Meta
Since the policy of both I and Kitty waiting at least 7 days before
responding to any message has not had any positive effect towards
promoting more responses from other group members, I have decided to
rescind that self-imposed restriction and simply reply when and if I
decide to. The group policy will soon be changed accordingly and a
formal special notice of this change will be sent, but I needed to place
this here, to explain my response at this time.
/Meta

On 04/17/2009 08:35 PM, Steve C. Floyd Jr. wrote:
> Paul Antonik Wakfer wrote:
>
>> This is to notify everyone that Kitty has written and had published on
>> OpEdNews.com, http://tinyurl.com/dlzbug , an excellent article with
>> the above title. When informed of the article, Tom Knapp, editor of
>> RRND (Rational Review News Digest), replied that it was FANTASTIC and
>> stated that it would be headlined in Monday's edition of RRND.
>> Although we will also be placing this in the focus section of SelfSIP
>> within the next few days, I decided that this message should be a
>> special notice at this time because comments are only allowed at
>> OpEdNews for a limited time after an item appears.
>>
>> This article has come about because Kitty has thoroughly understood
>> and integrated the ideas of the Self Sovereign Individual Project,
>> particularly from the essay introducing the concept of Social
>> Meta-Needs with it twin implementations through Social Preferencing
>> and the Natural Social Contract. I was particularly pleased that the
>> piece also required very little editing from me. Of course it greatly
>> helps that she was a part of the discovery and development of those
>> ideas, but such deep understanding and full integration is certainly
>> not beyond the powers of many others.
>>
>> We both look forward to a time when many more people (first a few,
>> then dozens and finally hundreds! :-) have accomplished this deep
>> understanding and full integration and are presenting their own unique
>> and persuasive examples and interpretations of these novel and
>> profound social ideas in practical human social action.
>>
>> --Paul
>>
>> [The RRND commentary webpage currently has my article at the top of
>> its list - http://www.rationalreview.com/news#commentary :>)
>>
>> As I wrote Tom when I sent him notice of the article's publication, I
>> purposely submitted this article, Tax/Regulation Protests are Not
>> Enough at OpEdNews.com because it is a "progressive" news site and
>> while many there have some of the wrong ideas of how to get to and
>> even in some ways what constitutes a better society, it is clear that
>> all writers and commenters there really do want one. I think that
>> there can be inroads made by reaching out beyond the "choir" with this
>> view of those who do not currently hold some of the same views by
>> finding some foundational common points. I am pleased that the
>> managing editor, after rereading and reconsidering, moved my
>> submission from a diary entry to which she had downgraded it, to a
>> headlined article. **Kitty]
>
> Thank you for sending the notification about, and link to, Kitty's
> article on OpEdNews. I spent some time to create a profile on the site
> so I can comment on someone else's comment. I enjoyed the article. The
> following is an excerpt from Kitty's article that I will comment on:
>
> (begin-quote)"Today (2009), electronic access to countless sources of
> information (many not even available 40 years ago) and rapid lengthy
> communication with virtually anyone else can be had by the vast majority
> of those in the industrialized areas of the world and much of what is
> still on the road to "development". It is a rare person (adult and
> child) in the US who does not have access to, if not actually own, hir
> own computer; many have computer features in their cellular phones. For
> an individual in the US (and much of the world) these days to be
> informed on everything that happens currently or in the past and on
> ideas published by anyone currently or in the past is now mostly a
> matter of interest/desire/time rather than purely technical and/or cost
> availability.
>
> So the questions can and should be asked, "Why does the individual still
> need to be ruled by others? Is there not a better way now to achieve
> social order than by some centralized governing body to which an
> individual can, at best, only have an effect if part of a majority
> casting votes for a particular candidate/bond/referendum in a particular
> election?"" (end-quote)
>
> Meta
> A standard old method of quoting a long piece (as above) is to use
> "guillemets", which are either ">>" or "<<" marks at the beginning and
> end of the quote (see Kitty's example of this in her response to one
> of the commenters on OpEdNews). You could also use something equivalent
> to my Meta tags as: "Quote" and "/Quote" (which originate from the
> methods used in markup languages).

To continue here a bit more, your "(begin-quote)" and "(end-quote)"
are the right idea, but I contend that it is far better to use a set
standard for such indicators rather than for everyone to invent their
own method and thereby potentially confuse the reader with their
meaning and intention.

> /Meta
>
> I am commenting on this passage in particular because when I read it, I
> integrated several ideas which I hadn't previously considered (see my
> comment tonight to JonmarkP, where I discuss these ideas). More
> specifically, I hadn't considered the idea that the functions of
> government may be obsolete *because of* communication technologies
> such as the Internet.

This has been my thesis in all parts of the Self-Sovereign Individual
Project, stated implicitly or explicitly several places therein.
Specifically, when I critiqued the founding documents, particularly the
Declaration of Independence, I observed that it: "was written with the
best of intentions and with all the knowledge and wisdom which was
reasonably possible to be held by the best of men at that time in
history." The non-technological environment (particularly with respect
to speed of communication over any distance) of the time was the major
factor limiting even the most brilliant thinkers from discovering the
ideas that I have presented in my Social Meta-Needs treatise and most
certainly would make my implementations of them not even considered
because of the total impracticality in that era of those implementations
to any significant size and extent of a society. This is why I can
both revere the founding fathers and yet find great fault with what they
wrote and did - fault, that is, with respect to any thought of its being
able to work effectively in the modern world.

