like America why don’t you leave?” or "If you don't want to be killed by the police, then submit to their demands." Now granted the individual can leave if they so choose, but the collectivist cannot accept much criticism of the state. Those who criticize eventually must be coerced into submission or relegated to the enemy status. Individuals can complain about the individual holding the authority at the time, if it isn’t a totalitarian state. That level of criticism boosts the argument of the collectivist that there is a democratic process & freedom of criticism. Still being able to complain because you don’t like George W. Bush or Barack Obama doesn’t exactly compare with critiquing the entire process. People become so caught up in the collectivist mentality that even elections become simply which collectivist to put in control. When I’ve admitted to voting for a third party candidate or a write in candidate (I used to vote for Bill the Cat every four years), I’ve been met with such expressions as “you’re just throwing your vote away” or “why even vote?”. This demonstrates the powerful ideology of collectivism at its worst: the winner-take-all mentality & the fallacy that one vote (yours) really matters. Elections in this country have a decidedly horse race mentality or for most Americans, a Superbowl mentality with playoffs (primaries) leading to the ultimate showdown between two collectivists who won’t significantly change the core system, just continue to infringe upon the individual rights of the people. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Who is the worst president ever? The next one.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is another layer of propaganda in collectivism, the cult of personality or the savior complex. Elections come down to one or two word slogans like: hope, change, dignity, progress. This is blather. This contradicts the idea of temporary authority in the cooperative process. Namely that any position of authority should not only be held temporarily, but that the whole position should be temporary to fit the current need. The cooperative mentality means that any authority position should eventually self-eliminate. A collectivist doesn't want the problem eliminated because that eliminates the need for the authority. The one thing that the collectivist needs to continue the collectivist project is a perpetuation of the problem. If the problem is solved, the need for the collective authority disappears. Take the case of what’s happened after September 11th, 2001. Americans had reached a disdain for the collectivist propaganda of intervention in the affairs of the rest of the world. Remember that George W. Bush claimed he wasn't interested in "nation-building" during his campaign. The old enemy of the Soviet Union & communist spread no longer frightened the masses. The collectivist needed a new justification for the continued intervention in the world to support the Military Industrial Collective. What a bonus that 19 hijackers flew planes into buildings & shifted Americans back to the interventionist mentality from their isolationist leanings. Since that horrific day, the collectivists have managed to pump people across the world full of fear. However the average individual is more likely to die from a car accident or disease than from a terrorist attack. The propaganda effort not only builds fear in the coerced membership of the various collectives, but it creates its own antithesis in a collective of those who have been labeled & declaimed as terrorists. I’m not making conspiracy theories here. I’m not claiming that the government or the state intentionally or deliberately created the ‘terrorists’. I’m saying that identifying an enemy, an antithesis to the collective will, is innate in collectivist thinking. It isn’t deliberate: its the ideology. The collectivist 'creates' the enemy by coercion to ideology. Those who reject or renounce the ideology become the 'facts on the ground' enemy. The collectivist goal is always to confront a physical or an ideological enemy. Note how our country is now inflamed in the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, & we even spent a decade on the War on Poverty, which some collectivists want to re-escalate. So a collectivist mentality, by those who adhere to the ideology of collectivism, finds justification for any and all collectivism. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />Now cooperation can be seen as a collective action. Any time individuals get together & work for a common goal, it can be called a collective action. However cooperative process is not based on a collectivist mentality. Individuals can come together voluntarily to solve a particular dilemma without having to create a collectivist organization. Individuals who act cooperatively will not form a collectivist mentality that the good of the whole is more important than the good of the individual. The first difference between the two organizations is the voluntary vs. coercive nature of these organizations. A collectivist mentality requires membership of all. No one is exempted. While some collectivists will volunteer, the majority will be coerced. In a cooperative process, volunteers are free to join or leave at their volition. The cooperative process works through consensus to benefit the individuals in the cooperative. If an individual doesn’t see the benefit, that individual doesn’t have to participate.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Whether it is a myth or a reality, the shared cooperative activity of barn building on the prairie is an example of cooperative action. Each family recognized the difficulty of building a barn alone, & so the families voluntarily came together to build each others barns. Once the barns were build the cooperative organization disappeared. Families could choose not to participate, but they didn’t benefit from the cooperative effort. The cooperative organization didn’t force the membership to build barns for people who didn’t want one or didn’t participate in the cooperative. For that matter, the individual family probably might have left the cooperative effort after their barn was built & not helped with other barns without being coerced to participate. They would have been denounced & probably wouldn’t have been popular. I don’t think this happened often because most people recognize innately the benefit of cooperation & choose to participate rather than take advantage. There will always be some individuals who seek advantage without toil, but they will be ostracized by self-reliant individuals & will probably not be asked to participate in future cooperative efforts. According to the mythology of the pioneering era, the barn raising was a social event with celebration & camaraderie, yet another motivation for individuals to participate. While the men built the barn, the women prepared a huge meal (I acknowledge the patriarchal hierarchy & don’t wish to perpetuate it, just describing the mythology’s plot). Why do I continue to describe this as a mythology? For the most part, I get this imagery from various movies, TV series & literature where these activities are portrayed. I don’t have primary documentation that they ever occurred, but whether they did or didn’t, the behavior is consistent with what I’m describing as cooperative action rather than collectivism. Self-reliant individuals cooperating to achieve what is difficult to achieve as individuals alone isn’t the same as an authority deciding that everyone must come together & build barns for the ‘good of all’.