Joe Kelley,
I'm glad you present your thoughts in chunks the way you do, as this makes them easier to comprehend and lessens fatigue. I should do more of that myself. I don't know that I even see as much significance in some of what I say as you do, but thanks for so patiently considering each bit. I probably can't repay the favor, tending toward a more general response rather than one guided by quotation from you.

A few things I seem to pick up:

You think I may be miscontruing Bloom in Global Brain. Very possbily, as I've not read much of his book. I cherry-picked one quotation, about having a computer read the dliatation in our pupils and then go crawling the web to buy stuff for us. Okay, this might not be typical of Bloom, but I do very strongly not want to participate in that kind of consumersim, and I hope I will continue to have the choice not to.

You see, values inevitably will come into play, and that might be what I should have said. It is definitely not that interconnectivity is bad or good in itself, but as I think you said that humans have the freedom to put it to good or bad uses. But this is not just a stark matter of legal vs. illegal as you seem to say, but of what kind of interaction we most value or esteem most highly. It is not true that I see anything negative about interconnectivity, but I do see a negative in a world in which people move farther away from warm or actual relations with each other. That would be a behavioral shift that would also impact the degree to which people have the time of inclination to care about one another, in real time through flesh and blood. There will always be a blowback ( a word you use) from anything that has the ability to move us forward on a given The wise thing is then to minimize loss or blowback.

I hear about a "slow media" movement, where some people have decided to go back to letter writing and unplug. They're reacting to a sense of loss of intimacy or immediacy or experience as we always used think of it, I think.

With the quote from Machiavelli and your feeling that I 'm harboring a negative about interconnectivity, could it be conservatism you're sensing? Because in a philosophical--but not a political--sense, I am conservative. I do think that there are enduring facts about our nature that we ignore at our peril. One of these is that we evolved as creatures needing intimate or at least truly personal contact. Another would be that there is not a substitute for the family as the very core of society. I don't think people are more inherently evil than good, but I believe we will always reflect a mixture of good and bad.

Your proposal to answer the questions of whether or not we are less empahtetic today and also better off thanks to capitalism is ambitious, probably impossibly ambitious. Because of the multiple points of view needing to be considered, how would we decide what we mean by "we"? How would we take into account the ebb and flow of different civilizations?

I may be wrong here but my guess is that you are harboring a false viewpoint that has been unwelcome in your natural way of perceiving life. I can call this viewpoint the Machiavelli syndrome. People who profit from you having this viewpoint are people who have this viewpoint, people who own it. If you have this viewpoint and you don’t see it, it may be very difficult to divorce yourself from it. It may be impossible.

I don't see what my false viewpoint is, Joe (although part of your point is that I may be blind to it). I don't see any attraction or find any resonance in the Machievelli you quote.

And I seem to see you insisting on a good/bad or yes/no verdict on interconnectivity, and I don't see this as possible.

That is sketchy compared to your own post, but it's as far as I'll take things at this point. Thank you for reading.

DWill




[

+++++++++++
It is not true that I see anything negative about interconnectivity, but I do see a negative in a world in which people move farther away from warm or actual relations with each other.
++++++++++++++

Dwill,

How much of that is due to factors that are due to a lack of connectivity, specifically being the results of specific people who sever connectivity, keep things deliberately suppressed?

I can illustrate.

If human beings could work more efficiently when suppression of data is measurably elevated their cost to benefit ratio will decrease on the cost side and increase on the benefit side.

A clear example could be a new drug that is patented, suppressed, kept secret, kept scare, so as to move more power (money is purchasing power) to those who suppress, patent, or otherwise choke up that flow of data. Now suppose that such a drug is a hypothetical wellness pill, cures cancer, cures aids, cures the common cold, everything, just so as to bring the point home – in spade.

How much savings in costs are realized when everyone is well?

How much does the average work our for the average Joe worker reduce for an even greater standard of living?

Will Joe have more time to connect with his wife, children, neighbors, extended family, etc.?

How much cost in intimacy is the result of many people having to work all hours just to survive, leaving no energy, no time, and no power left for anything other than work?

If you would like to continue that line of thought I can quote from Eric Fromm’s work. If not, I can leave that avenue as it is.

+++++++++
The wise thing is then to minimize loss or blowback.
+++++++++

My mind almost always follows that type of thinking back to the criminals. If the criminals had no innocent victims, if everyone were criminals, who would have time left for anything other than offensive, the slightest weakness is death?

Everyone is the enemy, always.

If every potential innocent victim is armed with Perfect Information, knowing every possible crime on his or her road, and people think, they know, they avoid, the step aside, they do not become victims, what is left to be on the list of dangers, things that may blow back?

