Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Ray E. Harrell]

Thanks Mike,

I would appreciate your discussion of the material I wrote.   I feel that it is
relevant for discussions of the future of work,  just as many management groups
are exploring those very same structures in work processes today.I'm not
referring to the plastic shamans of the "Fast" magazine variety, although
everyone has to begin somewhere, but to the works of people like Peter Senge
whose whole concept of Business Organizations that learn as organisms are based
on both European performing arts ensembles and  Native American ceremonial
structures that have succeeded in many of the openly hostile physical
environments, the desert Southwest for example where Senge gives credit and the
American Classical Performing Art's Market where only 2% of those trained are
successful.   Senge wants to know what it is that makes that 2% succeed where
the other 98% become successful in less rigorous fiscal professions. He
relates it to the ability to analyze structure and to realize the relativity of
structure while deliberately creating a stable foundation that will make human
existence have meaning.

Senge's colleague Donald Schoen also used many of these same structures in his
"Reflective Practitioner" theories for both business, education and health
care.On the other hand, the computer/futurist folks seem IMO  thoroughly
grounded in simple behavioral psychology.

A point made by  the NYTimes reviewer  on the
site of Hans Moravic's book.I
haven't read the book so I won't comment except on the Moravic response which
was to identify the reviewer as a philosopher and not a computer person and
then to claim that he didn't understand the issues. That is what we used to
call in raising my daughter the "distract and divert strategy" from questions
that we didn't want to answer.  From E. Dyson to T.J. Rodgers everything
that I have read by these folks ignores the basic issue that the reviewer
asked.   Once you transfer consciousness to a computer and kill the organism
does the soul of the person continue in the computer?   The answer of the
computer person is that the behavior of the original continues and so is
yes.As a performing artist I find that strange. I would never say that
the performance of a Beethoven Sonata  by Franz Liszt was the same as that same
sonata performed by Ludwig himself or made the player inhabited by Ludwig's
consciousness.Underlying processes can be used by individuals and
groups but this does not negate the uniqueness of the original or the human
soul.
Both Moravic and Daniels seem to be saying, along with the French, that "you
work to live as you wish" and not "live to work as you wish."The purpose of
work being to create leisure.   That is not hunter/gatherer as they seem to
imply at their sites but has been a part of English thought throughout most of
the Industrial Era.I'll leave that discussion to Mike Hollinshead since he
is the historian on this but I believe I'm correct on this.

As a musician used to working with synthesizers, (the second keyboard is always
the slave to the first)  I would call their robot computer structure more
slave/master than father/son.Once you have slaves machines to do your  mass
production "jobs"  then you are more in the mode of the Greek than the
Hunter/Gatherer (as the modern souls imagine Hunter/Gatherers). I still
state that as an Indian who grew up on a reservation in Oklahoma and whose
relatives have been involved in "Indian" work processes for many generations
that the whole concept of  Hunter/Gatherer is Paleolithic and bears little
resemblance to anyone I have even known or heard about through the "Moccasin
telegraph."   There are people today who are work for themselves, as I do, but
this is in terms of free lance work.

The same was true of the English before their  families "imprinted" on the
factory "whistle". The factories hired the whole families because the
fathers would only work until they had money and then would go fishing.
That still happens in Italy,  Spain and the Hispanic cultures.   I don't
believe that they are Hunter/Gatherer. I also don't believe that these
folks making these myths up are thinking "systems."

This slave/master system, I contend the computernics are advocating,  is not a
bad thing.The Greeks used it to create philosophy and great art.   However,
on the computer "futurist" sites I've seen, they don't even include art and
culture much less philosophy.But then they speak of the disappearance of
"work" but an examination of the root of the word from the beginning English
dictionaries will show that they do not mean "work" but "jobs."   Might we not
call this working in order to become lazy? Not loafing ala Veblen or "play"
as with learning a difficult work performing art but just "lazy."That is
also the reason that I believe they can only imagine humans withering away and
giving in to th

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[P.A. Gantt]

"P.A. Gantt" wrote:

> Speaking of democracy... it is an opiate only if
> we Netizens stand by and let the ubiquitous "they"
> take the First Amendment away from us by pricing
> us out of the Net. I will send an easy form
> and ways to address this pressing issue
> in my next send.
> 
> =


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-- 
P.A. Gantt, Computer Science Technology Instructor
Electronic Media Design and Support Homepage
http://user.icx.net/~pgantt/
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Subject=etech
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/vision/1998-11.asp
Common sense is not common, and conventional wisdom is not
wisdom. But at least you can have conventional sense. ~~ Daily Whale

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[P.A. Gantt]

Speaking of democracy... it is an opiate only if
we Netizens stand by and let the ubiquitous "they"
take the First Amendment away from us by pricing
us out of the Net. I will send an easy form
and ways to address this pressing issue
in my next send.

=
Source:

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  (Source: InfoWorld Electric) [OPINION] Internet
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-- 
P.A. Gantt, Computer Science Technology Instructor
Electronic Media Design and Support Homepage
http://user.icx.net/~pgantt/
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Subject=etech
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/vision/1998-11.asp
Common sense is not common, and conventional wisdom is not
wisdom. But at least you can have conventional sense. ~~ Daily Whale

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Eva Durant]

> 
> Eva, I give up. I'm sorry if I was bad mannered. But you do seem to argue
> from an impenetrable ideology. Let me explain my point of view, perhaps
> equally impenetrable.  Some years ago, I arrived at the conclusion that
> idealism and ideology are the worst things that have ever happened to
> humankind, even though I know that they go with the territory of being
> human.
> 
> What has happened time and again in history is that great ideas have become
> religious or secular ideologies which have then become mantras and formulas,
> which have then been fanaticized, and have then become marching boots. Look
> at Christ becoming the Crusades, Calvin and the Inquisition; at Hegel and
> Marx becoming Stalin and the gulag; at Nietche becoming Hitler and the gas
> chambers. Because of the ever-present possibility of this sequence, I would
> be apprehensive about a motivated and mobilized working class which has
> achieved "consciousness" in accordance with some ideal or ideology. Would
> its members, like Mao's Red Guards, begin to turf the capitalists wherever
> they thought they found them?
>


So, what you propose is, that we
never ever analyse our history and think about
how to avoid past pittfalls and make 
a plan for a better future?

All the past ideology failed, because all the movements
were taken over at some point - usually at the very
beginning - by non-democratic processes, that did
not allow the continuous re-examination of the aims, 
tactics and strategy - which is the core of a democratic
movement.

You probably say there is no point in
such analysis, all human effort ends of
being animal-like hierarchival and
democracy is an unnatural phenomena...
...  and I don't agree, does this amount to "inpenetrable
ideology"?  Afterall, I only argue for democracy,
and even some capitalists seem to be in favour of that... 
...allegedly.


once we manage
to be aware of the importance of maintaining
the democratic process, we can work out how best
to guard it from any deformation - we've seen it
often enough, surely you clever people can
come up with something - 


> I do recognize that it is not idealism itself, but the distortion of
> idealism into iron-clad ideologies, that is the fault.  Yet I would suggest
> that such distortion is more the rule than the exception. While I haven't
> lost sleep over it yet, I know that there are many millions of angry people
> around just waiting for the next great distortion and the next great
> crusade. If you could assure me that we could proceed to the ideal state
> owned and operated by the working class without persecution and bloodshed, I
> would buy it, but, knowing something of history and its ability to repeat
> itself, I might be pretty hard to convince.
>

I think only the development of
democracy can protect us from future bloodshed.
I've just seen some frightening docu
about the KKK and it's ilk in the US
having a major upswing. And one knows when
an ideology is problematic, not only
from the hate content, but also from
the hierarchical, militaristic character of
the organization.

(What was also shown, that they are able to 
grow in the present climate of capitalist
"all for oneself" ideology with the
complementary emotional desolation.
They interviewed an ex-member of 
one of these groups, and asked him why he joined.
He said these were the first bunch of people ever
to send him birthdaycards...)
 
> I recognize that people's lives are organized around work.  But I would
> argue that, in doing their work, people in general have little in common
> other than having to get out of bed and having to go to a place of work.
> People who do a particular kind of work or who work in a particular
> establishment have common interests, and if these are not being satisfied,
> they should take collective action, but action through negotiation and a
> democratically derived system of laws, with strikes as an ultimate threat.
> There are many instances in which broadly based opposition to unjust laws or
> circumstances make sense, but the issues in question usually transcend the
> interests of a particular group or class.  Poverty and homelessness, for
> example, require the attention of all members of society.  But on all such
> issues, I would like to think that whatever action is taken would be aimed
> at solving the problem, not at restructuring us into conformity with some
> ideological dogma about how a society should function.  We've surely had
> enough of that.
>

You miss the important point: there is a very obvious
and sufficient common denominator: we are forced to
work to earn a living, and the majority of
us has no say in the process at all, and a large
portion do not get even enough to live in dignity,
for their troubles.  Our lives are dependent on the
tiny layer, that owns our means of productions;
building, land, machinary etc, and most unfortunately
makes the decision for our military/economist/environmentalist
strategists, and it doesn't look li

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Ray E. Harrell]

A little fun from one of my favorite writers on science, life and attitudes.

REH



Questioning the calendar

A skeptic confronts the millennium
   By Stephen Jay Gould


Feb. 26 —  We have a false impression, buttressed by some
famously exaggerated testimony, that the universe runs with
the regularity of an ideal clock, and that God must therefore
be a consummate mathematician.


GALILEO DESCRIBED THE COSMOS as “a grand book written
in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles,
circles and other geometric figures.” The Scottish biologist D’arcy
Thompson, one of my earliest intellectual heroes and author of the
incomparably well-written Growth and Form, (first published in 1917
and still vigorously in print, the latest edition with a preface by
yours truly) stated that “the harmony of the world is made manifest
in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of
Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical
beauty.”


THE DIVINE MATHEMATICIAN
Many scientists have invoked this mathematical regularity to
argue, speaking metaphorically at least, that any creating God must
be a mathematician of the Pythagorean school.
For example, the celebrated physicist James Jeans wrote: “From
the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the
Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.” This
impression has also seeped into popular thought and artistic
proclamation. In a lecture delivered in 1930, James Joyce defined the
universe as “pure thought, the thought of what, for want of a better
term, we must describe as a mathematical thinker.”

MYSTERIES OF THE CALENDAR
Why do we base calendars on cycles at all? Why do we recognize a
thousand-year interval with no tie to any natural cycle?

If these paeans and effusions were invariably true, I could
compose my own lyrical version of the consensus. For I have
arrived at the last great domain for millennial questions —
calendrics. I need to ask why calendrical issues have so fascinated
people throughout the ages, and why so many scholars and
mathematicians have spent so much time devising calendars and
engaging in endless debates about proper versus improper,
elegantly simple versus overly elaborate, natural versus contrived
systems for counting seconds, minutes, hours days, weeks,
months, lunation, years, decades, centuries and millennia, tuns and
baktuns, thirish and karanas, ides and nones.

SIGNIFICANCE OF 1,000
Our culturally contingent decision to recognize millennia and to
impose divisions by 1,000 upon a solar system that includes no
such natural cycle, adds an important ingredient to this maelstrom
of calendrical debate.

If God were Pythagoras in Galileo’s universe, calendrics would
never have become an intellectual subject at all. The relevant cycles
for natural timekeeping would all be nice, crisp easy multiples of
each other — and any fool could simply count. We might have a
year (earth around sun) with exactly ten months (moon around
earth) and with precisely one hundred days (earth around itself) to
the umpteenth and ultimate decimal point of conceivable rigor in
measurement.

But God, thank goodness, includes both Loki and Odin, the
comedian and the scholar, the jester and the saint. God did not
fashion a very regular universe after all. And we poor sods of his
image are therefore condemned to struggle with calendrical
questions till the cows come home, and Christ comes round again
to inaugurate the millennium.

NATURE’S SYMMETRY

Oh, I don’t deny that some corners of truly stunning
mathematical regularity grace the cosmos in domains both large and
small. The cells of a honeybee’s hive, the basalt pillars of the
Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland make pretty fair and regular
hexagons. Many “laws” of nature can be written in an
astonishingly simple and elegant mathematical form. Who would
have thought that E=mc2 could describe the unleashing of the
prodigious energy in an atom?

But we have been oversold on nature’s mathematical regularity
— and my opening quotations in this essay stand among the worst
offenders. If anything, nature is infinitely diverse and constantly
surprising — in J.B.S. Haldane’s famous words, “not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

BLOODY-MINDED NATURE

I call this “bloody-minded nature” because I wish to specify the
two opposite domains of nature’s abject refusal to be
mathematically simple for meaningful reasons. The second domain
forces every complex society — as all have independently done,
from Egypt to China to Mesoamerica — to struggle with
calendar-making as a difficult and confusing subject, not a simple
matter of counting.

Many questions about the millennium — Why do we base
calendars on cycles at all? Why do we recognize a thousand-year
interval with no tie to any natural cycle? — arise directly from these
imposed complexities. Any adequate account of our current
millennial madness therefore requires that we understand why

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Bob McDaniel]

Given the recent introduction into futurework discussions of the concepts of
chaordics, heterarchy, complexity, hierarchy, the shorter work-week, genetic
engineering, animal and human evolution, the recent book Robot by Hans Moravec
 may be of interest to list
subscribers.

The book updates ideas in the following:

The cybernated space-economy

The digital environment

Future communities

Possibly appropriate fare on the verge of the 21st century.

Bob


--
___
http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Ed Weick]

>This is a bad mannered misinterpretation on your part,
>it is obvious that what I meant was
>their class-conscioussness, which is you are as aware as me, giving
>the programmer example above.  As the vast majority of human kind is
>working class as per the definition above, I can't see anything wrong
>with described as a mass of people I am proud to belong to.
>You may call it a nonsence, but  without an informed concensus
>and active participation of said masses to take over and transform
>the economy, any attempt of yours to  reform capitalism is futile -
>and a nonsence, utopistic ideology...

Eva


Eva, I give up. I'm sorry if I was bad mannered. But you do seem to argue
from an impenetrable ideology. Let me explain my point of view, perhaps
equally impenetrable.  Some years ago, I arrived at the conclusion that
idealism and ideology are the worst things that have ever happened to
humankind, even though I know that they go with the territory of being
human.

What has happened time and again in history is that great ideas have become
religious or secular ideologies which have then become mantras and formulas,
which have then been fanaticized, and have then become marching boots. Look
at Christ becoming the Crusades, Calvin and the Inquisition; at Hegel and
Marx becoming Stalin and the gulag; at Nietche becoming Hitler and the gas
chambers. Because of the ever-present possibility of this sequence, I would
be apprehensive about a motivated and mobilized working class which has
achieved "consciousness" in accordance with some ideal or ideology. Would
its members, like Mao's Red Guards, begin to turf the capitalists wherever
they thought they found them?

I do recognize that it is not idealism itself, but the distortion of
idealism into iron-clad ideologies, that is the fault.  Yet I would suggest
that such distortion is more the rule than the exception. While I haven't
lost sleep over it yet, I know that there are many millions of angry people
around just waiting for the next great distortion and the next great
crusade. If you could assure me that we could proceed to the ideal state
owned and operated by the working class without persecution and bloodshed, I
would buy it, but, knowing something of history and its ability to repeat
itself, I might be pretty hard to convince.

I recognize that people's lives are organized around work.  But I would
argue that, in doing their work, people in general have little in common
other than having to get out of bed and having to go to a place of work.
People who do a particular kind of work or who work in a particular
establishment have common interests, and if these are not being satisfied,
they should take collective action, but action through negotiation and a
democratically derived system of laws, with strikes as an ultimate threat.
There are many instances in which broadly based opposition to unjust laws or
circumstances make sense, but the issues in question usually transcend the
interests of a particular group or class.  Poverty and homelessness, for
example, require the attention of all members of society.  But on all such
issues, I would like to think that whatever action is taken would be aimed
at solving the problem, not at restructuring us into conformity with some
ideological dogma about how a society should function.  We've surely had
enough of that.

Ed Weick

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Christoph Reuss]

Eva wrote:
> I agree totally with what you say the EU is about.
> It is the sign of a next stage of capitalism, as you say,
> fighting it, seems to me, is as futile as the Luddites
> attacking machines.

