Greetings:

I hope all is back to normal now that the power has come back on. I
thought Kitty's post was very interesting: thank you for sharing what
happened.

[Yes, Erich, life is pretty much back to normal, though there are many
computer-related tasks backlogged and awaiting our attention. This morning (8/7)
we heard on Toronto radio news that ~20,000 customers are still without power,
more than 96 hours after the storm; these are homes and cottages (typically
vacation properties) in central Ontario including the Bancroft area, the town
where we do major shopping every 2 weeks. The radio station there has been back
on the air since the day before we our power returned - we'd been listening
occasionally via our car radio to whatever stations we could pick up. It appears
that there were *numerous* places where lines were downed by fallen trees (at
least 2 on the road to Wilberforce where we get our mail and which had power,
reported to us by our neighbors Friday morning after they came up from Toronto
late Thursday night for the holiday weekend) in addition to the 2 major
locations that were mentioned on the Toronto news station Thursday morning.
Hydro One's outage prevention methods seriously need to be re-evaluated; trees
in many locations are apparently not sufficiently cut back to avoid falling on
power lines in very strong winds or heavy icing conditions.

Later note: As of 8/8 early afternoon there are still ~1700 customers in the
Bancroft area without electricity - per the local radio station. And we have
learned from other Harcourt Parkers (actually cottagers up for the long weekend)
of downed lines (and blocked roads from fallen trees) within the Park itself as
a result of last Wednesday's storm that were not fixed until shortly before our
power returned last Saturday (8/5) just before noon. **Kitty]


I came across this flash animation of the Philosophy of Liberty and
thought you all might find it interesting:

http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Freedom/Articles/PhilosophyOfLiberty-english.swf

Have you ever considered constructing something similar to get your
ideas across in a more layperson's way?

[I and Paul have thought many times that it would be great to have someone
talented in the necessary skills offer to work with us to present the ideas of
the Self-Sovereign Individual Project in a novel or fictional documentary
format, or as an animated computer graphic. Neither one of us is talented in
those areas - and writing good fiction or developing a good Flash production,
either of which would draw the attention of large numbers of people, do require
talent as well as strong interest in the subject material.

We two can't do everything. Paul has spent many years working on his
philosophical ideas and has much yet to do. The Natural Social Contract and the
annotation files for which we provided a link here at the group still are not
complete, awaiting his being able to devote undivided attention for lengthy
periods. The work necessary to make the cottage a fully workable warm months
residence have taken precedence, but is itself interrupted by necessary online
work, including research. The needed mid-summer trips to Arizona (chiefly for
our every 3 month supplement stock-up), take a big chunk of time especially
since our computer systems in both locations are not yet fully compatible within
and between themselves (particularly after our recent changeover to Linux); this
alone demands much of Paul's energy with each change of location. If we had
sufficient assets/income then most of these time consuming tasks could be
greatly reduced (by purchase of equipment and services). On the other hand, the
changes and variety of tasks is probably healthy for both of us.

The link you sent turns out to be of the animated production that can be seen at
http://www.jonathangullible.com/ It is the same we viewed before being placed
online almost exactly 4 years ago, in 2002. When we first saw Ken Schoolland's
text in "Philosophy of Liberty", Flash animated by Lux Lucre, at the home of a
longtime libertarian acquaintance of Paul's, we were technically impressed.
Paul, though, was quick to note its philosophical shortcomings which are those
of almost all self-designated libertarians; these were given in email to this
acquaintance who has for years been active in ISIL (International Society for
Individual Liberty), hopefully to be forwarded on to Ken who had created the
text based on a book from the early 80s, "The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible".
She (Paul's libertarian acquaintance) notified us and others that comments had
been "passed on", however, it is clear that no philosophical changes were ever
made. Even with its definite philosophical flaws, this Flash production is well
done and the society it attempts to define is closer to what we consider
appropriate to humans than what exists, even if still not capable of sustaining
itself.

Despite his growing number of writings on SelfSIP.org (which we had not even
conceived when first viewing the Flash "Introduction to Liberty") and postings
to several libertarian-oriented forums and article comment blogs, Paul received
no response to emails sent to several individuals who are viewed as libertarian
"authorities" - public "challenges" via SelfSIP dialogues still await response
and there are many more that Paul hopes to someday put in writing. The few
individuals of public renown who have replied to Paul in public forums have
never done so with any specific questions or comments regarding his writings; it
appeared that they had never read them but had to write something.

Having a novel, or even an online computer animation, convey how a society could
operate on the principles of Social Meta-Needs would be highly advantageous
toward making those ideas visible and understandable to large numbers of
individuals. We would be extremely pleased to have some others work with us on
such a project. If any of those reading this post have the required skills and
interest, they need only contact us to initiate discussion. If you or others
don't yourself have the needed skills but you are interested in promoting the
principles of Social Meta-Needs and know others who write good fiction or are
skilled computer graphic designers and would likely find the philosophical ideas
Paul has presented to be challenging at least, then please do contact them
suggesting a worthwhile project.

We at this end look forward to hearing from others who themselves are willing to
work with us (and there are other ideas I haven't mentioned and ones others may
have also) - we can't do everything ourselves and definitely have no
reservations in sharing credit for spreading good ideas. **Kitty]


Erich