Now…, why couldn’t you have talked like this in the actual show instead of the “moron,” “idiot,” “stupid” name calling that teaches nothing and builds/reinforces bigotry. Those rants against the Rolling Stone author were incomprehensible because you weren’t teaching but having a blow out. The only thing that struck home for me was the wonderful admonition to not lump small and medium enterprises with trans-national, global, brutal, monopolistic enterprises, something I know but often fail to make clear in my own communication.

The hunting and 3 sisters stuff were suberb.

Sometimes an extra hand or two are essential/efficient to some tasks and/or safety, so, yeah, if you’re a committed single, neighbors, and community are the only reasonable way, so your advice to formalize the start of those relationship, if you have trouble asking for help when needs arise, was excellent and wise.

@Jack
HAH. Man I find myself saying “Its a trap” in ackbars voice nearly everyday. I agree regarding wealth, and also you definitely cannot automate care for the earth. That much is quite obvious.

No, I am certain you won’t invite him because you couldn’t stand to have someone on the show who is ten fold your intelligence, and threatens to change your views.

I’m having a good laugh as well, thanks for letting me cuss and not banning me… it was definitely a purposeful exception to my standard persona.

And hey, I’m not sorry I get butt hurt when people try to tell me 1+1=3, some of us call it honor. And some of us are more than willing to stand up for what is RIGHT, no matter the personal pain it may bring. Its about the next generation, not me.

“You lie!” Then I threw a shoe at you. Go back to work, comments can sit here and never be answered back. Its easy. Stop making excuses for not getting your work done.

If you watched those films, read the companion guide and followed the citations, keep up with Fresco, and know Fuller yet still can’t grasp it, then you sir are too incompetent to participate in that society. Maybe that is why you dislike it so much?

And uh, I have no desire to have a podcast. You definitely do it better than I would…? See that is how an RBE works, go where you are the best. Not forced into invisible slavery as most are today and would continue to be in your dreams; doing nothing that fits their desires, just trying to keep afloat in the caged pool of poo built for them…

Go back to work! Ignore those who displease you! You just keep building a world that revolves around your ideals, screw the rest of the planet and whats best for its future… Stop reading already…

hmm.

Well, I DO have a pretty good grasp of Fuller.. and IMO, theoretical technocracies have the same problem that theoretical libertarian or anarchist societies do..

the human race doesn’t have the maturity to live in them.

‘common sense’, ‘selflessness’ (concern for the good of the whole, as well as for oneself), and respect for the rights of EVERYONE, are VERY unevenly distributed throughout the world population.

and without them, the only ‘utopia’ possible.. is a brutal dictatorship.

(I just returned from a country in the ‘3rd world’ that I last visited ten years ago. The people of that country (not a ‘western oppressor’) have in ten years DESTROYED almost all of its natural beauty, and significantly damaged the natural environment. They have absolutely no problem with cutting down every tree, catching every fish, covering every square inch of land with garbage, and dumping toxic waste into their water. Are they ready for utopian ‘self government’? Travel.. its enlightening.)

@Mike (wrong reply level) –

Are the guys standing on the bridge government?
– they have made a claim of ownership to a piece of land
– if you dispute their claim, they will use force to assert their claim
– they are collecting ‘use fees’ for ‘their’ piece of land

Yes. By every definition they are a ‘government’.

Which is why I like to think of ‘governments’ as crime families.. it keeps my thinking straight. (this is our neighborhood, if you don’t like it, we’ll bust your knee caps.. you owe us $x a month for keeping you safe)

🙂

By definition the ‘legitimate government’ of an area is the strongest (by force) one. The one most able to defend its claim of ownership. Another group almost equally strong are the ‘rebels’.. a much weaker group is termed ‘criminals’.

anarchy = utopia
not my idea of a utopia, but anarchists think anarchy would be a ‘perfect world’.. therefore it is their idea of ‘utopia’. any such subject is ‘opinion’.. as it has to do with preference, not big R reality. Saying ‘system X can never work’ is opinion.. stating ‘I am not consciously aware of any historical instances of system X working’ is a statement of fact.