I think this comparison isn't correct, because the machines represented
true progress, whereas the EU represents regress rather than progress --
regress to centralistic megalomania like that of the Roman Empire, the
Soviet Union, the Third Reich etc.  Opposing the EU doesn't mean to
oppose progress, but to the contrary, it means to support more progressive
solutions for international cooperation.  A main theme of the EU's P.R.
is to stereotype EU opponents as old-fashioned, anti-European right-wingers.

--Chris

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Durant]

> I believe that the method you propose was tried several times during the
> past century.  Unions were formed as a means of mobilizing the working class
> against powerful industrial interests.  Political ideologies were fashioned
> as formulas for the development of ideal states in which the working class
> was to have owned the means of production.  Alas, what seems to suggest
> itself in retrospect is that the working class is something of a myth.  What
> it seems really to have wanted is a ticket to the good life or at least the
> best life possible under the circumstances.  Once this happened, it would
> seem that the working class's interests shifted to maintaining what it had,
> and not the general betterment.
>

You overlooked the fact that every inch towards shorter working
hours and social benefits was gained by the pressure of organised
labour movements,
and as soon as their  pressure softens we are moving rapidly back 
towards square one.  
Of course working class people, like everyone else, are in it for 
personal gains for a better life, who claimed anything else?
 
> Besides, is there still a "working class"?  Was there ever a "working
> class"?  Perhaps it never really was anything more than a theoretical
> construct and political generalization which conveniently glossed over the
> probability that society consisted of essentially self-serving and
> competitive interests.  Ask a computer programmer if he feels his interests
> to be identical or even similar to those of a miner or factory worker.
> 
Anyone who is forced to get out of bed in the morning for earning a 
living is working class, including the computer programmer. 
Ask the opinion of said person just after a redundancy or a shift 
towards working longer hours in shorter contracts.

> I would add that the use of terms such as "unconscious" or "masses" in
> referring to working men and women is the height of insult and arrogance
> (perhaps also ignorance).  I know a lot of working men and women, and there
> are very very few among them that have struck me as being either unconscious
> or part of some "mass".  Most have a pretty realistic view of their world,
> are getting on with their lives as best they can and have little time for
> nonsense ideology.
> 

This is a bad mannered misinterpretation on your part,  
it is obvious that what I meant was
their class-conscioussness, which is you are as aware as me, giving 
the programmer example above.  As the vast majority of human kind is 
working class as per the definition above, I can't see anything wrong 
with described as a mass of people I am proud to belong to. 
 You may call it a nonsence, but  without an informed concensus
and active participation of said masses to take over and transform
the economy, any attempt of yours to  reform capitalism is futile -
and a nonsence, utopistic ideology...

Eva
> Ed Weick
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Ray E. Harrell]

Hi Mike,

This is a very interesting post.   I find it the most interesting in how
you are traversing the path of traditional Native American Plain's Myth in
your forms.   The net for example is the traditional form of Spider Woman
and is considered essentially feminine in nature.

Amongst the Plains Peoples, powers are not hierarchical in the order sense
but singular centers of expertise given by the Great Mystery  to
individuals.   Otherwise everything is the same for everyone.   Everyone is
a teacher, artist, hunter, planter etc. although there are certain areas
that relate to talent or  gender because of the principle of parallel
images.   i.e. if someone seems to embody more an external process then
common sense would seem to say that  they have more potential expertise in
it.   You have also defined the structure of war and art in Plains Indian
societies.Structures that have more to do with power and games in their
societies, than death and destruction.They are, like virtual AGILE
companies, temporary and task oriented.

Michael Spencer wrote:

> Steve Kurtz wrote:
>
> > I argue...that hierarchies...have always existed and will most likely
> > continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied.
>
> To which Victor Milne replied:
>
> > I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple matter of
> > dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing.
>
> and Steve wrote again:
>
> > Who ever said anything about "simple" or "model"?
>
> Forget "simple".  I think the issue is whether or not hierarchy is
> some kind of underlying principle that structures things as they are,
> more or less in the way that, say, electromagnetism is such a
> principle.

The wolf pack is and that is the reason that the Wolf was the dominant
focus for the form of a war party in almost all of our societies.  It
is not something that you put on or take off easily.   Amongst some more
urban organized societies the Wolf Clan is the war clan that takes over
when a war is imminent.   I could make a case for Churchill being the Chief
of the War Clan in English WW II government.   When the war came, the peace
government was replaced by the war one and when it was over Churchill was
unceremoniously defeated to get back to the peace government.

Amongst my people that was called the Red (war) and the White (peace)
governments and they existed simultaneously with one being out while the
other was in.   Only a warrior woman could call the Red government into
being, but this is more specific then I should be and you probably are
interested in, but the parallels are interesting and may very well be
primal human in form and function.

> I don't think it is.  Hierarchy is a way in which we structure
> artifacts -- things, such as computer programs or navies, that we
> create in order to simplify the management of them.  It's also a way
> in which we structure or ideas about things, our intuitive or formal
> models, because it makes things easier to keep track of.

By this last statement are you referring to expertise or what is popularly
called "complexity theory" these days?

> There's an interesting 1945 paper by Warren McCulloch entitled "A
> Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets."  It
> notes that there are experimental observations along this line:
> given A, B and C, if these are presented pairwise -- A&B, B&C, C&A --
> a subject will often choose A over B, B over C and C over A.

I don't understand this.   Is the subject human?   If so,  does this not
relate to the original alphabetical pattern contained in the memory of the
subject?   That would make the form subjective would it not?For
example:  When Sequoia invented the Cherokee syllabury, being an Indian
scholar rather than a European, he included some European Alphabet symbols
in his system but gave them different sounds and orders.   That meant that
any child learning the system would not relate it to a European
intellectual space but to a Cherokee cultural space.   In their case I
doubt that the relationships WM described  between  A & B in a European
sense would be asserted in the Cherokee system.

It seems that the issue is learned order that is then related in the above
fashion.Do you see this differently?


> McCulloch, a polymath whose main interest was in trying to figure out
> how it is that a few pounds of neurons can engender mind, described
> how such heterarchical preference was immanent or implicit in neural
> structure.

Seems learned to me, unless he is saying that all knowledge is learned with
no genetic talent element.  Even if so, I don't understand why he would say
something so obvious.He seems to be comparing the structure of mind to
the structure of a crystal, but a learned one in the human sense.   i.e.
learning or education is the implicit "order" of the human neurons.I
would agree with that in both meanings of the word "order".Still seems
obvious although we do say that enlightenme

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Ed Weick]

Eva:

>It turned out that the the best way to fight capitalism is
>a united and goal-conscious working class.
>That working class contains highly educated if
>unconcious (!!) masses now, especially in Europe.
>What other - democratic - ways are there?

I believe that the method you propose was tried several times during the
past century.  Unions were formed as a means of mobilizing the working class
against powerful industrial interests.  Political ideologies were fashioned
as formulas for the development of ideal states in which the working class
was to have owned the means of production.  Alas, what seems to suggest
itself in retrospect is that the working class is something of a myth.  What
it seems really to have wanted is a ticket to the good life or at least the
best life possible under the circumstances.  Once this happened, it would
seem that the working class's interests shifted to maintaining what it had,
and not the general betterment.

Besides, is there still a "working class"?  Was there ever a "working
class"?  Perhaps it never really was anything more than a theoretical
construct and political generalization which conveniently glossed over the
probability that society consisted of essentially self-serving and
competitive interests.  Ask a computer programmer if he feels his interests
to be identical or even similar to those of a miner or factory worker.

I would add that the use of terms such as "unconscious" or "masses" in
referring to working men and women is the height of insult and arrogance
(perhaps also ignorance).  I know a lot of working men and women, and there
are very very few among them that have struck me as being either unconscious
or part of some "mass".  Most have a pretty realistic view of their world,
are getting on with their lives as best they can and have little time for
nonsense ideology.

Ed Weick

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Durant]

I agree totally with what you say the EU is about.
It is the sign of a next stage of capitalism, as you say,
fighting it, seems to me, is as futile as the Luddites
attacking machines. The unification of the USA happened in
the name of its fledgling capitalism, too.  

It turned out that the the best way to fight capitalism is
a united and goal-conscious working class.
That working class contains highly educated if
unconcious (!!) masses now, especially in Europe. 
What other - democratic - ways are there?
Global integration will be necessary in the interest of
using all our resources in a coordinated and sustainable
manner for the satisfaction of the global population
and even combating cosmic dangers such as asteroids...
... once it stops being a profit initiated progress.

Eva 


[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Colin Stark]

>Steve Kurtz wrote:
>
>> I argue...that hierarchies...have always existed and will most likely
>> continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. 

Methinks thou dost overgeneralize

and art over-bold in thy predictions

Koestler, Wilber, Raven, and  Hock all talk of more organic "chaordic or
holarchical " structures which are more applicable to the natural kingdom
than the "hierarchical" systems which humans have developed from regal and
military models, and which arguably exist only in the "Kingdom of the Human
Experience"


References:

Personal and social transformation -- Ken Wilber's books are featured at:
http://www.shambhala.com/wilber
John Raven's "A New Wealth of Nations" at http://www.npsnet.com/cdd/nwn.htm
points at the more general solutions to governance problems.
Chaordic or holarchical (Wilber/Koestler) management systems
http://www.cascadepolicy.org/dee_hock
http://www.funderstanding.com/mailing1.htm

**

Colin Stark

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Michael Spencer]

Steve Kurtz wrote:

> I argue...that hierarchies...have always existed and will most likely
> continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. 

To which Victor Milne replied:

> I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple matter of
> dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing.

and Steve wrote again:

> Who ever said anything about "simple" or "model"?

Forget "simple".  I think the issue is whether or not hierarchy is
some kind of underlying principle that structures things as they are,
more or less in the way that, say, electromagnetism is such a
principle.

I don't think it is.  Hierarchy is a way in which we structure
artifacts -- things, such as computer programs or navies, that we
create in order to simplify the management of them.  It's also a way
in which we structure or ideas about things, our intuitive or formal
models, because it makes things easier to keep track of.

There's an interesting 1945 paper by Warren McCulloch entitled "A
Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets."  It
notes that there are experimental observations along this line:
given A, B and C, if these are presented pairwise -- A&B, B&C, C&A --
a subject will often choose A over B, B over C and C over A.
McCulloch, a polymath whose main interest was in trying to figure out
how it is that a few pounds of neurons can engender mind, described
how such heterarchical preference was immanent or implicit in neural
structure.

As our social world begins to approach the complexity of, say, the
brain of a chicken or a shrew, it gets harder and harder to make
a hierarchical model fit except by brute force.  We're going to have
to begin to understand and use more reticular -- net-like -- notions
to cope constructively.  Of course, a problem with this for many
people is that, when all the elments are connected in a network
instead of a hierarchy, it becomes difficult or impossible to say
which is chief among them, who's in charge here, who gets preferential
treatment or exactly who can be blamed for a failure.

I think there's a small but growing awareness of this.  Some people
are trying to ensure that the emerging structures embody the essential
of human dignity, environmentals integrity and so on.  Others are
frantically trying to understand the concepts well enough to, so to
speak, outsmart the system and ensure that they or their employers can
remain "in charge here."

Hierarchy is a fine analytical tool, like geometry.  But it isn't a
structuring principle of the biological world and is one for the
social world only to the extent that we have chosen and continue to
choose to make it so.  I'm no more an ethologist than Victor and I
can't argue in detail just how we should treat things like dominance
relations in wolf packs but I can argue that the wolf pack is neither
the most basic nor the best model for building human affairs.


- Mike

-- 
"What is a number, that a man may know it, and a man, that he may know
a number?"  -- Warren S. McCulloch
---

Michael Spencer  Nova Scotia, Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
---

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Christoph Reuss]

Eva Durant (nomen est omen) wrote:
> You left out the peragraph that refered to international trade
> unionism in Europe.

Ah, now we know why it's called "the European UNION"... 

So you think the EU's massive democratic deficits could be compensated by
international trade unions ?  That would be a strange and weak substitute,
and actually it's not even that.  Neither the EC nor the corporations really
care about the trade-unions.  All trade-unions combined employ about 50
lobbyists in Brussels, compared to thousands of corporate lobbyists (e.g.
a single oil company employs 400 lobbyists to take care of the 700 EP
members).  The communication of the 'central' trade-union with the 'local'
trade-unions in the member countries is quite bad, and the efficiency of
them is very low. (The center is too far away and speaks a different language
[also literally].)

BTW, the EU is not a prerequisite for "international trade unionism in
Europe" -- rather, it's an obstacle to it, since the Euro (currency), the
Maastricht criteria and the stability pact  constitute an economical corset
that leaves little room for being social.


> Crawling back to national governments that are
> weaker than  international corporations, is certainly not the best
> solution.

But certainly a better solution than a centralistic mega-state "EU Inc."
that is dominated by corporate lobbies.


> By the way, probably due to the
> stronger influence of the left in the EU,
> their workplace directives tend to be better than the ones in the UK
> for example.

Well, this example from the country of Manchester-capitalism is hardly
representative for the EU's impact on social issues.  If you look at the
changes that occurred in Sweden since it joined the EU, you'll get a much
more negative picture:  Reduction of democracy, political transparence,
environmental protection, etc.

The "Left in the EU" is a hoax:  Blair and Schroeder are neo-liberals rather
than social-democrats.  Schroeder's party (SPD) completely rejected a Green
proposal to introduce direct democracy in Germany, although the SPD's
election campaign had announced this introduction.  As the secretary of the
Swedish EP delegation noted, the political power in the EU is actually in
the hands of conservatives and of corporate lobbies, and not even a
fortification of the EP would lead to a democratization of the EU (i.a.
because the mega-state is simply too big and too centralized to be
democratic -- 1 MP would represent 500'000+ citizens).  Both "social" and
"democratic" are fraudulent attributes of the EU, to lull the herd animals.


> All in all, what seems to be so good for global capitalism
> could be also good for the global integration of democratic
> movements for a better globe...

Maybe, but what does this have to do with the EU ?
The EU has long become an accellerator rather than a decellerator of
anti-social globalization, increasing the internal competition within
Europe.  To update your EU knowledge (while sticking to your familiar
Marxist reading), you might read articles like "The EU and the Left"
in the German journal "Marxist Renewal" 32/97 (or similar contemporary
literature in case you don't read German).  An interesting online resource
for a Left anti-EU perspective is  http://europa.crossnet.ch/  (Swiss Forum
for Direct Democracy).  (some articles in English)

--Chris

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Steve Kurtz]

Durant wrote:

 http://csf.colorado.edu/sustainable-economics/daly/
> >
> 
> Is there a theory you could sum up?
 
Very short abstract on above website does that.

> If you are
> eliminating profit-growth, you are eliminating capital.

No. No-growth doesn't eliminate existing infrastructure or existing
tokens/credits.
Capital can still change hands - zero sum.
 
>  > Re distribution scheme, nothing wrong in theory; but scarcity causes
> > competition, and scarcity(per capita) increases every day.
> >
> 
> Hm? There's no scarcity of houses, yet there are a multitude of
> homeless people, same goes for good cloths, food etc even
> in our "best" economies.

I'm talking globally: 7 million net new humans/month, increased debt, &
disappearing natural capital/biosphere health. Surplus is local & temporary
only.
 
> So all the supernatural lore is based in reality, and not on
> the ignorance  and pattern making ability of human imagination
> in the absence of scientific data,
> describing storms, vulcanoes, sun and moon - and human stereotypes,
> such as women and slaves are animals, foreigners talk gibberish and
> have dog-head, barbarians, infidels, sons of satan , etc, etc.

Define 'reality'. A unicorn, the devil, a mermaid (cedna is main goddess
for Inuit/Eskimo) are all "real" beliefs that influence real behavior.
"Ideas" like that are part of reality, and even have predictive &
explanatory value.
(big snip)

> and should be as obsolete as slave-keeping.

That's been my point for years(others too). You are fighting for a
"should", the "ought".  Wittgenstein: "ethics & aesthetics are one"
(subjective/relative)

> besides,  I would  contradict your  stereotyping of
> my genetics if I won't have the last word...

How does "studious" equal 'competitiveness'? That's the trait of getting
the "last word"! And that's the trait you try to deny to the natural
world!!

Now I promise no further response from me on this thread.