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />If I think back to my experience with PAUSE (Palestine Action, Union Square East), I can see the cooperative model working consistently. A completely anarchistic operation from the beginning, the group never had leadership, never coerced people to belong or leave, never established any hierarchy. The only guidelines that received consensus were the times we agreed to meet on Saturdays. No one held any positions of authority, & no one was coerced into participating in a certain way. When there were disagreements about the materials or the speech that some individuals used, the group as a whole got together & developed a consensus that all agreed to follow. Violations were met by other members speaking to the infractions. We decided what was acceptable to discuss & what wasn’t pertinent to the cause. Once we had agreed that the cause was informing the public on the Israeli occupation & American financial, military & diplomatic support for that occupation, the determination of what language or presentation was acceptable was always based on these goals. If the particular language or presentation didn’t promote the goal, then the language wasn’t used at least at that setting by consensus. For years, we were held together by the violent, hateful responses to our weekly protests by Zionists, Israeli apologists, uninformed Americans who believed otherwise, & religious zealots who couldn’t see beyond their religion. It often drove them nuts when they asked to speak with the leadership that didn't exist. We had to provide security for each other, but the main way this was flexed was by massing around the individual being aggressive & not allowing them to continue. Rarely did we have to use defensive force, but on those occasions, we stood together. Individuals who didn’t take action were shunned & shamed by the rest of the members. They weren’t coerced into leaving, but they weren’t made to feel as welcome (ignoring them was the common demonstration of disapproval). As we gained a stronger foothold & a better presentation, the strength of the protest began to make the opposition from the aforementioned groups less prevalent & less distracting. Slowly we overcame any opposition except for what we began to refer to as ‘drive-bys’, a snarky comment shouted as they walked by. Fewer and fewer antagonists stopped to argue or agress. We reached a point where the protest became what Saul Alinsky calls a “drag”. It became a ritual & not a productive use of our time. On top of that, bigoted individuals within the cooperative began to spew ridiculous statements & refused to agree that these statements were not in service to the goal, bringing an end to the cooperative consensus. Their continued obstinacy in the face of objection from the rest of the group led most people to stop participating, demonstrating again the voluntary quality of the cooperative organization. When it no longer matched individual goals & values, individuals voluntarily left rather than participate or be attached to the changes in the group. It came apart just as organically as it formed. Many of the individuals have stayed in contact but no longer attempt to protest for a Free Palestine together at Union Square. The best part of being involved in this action was learning about anarchic methods & process, meeting some of the most amazing individuals I’ve ever met, & interesting me in more cooperative, anarchic organization & process.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In summary, the collectivist adheres to an ideology, the ideology that the good of the whole supersedes the good of the individual. Coercion & brute force demand the acceptance & participation of the collectivist community. A process of cooperation is not an ideology & doesn't use coercion. Rather cooperation is a process, a process that has few defining elements other than individual volition & consensus. When these two elements work together, a cooperative process starts. Where it leads is up to the volition & consensus of the self-reliant individuals who work together. I'm not claiming that cooperative process will replace the state with a new form of governance. Rather, cooperation is process that works at local levels. Cooperation is grassroots action that doesn't get usurped by collectivist leadership who only want to establish a new hierarchy under their 'leadership'. </div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-75935775699413492012015-01-10T10:02:00.000-05:002015-01-10T10:02:57.301-05:00Rotational Process in Cooperative Organizations<div style="text-align: justify;">
As was discussed in the previous post, the rotation of authority among members lessens the risk of usurpation, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Nothing will eliminate the risk of usurpation by individuals with miscreant intentions. However the rotation of authority & responsibility does lessen that risk. Another way that it lessens that risk also provides an additional benefit: increased expertise & capability across the membership. Since the various positions of authority or responsibility are shared & rotated among all the membership, the strength of the organization is only as strong as its weakest link. The value of rotating these positions is that even the weakest link becomes stronger with more practice & exposure to the responsibilities of the role. People can learn to be competent in a wide variety of areas. Could everyone learn to fly an airplane? The vast majority could if given the training & experience. There will always be members of the human race who lack certain cognitive ability, & a cooperative society would have to find roles for them that they can hold responsibly without feeling denigrated or denied. Each of us has limitations, some more drastic & complicated than others, but each has limitations. These limitations shouldn’t be seen as negatives however. A cooperative society would find ways to accentuate & utilize these individuals for their strengths rather than denying them based on their limitations. While a blind person shouldn’t be flying an airplane or driving a car (at least until these machines can be driven without needing to see), they can hold other roles within a society. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />Rotating positions of authority & responsibility will provide the education & improvement of each member of the cooperative community. While some positions will require expertise in order to fulfill, the goal will be to spread that expertise across the community. Obscuring & occulting knowledge has been a real source of power in human society since the earliest civilizations. A cooperative society would despise such occulted knowledge & monopolized expertise. A society that seeks to improve itself will look to having all members of the society well-versed in all areas of expertise & responsibility. Why would they seek this? Competency across the community means that no necessary task is limited to a small group of individuals, but can be performed by most if not all of the community. This prevents problems when & if the expert becomes incapacitated for any reason. Beyond that, the community develops and improves on these tasks & responsibilities as competency grows. As the community becomes more fluent in a particular skill or task, individuals will begin to find ways to improve or innovate. The more individuals know about a body of knowledge the more that their individual experience & cognition will absorb and critique the way that the body of knowledge is being used. An example of cooperation with a body of knowledge shared & transparent would be the open-source programming community. Cooperation across disciplines is a common, if not necessarily commonly practiced, tenet of education. Students learn best when they see connections between the various disciplines. The same would be true in a cooperative society. Those with mechanical & structural skills will see the same problem with different eyes than the analytical & logistical minds. This will lead to innovation & evolution of the process to be more efficient & productive. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />The rotational process also develops the new members of the community. Whether an individual decides to voluntarily join the cooperative community or the children of the community mature & become ready to hold positions of increasing responsibility, the rotational process acts as an apprenticeship for learning the procedures & skills necessary to hold and deliver the responsibilities of a certain position. As individuals matriculate through the rotational process, they receive the approval of the community to hold particular authority individually rather than as an apprentice. Whether the skills are managerial or leadership oriented or skill-based and artisan, the individual develops a competency that the community recognizes & rewards with the responsibility. The desire to be recognized & rewarded with increased responsibility is a motivation to improve one’s abilities & knowledge, perhaps more so than monetary compensation. That’s not to say that a cooperative society might choose to compensate individuals with higher levels of expertise & responsibility. A cooperative society would not deny any individual the opportunity to hold those higher compensation positions. The more individuals who had the expertise, the more individuals who could receive that compensation. If it came to a point where everyone had the competency, then either the competency no longer needs to be rewarded, or the opportunity to be rewarded is rotated among all the membership. This goes to the level of desire & motivation of the individual members of the cooperative. This sharing of responsibility & reward wouldn’t inhibit competition, but it would make competition fairer, without the monopolization of occulted knowledge. Let’s take the example of a cooperative ballet troupe. Instead of one or two individuals being the lead ballerina, the position would be rotated among all competent members of the group. Rather than a popularity contest or who knows who, who’s sleeping with whom, the competition for the position would rely on skill & ability to fulfill all the moves of the particular dance. If only two or three of the members of the troupe can accomplish the dance with competence, then the rotation is between those three. However the opportunity holds that any other member of the troupe can demonstrate competency & be brought into the rotation. The troupe’s membership would come to consensus on what these competencies would be. Anyone who has worked in the arts knows that many of the decisions about who will be exalted often have more to do with popularity or courtier-like behavior towards the arbiters of exaltation. Would rotating the lead role of a ballet stifle competition & stagnate the learning? Some would say that it would as the incentive to hold the role would be diminished because someone couldn’t hold it alone. That seems absurd. In healthy competition where the end result is not a zero-sum result (either I hold the role or someone else will), the healthy competition is to improve to a point where fewer & fewer can master the competency. As the skills become more & more difficult, fewer will be able to meet the standards, so the competition is to be among those who can. Perhaps even in a cooperative, there may only be one ballerina who can perform a particular dance at the highest level, but eventually there will be others who by aspiring to the role will achieve the competence. The cooperative individual will not be against sharing the lead position.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Naturally for any cooperative organization or community to flourish, it will require a changing mentality & attitude toward competition & sharing of knowledge. As long as individuals can benefit from occulting information & preventing others from exploiting the knowledge as well, the cooperative organization will struggle to grow. Never-the-less we also know that this monopolization of knowledge & expertise creates a society that is inherently unjust, divisive & destructive. The goal of a cooperative effort is to eliminate these qualities of the current system-in-place that prevent humanity from evolving & solving the complex & immense problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. Rotational processes would attempt to circumnavigate the monopolization of knowledge & skill for power toward a more just and humane competition of ideas. A competition to improve the lot of all rather than the lot of a few.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-47120737665768783302015-01-03T11:23:00.000-05:002015-01-03T11:23:08.960-05:00Rotational Authority<div style="text-align: justify;">
The dangerous situation developing between Mayor de Blasio & the NYPD provides an opportunity to explain why authority should be rotational to improve accountability. The behavior of the police turning their backs to the mayor in a hierarchical system is flagrantly insubordinate. I’ve thought quite a bit as a former Marine officer, how I would have handled such a situation if it had occurred under my watch. I’d have reacted the first time the NYPD turned their back on Mayor de Blasio in the hallway going to the slain officers’ bodies. My initial reaction was that I would never have walked through that hall with individuals who were behaving that way. I would have called the individual commanding the unit & demanded he/she clear the room of all those disrespectful & insubordinate individuals. I would have also demanded the names of each of the individuals & ordered them into my office the next day for an individual interview, where after having their time to air their grievances implied by that behavior, I would have dressed them down. The individuals were not only disrespecting Mr. de Blasio & the office of the mayor, but more to the point, the citizens of the city of New York. I would have made that clear to each individual & to the public. It would be important to punish any of the members of the unit who didn’t recognize their error. That is how a hierarchical leader would have to approach such a situation. In order to maintain the authority, the hierarch must punish insubordination without impunity. In a hierarchical system, without the position of authority respected, the authority loses its power to control, creating a vacuum that will be filled by someone who will maintain the authority. This is one inherent problem with hierarchical forms of authority.