@Insidious
I loved the response.
I laughed at the taliban response. EXACTLY MY POINT.

Government = force, GENERALLY at the behest of somebody else (whos controlling the force). Why they do what they do is completely all over the place.
Where I agree with how “the founders” thought of it, the only conceivable just government is one that YOU create and ordain. (You’ve instituted and it follows what you say).

It has never made any sense to me that one should pay taxes, and pay the paychecks of people whom would seek to harm you if you did something they didn’t quite like. That would be like me paying for body guards and them attacking me. What kind of fucked up service is that! You’re paying for the whole legal system to see whether or not you’re guilty of a crime. Paying for it… You’re not only paying in taxes, but you’re paying in COURT FEES. HAHAHAHA oh the irony.

All of your logical statements regarding anarchy are factual. Its one reason why I might even say “i’m not even an anarchist”. I’m a “nothing”. I don’t believe in utopias, only reality (countless perspectives and countless people engaging in any level of action about those perspectives).

Maybe voluntarist is the appropriate “label” for myself. It seems to me society has worked best when people want to work together.

Jack,

From one of my most favorite authors and thinkers: “When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.” –Mark Twain

You wrote, “I am just asking you an honest question how the hell can a person who doesn’t effect your life hurt you with their opinion about you or your ideas?”

I don’t know shit from Shinola about aspergers. Perhaps it protects you from slings and arrows, but whether it does or not, however we meet one another, untempered slings and arrows do sting most of us. When we interact it’s important to us or we wouldn’t take the time. When met with revulsion we pull back or attack back, so at that time at least, the other does effect your life.

I like you as well, Jack. Those of us who chose to attempt significant communication find it a constant stuggle, you perhaps less so than most of us. You and I don’t know each other well enough for more than liking, and thus as you say, it’s not that important, as separated as we are. More important is the effect that we have on those we come in contact with, however trivially, and vica versa, a permaculture, nature web principal. I am in true awe of your talents both intellectually and otherwise, their productivity, work, drive and, in most instances, humanity. My goal in interacting with you here at TCP is to try to aid you in making the best use of your talents, because those talents could have a tremendous impact on understandings that are in very short supply in America. The understandings that I refer to concern the absolutely crucial role of land management as it relates to agriculture and ecology in a very complex modern economy. The vast bulk of America is agriculture illiterate in the extreme, and until we can change that, other changes that we might want to make won’t be rooted properly. You can help more in that education than most anyone else that I know of.

Let me tell you an amusing story from my childhood. When I was about 12 my father was looking for a way to enclose the steer yard and found a way to do it with almost no direct expenditure. It proved to be not Pa’s finest hour or best decision ,and we all knew it eventually, including him. Here’s what happened. He found a sawmill owner and logger who would trade him rough sawn 1×6 pine lumber for 3 or 4 solid, what we called wild cherry main tree logs. We burned a lot of the smaller stuff from these trees in our very inefficient wood or coal burning central furnace. So for the cost of nails and a few steel fence posts we could build gates to surround the cattle yard. The actual building of the gates fell to my brother and me. We spent the better part of the winter cutting and nailing the 1/6’s together into about 2 dozen, 12ft long gates that were bitch heavy and very rough.

When the logger showed up with his load of lumber to drop off and pick up his cherry logs, It was obvious from the get-go that he had a fiery temper. Why was it obvious? Because every knuckle on both his hands was covered with 1/4 to 1/2” thick, horny calluses. When a log would frustrate him he would haul off and punch it before working out the problem. It was monster creepy. It turned out that his pine lumber was so green that much of it was still weeping. But Pa was not about to back out on a deal with this character, so for 15 years we had to live with a steer yard surrounded by a gated fence that looked like it was built out of rectangular pretzels and demanded periodic baling wire fixes to keep it from falling apart.