Steve

-- 

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being 
paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, 
in our age, can still do for those who study it."
Bertrand Russell,  "A History of Western Philosophy"

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Durant]

> As traditionally defined, you're correct. Herman Daly & many others have
> written about "steady state" economies which don't eliminate capital. Great
> source:
> http://csf.colorado.edu/sustainable-economics/daly/
>

Is there a theory you could sum up? If you are
eliminating profit-growth, you are eliminating capital.

 > Re distribution scheme, nothing wrong in theory; but scarcity causes
> competition, and scarcity(per capita) increases every day.
>

Hm? There's no scarcity of houses, yet there are a multitude of
homeless people, same goes for good cloths, food etc even
in our "best" economies. 

 
> > > I indicated that historical & literary lore was
> > > based on group memories and passed on myths...cultural heritages. These
> > > indicate *differences* based both on nature & nurture.
> 
> > So? Do these indications have necessarily a base in reality?
> 
> Yes. What other explanation can you posit?
>  

So all the supernatural lore is based in reality, and not on
the ignorance  and pattern making ability of human imagination 
in the absence of scientific data,
describing storms, vulcanoes, sun and moon - and human stereotypes,
such as women and slaves are animals, foreigners talk gibberish and
have dog-head, barbarians, infidels, sons of satan , etc, etc.

> > Even if it was true that jews tend towards intellectual stuff,
> > it is not genetic, it is a historical conditioning.
> > They were not allowed to own land in lots of countries,
> > they had to learn trades, they
> > had to learn, so ambitious learning is in family history.
> 
> nature/nurture mix most believable IMO (natural selection & adaptive
> fitness)
> 

Homo sapiens had not much chance to further evolve their physiological/
hardware equipment in their brief presence of cca 100K years.
And presently they probably stopped altogether, as there is no more
scope for selectivity, and there is a wide range of mixing in the 
last few centuries.

> 
> That makes sense; (undomesticated)animals maybe 95% nature, 5% nurture
> (GUESS ONLY)
> Humans (since pre-history) ??? more % nurture than other animals is a good
> bet. 
> 

Most human behaviour is "software development",
cannot be inherited. The capacity for connections has not
a lot of variability. We can all be very intelligent and creative,
if different ways/areas, given an environmental  chance. 

This idea that hard work, diligence and cleverness should
earn individuals more earthly goods, when they only
acquired said characteristics by environmental chance 
and earthly goods are not status symbol anymore 
is basically as senseless and useless 
and should be as obsolete as slave-keeping.

> Please forgive me if I don't respond to further posts for a while.
>

no problem... however as I bothered with this one before
i spotted your last line, I might as well send it -
besides,  I would  contradict your  stereotyping of 
my genetics if I won't have the last word...

Eva
 
> Steve
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Durant]

Steve Kurtz:
> You really need a course in elementary logic. Try to diagram the causative
> links you are claiming. What does any of the above have to do with
> accepting that we ain't all clones, and that our social institutions can't
> make us as equal as you would like.
> 

Would you kindly look up my past correspondence 
never have I said that we are clones and that I expect any social
institution to make us equal. This is your misconception
of socialism as per the uncritically regurgitated propaganda. 
Democratic socialism would be better at allowing us to be
individuals than capitalism ever can: economic oppression
means limited democracy. 

> You really don't get it. People make their beds & sleep in them. I'm
> supporting not a fixed system, but shrinkage - of population, & of economic
> throughput/impact. I'd like zero interest rates, & NO MONEY SUPPLY GROWTH.
> All steady state once at sustainable rates/methods of production,
> distribution, and consumption. Now that sounds quite Utopian, but it
> doesn't mean that everyone's share would be identical; it means the
> wholesystem might endure for some longer period than with growthmania.
>

Capitalism cannot function without growth, if the rate of profit
decreases - and it does anyway - capitalism is in crisis. 
What's wrong with having a distribution that allows everyone to
live freely and in dignity, rather than under an economic bridle.
 
> Another perverse induction. I indicated that historical & literary lore was
> based on group memories and passed on myths...cultural heritages. These
> indicate *differences* based both on nature & nurture. 
>

So? Do these indications have necessarily a base in reality? 

 
> > E.g. That wellknown fact of thousands years
> > of history that women cannot think rationally?
> 
> Strawwoman :-)
> 

No, you used this "historical literature" as evidence.


> You are so far out on a fantasy limb that I fear you're about to crash;
> maybe then you'd rejoin planet earth.
>

... I know and I learn my elementary logic,
straight after you learn yours. 
thanks for patronising me ever so politely.
 

> > Must be, because I am a 100% east-European jew
> > ethnically and I haven't
> > done any of these things. Besides being tall.
> 
> My *NAME* related to height. My ethnic background related to studious bent;
> your 2 univ degrees are consistent with that. My anecdotal story was merely
> an example of the differences between humans & cultures. 
>  

Even if it was true that jews tend towards intellectual stuff,
it is not genetic, it is a historical conditioning.
They were not allowed to own land in lots of countries, 
they had to learn trades, they
had to learn, so ambitious learning is in family history.

> 
> If you don't get the point of this**, I give up:
> 
> > > recognition of the fact that all living organisms are self-steering within
> > > certain limits, and that their **behaviour therefore can be steered from the
> > > outside only to a very moderate extent.**
> 

Social environment is more important feature in the development
of human behaviour than for animals. I cannot see any
of your cybernetic thingies giving evidence to the contrary.

Eva

> Steve
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Durant]

You left out the peragraph that refered to international trade 
unionism in Europe. Crawling back to national governments that are 
weaker than  international corporations, is certainly not the best 
solution. By the way, probably due to the
stronger influence of the left in the EU,
their workplace directives tend to be better than the ones in the UK 
for example. 
All in all, what seems to be so good for global capitalism
could be also good for the global integration of democratic 
movements for a better globe...

Eva

> Could you describe how this is possible in the above setting ?
> E.g. after Sweden joined the EU, the Swedes realized how they had been
> lied to from the pro-EU propaganda, so now the majority of Swedes regrets
> that they entered the EU.  Can Sweden leave the EU ?  Nope.  Can they at
> least democratically reject some directives from Brussels ?  Neither.
> So how do you propose they can "wrestle away from the rulers" ?
> 
> --Chris
> 
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Steve Kurtz]

Durant wrote:

> Capitalism cannot function without growth, if the rate of profit
> decreases - and it does anyway - capitalism is in crisis.
> What's wrong with having a distribution that allows everyone to
> live freely and in dignity, rather than under an economic bridle.

As traditionally defined, you're correct. Herman Daly & many others have
written about "steady state" economies which don't eliminate capital. Great
source:
http://csf.colorado.edu/sustainable-economics/daly/

Re distribution scheme, nothing wrong in theory; but scarcity causes
competition, and scarcity(per capita) increases every day.

> > I indicated that historical & literary lore was
> > based on group memories and passed on myths...cultural heritages. These
> > indicate *differences* based both on nature & nurture.

> So? Do these indications have necessarily a base in reality?

Yes. What other explanation can you posit?
 
> > > E.g. That wellknown fact of thousands years
> > > of history that women cannot think rationally?
> >
> > Strawwoman :-)
> >
> 
> No, you used this "historical literature" as evidence.

of what? 
 
> Even if it was true that jews tend towards intellectual stuff,
> it is not genetic, it is a historical conditioning.
> They were not allowed to own land in lots of countries,
> they had to learn trades, they
> had to learn, so ambitious learning is in family history.

nature/nurture mix most believable IMO (natural selection & adaptive
fitness)

(Guyer)
 > > recognition of the fact that all living organisms are self-steering
within
 > > certain limits, and that their **behaviour therefore can be steered
from the
 > > outside only to a very moderate extent.**

E.D.:
> Social environment is more important feature in the development
> of human behaviour than for animals. 

That makes sense; (undomesticated)animals maybe 95% nature, 5% nurture
(GUESS ONLY)
Humans (since pre-history) ??? more % nurture than other animals is a good
bet. 

> I cannot see any
> of your cybernetic thingies giving evidence to the contrary.

I had little doubt about that. BTW, not my theories, but good theories IMO.

Please forgive me if I don't respond to further posts for a while.

Steve

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Christoph Reuss]

Eva Durant wrote:
>
> > Since the Scandinavian nations (except Norway) and the Netherlands are now
> > in the EU, democracy is 'working' less and less in them.  All important
> > decisions are increasingly "shifted" to Brussels and [thus] the
>international
> > big biz.  ("The United States of Europe" is the aim, remember.)
> > Oligarchy with a democratic face (makEUp) is a more elegant way of
> > "managing the herd animals" than plain sincere scientocracy...
>
> However, luckily, people are not herd animals
> and just like you, they can periodically see
> through the machinations of the ruling class
> and ignite revolutions. One of these ends up being
> the one where they actually keep the power to
>  themselves once they wrestled it away from
> the rulers. They only need to re-realise
> that it is possible...

Could you describe how this is possible in the above setting ?
E.g. after Sweden joined the EU, the Swedes realized how they had been
lied to from the pro-EU propaganda, so now the majority of Swedes regrets
that they entered the EU.  Can Sweden leave the EU ?  Nope.  Can they at
least democratically reject some directives from Brussels ?  Neither.
So how do you propose they can "wrestle away from the rulers" ?

--Chris

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Steve Kurtz]

Victor Milne wrote:
 
> My point is that if a simple model of dominance does not apply very well to
> equine behaviour, it's certainly a mistake to extend it to human behaviour.

Who ever said anything about "simple" or "model"?

> >hierarchies and
> >ranges of human (& other) behavior have always existed and will most likely
> >continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. It
> >makes democracy somewhat irregular at best. But I'm not advocating
> >dictatorship, just realistic expectations if humans plan to peacefully
> >narrow the gap between rich & poor.
 
> [snip]


Steve
-- 

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being 
paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, 
in our age, can still do for those who study it."
Bertrand Russell,  "A History of Western Philosophy"

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Eva Durant]

You're right as far as decisions are made
in Europe, but don't underestimate
the unions that started to be international, too.
Not quite what you expect from those often mentioned
bleedin' herd animals!



Eva


> 
> Since the Scandinavian nations (except Norway) and the Netherlands are now
> in the EU, democracy is 'working' less and less in them.  All important
> decisions are increasingly "shifted" to Brussels and [thus] the international
> big biz.  ("The United States of Europe" is the aim, remember.)
> Oligarchy with a democratic face (makEUp) is a more elegant way of
> "managing the herd animals" than plain sincere scientocracy...
> 
> --Chris
> 
> 
> 

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Durant]

However, luckily, people are not herd animals
and just like you, they can periodically see
through the machinations of the ruling class
and ignite revolutions. One of these ends up being
the one where they actually keep the power to
 themselves once they wrestled it away from 
the rulers. They only need to re-realise 
that it is possible...

Eva

> Since the Scandinavian nations (except Norway) and the Netherlands are now
> in the EU, democracy is 'working' less and less in them.  All important
> decisions are increasingly "shifted" to Brussels and [thus] the international
> big biz.  ("The United States of Europe" is the aim, remember.)
> Oligarchy with a democratic face (makEUp) is a more elegant way of
> "managing the herd animals" than plain sincere scientocracy...
> 
> --Chris
> 
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Ray E. Harrell]

Me too.   I used to breed dogs.   I had Collies first then Shelties, Miniature
Schnauzers and Bichon Frises.  Many times the behavior of an animal can be
traced to an owner and the environment he created but this is not always the
case.   Especially with the smaller inbred species there have both physical and
behavioral problems that come from the stress placed on the genetic history just
from normal life.

I find cultures placed in unusually stressful situations to often be the
same. I may not know the cultural cues of some people but that doesn't mean
that they are wrong for having them.That also means that it can be dangerous
for me at times if I don't know those cues and vice/versa. The Russians that
lived where I used to have a cabin had a real thing about lines.There was
never a line invented that they couldn't crash.There, we would wait in line
for up to an hour and someone would walk in and step to the front when I wasn't
watching.   They of course knew to watch.   I learned quickly and I also had to
do it with an attitude that would have been the grounds for a gunfight in
Oklahoma. Communism had nothing to do with it as a system except the fabled
commissary lines might have.Things are not always as simple as they seem on
paper or in theory.

Stay strong and be observant,

REH

Victor Milne wrote:

> Just a comment on animal behaviour. I am not an ethologist, but we have a
> herd of 18 horses. I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple
> matter of dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing.
>
> The most aggressive animal in our herd is the shortest, a 13.2 hh pony
> gelding (with a very massive frame). However, he never bothers the old herd
> leader, who at age 30 spends most of his time dozing in the sun and just
> growls a bit if the "kids" in the herd crowd in when he goes to the feeder.
> Curiously the very aggressive pony can be totally cowed by a certain small
> mare, two inches taller than him but much slighter. In turn a usually gentle
> Arab gelding succeeds in bullying the small mare, but the Arab is totally
> intimidated by the pony, so we have a strange dominance triangle. The
> biggest animal in the herd--my 16.1 thoroughbred gelding which I use for
> long distance competitive riding--is also the biggest wimp of all. All the
> males are gelded, so I presume that testosterone levels are about equal.
>
> My point is that if a simple model of dominance does not apply very well to
> equine behaviour, it's certainly a mistake to extend it to human behaviour.
>
> Live long and prosper
>
> Victor Milne & Pat Gottlieb
>
> FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
> at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/
>
> LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
> at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/
>
> -Original Message-----
> From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: list futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: February 25, 1999 6:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics
>
> >Eva Durant wrote:
> >
> >> The bully tend to be the biggest puppy, the one with
> >> the most expendable energy. Even in dogs,
> >> aggressivity is "taught" by the human
> >> who replaced the role of the alpha.
> >
> >Above is another example of internal inconsistency. The bully pup is
> >aggressive independently of human interaction; and aggressiveness,
> >dominance, & hierarchy exist apart from domestication.
> >
> >> Even bull-terriers in a strong-controlled
> >> but peaceful environment tend to grow up
> >> docile.
> >
> >I've no data, but my personal experience agrees - within a range, of
> >course.
> >
> >> You say we should not attempt democracy because
> >> no animals live that way?
> >
> >Strawman.
> >I never said or implied that. I argue, like Ed does, that hierarchies and
> >ranges of human (& other) behavior have always existed and will most likely
> >continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. It
> >makes democracy somewhat irregular at best. But I'm not advocating
> >dictatorship, just realistic expectations if humans plan to peacefully
> >narrow the gap between rich & poor.
> >
>
> [snip]

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Victor Milne]

Just a comment on animal behaviour. I am not an ethologist, but we have a
herd of 18 horses. I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple
matter of dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing.

The most aggressive animal in our herd is the shortest, a 13.2 hh pony
gelding (with a very massive frame). However, he never bothers the old herd
leader, who at age 30 spends most of his time dozing in the sun and just
growls a bit if the "kids" in the herd crowd in when he goes to the feeder.
Curiously the very aggressive pony can be totally cowed by a certain small
mare, two inches taller than him but much slighter. In turn a usually gentle
Arab gelding succeeds in bullying the small mare, but the Arab is totally
intimidated by the pony, so we have a strange dominance triangle. The
biggest animal in the herd--my 16.1 thoroughbred gelding which I use for
long distance competitive riding--is also the biggest wimp of all. All the
males are gelded, so I presume that testosterone levels are about equal.

My point is that if a simple model of dominance does not apply very well to
equine behaviour, it's certainly a mistake to extend it to human behaviour.

Live long and prosper

Victor Milne & Pat Gottlieb

FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/

LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/




-Original Message-
From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: list futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 25, 1999 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics


>Eva Durant wrote:
>
>> The bully tend to be the biggest puppy, the one with
>> the most expendable energy. Even in dogs,
>> aggressivity is "taught" by the human
>> who replaced the role of the alpha.
>
>Above is another example of internal inconsistency. The bully pup is
>aggressive independently of human interaction; and aggressiveness,
>dominance, & hierarchy exist apart from domestication.
>
>> Even bull-terriers in a strong-controlled
>> but peaceful environment tend to grow up
>> docile.
>
>I've no data, but my personal experience agrees - within a range, of
>course.
>
>> You say we should not attempt democracy because
>> no animals live that way?
>
>Strawman.
>I never said or implied that. I argue, like Ed does, that hierarchies and
>ranges of human (& other) behavior have always existed and will most likely
>continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. It
>makes democracy somewhat irregular at best. But I'm not advocating
>dictatorship, just realistic expectations if humans plan to peacefully
>narrow the gap between rich & poor.
>

[snip]

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Christoph Reuss]

Victor Milne wrote:
> So far as I know, democracy is working passably well in some countries such
> as the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands. So maybe Jay's notion of
> democracy is limited to what's found in the USA--and I'll admit that what we
> have in Canada is only modestly better and has been deteriorating.