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let’s establish what a police force actually does: provide security for the community. Security from external & internal threats. Threats aimed at the citizen & the citizen’s property. In a hierarchical system the leader of the community (i.e. the mayor) maintains & directs the actions of the police to provide that security. The mayor has been chosen by a process that the community accepts or concedes. The mayor determines in conjunction with his police chief the needs of the police force to provide that security & budgets to implement that security system. The hierarchical system requires that those at the bottom of the hierarchy pay allegiance to those above. The opportunity for abuse becomes readily available, especially as the top of the hierarchy also establishes the parameters of what is considered ‘threats’. Because most laws that a hierarchical system establishes are to prevent or deter threats to ‘person & property’, they are open to misuse. As we have seen post 9-11, ‘threats’ are established by the hierarchical elite to protect their position & authority, not to protect the citizens & the citizen’s property, even if this is what is claimed. The failed drug wars (drugs are the threat) provides another example of how the hierarchical elite protects itself against the citizens it claims to protect. Taxes or the ‘threat’ of citizens not paying taxes created the situation that authorized the police to strangle Eric Garner. This is while ‘threats’ to the rights of citizens are downplayed & denied in order to protect the same citizens from ‘threats’ perceived or created (tax evasion as a justification for deadly force). The hierarchical system of authority doesn’t provide a protection to those at the bottom of the hierarchy from abuse by the top echelon. That is the difference between a hierarchical system & a cooperative system. One way that the cooperative organization differs would be the use of rotation.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />The goals & basic structure of a cooperative system to provide security would not be significantly different. Patrols of the area would be necessary, tools to provide the security would have to be provided, & a hierarchy of leadership would have to be established. The difference would be in how that hierarchy was established & how the upper echelons were filled rather than chosen or taken. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />Most proposed cooperative systems use the term ‘horizontal organization’. By this anarchists attempt to prevent a vertical (hierarchical) power structure from being established. If a system is horizontal, then there is no higher authority that wields power over the rest. A cooperative society would be based on such a system. So how can that work for a community to provide security? Obviously, a hierarchy must be established for a security force to provide the protection the community needs. An horizontal organizational structure doesn’t eliminate hierarchical positions of authority completely, but it changes the method by which those positions are assigned and held by making the assignment temporary & rotational. Temporary authority would limit the possibility of usurpation & corruption of a position of authority as important as security, but it can’t do it alone. I’ll discuss temporary in future posts. The other necessary ingredient is rotation. The importance of the rotation cannot be negated. By rotating, the cooperative not only prevents an usurping of the power of the authority established in a security collective action, but it improves the quality of each member of the cooperative to provide that security. As each member must hold the role at some time or other, it behooves everyone in the collective to ensure that each individual is properly trained & prepared to successfully fulfill the responsibility of security for the collective. My personal experience in the Marines demonstrated that even the weakest link in a collective chain can be held to standards acceptable to the collective’s needs. Further, the collective can then hold the individual accountable when they don’t fulfill their responsibility or duties. So in a cooperative, the security details would be established on a rotating basis of guards, patrols, & officer of the day. Each would have specific tasks to accomplish during their tour of duty (authority). The tour of duty could be on a 24 hour basis. With this in mind, the position of even mayor could be rotated on a regular basis, daily, weekly, whatever the cooperative membership decided. The rotation of this authority would put some weak individuals into the position & some corrupt individuals as well. Both could be held accountable to improve or change. At worst an individual who decides to usurp the power to a dangerous level would have to be confronted immediately by the cooperative community as a whole. This would be easier to do in a rotational basis, since the usurping individual would have less time or opportunity to develop subordinates who would aid in his usurpation. A mixture of leadership skills throughout the organization's structure would help to prevent this. The basic guideline of responsibility would have to be that no unlawful order should be ever followed by those in subordinate roles. Knowing that they won’t be in that role permanently or that any move up the hierarchy is not dependent on following the orders of those above without question would give most individuals the strength to challenge unlawful orders.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />There are many strengths to the rotational organization that I want to discuss in future posts, but the most important is that rotation provides a barrier to usurpation. Without self-reliant individuals comprising at least a potent minority within the community, it would be a difficult barrier to maintain, especially after the first failure of the system to provide adequate security offering the opportunist a chance to sway minds that the opportunist could do a better job than the cooperative/rotational method. However, as we’ve seen with the rising movement around the police state, attempts to usurp the leadership role of the movement have generally failed because there are enough individuals within the movement who speak loudly and forcefully against individual leadership roles (note the backlash to Oprah's comments about the need for leadership). I hope that the skeptical attitude toward individual leadership will continue because that will only strengthen each member of the movement to be self-reliant and cognizant of their own power to promote and propel the movement through cooperative not hierarchical organization.