The moral to this story is that blowing off steam by punching out immovable objects just damages you, however satisfying it might feel at the moment to hurt yourself and imagine you are hurting something that can’t feel hurt. It’s the same with people. Permaculture, if I get it right, however much initial and ongoing truly creative destruction is involved in practicing it, is essentially a nurturing enterprise, is it not? Strength is good, but so is nurturing. When Jack Spirko allows himself the indulgence, particularly in political rants, of blowing off and punching out wimpy progressives, libtards, morons and stupid folks of all dimensions, he only hurts himself and his influence, and turns these folks into immovable objects. They are folks that might be likely to become his allies in Earth nurturing, if he doesn’t blow them off, drive them away, and thus fail to educate to a crucial need. I know that it is a fine line that all of us cross. Keep looking for it, and pull yourself up when tempted to cross it, and all of us of good will, will attempt the same.

I see you pulling back right-wingers from the brink of idiocy all the time. I think that you are capable of doing the same with left-wingers, if you can get them to stick around, by tempering the level of insult when politics and society are the subjects. While perhaps you are right that we are a nation of wimps and T-cups, whatever they are, I would caution that no strength in either direction ever came from insult. What results from insult is simply slavery. While this might not be the most prudent business choice in terms of immediate $$$ return, immediate $$$ return is a whole lot of what got us into this mess in the first place. You’ve done so well, that you can afford, I suspect, to lose a few hard line idiologs, in favor of building a broader, more comprehensive audience, and extending your influence for the longer haul.

Two little pieces of unfinished business and then I’m done. I was wrong in using the word, “militant,” about you earlier, and I apologize. I didn’t know or understand you well enough.

I hope I haven’t infuriated you, but suspect that is of less importance to you than it might be to me. Slings and arrows do sting me, so please practice a little gentility, friend.

@Jack who wrote, “…I still don’t get how anyone is harmed emotionally or otherwise by the opinion of someone who has no effect on their lives.”

Because I’m not face to face with you doesn’t mean you don’t effect me and perhaps I, you. Wasn’t it the Bard who wrote something like, “If you prick me, do I not bleed?” I don’t doubt that you must have or have developed a thick skin to criticism, but really I don’t buy into your complete indifference to pricks, so to speak. Your impassioned and caustic responses to critiques belie such a conclusion, unless those responses are simply calculated personna building, in which case you must be a sociopath. I don’t believe for one second that you are, and that you don’t bleed just a little at least. I can’t answer that question any better than that.

This may turn out to be a disaster but I’m going to quote you and then quote you again with some changes to maybe make a point or two.

Jack: Most left wingers are lead by emotion not logic. It is very hard to convince anyone with a rational argument to an emotional issue. Liberalism is all about how you “feel things should be”. The only way I can reach a liberal is when they give up on the system they trust.

Ron: Most right wingers are lead by self interest not logic. It is very hard to convince anyone with a rational argument that self interest is not the whole of life. Conservatism is all about what you “feel you have a Right to”. The only way I can reach a conservative is when they trip over their own self interest.

Jack: While I agree with “liberals” on many things most liberals worship at the foot of government. Add to this they want to regulate things into the way they think they should be and it is a hard conversation to have.

Ron: While I agree with “conservatives” on many things most conservatives worship at the foot of Exxon/Monsanto/Chase Bank. Add to this they want to un-regulate things into the way they think they had it during the Great Communicator or 2007 and it is a hard conversation to grok, knowing what has gone down since then.

The point to this exercise is that logic and rational debate are a small part of either of these characterizations, and emotion rules when folks are stuffed into two categories. The stuffer is always prone to error, based on his/her very own logic AND emotions.

To borrow a page from Joel Salatin: I am a radical, populist, progressive, libertarian, situational, social, Christian. Notice that I didn’t claim liberal. liberal is too close to neoliberal anymore. Depending on what I learn/experience/think about between now and then, that may change in order or part tomorrow. Human beings are never as simple as our thoughts and beliefs demand. But you can talk to me. Why not others that you have convinced yourself are hopeless because of your categories?