Since the Scandinavian nations (except Norway) and the Netherlands are now
in the EU, democracy is 'working' less and less in them.  All important
decisions are increasingly "shifted" to Brussels and [thus] the international
big biz.  ("The United States of Europe" is the aim, remember.)
Oligarchy with a democratic face (makEUp) is a more elegant way of
"managing the herd animals" than plain sincere scientocracy...

--Chris

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Steve Kurtz]

Eva Durant wrote:

> The bully tend to be the biggest puppy, the one with
> the most expendable energy. Even in dogs,
> aggressivity is "taught" by the human
> who replaced the role of the alpha.

Above is another example of internal inconsistency. The bully pup is
aggressive independently of human interaction; and aggressiveness,
dominance, & hierarchy exist apart from domestication.

> Even bull-terriers in a strong-controlled
> but peaceful environment tend to grow up
> docile.

I've no data, but my personal experience agrees - within a range, of
course. 

> You say we should not attempt democracy because
> no animals live that way?

Strawman.
I never said or implied that. I argue, like Ed does, that hierarchies and
ranges of human (& other) behavior have always existed and will most likely
continue to do so despite any structural changes invented & applied. It
makes democracy somewhat irregular at best. But I'm not advocating
dictatorship, just realistic expectations if humans plan to peacefully
narrow the gap between rich & poor. 

> And for the same
> reason we should accept whatever an exploitative
> and visibly insane social structure throws at us?

Your creation of strawmen continues to amaze me.
 
> Than we shouldn't do poetry, science, etc, etc,
> or even debate on the internet,
> must be bad for us, it is against our animal nature,
> I haven't seen any mammals doing it...

You really need a course in elementary logic. Try to diagram the causative
links you are claiming. What does any of the above have to do with
accepting that we ain't all clones, and that our social institutions can't
make us as equal as you would like.

> What a said apology for the support of
> the capitalist system!

You really don't get it. People make their beds & sleep in them. I'm
supporting not a fixed system, but shrinkage - of population, & of economic
throughput/impact. I'd like zero interest rates, & NO MONEY SUPPLY GROWTH.
All steady state once at sustainable rates/methods of production,
distribution, and consumption. Now that sounds quite Utopian, but it
doesn't mean that everyone's share would be identical; it means the
wholesystem might endure for some longer period than with growthmania.

> You are confusing physical/biologival and behavoral/social
> traits.

The traits of the individuals *affect* the behavioral/social systems they
create. I was indicating only the nature/nurture mix.

> So we should accept all the unscientific stereotyping
> of historical literature as evidence?

Another perverse induction. I indicated that historical & literary lore was
based on group memories and passed on myths...cultural heritages. These
indicate *differences* based both on nature & nurture. 

> E.g. That wellknown fact of thousands years
> of history that women cannot think rationally?

Strawwoman :-)

> Etc, Etc.?  Are you serious??

You are so far out on a fantasy limb that I fear you're about to crash;
maybe then you'd rejoin planet earth.

> People in the absence of scientific methods
> end cientific data, made some patterns that had no
> real base, only a self-fulfilling expectations
> of set behavoral forms.

Now you sound like Jay! Remember, only a tiny % of humans understand
scientific theory. Science tries to understand what people do, it doesn't
make them do what they do. People learn by experience, and the
'self-fulfilling' rarely evolves as expected. Unintended consequences and
intervening unexpected variables change things ad infinitum.

> Must be, because I am a 100% east-European jew
> ethnically and I haven't
> done any of these things. Besides being tall.

My *NAME* related to height. My ethnic background related to studious bent;
your 2 univ degrees are consistent with that. My anecdotal story was merely
an example of the differences between humans & cultures. 
 
> > OK. You acknowledge a "mixture" of nurture/nature. So why throw out the
> > "nature" by speculating that nurture can overrule it? 

> Everyone has a hardwired possibility to become
> a psychopath in given circumstances. Nurture can
> overrule it except for a very few cases of
> physiological mental illness.

You use a statistical "tail" to try to prove the norm. Sure brainwashing
can break people or turn them into zombies. Under normal circumstances
people function more 'normally' - nature/nurture mix.

> Please tell me what points you are making with
> these excerpts, I missed them.
> 
> Eva

If you don't get the point of this**, I give up:

> > recognition of the fact that all living organisms are self-steering within
> > certain limits, and that their **behaviour therefore can be steered from the
> > outside only to a very moderate extent.**

Steve

Re: Democracy & sociocybernetics

[Eva Durant]

> > I don't think that the level of
> > aggressivity is an ethnic trait
> > or even genetic.
> > Any such statement on "human nature"
> > is very suspect.
> 
> Have you ever noticed the bully & the runt in a litter of puppies? Have you
> noticed some species of dogs as more predictably aggressive than other
> breeds? And please don't tell us as you always do that humans are
> 'different'; sure we're different, but we're still mammalian.
>

The bully tend to be the biggest puppy, the one with
the most expendable energy. Even in dogs,
aggressivity is "taught" by the human
who replaced the role of the alpha.
Even bull-terriers in a strong-controlled
but peaceful environment tend to grow up
docile.  

You say we should not attempt democracy because
no animals live that way? And for the same
reason we should accept whatever an exploitative
and visibly insane social structure throws at us?

Than we shouldn't do poetry, science, etc, etc,
or even debate on the internet,
must be bad for us, it is against our animal nature,
I haven't seen any mammals doing it...

What a said apology for the support of
the capitalist system!



 
> > I am not aware of any present mongols
> > being more aggressive than other peoples.
> 
> Another example of nature/nurture adaptive fitness is high altitude
> athletes who's genetic heritage, childhood development, and training
> increase their capacities/skills.
> 


You are confusing physical/biologival and behavoral/social
traits.

> 
> > Most research comparing such ethnic or
> > race differences are scientifically
> > contraversial to say the least.
> 
> Evidence? Historical literature is full of genealogical lines with their
> dominant traits/characteristics. Do you think the attributions made in
> literature are unrelated to real experience? Pure tabula rasa fantasy?
>


So we should accept all the unscientific stereotyping
of historical literature as evidence? 
E.g. That wellknown fact of thousands years
of history that women cannot think rationally? 
Etc, Etc.?  Are you serious??
People in the absence of scientific methods
end cientific data, made some patterns that had no 
real base, only a self-fulfilling expectations
of set behavoral forms.


> I'm short, pensive, studied philosophy in univ., made enough $ trading in
> finance to retire young to organic gardening, and am 1/2 eastern euro jew,
> 1/4 german jew, 1/4 german christian. Kurtz (kurz) means short in german.
> Jews were historically good traders, and studied talmud (philosophy).  In
> _Heart of Darkness_ (J.Conrad),  Kurtz is a gloomy, philosophical
> businessman/trader. He is referred to in Eliot's poem "The Wasteland", and
> reappears as Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now". All coincidence?
>


Must be, because I am a 100% east-European jew 
ethnically and I haven't
done any of these things. Besides being tall.

Jews learned to be good traders, as in a scores
of medieval countries they were not allowed to do
anything else. I happen to know dozens who are crap
at it, couldn't give a damn, do other stuff
well or live in poverty.

  
> > The level of allowed/legit aggressivity
> > is a social construct
> > (level of control expected i.e.
> > aggressivity tolerated), with individual
> > variation being a mixture of nurture
> > environment and the given chemical balance
> > of the nervous system.
> 
> OK. You acknowledge a "mixture" of nurture/nature. So why throw out the
> "nature" by speculating that nurture can overrule it?  A first & second
> order cybernetic feedback system is IMO the clearest way to approach the
> issues we've been slinging around these last weeks.
> 

Everyone has a hardwired possibility to become
a psychopath in given circumstances. Nurture can 
overrule it except for a very few cases of
physiological mental illness.
It is not a speculation but a fact you see
if you look around, our behaviour reflects
the social/emotional defects or plusses of
our environment.

Please tell me what points you are making with
these excerpts, I missed them.


Eva



> excerpted from abstract below:
> "Third, this is caused by autopoiesis (Greek for self-production), the
> recognition of the fact that all living organisms are self-steering within
> certain limits, and that their behaviour therefore can be steered from the
> outside only to a very moderate extent."
> 
> 
> better format on:
> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Einmag_Abstr/FGeyer.html
> 
> The Challenge of Sociocybernetics. 
> 
> By F. Geyer 
> 
>  Felix Geyer 
>  SISWO 
>  Plantage Muidergracht 4 
>  1018 TV Amsterdam 
>  Nederland 
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
> Full Paper
> 
> Abstract: 
> 
> This paper summarizes some of the important concepts and developments in
> cybernetics and general systems theory, especially during the last two
> decades. Its purpose is to show show how they indeed can be a challenge to
> sociological thinking. Cybernetics is used here as an umbrella term for a
> great variety of related disciplines: general sys

Re: Democracy

[Eva Durant]

I don't think that the level of
aggressivity is an ethnic trait 
or even genetic. 
Any such statement on "human nature"
is very suspect.

I am not aware of any present mongols
being more aggressive than other peoples.
And I am not being PC, just never heard about
such scientific evidence. 
Most research comparing such ethnic or
race differences are scientifically 
contraversial to say the least.

The level of allowed/legit aggressivity
is a social construct 
(level of control expected i.e. 
aggressivity tolerated), with individual
variation being a mixture of nurture
environment and the given chemical balance
of the nervous system.

eva



> 
> Competition has been with us since the dawn of time.  Hunters and gatherers
> competed for harvesting territory, farmers competed as tribes for the best
> lands and then within tribes for the best lands, and manufacturers have
> competed since manufacturing became the dominant mode of business.  The
> whole thing has been driven by real or perceived scarcity - either I get my
> cut or someone else will - and, it would seem, the need to dominate, which,
> though deplorable, is nevertheless a human characteristic.
> 
> In this process, peaceful people tend to get kicked around - e.g., the
> peaceful Utes who once lived in southern Alberta were kicked out by the
> Blackfeet; Bantu tribes overran Africa; the Mongols, from far east Asia,
> overran Europe as the Huns had previously; and of course we are still,
> hopefully, familiar with what the Germans and Japanese tried to do just a
> few decades ago.  I once asked a Professor of Russian History why the
> Mongols overran Russia and moved into eastern Europe in the 13th and 14th
> Centuries.  He looked at me with some surprise, not as though it was a
> stupid question, but one that he had never really considered.  His answer:
> "Why, they were Mongols, that's what Mongols did."
> 
> Ed Weick
> 
> 

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Eva Durant]

>Trying to make a difference?   So what?  People have been trying to make a
>difference ever since people existed.  And today, our water laps the
>portholes of our Titanic.
>
>When one's ship is on its way down, the only thing that matters is results.
>Rather than wasting time on a make-believe political system, wouldn't it
>make more sense to petition the rich directly for relief?


Unless you mean euthenasia...

The rich are not aware that they are on the same
ship with us, save a few lonely voice such as Soros.
Asking them to use all ther wealth to save the
earth sound much more utopistic than anything
I ever said.

Anyway, if we are just a type of herd animals,
we should not bother in any effort of diverting
impending catastrophies - 
I don't know any herd animal who
behave like  that.

Another of them damn contradictions.

I bet Ray is chuffed with the idea that
humans never ever made a difference.


Eva





>Jay 

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Eva Durant]

>... and the good ship Titanic takes her final plunge into the icy blackness.
>Our final scene is of a panicing herd --  arms waving and running in
>circles -- totally preoccupied with the political correctness of it all.

I don't remember anyone using PC arguments. Another strawman.

> I am leaving this list for a while.


about the best point made so far...


Eva


C U later,
Jay   

Re: Democracy(TM)

[Eva Durant]

So the "left" is still to be equated with the
soviets.  You think today's socialists
want to follow the pattern of the ex-USSR. 
You are (again) ignoring all 
I've been saying here for years.

I suppose there must be a few over 70
CP-ers who still idolise the USSR, 
but that is definitely not
"the left".

Please do not send picture to any list -
that is an ultimate offence against netikette.
You can send it privately to people who
are interested, or put it on your website
and refer to it.

Eva



> To the list:
> 
> I tried sending a picture but obviously that doesn't work.  I guess it's just
> "too big",  I mean too much memory for the list or servers.Anyone who wants
> one just ask and I will try sending it to you.   Eva, did you get the picture?
> 
> Now as for Eva, Ed, Jay, Arthur, Sally, Mike and the rest,
> 
> The problem with this for me is the same as Paul Robeson.   I worked with one of
> his teachers and he was a great man.  One of the great artists and heroes of the
> 20th century.It was not his politics that was so much the problem, anymore
> than was Picasso's, but the whole concept of " intellectual value" abroad in the
> society in his time and this time still.
> 
> A best selling book by a female judge says it best:   "Beauty fades, dumb is
> forever." But what constitutes smart?A scientist on the basketball court
> with professional players would make dumb moves as would the reverse.
> Robeson was a great singer and a great political hero for an America that was
> brutal, crude and banal but he failed to see the same in the Soviets and the
> relatives of his intellectual friends in Moscow who were murdered by Stalin,
> never forgave him.
> 
> The split between Jews and Blacks began there but the Black collaborationists
> who abandoned Robeson in the U.S. maintained the fragile coalition for a time
> longer until more progress could be made.   The Crow Priest "Plenty Coups" had
> done the same sixty years earlier when he also signed a loyalty oath while
> "Crazy Horse" was murdered for being intractable.So who was right?The
> hero Robenson, under illegal  "house arrest" in the U.S. for seven years
> protesting the lynchings and apartheid refusing to sign an unconstitutional
> loyalty oath so that he could perform around the world,  or the men who
> cooperated with Macarthy?We have a similiar issue with Elia Kazan and the
> Oscars.
> 
> And they love to call this a Judeo-Christian society.   If I were either I would
> protest or certainly not admit to it.
> 
> It is said that the CIA gave Robeson a drug, that causes paranoia, at a party in
> Moscow and the effect was that he slit his wrists effectively stopping his world
> tour of socialist countries and not embarrassing the U.S. powers.   The Russians
> cooperated by giving him shock treatments and practically destroying the man.
> Beauty is fragile but dumbness is cantagious.All of this was on Television
> tonight.This great artist was a national treasure but dummies who stumble
> over diamonds and can only use them to kill rabbits were emulated in the last
> couple of  centuries and are emulated still.   Yes those same bunny killers are
> the ones who call us Hunter/Gatherers and even finally got it into the Am. Her.
> II American Dictionary. There is a problem with "knowledge" especially when
> you can simply  define your competitor out of existence.Only the latest is
> real because there is a problem with remembering.
> 
> In tomorrow's NYTimes there is an article about the scientist businessmen in
> Silicone Valley using their technical expertise and money to effect the
> political  landscape in California for the Libertarians.   Most are young and
> beautiful but their causes will outlast them and are truly dumb.   Even the
> article quotes them as having very short attentions spans.   (Cocaine can cause
> that also.) So the left is dumb and the right is dumb. Jay there had
> better be more than just right or left or this ship WILL  sink.
> 
> Robeson was trapped.White America patted themselves on the back for
> "letting" him become who he was but did not ask why they were not up to his
> standard.   It also never occurred to them that this world class artist could
> have happened anywhere at any time.   America had nothing to do with it.It
> just destroyed his health and ultimately killed him.The country that
> criticized the KGB even monitored his medical charts in the hospital with the
> FBI.   What should worry the folks here is that the Black folks are not
> forgetting this stuff. Even Harry Belafonte came across like a historian
> tonight.They were an impressive group of people.
> 
> On Nightline tonight there was a program about a study in how the White medical
> establishment treats blacks differently even when they are middle class, have
> good health insurance and are productive. In effect they were saying that
> the Black community is being rob

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Jan Matthieu]

Temporary relief. But I'm starting to see a pattern here. When you got a
lot of criticism on a few other lists which you owned yourself, you just
closed them down. It seems like you are mainly making your propaganda, get
in a row with some democrats, then leave and move on to some other places
where to spread the 'good news'. It is quite useless to argue with you as
this mostly leads to postings of excerpts of your personal website and
anti-democratical nonsense, and never, for as long as I read your mails,
has had the slightest effect, never led to any change of thinking. 

So I'm sure we'll meet again

Jan Matthieu
Flemish greens

--
> Van: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Aan: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Onderwerp: Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.
> Datum: donderdag 25 februari 1999 6:30
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> >Is that how you regard your neighbours? People on this list? Are you
> >better?
> 
> ... and the good ship Titanic takes her final plunge into the icy
blackness.
> Our final scene is of a panicing herd --  arms waving and running in
> circles -- totally preoccupied with the political correctness of it all.
> 
> God!  What a waste of time.
> 
>  I am leaving this list for a while.
> 
> C U later,
> Jay

Re: Democracy

[Ed Weick]

Eva:
>>Classless society happened to humans for 100K + years,
>>our relatively short written history chronicled  only the
>>class society that also happened to us - with it's
>>exploitation, privilege, cruelty,  etc.

Ed Weick:
>
>You can believe that if you like, but I doubt very much that the first 100K
>of human were without class and cruelty.  But then of course none of us
were
>present, so how can we know?  Incidentally, there is a very good novel
>written on the theme of prehistoric cleverness and cruelty -- Willian
>Golding's "The Inheritors", which deals with an encounter between
>Neanderthal and modern man.  Golding is better known for "Lord of the
>Flies", which carries a somewhat similar message, though the setting is
>modern.
>
>Believe me, I too would like to believe that a series of social
>transformations, such as going from hunting and gathering to agriculture
and
>thence to industry, accounts for the class system and resultant
>exploitation.  But I really have no evidence that exploitation did not
exist
>in earlier systems.  And not only that.  It is people themselves who
brought
>about the transformations, and for their own ends.  That is, the class
>system was not imposed on us by aliens from outer space.  We created it,
>probably a very long time ago, and amplified and broadened it each time
some
>new innovation made it possible to do so.
>
>Hunters were displaced by farmers, and farmers by industrialists, and each
>time those who were displaced became the lumpenproletariat who had to work
>for the farmers or the industrialists.  Perhaps the driving cause is our
>need to invent and innovate, but that is something that we can't help
doing.
>It is a consequence of having large brains and opposable thumbs, or some
>such thing.
>


Postscript to the above, after further consideration:

Competition has been with us since the dawn of time.  Hunters and gatherers
competed for harvesting territory, farmers competed as tribes for the best
lands and then within tribes for the best lands, and manufacturers have
competed since manufacturing became the dominant mode of business.  The
whole thing has been driven by real or perceived scarcity - either I get my
cut or someone else will - and, it would seem, the need to dominate, which,
though deplorable, is nevertheless a human characteristic.

In this process, peaceful people tend to get kicked around - e.g., the
peaceful Utes who once lived in southern Alberta were kicked out by the
Blackfeet; Bantu tribes overran Africa; the Mongols, from far east Asia,
overran Europe as the Huns had previously; and of course we are still,
hopefully, familiar with what the Germans and Japanese tried to do just a
few decades ago.  I once asked a Professor of Russian History why the
Mongols overran Russia and moved into eastern Europe in the 13th and 14th
Centuries.  He looked at me with some surprise, not as though it was a
stupid question, but one that he had never really considered.  His answer:
"Why, they were Mongols, that's what Mongols did."

Ed Weick

Re: Democracy(TM)

[Ray E. Harrell]

To the list:

I tried sending a picture but obviously that doesn't work.  I guess it's just
"too big",  I mean too much memory for the list or servers.Anyone who wants
one just ask and I will try sending it to you.   Eva, did you get the picture?

Now as for Eva, Ed, Jay, Arthur, Sally, Mike and the rest,

The problem with this for me is the same as Paul Robeson.   I worked with one of
his teachers and he was a great man.  One of the great artists and heroes of the
20th century.It was not his politics that was so much the problem, anymore
than was Picasso's, but the whole concept of " intellectual value" abroad in the
society in his time and this time still.

A best selling book by a female judge says it best:   "Beauty fades, dumb is
forever." But what constitutes smart?A scientist on the basketball court
with professional players would make dumb moves as would the reverse.
Robeson was a great singer and a great political hero for an America that was
brutal, crude and banal but he failed to see the same in the Soviets and the
relatives of his intellectual friends in Moscow who were murdered by Stalin,
never forgave him.

The split between Jews and Blacks began there but the Black collaborationists
who abandoned Robeson in the U.S. maintained the fragile coalition for a time
longer until more progress could be made.   The Crow Priest "Plenty Coups" had
done the same sixty years earlier when he also signed a loyalty oath while
"Crazy Horse" was murdered for being intractable.So who was right?The
hero Robenson, under illegal  "house arrest" in the U.S. for seven years
protesting the lynchings and apartheid refusing to sign an unconstitutional
loyalty oath so that he could perform around the world,  or the men who
cooperated with Macarthy?We have a similiar issue with Elia Kazan and the
Oscars.

And they love to call this a Judeo-Christian society.   If I were either I would
protest or certainly not admit to it.

It is said that the CIA gave Robeson a drug, that causes paranoia, at a party in
Moscow and the effect was that he slit his wrists effectively stopping his world
tour of socialist countries and not embarrassing the U.S. powers.   The Russians
cooperated by giving him shock treatments and practically destroying the man.
Beauty is fragile but dumbness is cantagious.All of this was on Television
tonight.This great artist was a national treasure but dummies who stumble
over diamonds and can only use them to kill rabbits were emulated in the last
couple of  centuries and are emulated still.   Yes those same bunny killers are
the ones who call us Hunter/Gatherers and even finally got it into the Am. Her.
II American Dictionary. There is a problem with "knowledge" especially when
you can simply  define your competitor out of existence.Only the latest is
real because there is a problem with remembering.

In tomorrow's NYTimes there is an article about the scientist businessmen in
Silicone Valley using their technical expertise and money to effect the
political  landscape in California for the Libertarians.   Most are young and
beautiful but their causes will outlast them and are truly dumb.   Even the
article quotes them as having very short attentions spans.   (Cocaine can cause
that also.) So the left is dumb and the right is dumb. Jay there had
better be more than just right or left or this ship WILL  sink.

Robeson was trapped.White America patted themselves on the back for
"letting" him become who he was but did not ask why they were not up to his
standard.   It also never occurred to them that this world class artist could
have happened anywhere at any time.   America had nothing to do with it.It
just destroyed his health and ultimately killed him.The country that
criticized the KGB even monitored his medical charts in the hospital with the
FBI.   What should worry the folks here is that the Black folks are not
forgetting this stuff. Even Harry Belafonte came across like a historian
tonight.They were an impressive group of people.

On Nightline tonight there was a program about a study in how the White medical
establishment treats blacks differently even when they are middle class, have
good health insurance and are productive. In effect they were saying that
the Black community is being robbed of its productive members by poor medical
care in major hospitals all because of  Doctor's attitudes about who they
value.  (Yes we've seen this before!)

The study  will be in the New England Medical Journal for those of you who
believe this is hokum.   I'm only reporting. ( It took an act of Congress to
get the secret sterilization's of Indian women stopped in Government hospitals
in 1977.  The month the bill was passed there were 1,600 done anyway.  So it's
not all that much hokum or maybe hohokum either. )

Koppel on Nightline didn't ascribe the inferior care  to a belief  in White
Supremacy by the Doctors but in simple atti

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Durant]

...
> The democratic process is best thought of as "government by popularity
> contest".  And since, as Lord Russell (and many others) have pointed
> out, the certainty of a lie is more popular than the uncertainty of the
> truth, the democratic process selects for the best liars.
> 

you describe a present that the majority of
people are rightly sick of and stay away from.
This means, that they are ready for a more advanced
level of democracy where people compete with their ideas, 
and winning doesn't mean more power and privilages, but
a betterment for everybody due to finding the best options.
People could gain the esteme and status in society by
demonstrating their usefulness, rather than demonstrating
their wealth and power. 
Any other but in a democratic system there is an incentive
to keep privileges, obscure information and play the lie of
the powergames.
Only such  futher progressed democracy will expect people to act 
like intelligent beings.
The present one treats them like herd animals, and humans have this 
habit of conforming to expectations, whether low or high. 

Eva


> In our society,  the political character must excel at lies -- excel at
> doubletalk and "doublethink" -- in order to win his popularity contest:
> 
> "His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To
> know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while
> telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two
> opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and
> believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
> morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
> impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to
> forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back
> into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
> promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same
> process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety:
> consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to
> become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
> Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of
> doublethink."  -- George Orwell, 1984
> 
> In our society, the function of the political character is to not to
> actually solve problems -- our Founding Fathers reserved "problem
> solving" for the moneyed-class.
> 
> Madison even went so far as to boast that "the true distinction" between
> ancient regimes and the proposed experiment in government "lies in the total
> exclusion of the people in their collective capacity."
> http://dieoff.com/page168.htm  ]
> 
> In our society, the  function of the political character is to simply
> reassure and calm the common herd animals with soothing,
> meaningless sounds.
> 
> To paraphrase Marx: "Democracy is the opiate of the masses."
> 
> Jay
> 
> 
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Victor Milne]

I don't know why Jay wastes so much energy on his scientocracy scheme which
just ain't never gonna happen.

Unfortunately, I agree, dieoff could happen. So Jay's scheme is much like
announcing on the Titanic that there will be a forum on improving vessel
designs. In the circumstances, it would be much more practical to work with
what you've got.

So far as I know, democracy is working passably well in some countries such
as the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands. So maybe Jay's notion of
democracy is limited to what's found in the USA--and I'll admit that what we
have in Canada is only modestly better and has been deteriorating.

It is a cheap copout to claim that politicians by their very nature are
liars. I have met a certain number who, I believed, were public-spirited
people trying to make a difference in their community.

So why doesn't the political process work better in Canada and the USA and
many other countries? I believe a large part of the answer is that we allow
corporations to fund political parties and their election campaigns. The
people at the top in a party end up not wanting to rock the boat for their
so-generous donors. In some nations a great part of the election campaign is
financed out of public funds, so that elected officials will not be
beholden.

I know it won't be easy to bring about a change like this. But it's
possible. An 89-year old grandmother is walking coast-to-coast in the USA to
promote a petition for campaign finance reform. One posting on this list
mentioned that George Soros is bankrolling some efforts in that direction.
It could happen that our democracy could become ... more democratic. Ranting
at people that they have to set up a scientocracy is asking for the
impossible to happen.

Victor Milne

FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/

LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/




-Original Message-
From: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 24, 1999 11:51 AM
Subject: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.


>>Jan:
>>
>>I know one thing for certain: it's not you and people who harbour such
>>ideas, going to save the world, you just make things more difficult for
>
>Jan has political ambitions and provides a good study of the political
>character.  We notice at once that the political character can not actually
>admit the Titanic is indeed sinking, because that would put him in the
>untenable position of having to supply a solution -- which he obviously
>can't do.
>
>The democratic process is best thought of as "government by popularity
>contest".  And since, as Lord Russell (and many others) have pointed
>out, the certainty of a lie is more popular than the uncertainty of the
>truth, the democratic process selects for the best liars.
>
>In our society,  the political character must excel at lies -- excel at
>doubletalk and "doublethink" -- in order to win his popularity contest:
>
>"His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To
>know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while
>telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two
>opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and
>believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
>morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
>impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to
>forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back
>into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
>promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same
>process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety:
>consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to
>become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
>Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of
>doublethink."  -- George Orwell, 1984
>
>In our society, the function of the political character is to not to
>actually solve problems -- our Founding Fathers reserved "problem
>solving" for the moneyed-class.
>
>Madison even went so far as to boast that "the true distinction" between
>ancient regimes and the proposed experiment in government "lies in the
total
>exclusion of the people in their collective capacity."
>http://dieoff.com/page168.htm  ]
>
>In our society, the  function of the political character is to simply
>reassure and calm the common herd animals with soothing,
>meaningless sounds.
>
>To paraphrase Marx: "Democracy is the opiate of the masses."
>
>Jay
>
>
>
>

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Franklin Wayne Poley]

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jay Hanson wrote:

> - Original Message -
> From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> >What alternative would you propose? How about if you were to become King
> >Jay I ? Would that work better?
> 
> A careful analysis of a problem is the first step in solving that problem.
> If "democracy" is government by the common herd animals, then you don't have
> it now.

Is that how you regard your neighbours? People on this list? Are you
better?

> Once you see things as they really are -- a plutocracy -- then you can start
> making constructive suggestions.

Are you one of the plutocrats? An aspiring plutocrat? King, maybe.
FWP.

*** [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send "Subscribe Future.Cities" to
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Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Ray E. Harrell]

Eva,

This is for you, your husband and the list:Bill Tall Feather is the Elder on
our council and we celebrated his 94th birthday on Saturday.   Today I finally
figured out how to e-mail a picture and so I hope this works for you all.

As for Democracy and Power, I think that you need both.   I have mentioned our
traditional situation on this list ad naseum so I won't mention it again.   I
would say that a society that is not built around various expertises as well as
their pedagogical level presents several problems for me, not the least is
safety.Witness  Chernobyl and Three Mile Island where the scientists could
design a workable plant but not a worker who could run it.

Around these issues of safety I would rather have the old "Clan Law of Blood" or
traditional law of the Cherokee Nation which ascribes responsibility for the
collection of the debt of responsibility to the Clan of anyone hurt by another's
irresponsibility.   You could buy anyone's responsibility off by paying
reparations to the injured and their Clan, as long as it didn't include death.

For any infraction other than a death, if the criminal could make their way to
Chota, the City of Peace and convince the citizens to allow them to stay they were
given sanctuary.They had to stay at least a year until the "Friends Made
Ceremonial," the most sacred of all ceremonials when forgiveness asked for, must
be given.  During that year they were rehabilitated and earned their forgiveness
and freedom.

Death was only payable by another death with the exception being that the
relatives of someone who was accidentally killed could be paid by the killer's
Clan giving someone  from their own Clan to that the deceased Clan who would take
up the responsibilities of the one killed.   Or if the deceased was despised then
the killer's Clan could be released by the simple payment of goods but if one of
the deceased's relatives objected then a life was met with a life.

You need not take the life of the killer, in fact any member, male, female, adult
of child would do.This may seem harsh to you folks but murder was not
committed very often in the old nation.   Since anyone would pay for the sentence,
escape was impossible and Clans disciplined their own members before they lost
more valued members to the law.   They thought better of it before they would do
it.

That is far from the situation today,  in fact there is now a 150 year feud going
on because those who took the European legal model & signed a treaty which killed
one third of the nation in a death march.   Those who went on the march demanded
the Law of Blood while those who signed the treaty hid behind the U.S.
Cavalry. It is still going on. We have at least as long a memory as the
Irish and the Yugoslavs.We believe in the rule of law.

Anyway Bill Tall Feather has lived his life by practicing the disciplines of the
traditions and when I offered to pay for a massage on his birthday, he refused
politely saying that he could take care of his own body.   Maybe I should give up
massages myself.

REH

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Jay Hanson]

- Original Message -
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>Is that how you regard your neighbours? People on this list? Are you
>better?

... and the good ship Titanic takes her final plunge into the icy blackness.
Our final scene is of a panicing herd --  arms waving and running in
circles -- totally preoccupied with the political correctness of it all.

God!  What a waste of time.

 I am leaving this list for a while.

C U later,
Jay

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Jay Hanson]

- Original Message -
From: Victor Milne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>It is a cheap copout to claim that politicians by their very nature are
>liars. I have met a certain number who, I believed, were public-spirited
>people trying to make a difference in their community.

Trying to make a difference?   So what?  People have been trying to make a
difference ever since people existed.  And today, our water laps the
portholes of our Titanic.

When one's ship is on its way down, the only thing that matters is results.
Rather than wasting time on a make-believe political system, wouldn't it
make more sense to petition the rich directly for relief?

Jay

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Jay Hanson]

- Original Message -
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>What alternative would you propose? How about if you were to become King
>Jay I ? Would that work better?