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-78588332324666774932014-11-09T22:03:00.000-05:002015-01-11T09:13:59.173-05:00Accountability & Authority<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’ve broken down authority into four areas that I want to discuss as topics on authority: rotational, temporary, responsive & accountable. So let’s start with accountable authority. When I speak of accountable authority, I mean that those who hold the position of authority are accountable to those who have established that authority and placed the individual into the position of authority. So for example, the sheriff in a community is given the authority to police the city, providing the security necessary to prevent violence & crime. Every action must be accountable to those he represents. No other agency should have any lien on his accountability. In a community of cooperative, self-reliant individuals, the authority given to those who provide security must be constantly accountable to the community for all actions. We (self-reliant individuals in positions of authority) must stand tall as individuals for our every action. This means that the situations that have arisen of police brutality, excessive force & blatant disregard for those that they supposedly serve would be brought to immediate resolution. There would be no time for arguing the validity of police ‘immunity’ from misbehavior. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Our society as it is currently organized prevents this from happening. There are various interests, from the group of individuals who make up the police force & form the ‘thin, blue line’ holding themselves above the accountability to the community through a process of fraternization, to the politicians who seek to maintain their power and protect themselves from the accountability of the masses for their actions and policies. There are the various interest groups that benefit from an excessive & aggressive police force (the prison system, now privatized; the corporations which want to hide their white-collar crimes behind street crime; the police & prison worker unions who wish to protect their jobs; the communities where prisons provide a source of income and employment). The list goes on and on. Meanwhile the public is neither protected nor able to hold those who abuse the system accountable for their actions. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In much the same way, the Board of Directors of a corporation, who have the authority to determine the direction & actions of the corporation are not held accountable to anyone but themselves & large shareholders (who in fact are the same). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the Marines the policy of leadership and authority was that of responsibility for those subordinate, for the success and failure of the unit. The officer could not blame his subordinates. He had to take responsibility and was held accountable to his commanding officer. That was the policy, but the Marines also had an unwritten comment about the reality of authority: “The Corps eats its own.” Marine leadership was more than happy to throw subordinates under the bus when they could foist their responsibility onto their subordinates & blame them for the failures of their command. I saw this happen in the Corps while I was there, & I see it happen throughout the world of business & politics.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So in a cooperative community, which would have to be small enough to remain ‘responsive’ and ‘accountable’ to the needs of the community, the authority given would have to regularly respond to the complaints & recriminations of the community. If there were no complaints, then there would be no need for any regular action, but I don’t think that this would happen with human beings. Humans will always see their rights as sacrosanct and won’t always recognize when their rights have actually impeded or subordinated another or the community’s. So a regular way to hold authority accountable to the establishing group will have to be created and maintained. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So let’s take a few examples of authority run amok. For instance the idea that we can trust the FCC to keep the Internet open, free & accessible to all. Let’s start with the fact that the head of the FCC, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler" target="_blank">Tom Wheeler</a>, worked for the very corporations that want to control the Internet & make it tiered so that their content loads faster. For most libertarians & anarchists, the very fact that a government agency wants to regulate the Internet indicates the abuse of authority. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While the FCC claims that they have held public hearings, have released a <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/reports/measuring-broadband-america-2014" target="_blank">report</a>, and have accepted public comment via email, the reality is that this isn’t much different that New York City’s Department of Education’s Public Education Panel (<a href="http://www.nycparentsunion.org/archives/990" target="_blank">PEP</a>), which rubber-stamped the mayor’s “reforms” & helped to close schools in neighborhoods that had no voice. Parents spoke of the panel members texting & reading while “listening” to the public’s comments, then resoundingly voted to close schools that the parents had begged be kept open. The result: overcrowded schools, teachers placed into the “rubber room” simply because their school closed, & Bloomberg placing one of his pet charter schools (read: public-in-name-only) into the publicly owned building, rent free. We can expect the same respectful listening from the FCC.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yet the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/" target="_blank">cheerleaders</a> of authority claim that if we just call Tom & the president, they’ll stop this:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
…we are walking a very tight rope on net neutrality. President Obama holds our fate and will be making a decision soon.<br />
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is reportedly pursuing a terrible proposal disguised as net neutrality. But it isn't. Wheeler's proposal is legally untested, and paves the path to allow internet service providers to extract additional fees from websites for preferential treatment and delivery on the internet. It's called "paid prioritization."<br />
Paid prioritization is something which corporate media like Fox News could afford, but grassroots media like Daily Kos could not. It would crush all voices online that are not already giant corporations.<br />
We can change the course of this decision, but our ONLY path to victory is to influence the influencer: President Barack Obama.<br />
Please, click here to call the White House now to demand full net neutrality with Title II protections. We will provide you with the phone number and the script.<br />
This can go either way—and it’s going to happen fast. The White House may be releasing its official statement as early as next week—we’re expecting it to come quickly.<br />
We know who has FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s ear and where he takes his signals from––it’s Obama. And, while the President says he can’t influence an independent agency, the truth is he can influence the people in the agency.<br />
The Internet, Daily Kos and free speech all need you.<br />
Please take a moment to call the White House and demand full net neutrality under Title II by treating ISPs as common carriers. President Obama can choose to be known as the President that saved the internet or the President that broke it.<br />