What is left, if you can see what I am illustrating, is random accidents, non-willful, non-purposeful, non-intentional, natural, accidents.

How do those dangers compare to the volume, over time, of criminal blow-back, where the victims are led to believe that the injuries they are suffering are accidental?

I urge you to consider the cost/benefit viewpoint where Joe worker is shackled into productive effort constantly and that may be the blowback or the culture shock or whatever it is you are seeing and working toward communicating to me. Why are you not now spending time with your loved ones?

Is it possible that you are being generous, you are being sympathetic, and you are now offering to me something of great value, something worth doing, something interesting, something important, and you are doing so because you have now the power to reach people who you would otherwise never have been able to reach even if you lived 100 generations?

I have to go to guitar lessons with my 15 year old daughter right now.

I’ll be back to edit or respond, god willing.

With the quote from Machiavelli and your feeling that I 'm harboring a negative about interconnectivity, could it be conservatism you're sensing?

DWill,

I don’t know what there is to conserve, or is conservatism like an operating system where things are conserved by default?

My guess was a stab in the dark, throwing out ideas to see if a connection is made, no connection here, so that experiment can be discarded. I’m seeing how the foreign viewpoint is taking shape, as specific things like types of connections are replacing merely connections as the thing in view is moved into view. Some connections are definitely to be avoided, and my way of being very specific is to point out how connections to criminals are best avoided unless the person contemplating such a connection is a criminal or a willing victim.

If the idea is to conserve innocence, peace, productivity, happiness, and other life sustaining things, things that are not criminal, rather than conserving crime, conserving power to eliminate competition, conserving the power that injures innocent people for profit, then I can share that version of conservation with open arms, vim, and vigor.

Since this conversation began I thought a lot about this very thing, this conservative/liberal battle. What is being conserved and why is it being conserved?

Because of the multiple points of view needing to be considered, how would we decide what we mean by "we"? How would we take into account the ebb and flow of different civilizations?

Statistical measurements of significance, say 75 percent, is what I had in mind. Something concrete, known, and known to be significantly more than the relative example.

A mean average of toil, cost, work, un-freedom, labor, intense concentration of life spent on less than desirable activity, is x 100 years ago while today that mean average is reduced or increased by 25% for a mean average of life. If the idea is to know the facts the facts can be known, if the idea is to obscure the facts or twist the facts the facts can be twisted.

7.5 hours a day is required for the average person to produce a comfortable or average living 100 years ago and today 10 hours a day is required – or visa versa.

Call it the happiness factor, the freedom factor, the factor of liberty. Why would anyone be required to spend their lives slaving for less than subsistence today? How would that even be possible considering how much more efficient modern technology empowers production of the necessities?

When I use the term “we” I am viewing the species human. Compare a hypothetical Earth time where the species human invents everything “we” have invented to date plus one more thing, and that thing was invented 200 years ago. That thing for this hypothetical inspection of what I am trying to convey is an anti-crime device and it works. It tells the user when and where a crime will occur and the user can avoid the crime easily. It matters not how the thing works in this hypothetic experiment of the tool “we” call a brain.

Is the hypothetical Earth, after 200 years since the invention of the anti-crime device, more or less hard on the species human as the species human endeavors to exist on the planet Earth?

My brain conjures up a better place, fewer hours required in toil and trouble, more time to be happy for us.

If some people have an irresistible desire for victimization they can choose to be victims, I’m sure that someone will volunteer to victimize them.

I don't see what my false viewpoint is, Joe (although part of your point is that I may be blind to it). I don't see any attraction or find any resonance in the Machievelli you quote.

I don’t either. I guessed. I’m not seeing some of the stuff I think I should be able to read into your words, specific things, and so far my questions are finding understandable answers, this is a process, forget about the error on my part, I can drop that possibility.

Harmony, or agreement, either works or it doesn’t. If you did harmonize or resonate with that perspective offered by Machiavelli my guess is that you would be on the attack right now – I’ve seen that often enough.

When the shoe doesn’t fit, you don’t wear the shoe.

And I seem to see you insisting on a good/bad or yes/no verdict on interconnectivity, and I don't see this as possible.

I’m coming up with terms like culture shock, but I’m not sure it fits here. Have you read anything on studies done in cases where a given society has lost large portions of its total population? The stellar example is Cambodia, and then Russia, China is in there, Germany, the North and South in specific areas in the U.S.A and the parts that no longer wanted to be in the U.S.A, etc.

People are shocked and awed for sure, under certain conditions, severe conditions, horrible conditions, terrible conditions. Solzhenitsyn offers a first hand account.