A careful analysis of a problem is the first step in solving that problem.
If "democracy" is government by the common herd animals, then you don't have
it now.

Once you see things as they really are -- a plutocracy -- then you can start
making constructive suggestions.

Jay

Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.

[Franklin Wayne Poley]

What alternative would you propose? How about if you were to become King
Jay I ? Would that work better?
FWP.

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jay Hanson wrote:

> >Jan:
> >
> >I know one thing for certain: it's not you and people who harbour such
> >ideas, going to save the world, you just make things more difficult for
> 
> Jan has political ambitions and provides a good study of the political
> character.  We notice at once that the political character can not actually
> admit the Titanic is indeed sinking, because that would put him in the
> untenable position of having to supply a solution -- which he obviously
> can't do.
> 
> The democratic process is best thought of as "government by popularity
> contest".  And since, as Lord Russell (and many others) have pointed
> out, the certainty of a lie is more popular than the uncertainty of the
> truth, the democratic process selects for the best liars.
> 
> In our society,  the political character must excel at lies -- excel at
> doubletalk and "doublethink" -- in order to win his popularity contest:
> 
> "His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To
> know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while
> telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two
> opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and
> believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
> morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
> impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to
> forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back
> into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
> promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same
> process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety:
> consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to
> become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
> Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of
> doublethink."  -- George Orwell, 1984
> 
> In our society, the function of the political character is to not to
> actually solve problems -- our Founding Fathers reserved "problem
> solving" for the moneyed-class.
> 
> Madison even went so far as to boast that "the true distinction" between
> ancient regimes and the proposed experiment in government "lies in the total
> exclusion of the people in their collective capacity."
> http://dieoff.com/page168.htm  ]
> 
> In our society, the  function of the political character is to simply
> reassure and calm the common herd animals with soothing,
> meaningless sounds.
> 
> To paraphrase Marx: "Democracy is the opiate of the masses."
> 
> Jay
> 
> 
> 
> 

*** [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send "Subscribe Future.Cities" to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] See http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex *** 

Re: Democracy

[Thomas Lunde]

From: Ross James Swanston who wrote: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


>But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by
>those wielding the power including  vested interests and lobby groups (
>multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom
>wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to
>define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government.  It is about
>half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies
>are made to appear like 'the truth'.  It is about money and lots of it.
>The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public
>opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for).
>
>Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at
>least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the
>opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by
>whatever means at your disposal.

Thomas:

Forgive me for being selective, I liked your whole essay.  However the above
paragraphs is a really stinging indictment against the concept of democracy
as practiced throughout the medium of the vote.  And I believe you are
right.  It is that rotten - perhaps even more so.  And it is spiraling out
of control to the extent that we may move beyond our usual madness of wars
and creating suffering and poverty to destroying the very planet we live on.
It is an evil system which provides immense wealth for a few and destructive
poverty and slavery for the many.  It must stop.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: democracy

[Ray E. Harrell]

Well, I usually find myself agreeing with Arthur but coming from that group
that you all are lionizing, I would have to respectfully disagree.  The issue
for me is life experience, education and professionalism.The issue with
U.S. politicians is one of time.  American Politicians are elected at different
intervals and in some cases are term limited.   The governments don't fall
if an Executive loses a vote as in the Parliamentary systems.   In the near
future we will see how the two systems compete in handling the competition
between a United Europe that is basically parliamentary and the United
States which is not.

Also the issues of wisdom are not IMO really the point.  Buckley exists
in a very small group of wealthy and super-wealthy who are insular and
very uncomfortable with the products of general elections.  They so
mistrust professionalism among politicians that they believe their only class
protection is an impotent government and term limits that couldn't
possibly allow the building of a serious professionalism amongst those
elected.

In the last few years I have seen life experience amongst politicians
demeaned by the wealthy, to the point that a long elected history means
that the person is "not able to get a job in the 'real' world" and is almost
on "welfare."  The fact that they are so miserably underpaid and so
little controlled by the wealthy just makes it all that much worse as far
as the Buckley crowd is concerned.   Imagine the CEO of ITT only
receiving $275,000 a year in salary. What kind of CEO would be
willing to take such a low salary for twenty-four hour a day work?
You may add in a "house" that when the job is terminated goes to the
next CEO with a job limit of 8 years and a review every four.

The fact that the local 100 names of the Boston telephone directory
believes that this will get them committed professional public servants
(and they do) casts great doubt in my mind on their wisdom and
sophistication.  How about our letting them be responsible for the
budget of the country instead and treat highly trained professional
economists in the same fashion as politicians?I wouldn't even
support that and you realize how often economists have taken hits
from me on this list.

I believe in the value of life experience, education and professionalism.
The problem for me is the "Jude the Obscure" issue.  How to recognize
and reward the person who against overwhelming odds develops their
own expertise and who breaks the bonds of the normal systems to
achieve a breakthrough.  It has often been stated that Rodin's "Thinker"
was destroyed by the establishment and that van Gogh never sold a
painting except to a relative.  That is used as a reason for not respecting
traditional knowledge and education.   But when you destroy traditional
context what you get is a lack of loyalty and a rise in chaos.

So for me the problem is how to develop the normal person to their highest
potential while avoiding the "Peter Principle" and yet make room for the
genius or the breakthrough.  Those to me are not problems that can be
solved by systems but must be solved by culture and a heightened
sophistication of the entire culture.

REH

Cordell, Arthur: DPP wrote:

> I agree.  Many years ago William Buckley, the right wing editor of the right
> wing National Review made a statement that I was surprised to find myself
> agreeing to then, and even more so today.  He said something like the
> following,  "I would sooner have the first 100 names from the Boston phone
> book than the 100 elected US senators making decisions on my behalf"  I have
> met many Harold's, people of commonsense, and have met many high IQ types,
> whizz-kids.  Guess who I am going to look for for ideas during the next ice
> storm, or y2k disaster-- or just plain ideas on governance.
>
> arthur cordell
>  --
> From: Victor Milne
> To: futurework
> Subject: Re:democracy
> Date: Saturday, January 30, 1999 11:27AM
>
> As I recall, this thread got started with a comment about many of the voters
> seeming to be neither intelligent nor well-informed. I'm sure from many of
> his postings that Ed Weick did not mean this in an elitist sense.
>
> I don't think lack of intelligence is really the problem. I also do not
> think that intelligence in any easily definable sense is really relevant.
> The core of the issue is really personal values. I work in a factory and my
> best friend there is a spot-welder named Harold. I don't think Harold could
> have pursued all the academic education I obtained before my foot slipped
> off the career ladder. However, Harold's heart is in the right place and he
> has a great deal of common sense (in the original meaning of that phrase,
> not in the debased meaning popularized by the right-wing government of
> Ontario).
>
> When you promote the notion of governance based on intelligence, you have no
> guiding values to select those people. Although I have successfully
> completed 10 years of pos

Re: democracy

[Ross James Swanston]

At 09:32 PM 1/29/99 -0500, you wrote:
>So an unambiguous fact about Democracy, is that Iceland has had one
>longer
>than any Western Country as was pointed out to me on this list last
>year.
>
>There are also many pure Democracies in traditional cultures around the
>world.
>They are however, remarkably weak militarily and usually small in
>numbers.
>
>We had several in this hemisphere with the "Cuna" in Panama being the
>oldest.
>It is generally considered to be a couple of thousand years old,
>although
>I don't know how they can tell.  Their governmental form is the "town
>meeting" similar
>to the old New England version that the settlers took from the Quakers
>and the
>Iroquois Confederacy's "Great Law of Peace".
>
>It is my understanding that the Maori in New Zealand are also a pure
>Democracy
>but perhaps one of our New Zealand list members could help with that
>more than I.
>
>From what I have read on this list regarding democracy several themes
stand out.  One of these themes seems to be  that much of what has been
said is very idealistic and divorced from reality.  One of these is this
idea of "pure" democracy, whatever that means.  Some systems may be more
democratic than others but no system can be said to be "pure".

When Abraham Lincoln gave us that simplistic definition of democracy,
"Government for the people,  by the people, of the people," he was taking
on the role of an idealist since in no situation is this definition
strictly true.  The idea of "pure" democracy sounds suspiciously like
pluralism where it is claimed consensus is reached by balancing out the
claims of competing interest groups to reach an amicable solution. 

Maybe you might like to explain again - I probably missed it - what you
mean by "pure democracy".   I could be taking the wrong interpretation out
of it as obviously my interpretation differs from your interpretation. 

But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by
those wielding the power including  vested interests and lobby groups (
multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom
wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to
define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government.  It is about
half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies
are made to appear like 'the truth'.  It is about money and lots of it.
The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public
opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for).

Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at
least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the
opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by
whatever means at your disposal.  Whether there is any justification for
discrediting 'the enemy' is irrelevant.

It is for these reasons that pluralism and the idea of "pure" democracy has
to be rejected.

If my interpretation is correct and getting back to New Zealand's case, at
no stage could the case of the Maori in New Zealand be said to be an
example of "pure democracy".  Anyone who knows anything of the history of
the Maori in New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) knows that it is
a history of conflict between the indigenous culture (the Maori) with
values based around The Land and collectivism.  The mana of the tribe is
more important than the interests of any one member.  In Maori culture
great stress is placed on the spiritual values surrounding these  concepts.

The early European colonists on the other hand brought with them values
diametrically opposed to those of the Maori.  These  were the
individualistic values associated with capitalism, namely private ownership
and extreme materialism.  What is more, the early colonists and
missionaries were extremely ethnocentric in that it was assumed that
European culture was "superior" to that of the indigenous culture.  There
was a mission to bring 'civilisation' to the 'backward savages'.  It was
not recognised  that Maori culture was not 'inferior' - it was just
different.  Thus, integration was the prevailing attitude of the 19th
Century rather than partnership, which the Treaty of Waitangi was suposed
to stand for.  Such attitudes are not dead today by any means, though
significant progress has been made to settle disputes, such as the
confiscation of land last century, through the Waitangi Tribunal.

This brief outline traces the roots of calls within New Zealand for Maori
Sovereignty, a separate Maori parliament (Kiwi version), and a separate
Justice and Education System.  It is an attempt to show that while Maori
may have integrated fairly well into the Westminster style of parliamentary
democracy imported into New Zealand by the early settlers, there are still
deep divisions within New Zealand society between pakeha (Maori name for
'the White man') and  Maori, an inevitable consequence of imposing one
culture on another.  These di

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Franklin Wayne Poley]

It's not a ridiculous idea...just very limited. For example that
"footprint" should be measured in 3 space not 2 space.
FWP.

On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Melanie Milanich wrote:

> Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" .  Most people still
> don't "get" it.  The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday
> ridiculing him and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for
> the winter and to drive a van.  They see no limits to the size of the
> pie, as U.S. consumers who are now spending more than they earn to
> keep fueling their economy. The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for
> presuming to know that "happiness" does not depend on material wealth.  
> To be rich is glorious.  But to be happy? Melanie
> 
> Steve Kurtz wrote:
> 
> > Durant wrote:
> >
> > > At the moment it is a big enough pie,
> >
> > Not according to thousands of scientists including majority of living Nobel
> > winners. Not according to Wm. Rees & Mathis Wackernagel, _The Ecological
> > Footprint_. Their estimate is that 2Billion is maximum population
> > sustainable at the *current global average per capita consumption level*.
> > (NOT the western/northern/developed level) If you won't dispute their data
> > and calculations in a systematic way, you are merely indicating that you
> > wish it were otherwise.
> >
> > The DAILY loss of species, the daily net drop in aquifers, topsoil, trees,
> > marine life, ...are not refutable. Your plea is like a tape in a loop,
> > replayed ad infinitum without evidence.
> >
> > Mid-winter break for me; next episode in Spring.
> >
> > Steve
> 
> 
> 

*** [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send "Subscribe Future.Cities" to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] See http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex *** 

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Durant]

sounds like he equated capitalism with democracy.
Big mistake...

Eva

Octavio
> Paz's
> In Light of India, where I came across this passage:
>  "In the West since the l8th century change has been overvalued.  Traditional
> India, like old European societies prized immutabilityAlong with change
> the modern West glorifies the individual...Change and the individual fulfill
> each other.  With his habitual insight, Tocqueville differentiated between
> egotism
> and individiualism.  The first "is born from blind instinct..it is a vice as old
> as
> the world and is found in all societies."  Individualism, in contrast, was born
> with democracy, and it tends to separate each person and his family from
> society.
> In individualistic societies,  the private sphere displaces the public. For the
> Athenian,
> the greatest honor was citizenship, which gave him the right to take part in
> public
> affairs.  The modern citizen defends his privacy, his economic interests, his
> philosophy,
> his property, what couonts is himself and his small circle, not the general
> interests of
> his city or nation. " ...Aristocratic societies were heroic:  the fidelity of
> the vassal for
> his lord, the soldier for his faith. These attitudes have almost completely
> disappeared
> in the modern world.  In democratic societies, where change is continual, the
> ties that
> bind the individual with his ancestors have vanished, and those that connect him
> 
> with his fellow citizens have slackened.  Indifference and envy are democracy's
> great defects. Tocqueville concludes:  Democracy makes each individual not
> only forget his ancestors, but also neglect his descendents and separate himself
> 
> from his contemporaries: he is plunged forever into himself and, in the end, is
> eternally surrounded by the solitude of his own soul" ,  A prophecy that has
> been utterly fulfilled in our time.
> I find modern societies repellent on two accounts. On the one hand, they have
> taken the human race--a species in which each individual, according to all the
> philosophies and religions, is a unique being-- and turned it into a homogeneous
> 
> mass; modern humans seem to have all come out of a factory, not a womb.
> On the other hand, they have made every one of those beings a hermit.
> Capitalist democracies have created uniformity, not equality, and they have
> replaced fraternity with a perpetual struggle among individuals.  It was once
> believed that, with the growth of the private sphere, the individual would have
> more leisure time and would devote it to the arts, reading, and self-reflection.
> 
> We now know that people don't know what to do with their time.  They have
> become slaves of entertainments that are generally idiotic, and the hours that
> are not devoted to cash are spent in facile hedonism. I do not condemn the cult
> of pleasure;  I lament the general vulgarity.
> I note the evilsw of contemporary individualism not to defend the caste system,
> but to mitigate a little the hypocritical horror it provokes among our
> contemporaries.
> Castes must not disappear so that its victims may turn into the servants of
> the
> voracious gods of individualism, but rather that, between us, we may discover
> a fraternity.
> 
> Durant wrote:
> 
> > Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive
> > to the point where our population level out without any
> > war or other means of mass death,
> > if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global
> > cooperative employment of the best science we can muster.
> > It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system.
> > It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily.
> >
> > Eva
> >
> > > Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" .  Most people still don't
> > > "get" it.  The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him
> > > and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to
> > > drive a van.  They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers
> > > who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy.
> > > The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness"
> > > does not depend on material wealth.  To be rich is glorious.  But to be
> > > happy?
> > > Melanie
> > >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy

[Durant]

I agree with what you say here. I've never used the term "pure 
democrcy".  I am aware of the dynamic relationship between democracy 
and dictatorship; it is democracy for those who are part of the 
power, the real decisionmaking, the control of information, 
and is basically dictatorship for 
everybody else, whether the power elite claims to "mean well" or 
to act in "the name of the people" or not.
The more people are there to actively participate in power as above,
the more functional is the democracy, the aim is to have every member of the
communities - and eventually, the globe in there.  Even then,
in every decision there will be a minority against whose wishes
the majority will have to execute a decision. However, not every 
issue  is such yes-no option and in every issue the majorities and 
minorities would consist of different individuals.