Keep fighting,<br />
Rachel Colyer, Daily Kos (a mass email from DailyKos)</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’d like to believe… not. Just listen to the sycophantic language: "President Obama holds our fate" and "our ONLY path to victory is to influence the influencer." Try calling the White House (or most any elected official) and see what influence you wield. You can bet that if <a href="https://www.timewarnercable.com/content/twc/en/about-us/leadership/overview.html" target="_blank">Robert Marcus</a> calls, he gets a direct line to President Obama. These supposedly elected authorities have no accountability to the public, the community, or you. They have accountability to the corporations who fund their election campaigns</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So how can authority be held accountable? On a national scale, it can’t. People genuinely fear a stateless society. Yet they seem comfortable with a state where they have no voice. Why is that? When people have a voice in their government, at the local level, the government does much less. Generally a local government only does what the populous wants done. When the mayor is your neighbor, he tends to listen better than when he lives in a gated community or his own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P77Sik8PKcw" target="_blank">dream land</a>. So accountability means local and direct. How large can that be? If you can’t talk to the authority directly, it’s too large. So the question always becomes: “who will protect us against…”. I don’t have ‘the’ answer to that, but I’ll venture a guess that whoever the entity is from whom we need protection, it’s a state of some sort. Even ISIL/ISIS/IS calls itself a ‘state’, at least in translation. The first way to eliminate unaccountable authority is to seek local processes & local cooperative efforts among self-reliant individuals. When we do, the local issues become far more important, and groups like ISIL, Israel/Palestine, & Ukraine seem far less of a concern. The <a href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/777164/nypd_marijuana_crusade_led_to_cops_killing_a_teenager_in_the_bronx" target="_blank">policing</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo" target="_blank">arm</a> of the state seems to be a much bigger threat to our neighborhoods than the terrifying <a href="http://www.barenakedislam.com/category/beheadings-graphic" target="_blank">boogieman</a>. </div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-72246766651910580322014-10-04T12:06:00.004-04:002014-10-04T12:06:40.830-04:00Authority<a href="http://nyti.ms/YHfTbi" target="_blank">In Japan, a Portrait of Mistrust</a><br />
<iframe width="480" height="373" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" id="nyt_video_player" title="New York Times Video - Embed Player" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=100000002139205&playerType=embed"></iframe>
<br />
Trust the “authority”. How is that working out for humanity? Communities establish “<a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/authority">authority</a>” to provide <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/2013/03/26/horse-meat-found-in-chicken-nuggets-the-scandal-grows/">information</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/">security</a>, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/justices-signal-a-monsanto-edge-in-patent-case.html">justice</a>. Society and communities give authority power by the trust given to the authority to provide what they’ve been “authorized” to provide. That’s the dilemma faced by the Japanese people in this NYTimes video. Who can we trust? We spend a great deal of time putting trust in “authorities” that tell us what is safe, what is news, what is just. How often do we explore the accuracy of these “authorities”? Not often enough.<br />
How often do we rely on the “authorities” to provide us with accurate and relevant news? How often are we presented with <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-usa-lottery-winner-idUSBRE92R0NU20130328">non-news</a> by these same authorities? We have “authorities” telling us that medications are safe, that coal is a “clean” energy source, that <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/jamie-dimon-resign-over-jpm-big-loss-simon-142308640.html">Jamie Dimon had no idea</a> that his corporation had made very bad bets. Pick your choice, but “authority” had a mixed track record at best. <br />
We rely too heavily on “authority” obviously. We fail to consider the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority">ad verecundiam</a> fallacy or the appeal to authority. We don’t bother to consider the accuracy of what the “authority” says. So in the video above, we have the produce merchant at the beginning appealing to the authority of the government to approve her produce as safe for consumption. This is the same government who told the Japanese two years ago that radiation from Fukushima was <a href="http://why.knovel.com/all-engineering-news/1055-japanese-government-declares-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-reactor-successfully-contained.html">contained</a>. The women shopping in the store question the authority’s declaration. They demonstrate a rejection of the appeal to authority. Even still, they assume that the produce labeled from other regions is safe, simply because it isn’t near Fukushima. They have reached a point where they feel they can’t trust the “authorities” to provide them with reliable information or safety. The statistics regarding the low levels of trust in the veracity of the Japanese government demonstrate the horrible contradiction that these people face. They want to provide for their children, but they have no way to verify what they’re purchasing. <br />
Here in America we face similar contradictions. We watch as the government spent trillions to fight a war based on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries#.22Sixteen_Words.22_controversy_in_2003_State_of_the_Union">lie</a>, yet they now claim to have to tighten our belts, while they protect their own <a href="http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/Change-in-Scheduled-Pay-Rates-for-Members-of-Congress.aspx">pay, benefits, and medical coverage</a>. The stock market is reaching new highs even as more and more people are feeling the crunch of the recession that is “authoritatively” over. We grab “organic” foods from the market without questioning the veracity of what “organic” actually involves. Some “authorities” tell us that “guns kill people” while others say “guns don’t kill people”. <br />
My point is this: our loss of self-reliance has more to do with mental laziness than anything. We don’t spend enough time verifying the sources of our information or the veracity of our “authorities”. We put too much faith in the good intentions of our leaders and authorities. The trust in “authority” has taken away some of our self-reliance. The last posting had less to do with going back to some bucolic, simpler lifestyle than it did with how much we’ve given our trust over to authorities. These “authorities” have abused our trust, and we must find a way to develop alternate ways to establish “authority” whether it is news, security, or justice. I don’t want to attempt to offer the answers to any of these questions or how to resolve the question of “authority”. I will pose two suggestions to limit authority: that it be temporary and rotational. I’ll elaborate more on that in my next post. JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-67422993370379581902013-03-17T11:49:00.002-04:002016-02-04T21:04:26.256-05:00Lost "Self-Reliance"<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/611/Shooting_for_the_Beef" title="Brooklyn Museum: Shooting for the Beef">
