--- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Antonik Wakfer" <paul@...> 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.
>

Meta
Snip of Paul's & Kitty's explanations.
/Meta


Meta
The following is a response I made to a commenter to my article at
OpEdNews.com. It covered some important aspects of the article and
touched on the commenter's reading of the SMN theory essay.
/Meta

It's not necessary that everyone... [Title]
------------------------
"be as smart as [me]", as you put it.

First off, thank you, Roy, for a very substantive comment. There are
far too few of them at those few OpEdNews.com articles, that I
actually read. I think the practice of 1 to 3 sentence comments is
common partly because the enormous number of articles that are
submitted and published every day tends to encourage soundbite types
of retorts and/or praises. It is in fact difficult, I think, for the
newbie or only occasional reader at OEN to distinguish among writers
and make time worthy evaluations about what to read, skim or just
ignore. I understand why the editors themselves do not wish to make
such essentially censorship type evaluations and publication
decisions, but the vast numbers alone makes it very hard to find the
gems among the chaff. But then this current overload is a major
problem with information on the Internet in general, which will only
be resolved when each user begins to return and gain value for all
aspects of his/her (hir) usage.

<< Kitty, you present a very interesting and rational slant on the
concepts of personal liberty and individual responsibility in a
society. Your arguments are based on fundamentally libertarian
concepts, <<

While there are such things as "libertarian concepts", most are
ill-defined, ambiguous and incomplete. While many libertarian notions
are certainly in the right direction of thought and action, their
ambiguous nature and lack of basis in human nature makes them
inadequate for guiding social interactions. My practical suggestions -
the listed 6 items - did not actually come from libertarian concepts
at all. The idea of privacy adopted by most libertarians is, in fact,
directly opposed to any practical application of social preferencing.
Even worse is the insistence on anonymity adopted many libertarians,
which completely negates any possibility of social preferencing and
consequently, of any advance to a society of self-responsible
self-orderly individuals (which must necessarily also require the
ability of each member to efficiently evaluate the self-responsibility
and self-ordering actions of each other member with whom s/he
interacts).

<< but you take them beyond principle into the realm of practical
implementation. <<

Yes, this article has taken principles into the practical, rather than
simply repeating or lamenting as so very many articles do. However,
any principle that cannot be made practical is not only useless but
must, almost necessarily, be invalid. This is a point of logic and
epistemology, too often forgotten, not understood or ignored.

<< However, as much as I might agree with your message, I can't
envision it ever happening in the real world. There are simply too
many ignorant, apathetic, and irresponsible people who WANT the
government to make their decisions for them and to make YOUR decisions
for you too. <<

I don't envision "it" - large scale practice of the recommended list
of items - happening in the *current* society. I and Paul are trying
to find and encourage a cadre (nucleus or core group) of people to
begin to use these methods and others to work outside government and
lead the way for others to follow similarly. Some of the "ignorant,
apathetic, and irresponsible people" will wake up and see that this
works and follow suit, trying it out for themselves. But many will
continue on and, like the dinosaurs, will eventually be resigned to
oblivion. It is the young and even the children who are and will grow
up, who are and will be open to these new ways and will become the
greatest source of self-responsible individuals populating the newly
evolving self-ordered society.

<< Who's the comedian who said, "You can't fix stupid." Well, that's
exactly our problem. Unfortunately, to "Fix" society in the way you
propose, you have to first fix "Stupid," at least for a majority of
the population. I have recently started calling this the "Stupid
People Problem." <<

No, you don't fix "Stupid", and you don't even try to fix current
society. Rather you build a new society completely intermingled with
but largely ignoring the old one - gradually as described above - and
you leave the "stupid" to fix themselves or get left behind and be
eliminated by attrition. There have always been "ignorant, apathetic,
and irresponsible people", but in the past they were few in number and
either died off quickly or learned their lessons through reality's
"school of hard knocks" and changed their behavior. The problem has
only become so enormous because of the current and growing social
practices (since at least the last 70 years) which enable
irresponsible ("stupid") which have sought to eliminate the school of
hard knock and to enable irresponsible thinking and behavior to arise,
continue and even to flourish in terms of its number of
"practitioners". The most recent and current economic mess is a direct
result of this, though the vast majority of politicians and their
supporters/encouragers are scrambling to place the blame for it on
everything and anyone else than previous actions of government.
Keeping the populace complacent and dependent is a necessity for
governments to continue to exist; having self-responsible
self-regulating individuals would lead to the obvious conclusion for
vast numbers that governments are not just unnecessary but a hindrance
to those same people.