Eva

> From what I have read on this list regarding democracy several themes
> stand out.  One of these themes seems to be  that much of what has been
> said is very idealistic and divorced from reality.  One of these is this
> idea of "pure" democracy, whatever that means.  Some systems may be more
> democratic than others but no system can be said to be "pure".
> 
> When Abraham Lincoln gave us that simplistic definition of democracy,
> "Government for the people,  by the people, of the people," he was taking
> on the role of an idealist since in no situation is this definition
> strictly true.  The idea of "pure" democracy sounds suspiciously like
> pluralism where it is claimed consensus is reached by balancing out the
> claims of competing interest groups to reach an amicable solution. 
> 
> Maybe you might like to explain again - I probably missed it - what you
> mean by "pure democracy".   I could be taking the wrong interpretation out
> of it as obviously my interpretation differs from your interpretation. 
> 
> But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by
> those wielding the power including  vested interests and lobby groups (
> multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom
> wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to
> define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government.  It is about
> half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies
> are made to appear like 'the truth'.  It is about money and lots of it.
> The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public
> opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for).
> 
> Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at
> least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the
> opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by
> whatever means at your disposal.  Whether there is any justification for
> discrediting 'the enemy' is irrelevant.
> 
> It is for these reasons that pluralism and the idea of "pure" democracy has
> to be rejected.
> 
> If my interpretation is correct and getting back to New Zealand's case, at
> no stage could the case of the Maori in New Zealand be said to be an
> example of "pure democracy".  Anyone who knows anything of the history of
> the Maori in New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) knows that it is
> a history of conflict between the indigenous culture (the Maori) with
> values based around The Land and collectivism.  The mana of the tribe is
> more important than the interests of any one member.  In Maori culture
> great stress is placed on the spiritual values surrounding these  concepts.
> 
> The early European colonists on the other hand brought with them values
> diametrically opposed to those of the Maori.  These  were the
> individualistic values associated with capitalism, namely private ownership
> and extreme materialism.  What is more, the early colonists and
> missionaries were extremely ethnocentric in that it was assumed that
> European culture was "superior" to that of the indigenous culture.  There
> was a mission to bring 'civilisation' to the 'backward savages'.  It was
> not recognised  that Maori culture was not 'inferior' - it was just
> different.  Thus, integration was the prevailing attitude of the 19th
> Century rather than partnership, which the Treaty of Waitangi was suposed
> to stand for.  Such attitudes are not dead today by any means, though
> significant progress has been made to settle disputes, such as the
> confiscation of land last century, through the Waitangi Tribunal.
> 
> This brief outline traces the roots of calls within New Zealand for Maori
> Sovereignty, a separate Maori parliament (Kiwi version), and a separate
> Justice and Education System.  It is an attempt to show that while Maori
> may have integrated fairly well into the Westminster style of parliamentary
> democracy imported into New Zealand by the early settlers, there are still
> deep divisions within New Zealand society between pakeha (Maori name fo

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Durant]

Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive
to the point where our population level out without any
war or other means of mass death,
if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global
cooperative employment of the best science we can muster.
It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system.
It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily.

Eva

> Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" .  Most people still don't
> "get" it.  The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him
> and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to
> drive a van.  They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers
> who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy.
> The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness"
> does not depend on material wealth.  To be rich is glorious.  But to be
> happy?
> Melanie
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Durant]

So Jay is too late with his dioff stuff, we are all dead...
this is a virtuall/mystical discussion on one of Mike's
astral planes...
Nothing to be done, everybody who can afford it - take your
break, follow Steve... I woman the barrikades on my own...

Eva

> Not according to thousands of scientists including majority of living Nobel
> winners. Not according to Wm. Rees & Mathis Wackernagel, _The Ecological
> Footprint_. Their estimate is that 2Billion is maximum population
> sustainable at the *current global average per capita consumption level*.
> (NOT the western/northern/developed level) If you won't dispute their data
> and calculations in a systematic way, you are merely indicating that you
> wish it were otherwise.
> 
> The DAILY loss of species, the daily net drop in aquifers, topsoil, trees,
> marine life, ...are not refutable. Your plea is like a tape in a loop,
> replayed ad infinitum without evidence.
> 
> Mid-winter break for me; next episode in Spring.
> 
> Steve
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Melanie Milanich]

I am now renting a room in my house to a young man, a student, from Pakistan
(who
has also lived and studied in Egypt and Indonesia ). When I ask him questions
about Pakistan, he tells me that to understand Pakistan I must first read about
the history of India.  I am following his advice and am now reading Octavio
Paz's
In Light of India, where I came across this passage:
 "In the West since the l8th century change has been overvalued.  Traditional
India, like old European societies prized immutabilityAlong with change
the modern West glorifies the individual...Change and the individual fulfill
each other.  With his habitual insight, Tocqueville differentiated between
egotism
and individiualism.  The first "is born from blind instinct..it is a vice as old
as
the world and is found in all societies."  Individualism, in contrast, was born
with democracy, and it tends to separate each person and his family from
society.
In individualistic societies,  the private sphere displaces the public. For the
Athenian,
the greatest honor was citizenship, which gave him the right to take part in
public
affairs.  The modern citizen defends his privacy, his economic interests, his
philosophy,
his property, what couonts is himself and his small circle, not the general
interests of
his city or nation. " ...Aristocratic societies were heroic:  the fidelity of
the vassal for
his lord, the soldier for his faith. These attitudes have almost completely
disappeared
in the modern world.  In democratic societies, where change is continual, the
ties that
bind the individual with his ancestors have vanished, and those that connect him

with his fellow citizens have slackened.  Indifference and envy are democracy's
great defects. Tocqueville concludes:  Democracy makes each individual not
only forget his ancestors, but also neglect his descendents and separate himself

from his contemporaries: he is plunged forever into himself and, in the end, is
eternally surrounded by the solitude of his own soul" ,  A prophecy that has
been utterly fulfilled in our time.
I find modern societies repellent on two accounts. On the one hand, they have
taken the human race--a species in which each individual, according to all the
philosophies and religions, is a unique being-- and turned it into a homogeneous

mass; modern humans seem to have all come out of a factory, not a womb.
On the other hand, they have made every one of those beings a hermit.
Capitalist democracies have created uniformity, not equality, and they have
replaced fraternity with a perpetual struggle among individuals.  It was once
believed that, with the growth of the private sphere, the individual would have
more leisure time and would devote it to the arts, reading, and self-reflection.

We now know that people don't know what to do with their time.  They have
become slaves of entertainments that are generally idiotic, and the hours that
are not devoted to cash are spent in facile hedonism. I do not condemn the cult
of pleasure;  I lament the general vulgarity.
I note the evilsw of contemporary individualism not to defend the caste system,
but to mitigate a little the hypocritical horror it provokes among our
contemporaries.
Castes must not disappear so that its victims may turn into the servants of
the
voracious gods of individualism, but rather that, between us, we may discover
a fraternity.

Durant wrote:

> Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive
> to the point where our population level out without any
> war or other means of mass death,
> if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global
> cooperative employment of the best science we can muster.
> It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system.
> It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily.
>
> Eva
>
> > Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" .  Most people still don't
> > "get" it.  The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him
> > and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to
> > drive a van.  They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers
> > who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy.
> > The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness"
> > does not depend on material wealth.  To be rich is glorious.  But to be
> > happy?
> > Melanie
> >
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]




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fn: Melanie Milanich
n:  ;Melanie Milanich
email;internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
x-mozilla-cpt:  ;0
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Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Steve Kurtz]

Density has multiple definitions.

Durant wrote:
> 
> So Jay is too late with his dioff stuff, we are all dead...
> this is a virtuall/mystical discussion on one of Mike's
> astral planes...

Re: democracy

[Durant]

>  Eva:
> > At present large densities of people in Japan, Holland,
> > etc have high standard of living and falling birth rates.
> 
> agreed
> 
> > At present population levels are not the cause of rising poverty, 
> > but the insane structure of economics and distribution.
> 
> Without parasitic imports of food, energy, etc., Japan & Holland couldn't
> maintain those populations. What they take from other locales CAUSES
> shortages & poverty remotely. Your mention of "distribution" has partial
> relevance! 
> 
> > If all your scientists are incapable of seeing such an
> > evident fact, I don't
> > give a damn for their opinion. 
> 
> No matter how you slice up an insufficient pie, the slices won't provode
> sustanance for 
> all humans. 
> 
> Steve
> 

At the moment it is a big enough pie, however if we let
the market rip off the environment and of most of humanity
it won't be. This is also  where the population growth slowing problem
converges to.  You chop the population in half with whatever
nasty means, and poverty/malnutrition will be still abound,
as it was in the dark ages, when population problem did not exist.
Avoid this and go on about blaiming the great unwashed for 
multiplying, won't take you very far. 

Eva
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Melanie Milanich]

Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" .  Most people still don't
"get" it.  The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him
and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to
drive a van.  They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers
who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy.
The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness"
does not depend on material wealth.  To be rich is glorious.  But to be
happy?
Melanie

Steve Kurtz wrote:

> Durant wrote:
>
> > At the moment it is a big enough pie,
>
> Not according to thousands of scientists including majority of living Nobel
> winners. Not according to Wm. Rees & Mathis Wackernagel, _The Ecological
> Footprint_. Their estimate is that 2Billion is maximum population
> sustainable at the *current global average per capita consumption level*.
> (NOT the western/northern/developed level) If you won't dispute their data
> and calculations in a systematic way, you are merely indicating that you
> wish it were otherwise.
>
> The DAILY loss of species, the daily net drop in aquifers, topsoil, trees,
> marine life, ...are not refutable. Your plea is like a tape in a loop,
> replayed ad infinitum without evidence.
>
> Mid-winter break for me; next episode in Spring.
>
> Steve




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n:  ;Melanie Milanich
email;internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: democracy/cornucopia

[Steve Kurtz]

Durant wrote:

> At the moment it is a big enough pie,

Not according to thousands of scientists including majority of living Nobel
winners. Not according to Wm. Rees & Mathis Wackernagel, _The Ecological
Footprint_. Their estimate is that 2Billion is maximum population
sustainable at the *current global average per capita consumption level*.
(NOT the western/northern/developed level) If you won't dispute their data
and calculations in a systematic way, you are merely indicating that you
wish it were otherwise.

The DAILY loss of species, the daily net drop in aquifers, topsoil, trees,
marine life, ...are not refutable. Your plea is like a tape in a loop,
replayed ad infinitum without evidence.

Mid-winter break for me; next episode in Spring.

Steve

Re: democracy

[Durant]

> 
> >Again the cornucopian fallacy raises its ugly head. 
> 
> My grubbing in the late-Victorian archive makes me suspicious of undefined
> uses of the word "fallacy". The late-Victorian legacy can be roughly
> translated as  "My class prejudice is Truth, yours (the one that _I_
> attribute to you) is fallacy."
> 
> What kind of a *fallacy*, then, is this "cornucopian fallacy"? Is it a straw
> man? An ad hominem? A reductio ad absurdum? Is it a forceful way of saying,
> "I won't listen to you because (people like) you are not worth listening to"?
> 
>

and what is cornucopian? The dictionary goes on about some goat's 
horn with ornaments...

Eva 
> Tom Walker
> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy

[Durant]

At present large densities of people in Japan, Holland,
etc have high standard of living and falling birth rates.
At present population levels are not the cause of rising poverty, 
but the insane structure of economics and distribution.
If all your scientists are incapable of seeing such an
evident fact, I don't
give a damn for their opinion. 

Eva

> >  individual freedoms
> > would be only lessened for a small minority,
> > for the rest I think a change to the future
> > I advocate would mean more individual freedom.
> 
> This is your great speculative hope. If the worlds scientists are to be
> believed(back to dieoff.org for multiple exhibits of declarations signed by
> thousands), then freedoms shrink daily with NET 250,000 human pop. increase
> & daily loss/pollution of vital resources. Are we to believe you or the
> thousands of concerned scientists? Freedom is constrained/limited by
> life(growing) demands & available (shrinking)options. Again the cornucopian
> fallacy raises its ugly head. 
> 
> Is my writing unclear to other readers?
> 
> Steve
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy

[Steve Kurtz]

 Eva:
> At present large densities of people in Japan, Holland,
> etc have high standard of living and falling birth rates.

agreed

> At present population levels are not the cause of rising poverty, 
> but the insane structure of economics and distribution.

Without parasitic imports of food, energy, etc., Japan & Holland couldn't
maintain those populations. What they take from other locales CAUSES
shortages & poverty remotely. Your mention of "distribution" has partial
relevance! 

> If all your scientists are incapable of seeing such an
> evident fact, I don't
> give a damn for their opinion. 

No matter how you slice up an insufficient pie, the slices won't provode
sustanance for 
all humans. 

Steve

Re: democracy

[Ray E. Harrell]

I hesitate to get involved since so much of this feels like talking past
each other.
In my business I deal with people from a lot of different language
cultures and
from cultures who use the same language but in different ways.   Math
and Physics
are about the only languages possible in these situations and only
because they
are so relatively simple and linear.  The other modes of communication
demand more
respect for life's experiences and a willingness to really find out what
the other person
means by what they have  written.

So an unambiguous fact about Democracy, is that Iceland has had one
longer
than any Western Country as was pointed out to me on this list last
year.

There are also many pure Democracies in traditional cultures around the
world.
They are however, remarkably weak militarily and usually small in
numbers.

We had several in this hemisphere with the "Cuna" in Panama being the
oldest.
It is generally considered to be a couple of thousand years old,
although
I don't know how they can tell.  Their governmental form is the "town
meeting" similar
to the old New England version that the settlers took from the Quakers
and the
Iroquois Confederacy's "Great Law of Peace".

It is my understanding that the Maori in New Zealand are also a pure
Democracy
but perhaps one of our New Zealand list members could help with that
more than I.

The problem of respect, compassion and tradition that allows people to
leave
each other alone to work out their lives and yet cooperate together
governmentally
is not insurmountable.  You just have to be willing to agree that
nothing will be
perfect and that you committ yourself to the children that are to come
at all
costs.

As for science and knowledge.  Developing people's whole potential and
sensitively
dealing with the rigidity of that which is passing, in a positive
manner, allows
change to happen without the anger and destruction.   Every group has
something
to offer and it is THAT truth that must always remain before us.
Otherwise it is just
a perpetual adolescence and we are condemned to always resent the young.

REH



Eva Durant wrote:

> >>I pointed out (often), that there are fundamental conditions for
> >>a proper working democracy, and these conditions did not
> >>exist in our history so far.
>
> >Then the reasonable observer would conclude they never will.
>
> What about universal literacy? What about
> the technology to make information
> universally available and open for everyone?
> What about the capacity to produce all
> basic necessities in abundance?
> What about basic experience in democratic de-
> cisionmaking?
>
> To my knowledge, some of these conditions
> only existed for less than 100 years and on
> the others we are still working on.
>
> So, who is this reasonable observer?
>
> Eva
>
> >Jay

Re: democracy

[Eva Durant]

I only respond to bits that are clear
enough for me to comprehend...
>From the latter message about the
only concept I managed was "concern"...

>From the one next - individual freedoms
would be only lessened for a small minority,
for the rest I think a change to the future
I advocate would mean more individual freedom.

I don't know how you define intelligence.
I thought we are all capable listen to reason
and make decisions for a future we can visualise, 
but most of us don't have the
opportunity to do so.

Eva

> Eva,
> 
> You persist in not addressing the words of your antagonists, & respond
> based upon your revisionist interpretations, ignoring parts that would be
> inconsistent with your ideal.
> See the second para. below. Note that Jay & I fully expect humans to either
> revolt/self-destruct *or* to wake-up to the lessening of individual
> freedoms required for the 'common good'. The "intelligence" you seek to
> objectify is nothing more than total adaptive fitness to habitat, including
> creative & scientific aspects. Humans are not divisible in actuality, only
> by theoreticians.
> 
> Steve
> 
> > Not contempt, Eva. Concern. The decline isn't limited to mental
> > (brain/nervous system). No species is composed of exact replicas/equals.
> > Adaptive fitness is a reality. Humans are the only species known that
> > attempts to make differences disappear - a physical impossibility. For
> > those dealing in 'souls' or 'spirits', I have nothing to say, and you have
> > nothing to show us. 
> > 
> > This doesn't make deep democracy impossible; recall Garrett Harden's
> > "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" as the rational way forward. (see
> > Jay's site: dieoff.org)
> >
> 

Re: democracy

[Steve Kurtz]

Eva:
>  individual freedoms
> would be only lessened for a small minority,
> for the rest I think a change to the future
> I advocate would mean more individual freedom.

This is your great speculative hope. If the worlds scientists are to be
believed(back to dieoff.org for multiple exhibits of declarations signed by
thousands), then freedoms shrink daily with NET 250,000 human pop. increase
& daily loss/pollution of vital resources. Are we to believe you or the
thousands of concerned scientists? Freedom is constrained/limited by
life(growing) demands & available (shrinking)options. Again the cornucopian
fallacy raises its ugly head. 