Family viability may have once been measurably more viable, able to produce fine examples of human beings, a harmonizing and resonating productive arrangement, a good thing, a mutually beneficial association, a power to ensure survival of the family members, more so in the past than today. That brings me right back to the facts of the supposition. Is it true? Where is it true, when, why, how true?

Is the thinking here along the lines of some people having no direction, no purpose, no guidance, no moral imperative, today more so than last week, last month, last year, a decade ago, a century ago?

Here, if that is in view, brings my comments back to Bloom’s illustrations of boom and bust cycles. If there is a natural boom and bust cycle that occurs every 100 years, how would a generation fit into that cycle? What would someone who lives for 75 years see when they are within such a cycle and unaware of it?

Joe, I find that few people make the connection between conservatism and conserving, but you did.
All of the things you mention (innocence, peace, happiness, etc.) are examples of things that should be conserved, but in the general sense, conservatism is simply a consciousness of the ground of our humamn being. It provides a gauge with which to measure the reasonableness of ideas or movements. That said, there is no true connection between this conservatism and the political label used today in the conservative vs. liberal opposition. A conservative today is likely to favor unfettered exploitation of the environment and an unregulated marketplace, both of which are destructive, not conserving. In the 19th century, it was a liberal who favored laisse faire in business. So these two terms, liberal and conservative, identify two camps but have little meaning.

A mean average of toil, cost, work, un-freedom, labor, intense concentration of life spent on less than desirable activity, is x 100 years ago while today that mean average is reduced or increased by 25% for a mean average of life. If the idea is to know the facts the facts can be known, if the idea is to obscure the facts or twist the facts the facts can be twisted.

7.5 hours a day is required for the average person to produce a comfortable or average living 100 years ago and today 10 hours a day is required – or visa versa.

Call it the happiness factor, the freedom factor, the factor of liberty. Why would anyone be required to spend their lives slaving for less than subsistence today? How would that even be possible considering how much more efficient modern technology empowers production of the necessities?

Even if the quantification could be done beyond the guesswork we'd have to employ regarding aspects of the past, would we prove that "things," i.e/. life, was either better or worse? And would we be assessing this for you and me or for the 20% or so of humans on the planet whose lives now are marked by extreme hardship? There is no way to generalize about the condition of the human species, either now or at a past time. I don't say any of this to deny that you or anyone has reason to say that "we" have better lives. There is evidence of this. But statistics will not nail down a situation that has so much of the subjective in it, and statistics will apply to some segments but not to others.

Compare a hypothetical Earth time where the species human invents everything “we” have invented to date plus one more thing, and that thing was invented 200 years ago. That thing for this hypothetical inspection of what I am trying to convey is an anti-crime device and it works. It tells the user when and where a crime will occur and the user can avoid the crime easily. It matters not how the thing works in this hypothetic experiment of the tool “we” call a brain.

Is the hypothetical Earth, after 200 years since the invention of the anti-crime device, more or less hard on the species human as the species human endeavors to exist on the planet Earth?

I apologize, Joe. I can't understand what you're getting at here.

My brain conjures up a better place, fewer hours required in toil and trouble, more time to be happy for us.

Hard to argue with it. However, a conservative view would keep in mind the centrality of satisfying labor in human life. Release from toil and trouble--well, that of course will always be with us. But to work to lessen it for each of us provides a good purpose for our lives. We'd never find it liberating to be released from work.

Is the thinking here along the lines of some people having no direction, no purpose, no guidance, no moral imperative, today more so than last week, last month, last year, a decade ago, a century ago?

I'm not sure what you mean by the thinking "here." But I would call the matter an imponderable. We can't expect an answer that would be valid for people in general.

I'm sensing, Joe, that we are glancing off each other in these exchanges, neither of us quite making contact with the other's mind. Maybe a more concrete subject would minimize what seems to be happening? Maybe we'll see later.

So these two terms, liberal and conservative, identify two camps but have little meaning.

DWill,

We are wandering off the topic and although I welcome any new data from any source, especially interesting data such as the words you offer, my habit or discipline pushes or forces me to connect this path we are on, somehow, with the topic.

Howard’s view, as I interpret it, is that conservatism is a label that points to a phenomenon that is a natural part of a life cycle; while liberalism is another part of that boom and bust cycle. Liberal examples of the genetic experiment go out and discover new sources of power while conservative examples construct or produce necessities utilizing existing power.

I can’t help but use Howard’s chess pieces on my own board; I see things as a power struggle. All living organisms are forced to abide by the natural laws governing life, and failing to gain sufficient power is the road to extinction, while failure to efficiently employ scarce power is as fatal.