<img alt="Brooklyn Museum: Shooting for the Beef" src="http://cdn2.brooklynmuseum.org/images/opencollection/objects/size3/40.342_SL1.jpg" /></a>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Walking through the <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/" target="_blank">Brooklyn Museum</a> last weekend, I came across the painting above. The title is “Shooting for the Beef”. The faces on some of the men look directly toward the viewer. These faces have the confidence of men who know how to provide for themselves, a satisfied look of self-reliance. They will live and die by their own production. The house behind them is a solid, simple structure but made with the materials around it. These men stand straight; they don’t slump. Their legs are their source of transportation, and the winner will guide the “beef” home, walking before. While it is a competition, it is a friendly competition. The “beef,” because I’m not positive whether it is a bull or a cow, looks toward the viewer with nearly the same expression. Every member of this moment appears comfortable in their situation. This scene is surrounded by nature, nature that has been scarred by the efforts of these men, whether the roads that have been channeled through the landscape or the tree stumps where a few men sit. The men's faces also demonstrate their pride in their achievement over their pride in appearance. These are “hard” men, who have worked in abrasive conditions to forge a way of life. They didn’t come home and put on skin conditioner or some form of “<a href="https://www.google.com/shopping/product/7273061426947750308?q=wrinkles&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=s8a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43828540,d.dmg&biw=960&bih=460&sa=X&ei=n9pFUd8fysPgA7uqgMgB&ved=0CMIBEOUNMAI" target="_blank">wrinkle-be-gone</a>,” and they didn’t send their children off to be educated. Do they read? Some, perhaps most. Would they want their children to read? Of course, and if they had the opportunity to collectively organize to have children learn to read, then they probably got together and made it happen, not as a governing collective but as a cooperative action among free volunteers. When the action was collective, it was voluntary and cooperative, probably to accomplish tasks that couldn’t be done individually: clearing roads, helping each other raise homes, mutual defense against outside threats. They didn’t drop by Banana Republic™ to pick up their clothes. They didn’t search Amazon™ to order their boots. More likely than not, they or their wives made these clothes. The only items they probably purchased was their musket and the tools they use to produce their life’s necessities. This is a world that existed without many external means of production. Small factories produced what couldn’t be produced by the individual, which was likely limited to weapons and perhaps forged tools like shovels, plows, and axes of greater complexity. However, these men probably had some level of forge and blacksmith skills. They probably made their own nails and horse shoes. They embody the means of production.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Marx misaligned the rightful ownership of the means of production. It shouldn’t belong to the “workers” any more than to the “capitalists”. The means of production is the human. Each human owns her means of production. The only thing she can guarantee is the ability to practice and utilize that means of production. When I say “guaranteed,” I don’t mean protected by an authority or governing body. I mean guaranteed by existence. Each human can utilize his means of production as he sees fit. He may barter his means of production to a corporation or another individual, but he has chosen to do so. We don’t have to do so. This is the inherent problem with both communism and capitalism: that someone or some entity other than “you” can “own” or “purchase” or “control” personal means of production. What do I mean by this? First of all we, Americans, have lost the heritage of our people, the heritage of self-reliance, of dignity in work and labor for one’s self and family, of humble pride in an existence built by our own labor, by our own ingenuity. The men in the picture are willing to compete, but in a competition based on their ability to use their musket. The men in the painting know that life is not fair, that they must rely on their own instincts, innovation, and integrity to survive. They don’t look to any source for support beyond what they can provide themselves.<br />
<br />
Today, we Americans depend on a variety of entities and individuals for support. We claim our independence, but we are a society of dependents, one and all, myself included. We depend on others to provide the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the energy we burn, the rights we need protected. We stereotype the individuals at the lowest rung of the nanny state as being either welfare queens, single teenage mothers or the lazy (the point that 2 of those 3 stereotypes are women can be an essay of its own). Yet we also receive from and depend upon the nanny state. I’m a teacher. My income comes from the state. I depend on the state to provide for my needs as I provide for them as a “public servant”, accomplishing what I hope will be the improvement of my student’s intelligence. I depend upon the energy that drives this computer where I’m writing this polemic. I am not self-reliant. Could I become self-reliant? Not without sacrifice and a complete reset of my values and a redistribution of my energy and effort. Can we expect people to become self-reliant? The answer to these questions may be coming. If the current system continues on its course, we may have no other option available.<br />
<br />
I take a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “<a href="http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~doyle/docs/self/self.pdf" target="_blank">Self-Reliance</a>” written in 1841:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“(E)nvy is ignorance;” What have we become but an envious people? The media provides plenty to fuel this envy. Most people don’t arrive at Emerson’s conviction. So many times I hear people say “I want it all.” Why? What does that even mean? We try to be “like the Jones” although that should probably be rephrased to “like Donald Trump” or “like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashians" target="_blank">the Kardashians</a>.” We crave material objects as means of fulfillment. We imitate constantly. In the 1970s, attempting to be a “punk” meant used-clothing stores and ‘found’ items that were put together by the wearer. Now it means shopping at a retail store where <a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=shop&q=punk+clothing&oq=punk+c&gs_l=products-cc.3.0.0l10.135324.137213.0.138528.6.6.0.0.0.0.107.486.5j1.6.0...0.0...1ac.1.6.products-cc.6JkD_1OIC2I#hl=en&gs_rn=6&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=pB1anYMfbOpFVfR-xphIlQ&ds=sh&pq=punk%20clothing&cp=23&gs_id=1ps&xhr=t&q=punk+patched+jacket+men&es_nrs=true&pf=p&tbm=shop&sclient=psy-ab&oq=punk+patched+jacket+men&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43828540,d.dmg&fp=c0073bcdfe5a66cf&biw=960&bih=460" target="_blank">patched jackets</a> come from China, produced by someone else. We don’t take ourselves “for better, for worse” as our portion. We believe we can become anything, if only we’re provided the means. Whether Emerson meant the “plot of ground” literally or figuratively, we don’t follow his guidance.<br />