In the past, and still today to some extent, in small isolated
communities the effects of information from town gossips and the service
people, who interacted with lots of locals, enabled the people of the
community to maintain a reasonable knowledge about and evaluation of
each other and thereby to effect a strong level of social preferencing
to the benefit of all. Unfortunately there were still many irrational
biases and misunderstandings used as part of that evaluation and
preferencing. The movements to eliminate such biases has had the
negative effect of also eliminating the rational aspects and beneficial
effects of such social preferencing - like the old saying "throwing out
the baby with the bathwater". In addition, once communities grew larger,
the rational aspects of social preferencing became harder to practice
and use, and nothing was left but the simpler irrational aspects (such
as one's religion, skin color, dress or hair style).

> When information exchange is as fast and
> readily-accessible as it is now (and may continue to improve), it
> greatly facilitates cooperation between individuals for mutual benefit.

The Internet or successors of it will enable strong social preferencing
to once again be an effective source of social evaluation and ordering.
Just look at the current and growing enormous amount of information that
is available whenever you want to purchase a product. Eventually this
will become available for all paid services (if it is not outlawed by
governments) and then for all personal value for value services
including personal interactions of any kind. The Internet (the UCN of
my Natural Social Contract - which yes, will still expand enormously in
both speed and accessibility - it is only in its infancy as yet) will
enable all this to happen once people start to understand why and that
it is in their rational best interest to be fully open about themselves.

> However, such cooperation can't take place unless *both* (or all)
> parties pursue the same outcomes.

Yes, and this is the major stumbling point with most people. They say:
"if only *I* do these things that you ask then I will lose and others
will gain. So I am not even going to start unless and until sufficient
number of others (usually meaning at least a majority) also do so." I
have little answer to such people other than to say:
1) If no one starts these actions, then they will never get accepted
and done by anyone.
2) You can gain personal psychological benefit from doing them by
knowing that you are acting rationally and optimally to the betterment
of society.
3) You can do them by stages starting with situations which will not
cause you that much hardship. For example do not quit your government
job today, but act to transition to honest work (where you are not
effectively the receiver of stolen funds and have no real way of
determining if you are actually worth the money you are getting) over
the next couple years.

In the end some of us are going to have to be like the early settlers
who opened up the west (and like those who began the revolutionary
war, for that matter, only we will not use violence), striking out
ahead of the others, and, yes, sometimes getting arrows in our backs.
Still I am convinced there is great happiness in the form of personal
satisfaction and self-esteem to be gained from being such a creator,
initial adopter and pioneer of a changing social paradigm, even though
I admit that the complacency and myopia of others can get very
discouraging at times.

> Pursuit of an outcome requires
> motivation, motivation requires interest, interest requires recognition
> of a need or desire, and such recognition requires *paying attention
> to reality* - i.e. *being responsible for one's life*.

But you cannot begin by exhorting someone to "be responsible for hir
own life". You must first lead hir to understand that the purpose of
hir life is optimally increasing hir lifetime happiness (many people
still think they are here to serve others and you need to convince
them that they their help for others will only be effective if they
first and foremost aim to help themselves to more happiness). Only then
can you begin to show hir why and that the only rational way to do
this based on the longest range and widest viewed thinking is to be
open, forthright and fully responsible for both the negative and
positive results of all hir choices/actions.

[I think that this point that Paul has emphasized is of extremely high
importance when interacting with others, and one I did not always
remember to use in earlier writings - that a person's purpose, even if
s/he does not recognize it) is to maximize her lifetime happiness. The
word as Paul and I use it means to seek to maintain or attain in life
all that is important, necessarily using long view, wide range thinking -
because that is the only means by which such maximization is possible!
Being self-responsible is a necessary method for this attaining and
maintaining, but recognizing and then beginning to proclaim the lifetime
happiness purpose to one's self and others is a prerequisite. **Kitty]

> I have read about the "democratization" of China, where such
> communication technologies are enabling individuals to discuss ideas
> that are "forbidden" by the government. However, I hadn't applied the
> same idea to the United States and other "Western, developed" countries.
> Kitty's article explores this idea by discussing government,
> inter-individual cooperation, and both of the previous, in the light
> of the historical lack of efficient communication technologies.
>
> I recommend the article.

Max, your comments on OpEdNews were well written and very helpful. I
am very pleased to see you stop holding back and spending unreasonable
amounts of time trying to decide what to do, but instead charging in
and ACTING! I would not say this for everyone, because many people
have fundamentally incorrect ideas, and action by them can be worse
than inaction. However, even without having fully read and digested
SMN and all related writings, you have shown that you have a very good
logical grasp of many of the right ideas. Therefore, it is time for
you to get involved and to learn as you go along. I look forward to
increasing amounts of such writings from you, so that you are included
among those "few" that I mentioned in my original message in this
thread (see above).

--Paul