I think it is sufficient to the cause of accurate understanding to say that criminals (legal or otherwise) profit by confusing their victims through deception. The word “liberal” once meant a person who worked toward limiting the flow of power going toward people who control government from people who create that power.

When the intended victims work toward gaining the power to accurately know a friend from a foe the change of labels confuses them. If I now seek to connect to a person who works toward the reduction of power flowing to legal people (government people, criminal or otherwise), do I look for a liberal?

If I lived in 1780 I would look for a liberal, I certainly wouldn’t look for a “Federalist” since they were actually nationalists disguised behind a false front. That tradition has carried on since then up to and including today. A modern liberal is a despot (legal criminal). A modern conservative is a despot (legal criminal). The difference between the two flavors of modern despots (legal criminals) is their current lies hiding their actual intentions. If either of those two types of dictators (legal criminals) were inclined to actually speak the truth they would both say the same thing; we are here to enslave our victims, join us or be enslaved.

Obey or be punished.

Or simply:

Obey

http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertati ... /sec2.html

Please consider checking out that link – it addresses our earlier conflict of viewpoints.

And would we be assessing this for you and me or for the 20% or so of humans on the planet whose lives now are marked by extreme hardship?

That angle of view can be very specific and from such a very specific measure much can be known, and known accurately. That is why I offered the shining examples on the top 10 list.

I can borrow from this book:

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

Top ten (percent of it’s own citizens killed per year):

1. Cambodia (Khmer Rouge)
2. Turkey (Ataturk)
3. Yugoslavia (Croatia)
4. Poland
5. Turkey (Young Turks)
6. Czechoslovakia
7. Mexico
8. USSR
9. Cambodia (Samrin)
10. Uganda (Amin)

Extreme hardship is, if anything, being tortured on the way to a torturous death, and the numbers are staggering, and it isn’t just a “natural” thing, it is legal torture and legal mass murder thing, and by that specific measure the Nazi example isn’t even on the list.

The shining example is Cambodia by a looooong margin.

People in a social setting can thrive the further they are away from such things in time and place. The closer people get to such things, right up to the closeness of being tortured and having all your loved ones murdered, after torture, in front of you, on your way into that torturous death, isn’t anything close to “thriving”.

I’m not confused by any of this, it makes perfect sense to me; hence my very keen interest in your viewpoint: a challenge to my own. I can’t possibly be right, and I can’t possibly have figured all this out, alone as I am in this viewpoint.

I must be crazy.

Did the chart on the link make sense to you?

Here it is:



The danger as I see it is the result of power flowing to legal criminals as legal criminals employ falsehood and violence to connect themselves to their victims. They run a social network based upon an immoral principle; whereby each member of that organization (legal, organized, crime) must kill or be killed, victimize or be victimized, torture or be tortured, destroy or be destroyed, enslave or be enslaved.

Have you heard of a comedian (I forgot who it was) where the idea is presented of a corporate knife. The knife has a handle in the middle of two blades. The user can stab the guy stabbing him in the back as the user swings back, before stabbing the guy in front, in the back.

Another illustration of my view comes from something called game theory or The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Here is a link and applet:

http://prisonersdilemma.groenefee.nl/

People who connect or cooperate are mathematically illustrated in conflict with people who “defect” or do not connect.

A. Mutually beneficial voluntary association
B. Gain at the expense of others

If you have the applet running (specific software must be loaded onto the computer using the applet: Java) and the numbers are moved around (b = “advantage for defection” = profit motive perhaps, p = “fraction of defectors in the first round” = peer pressure or “going with the flow” or political power or “the mob”) and you change the outcome of the association from the default you can see the result of the equation: it can turn all red or it can turn all blue.

Increase the factor p from 0.1 to a whole number 1 and the activity immediately becomes red where everyone defects. My thinking is such that the shining example of such a thing happening in reality is Cambodia under the Khmer Rough where everyone is forced into becoming the worst evil monster possible or suffer the worst possible death.

Such a “connection”, the quality of it, is either very, very good from one view or very, very bad from another view.

Now bring that p number back to .01 (default) and watch the “balance” of power.

People are cooperating and defecting.

Now subtract from the “profit motive” factor called b; where the “leverage” of gaining at the expense of someone else is lowered.

I moved that b factor down from the default 1.85 to the whole number 1.

The screen turns blue.

This all may make no connection in your way of seeing things. With my way of seeing things this makes all the sense in the world, and it ties well into my overall viewpoint.

It ties very well into the subject of legal currency, legal money monopoly power, and the power to ratchet up “interest rates” by making money scarce; which is the simplified version of that confidence scheme. The more complex version imitates the natural boom and bust cycles illustrated in Bloom’s work.

I’m happy now; having cycled my response back to the topic.

I see a need to cut this short, the software on this forum does odd things; such as this window scrolling up to the top of the page. I can continue reading your response and comment if inspired to do so, this may be sufficent for my response.

But statistics will not nail down a situation that has so much of the subjective in it, and statistics will apply to some segments but not to others

DWill,

If the idea is deception, then statistics can be as good a weapon as any other, in the right hands, aimed at the right victims. If the idea is to compare life in my town compared to life in a town in Cambodia during their worst of times, then the tool of statistics can be employed toward the goal of gaining a more accurate understanding of life.

I apologize, Joe. I can't understand what you're getting at here.

I can drop that path, for lack of interest. The relative comparison between the town I am living in and a town of similar size (population) within the legal reach of the Khmer Rouge intends to do the same thing as a comparison between the whole of life on Earth now, as it is, and a hypothetical Earth experience if a theoretical defensive weapon was invented 200 years ago. Two different angles of view used to illustrate the same thing. Perhaps the comparison between your home town and a town in Gaza will resonate better, it would, in my opinion, accomplish the same thing as my effort to illustrate the thing that you can’t understand what I’m getting at there.

Like this:

1.
A. 200 years of Earth life without a hand held defensive weapon (avoids crime)
B. 200 years of Earth life with a hand head defensive weapon

2.
A. Life in my town
B. Life in a Cambodian town during the legal reign of the Khmer Rouge

3.
A. Life in your town today
B. Life in Gaza today

All 3 intend to compare the same thing, measure the same process, view what goes on in one place relative to what goes on in the other place, to know why they are different, so as to conserve the better place, and even, if possible, to help liberate the not so better place.

Hard to argue with it. However, a conservative view would keep in mind the centrality of satisfying labor in human life. Release from toil and trouble--well, that of course will always be with us. But to work to lessen it for each of us provides a good purpose for our lives. We'd never find it liberating to be released from work.

From an Equitable Commerce view a question arises. What principle is involved in measuring the cost of labor when the laborer enjoys what he or she is doing, and therefore what price will be demanded when selling that labor?

My Equitable Commerce viewpoint is foreign to almost everyone, so the questions may appear to be off-topic. From my view the questions zero in on the exact center of the topic.

We'd never find it liberating to be released from work.

Who could argue with that? I don’t like to argue. What would be the point? My point is to point out how liberating it would be to liberate ourselves from destructive work and we may find productive work in abundance, and find ourselves loving our “chores” instead of hating them. What is the quality of work?

Which work is less despicable?

Which work is more enjoyable?

We can't expect an answer that would be valid for people in general.

My thinking there was along the lines of explaining the phenomenon that could be called victimization, to aid in answering the question of why there are so many ready victims, call them sheeple, and just don’t call them late for dinner.

Sometimes my humor doesn’t transfer, perhaps most, even all the time.

Maybe a more concrete subject would minimize what seems to be happening?

The topic is Bloom’s work. He focuses on booms and busts, natural, and man-made. I differ in my view of the man-made versions. I think the man-made versions are legal crimes. Does that resonate?

Hail,

or

To whom it may concern,

The following link is on topic if the topic concerns the meaning, or the context, in the book which is the topic.

I am curious and interested in borrowing other brains, other perspectives, concerning the relevance of this next link to the topic.

What, exactly, is to be re-invented?

How will it be re-invented, once it is known – exactly?

Here is the link (this type of media competes for my limited time and energy required to finish Howard Bloom's book):

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/512.html

Joe, would you like to be the discussion leader for this book?

http://www.booktalk.org/book-discussion-leader.html

I can offer my services; sure, I have a few ideas. Will the existing work be left published; where each chapter is listed as separate topics? I can begin commenting in each topic? Perhaps I am more qualified to be an assistant leader, an apprentice perhaps?

Hi Joe,

Yes, the chapter threads will remain as individual topics long after we're done discussing this book. In fact they will always remain published and on the Internet. If you look at our BOOKS page at http://www.booktalk.org/books.html you'll see that all of our past book discussions have remained open and available for comments. BookTalk.org was born in May of 2002 and we discussed our first book in June. Even that forum is still there open and ready for reading and additional comments. So your work will not be in vain.

I'll add your name as the discussion leader for "The Genius of the Beast" right now. Thank you very much! I'll mail you a free book after this discussion period is over as a thank you gift for leading this discussion. Don't be shy about reminding me! You will have earned it.