Is my writing unclear to other readers?

Steve

Re: democracy

[Tom Walker]

Steve Kurtz wrote,

>Again the cornucopian fallacy raises its ugly head. 

My grubbing in the late-Victorian archive makes me suspicious of undefined
uses of the word "fallacy". The late-Victorian legacy can be roughly
translated as  "My class prejudice is Truth, yours (the one that _I_
attribute to you) is fallacy."

What kind of a *fallacy*, then, is this "cornucopian fallacy"? Is it a straw
man? An ad hominem? A reductio ad absurdum? Is it a forceful way of saying,
"I won't listen to you because (people like) you are not worth listening to"?


Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

Re: democracy

[Steve Kurtz]

Eva,

You persist in not addressing the words of your antagonists, & respond
based upon your revisionist interpretations, ignoring parts that would be
inconsistent with your ideal.
See the second para. below. Note that Jay & I fully expect humans to either
revolt/self-destruct *or* to wake-up to the lessening of individual
freedoms required for the 'common good'. The "intelligence" you seek to
objectify is nothing more than total adaptive fitness to habitat, including
creative & scientific aspects. Humans are not divisible in actuality, only
by theoreticians.

Steve

> Not contempt, Eva. Concern. The decline isn't limited to mental
> (brain/nervous system). No species is composed of exact replicas/equals.
> Adaptive fitness is a reality. Humans are the only species known that
> attempts to make differences disappear - a physical impossibility. For
> those dealing in 'souls' or 'spirits', I have nothing to say, and you have
> nothing to show us. 
> 
> This doesn't make deep democracy impossible; recall Garrett Harden's
> "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" as the rational way forward. (see
> Jay's site: dieoff.org)
>

Re: democracy

[Durant]

We were tallking about intelligence, not some rare genetic
decease. It is not even an accepted fact that intelligence
is inheritable. So - you are saying, that most of humanity
is less intelligent than used to be? I'd like to see your
evidence, please.  And I don't like  the "concern"
neither. It's like Stalin or Pinochet looking at
infants they need punish at times, purely out of concern
for orderliness.   
I dispare. If you represent today's intelligentia,
I start to understand people being deeply suspicious -
they show more intelligence than I had so far in this respect.

Eva


> 
> > Not informed , yes. But not intelligent?? I wasn't aware of
> > any decline in public intelligence. Any data?
> > Voting and tv vieing habits are not valid - they belong to
> > the "not informed" bit.
> > 
> > I am seriously concerned now. How many of this list have
> > this total contempt for most of humanity???
> > 
> 
> Not contempt, Eva. Concern. The decline isn't limited to mental
> (brain/nervous system). No species is composed of exact replicas/equals.
> Adaptive fitness is a reality. Humans are the only species known that
> attempts to make differences disappear - a physical impossibility. For
> those dealing in 'souls' or 'spirits', I have nothing to say, and you have
> nothing to show us. 
> 
> This doesn't make deep democracy impossible; recall Garrett Harden's
> "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" as the rational way forward. (see
> Jay's site: dieoff.org)
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> See this report from yesterday's BBC:
> 
> 
> Humans may be collecting bad genes
> January 27,  BBC Net
> 
> 
>Better health care might be causing humans to become weaker.
>Humans could be getting weaker and sicker with each new generation
> because of a build up of bad genes.
>Most animals weed out harmful genetic mutations by natural
> selection -- only the fittest survive long enough to reproduce. But in
> humans the weak have been prevented from dying out by improvements in
> standards of living and health care.
>Commenting on the research published in Nature, James Crow, from the
> University of Wisconsin in Madison, said it was likely that in this
> situation natural selection would "weed out mutations more slowly than they
> accumulate".
>He said: "Are some of our headaches, stomach upsets, weak eyesight
> and other ailments the result of mutation accumulation? Probably, but in
> our
> present state of knowledge we can only speculate."
>Geneticists Adam Eyre-Walker, from the University of Sussex in
> Brighton, and Peter Keightley, from the University of Edinburgh carried out
> the new research. They calculated the rate at which human genes have
> mutated
> since our ancestors split from chimpanzees six million years ago.
>Keightley told the BBC: "We estimate that about 4.2 new mutations
> have occurred on average every generation in the human lineage since we
> diverged from the chimpanzees, and that 1.6 of those are deleterious."
>That rate is so high that without other factors intervening the
> human
> race should be extinct by now.
>One possible reason that humans have survived is that in the past
> natural selection eliminated handfuls of harmful genes because individuals
> with lots of mutations died early, before reproducing.
>But it is also likely that genes which were only slightly harmful
> became "fixed" in successive generations. Over time these would accumulate,
> especially if improving living standards and health care meant that the
> harmful genes were less of a handicap for survival.
> 
> (more links on the URL above)
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: democracy

[Edward Weick]

>
>> As Ed Weick pointed out last year on this list.  Such "scientific"
economic
>> writings as Marx and others are less science and more philosophy in spite
of
>> the Complexity Engineer's love of Huyek's writing structures.   If I
remember
>> right Ed said that they didn't really qualify being called Economists in
the
>> modern scientific sense.   But Ed will have to say whether my memory is
correct
>> or just all in my head.
>>


Yoiks!  I think I'm in trouble.  If I said that Marx and other 19th century
economists were philosophers, I was probably right.  I'll give myself the
benefit of the doubt.  However, I'd have to go back and see what I said.  I
may have deleted it by now, so I'm probably off the hook.

Ed

Re: democracy

[Eva Durant]

> 
> > Anyone who uses the winners/losers biological
> > evolution argument for the development of human society
> > is ready to blame the failures of social structure
> > on human characteristics, and ready to condemn
> > sections of society, rather than to condenm
> > inefficient social structures.  A straight
> > and sinister road to fascism.
> 
> Interesting thought but the economists who wrote the "Winner Take All Society"
> define this issue in the reverse.  The ones pushing Winner/Loser or Social
> Darwinian "Creative Greed" solutions blame the social governmental structures
> as not
> being efficient in their very nature.  According to them, only the private
> companies
> that have to live by the free market "natural selection" competitive process
> have the
> potential for efficiency, which is often interchanged with "productivity"
> although
> that is a confusing use of the two words.
>

Because they think without the intrusion of govrnments,
the winners/losers separation would be more perfect
for them. So that they can blame then every ill
on just their "inefficiently evolved" victims.


...
> 
> The propaganda of the left is amply criticized in the media in the West but a
> truly
> non-military economic competition between structures of the far left and right
> has never
> happened so we can't really call Capitalism, Socialisms, Communism or any other
> 
> economic ism scientific or Darwinian in that sense IMO.
> 

you lost me here. Just because they haven't competed,
doesn't mean we cannot draw conclusions, even scientific
conclusions. Your examples that I deleted show the shortcomings
of the competitive setup for sustainability and R&D.
Even just these two problems cannot be solved
based on market compotition system and there are more
such fatal flows. So surely, you try to achieve
a society without these flaws. 


> 
> As Ed Weick pointed out last year on this list.  Such "scientific" economic
> writings as Marx and others are less science and more philosophy in spite of
> the Complexity Engineer's love of Huyek's writing structures.   If I remember
> right Ed said that they didn't really qualify being called Economists in the
> modern scientific sense.   But Ed will have to say whether my memory is correct
> or just all in my head.
>

I find Marx's analysis scientific, because he manages 
to point out the features of capitalism that
are unable to achieve a balanced economical 
and social development. It makes sense to leave
them out from a future structure. This
is what he proposed with very good reasoning, using all
the historical and scientific data he had.
That he had also had the philosophical support of
dialectic materialism is just an extra plus.  

Eva

 
> REH
> 
> 
> 

Re: democracy

[Ray E. Harrell]

Eva Durant wrote: (snip)

> Because they think without the intrusion of govrnments,
> the winners/losers separation would be more perfect
> for them. So that they can blame then every ill
> on just their "inefficiently evolved" victims.

Are you saying it is like the Christian who blames Christians for the failure of
Christianity and not Christ?

> (snip)
> you lost me here. Just because they haven't competed,
> doesn't mean we cannot draw conclusions, even scientific
> conclusions.

How can you be logical about something that is simply theory?  Don't youneed real
data before you can call it scientific?The military option that I
mentioned pollutes the test of the integrity of the systems IMO.   Your
statement is an example of the assumptions that make an evaluation
difficult.  Suppose we begin with just the theory and then the data as to
the success of that theory.  Everything else is philosophy or prejudice, yes?

> Your examples that I deleted show the shortcomings
> of the competitive setup for sustainability and R&D.

They weren't examples but questions that I would like to discuss.Theoretical problems
to be explored.

> Even just these two problems cannot be solved
> based on market compotition system and there are more
> such fatal flows.

I am not tied to the market as the only system although considering themarket as one
of the systems is a good idea IMHO.

> So surely, you try to achieve
> a society without these flaws.

Actually I'm much too practical to believe in systems without flaws.But exploring
practically the future of work, the growth of both individuals
and systems and individual evolution fascilitated by an environment
that allows for all of the human endeavors, is in my mind, a worthy
exploration.

> I find Marx's analysis scientific, because he manages
> to point out the features of capitalism that
> are unable to achieve a balanced economical
> and social development. It makes sense to leave
> them out from a future structure. This
> is what he proposed with very good reasoning, using all
> the historical and scientific data he had.
> That he had also had the philosophical support of
> dialectic materialism is just an extra plus.

This sounds much like the comments that I hear about Hayek on the right
and his science.I'm not an expert on him but I certainly have heard a lot
about him from our Libertarian right wing.Can both be truly scientific and
diametrically opposed?Can we draw any conclusions about that without
the input of competitive data? minus the military option?

REH

Re: democracy

[Jay Hanson]

- Original Message -
From: Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>We were tallking about intelligence, not some rare genetic
>decease. It is not even an accepted fact that intelligence
>is inheritable. So - you are saying, that most of humanity

I don't want to get in a fight about IQ, but the scientists say it is at
least partially inherited  Besides the discipline of evolutionary
psychology,
the molecular biologists (who have nothing to evolutionary theory) find that
genes have a great deal to do with human behavior:

"The emerging science of molecular biology has made startling discoveries
that show beyond a doubt that genes are the single most important factor
that distinguishes one person from another. We come in large part ready-made
from the factory. We accept that we look like our parents and other blood
relatives; we have a harder time with the idea that we also act like them.
In other species, we value and encourage genetic differences in
'personality.' Consider the difference between a Wisconsin dairy cow and a
bull from Pamplona, or a golden retriever and a pit bull. Human breeding is
less orderly, but children do share personality traits with their parents.
Every grown man has experienced a shock of realization when he does
something exactly like his father before him. Every mother has a similar
experience when a child behaves exactly like her. This is not bad; it's
beautiful. This does not mean we are doomed to become our parents; it means
we begin our journeys where our parents left off." [pp. 11,12, LIVING WITH
OUR GENES: Why They Matter More Than You Think, by Dean Homer & Peter
Copeland; Doubleday, 1988 ]

But getting people to accept new knowlege has always been difficult:

"… wherein it is set forth that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus, that
the Earth moves around the Sun and that the Sun is stationary in the center
of the world and does not move from east to west, is contrary to the Holy
Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we
have written and subscribed these presents with our hand this twenty-sixth
day of May, 1616." -- Robertro Cardinal Bellarmino

"Of all hatreds, there is none greater than that of ignorance against
knowledge." -- Galileo Galilei, June 30, 1616

Jay

Re: democracy

[Steve Kurtz]

Eva Durant wrote:

> Not informed , yes. But not intelligent?? I wasn't aware of
> any decline in public intelligence. Any data?
> Voting and tv vieing habits are not valid - they belong to
> the "not informed" bit.
> 
> I am seriously concerned now. How many of this list have
> this total contempt for most of humanity???
> 

Not contempt, Eva. Concern. The decline isn't limited to mental
(brain/nervous system). No species is composed of exact replicas/equals.
Adaptive fitness is a reality. Humans are the only species known that
attempts to make differences disappear - a physical impossibility. For
those dealing in 'souls' or 'spirits', I have nothing to say, and you have
nothing to show us. 

This doesn't make deep democracy impossible; recall Garrett Harden's
"mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" as the rational way forward. (see
Jay's site: dieoff.org)

Steve


See this report from yesterday's BBC:


Humans may be collecting bad genes
January 27,  BBC Net


   Better health care might be causing humans to become weaker.
   Humans could be getting weaker and sicker with each new generation
because of a build up of bad genes.
   Most animals weed out harmful genetic mutations by natural
selection -- only the fittest survive long enough to reproduce. But in
humans the weak have been prevented from dying out by improvements in
standards of living and health care.
   Commenting on the research published in Nature, James Crow, from the
University of Wisconsin in Madison, said it was likely that in this
situation natural selection would "weed out mutations more slowly than they
accumulate".
   He said: "Are some of our headaches, stomach upsets, weak eyesight
and other ailments the result of mutation accumulation? Probably, but in
our
present state of knowledge we can only speculate."
   Geneticists Adam Eyre-Walker, from the University of Sussex in
Brighton, and Peter Keightley, from the University of Edinburgh carried out
the new research. They calculated the rate at which human genes have
mutated
since our ancestors split from chimpanzees six million years ago.
   Keightley told the BBC: "We estimate that about 4.2 new mutations
have occurred on average every generation in the human lineage since we
diverged from the chimpanzees, and that 1.6 of those are deleterious."
   That rate is so high that without other factors intervening the
human
race should be extinct by now.
   One possible reason that humans have survived is that in the past
natural selection eliminated handfuls of harmful genes because individuals
with lots of mutations died early, before reproducing.
   But it is also likely that genes which were only slightly harmful
became "fixed" in successive generations. Over time these would accumulate,
especially if improving living standards and health care meant that the
harmful genes were less of a handicap for survival.

(more links on the URL above)

Re: democracy

[Ray E. Harrell]

Eva Durant wrote:

> Anyone who uses the winners/losers biological
> evolution argument for the development of human society
> is ready to blame the failures of social structure
> on human characteristics, and ready to condemn
> sections of society, rather than to condenm
> inefficient social structures.  A straight
> and sinister road to fascism.

Interesting thought but the economists who wrote the "Winner Take All Society"
define this issue in the reverse.  The ones pushing Winner/Loser or Social
Darwinian "Creative Greed" solutions blame the social governmental structures
as not
being efficient in their very nature.  According to them, only the private
companies
that have to live by the free market "natural selection" competitive process
have the
potential for efficiency, which is often interchanged with "productivity"
although
that is a confusing use of the two words.

I think a very good discussion could be had on this competitive issue but
we must first give up our predispositions for a genuine exploration of the
principles and processes involved.For example,

1. how do private "clone" companies keep from using up the resources available
in their all out pursuit of "natural selection?"  (competitive advantage)

2. what about the contradiction between the necessary simplicity of "economies
of scale" and the complexity of truly innovative solutions to complex social
and cultural problems within their economic projections?

3. The same as 2 except the issue of expensive R & D which companies never
really have the money to do unless in a monopolistic situation.   (with the
drug companies in the U.S. as a prime example.  They have a "productivity lag"
in the development of new drugs not unlike the same "lag" in the development of
new theatrical and film products.  The price to recoup their initial investment
is beyond the ability of the consumer to pay.   In that case private HMOs
function like the government in keeping down costs except to the satisfaction
of no one.)

The propaganda of the left is amply criticized in the media in the West but a
truly
non-military economic competition between structures of the far left and right
has never
happened so we can't really call Capitalism, Socialisms, Communism or any other

economic ism scientific or Darwinian in that sense IMO.

On these lists, whenever
I have questioned the proponents of these isms as to the data on their
successes
and failures in competition, they have not been able to answer apart from the
military
component.  In the case of the far right, their ideals and an example of a
successful
use of those ideals in real world has been very "Christian like" in the defense
of the
system and the failure of everyone to live up to it.

As Ed Weick pointed out last year on this list.  Such "scientific" economic
writings as Marx and others are less science and more philosophy in spite of
the Complexity Engineer's love of Huyek's writing structures.   If I remember
right Ed said that they didn't really qualify being called Economists in the
modern scientific sense.   But Ed will have to say whether my memory is correct
or just all in my head.

REH