<br />
We can though. We can see the “wide universe is full of good,” despite what the media portrays. We can see that the most “nourishing corn” comes from our own efforts, and we can make ourselves self-reliant again. We can recognize that “envy is ignorance,” and we can stop relying on corporations with vast, negative <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality" target="_blank">externalities</a> to provide our “nourishing corn.” We can cooperate and collaborate with our neighbors and friends to accomplish what we can’t do alone. We can do it locally and not expect it to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics" target="_blank">filter down</a> to us from above. We can stop believing that electing the “right” leader will make a difference. What we can’t do is expect the current system to remain eternally, any more than we can expect the creation of a perpetual machine.</div>
JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4412449637090346810.post-15220446297856787092011-11-14T14:56:00.001-05:002017-07-13T10:29:17.844-04:00OWS - A Perspective<span style="font-size: x-large;">I don’t want a job. I want a life. I want a creative life that puts my creativity to work creating positive products for a better society. I want to belong to a society that focuses on the community, not as an entity to be served or receive benefits from, but a community of autonomous individuals who create and produce what they want, providing their personal expertise as they move along. This sounds ideological, and it is in the sense that I expect people to behave better than history has shown. What I like about the OWS is the disappearance of leadership from the vanguard. The vanguard is the people, the powers that be must negotiate with the people, not the people’s representative. In fact the powers that be (de facto) don’t have to be dealt with at all. Recognizing their authority is a mistake. Recognizing their power is necessary. However to recognize their authority is to give them de jure status that they don’t have. Which is why they are so freaked out right now. “How dare you not acknowledge us!” They scream and rant that we have no leaders and no platform. Here’s a platform: We the People will continue to occupy until we have regained our country. The 1% is welcome to join the 99% just as soon as they quit trying to be the 1%. The 99% is happy to change to the 100%, just as soon as the 1% stops trying to have special rules, special advantages, special status. Period. Much as Jesus told those who wished to join him to give up everything and follow him. It didn’t mean to become a beggar, but to give up all the special status that their material goods reflected. He didn’t say that we had to all become wandering teachers and proselytize without producing. If humanity behaved as such, nothing would function and everyone would starve. However, what he meant was that we have to give up our status, our claim to special favors, to superior attitudes toward all. ALL! There is no effort that makes one superior in any way. Being a job creator is as ridiculous a term as king. “You need us!” They clamber, and then tell us how to take care of them. They need us. Without the 99%, the 1% goes nowhere, does nothing. This illusion that money creates jobs, that jobs aren’t there until money creates them is absurd. The job needs to be done. Crops need to be grown, buildings built, and streets need to be swept. There is no need for this bureaucratic mass of managers who will “dictate to us what needs to be done”. Anarchy is not the elimination of organization, but the organic growth of work. There is work to be done. It must be done. Not everyone is willing to do the same work, nor do they need to. Work can be shared so that there is time for creativity and study. There is no need for longer hours of backbreaking work when there are so many unemployed and underemployed. I add the many who have “jobs” especially service jobs and office jobs. whose job neither fulfills any real production nor does it give any value to the life of the job holder. Anarchy is grass-roots and local. Federalism and democracy are top-down, whether people like to admit it or not. How did the capitalists become the managers of the resources? Generally by illegal and unethical means. Survival is the only necessary means of motivation. Either we will survive or we won’t. Anything else used as motivation comes across as false, insincere, ideological. We have an environmental problem, the problem isn’t the environment, but human survival. What will we do? We will let those who hold and control the assets to deprive us of what they profligately waste. They sit on a heap of assets that they refuse to distribute based on the lame idea that they somehow deserve to be compensated for sitting atop the assets. Their power comes from our belief that somehow they deserve to have these assets. That they will be better at distributing and controlling the assets than the “mob”. But there is no mob, except when there is need. Usury must go. “A hungry mouth is an angry mouth.” When people say that the OWS movement does nothing but live off the donations of others, they are right. But let’s look at why donors donate to such a “welfare state” of living. OWS is outside the system. Because they have chosen to live outside the system, they must find support elsewhere. In the system, one can continue to accept the drippings off the slop table of the wealthy and survive within the system, but one must be part of the system. Donors recognize that to find an alternative to the system, OWS must be supported by taking from the system and giving to the occupation. The donations are actually removing wealth from the system and giving it to the organic development of an anarchistic society that will provide for all within its means. Because we’re all in this together. Some of us are not ready to leave the system, because we still feel a level of comfort in the system, or we recognize that we need to support the occupation with our destruction of the system by donating to the occupation. What leaves the system in goods and assets, not in fiat money destroys the system. The occupation already has taken over many aspects of the system. It feeds the people (all the people). It provides shelter of sorts, these shelters must become more permanent and more disruptive of the system (occupying abandoned and empty buildings). Those who remain in the system to support the occupation must help to bring down the system.</span>JKVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456849565631263660noreply@blogger.com0