<< I read your husband's treatise on Social Meta-Needs. It is a very
precise and scholary (sic) work, but way over the heads of average voters.
I will admit I had to read parts of it twice myself. I enjoyed the
intellectual workout, but how many people would. "The Compossibility
of Ethical Egoism" is just one example of several concepts that very
few of the people who show up at the polls will have the ability
and/or desire to understand. <<

It has never been Paul's or my thought that the majority of current
readers would find his essay (and thank you for recognizing it as "a
very precise and scholarly work", something that no current
libertarian scholar appears yet ready to do) comprehensible. It most
definitely should have taken you 2 readings of some parts - it sure
did me (and more in some cases) when he was first creating it and then
during revisions. Paul has always been best as a teacher for the
highly intelligent and already knowledgeable, dating back to when he
taught advanced software engineers about the intricacies of the
super-computer hardware for which they were developing software, a
course he developed himself and taught world-wide for a number of
years in the late 70s and early 80s.

It has always been our goal to locate those initial relatively few
individuals who would be able to recognize the essential values in our
ideas, now crystallized by the foundational presentation of the theory
of Social Meta-Needs, through their own reading, and then
question/discuss with us (in public) those areas where the
implications are quite new and even radical. Our intended plan is to
have many more people (first a few, then dozens and finally hundreds!
:-) first accomplish this deep understanding and full integration, and
then present their own unique and persuasive examples and
interpretations of these novel and profound social ideas in practical
social actions.

<< (I have some issues with the idea of Rights vs. Meta-Needs, and
with the practicality of Victim defined restitution, but that's a bit
beyond the scope of this article.) <<

Now "victim defined restitution" is one of those ideas that is not at
all part of standard libertarian thinking (and would be soundly
rejected by most - likely for the same reasons that you are having
reservations about it). And it is a pleasure to see that you have you
picked up on this major item in the SMN theory.

We would have been very surprised, Roy, (and actually disappointed
too) if you did not have some questions/issues on what you read in the
theory of Social Meta-Needs. This idea and some others did not spring
fully formed into Paul's head. We had many, many months of discussions
between the 2 of us - after many years of background thinking by Paul.
Many conclusions held by Paul to be valid (and even more for me) were
changed by his own thinking during this process. For instance,
although victim-specified restitution appeared to be the only
conclusion that would be consist with our discovery and full
understanding of the nature of human beings, we too wrestled with the
idea for quite a while before we were could accept it as workable, and
only were able to do so when we began to understand the full
methodology and strength of social preferencing. But I hope that you
will raise your issue(s) at MoreLife Yahoo so that an in-depth
exchange can take place - OEN is just not structured for this type of
discussion. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/morelife/

<< I wish that more people were as smart as you, but the reality is
that there's more of them than there are of you. <<

The "ignorant, apathetic and irresponsible" do not really matter.
These individuals are powerless without enforcers to do their bidding
- granted that many of these are among the first. These latter must be
negatively socially preferenced into oblivion (ostracized, to use an
ancient term). It is the knowledgeable, concerned and responsible
individuals who matter in the world (this is the thesis of Ayn Rand's
novel "Atlas Shrugged") - and this in an essential point to keep in
mind for one's self and in associating with others. Ignore the former
and voluntarily deal only with the latter.

Another item that could be added to the list in my article is to avoid
all "voluntary" forms of taxes - those that are not built into the
system such as sales taxes are in the current society. Be
self-employed (a contractor) and preferentially associate with those
doing the same, while encouraging others in the same manner. Strongly
consider the practice of a profession or trade without yielding to the
current government interference between parties - have a contractual
relationship with those who want your services, which makes clear what
is involved, and initiate such a contractual relationship only with
those who are agreeable to the ideas in principle as well as practice.
(I can imagine business cards that promote this idea...) We have many
other ideas and I'm sure others can and will produce still many more
when they break the habit of thinking within the government-society
"box".

Once again, thank you, Roy. The opportunity to elaborate on the
initial ideas in the article is greatly welcome. Hopefully some of
those who read the article *and* the comments will be motivated to
become more self-responsible and self-orderly, the earliest start
towards that far better and eventually optimal society that most
people seek.

BTW I noted your comment on 4/2 to another article, the last portion
of yours:
"There is no solution to the problem [of distortion of words by
politicians] as long as there are simple minded people and politicians
who want to exploit them. I don't see the balance of rational to
emotional thinkers changing anytime in the foreseeable future."
[addition mine]
Your entire reply was well worded, though cynical. Possibly now, after
reading my article and this exchange between us, you will rethink what
you wrote and see that there is a solution. Not one that will
immediately bring results, but is capable of bringing about meaningful
ones for the entire goal of the optimal society.

Lastly, I will be making this entire response of mine here at OEN into
a reply to the thread at MoreLife Yahoo that announced my article
publication. That is where continued dialog can take place on this
article and/or branch off onto the SMN theory and implications.

**Kitty

MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting