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From: http://www.shareintl.org/archi...
===
"We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition."
"It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource.
===

BTW, I'm quoting Morton Deutsch there (as indicated). Here is the source link (also on the previously linked page):
http://www.beyondintractabilit...
" Q: You're starting to see the analogy to international conflict, or intractable conflict on a larger scale?
A: Yes. Well, I wrote a paper about preventing World War III. That was during the height of the cold war, I think I wrote it in 1982, it was called "The Presidential Address to the International Society to Political Psychology." And there I took the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union and characterized it as a malignant relationship, which had some of the characteristics that I was talking about with the couple. It was right for both the United States and the Soviet Union to think that the other was hostile, would undo it, would damage it, you know, all of these things. The relationship was a malignant one. They had to become aware of the malignancy, and the only way out really was recognizing that it's hurting, recognizing that there is a potential better way of relating. And that better way of relating involves having a sense that one can only have security if there's mutual security. And that's true in most relationships. That's particularly true to recognize groups that have had bitter strife where they've hurt each other. They have to deal with the problem of how to get to where they can live together. It may be ethnic groups within a given nation or community. They can only live together if they recognize that their own security is going to be dependent on the other person's security. So each person, each side, each group has to be interested in the welfare of the other.
On a national level it has to deal with military and other economic security. At the group level and personal level, it often has to do with psychological security. It has to do with someone recognizing, I shouldn't be treating the other in an undignified, disrespectful way. So in an interpersonal relationship, that kind of security, recognizing that not only are you entitled to it, so is the other person entitled to it. And if you don't give that other person that entitlement the relationship is going to move in the other direction, back to bitter conflict."

That said, sure, if you look at evolution, there is a sense that every generation is filtered somehow. Only one sperm of millions gets to the egg... But, what really matters to survival of humans once they are conceived? Cooperation seems very important among humans. Individual ex

But [the use of sanctions] is much more common than their success: studies indicate that only five to, at most, 30 percent of sanctions result in the desired change.

Source: http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/sanctions

So why do they use sanctions? To take tangible action that demonstrates the seriousness of their commitment without actually going to war. Sanctions are generally used to further moral causes, I think, where you want some person or nation to improve their behavior but it doesn't make sense to kill a bunch of people to force them to do it.

Sanctions are also costly to the countries imposing the sanction, which further demonstrates their seriousness.

"All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions."

It's a little more complex than that. One can ask:
* What dysfunction leads to the hate, and can it be fixed before the hate manifests itself?
* If the hate is there, how can one prevent it from being acted on by the context around the hate?
* If the hate is being acted on, how can one respond to it effectively, given that acts claimed to be justified against those who hate can themselves be hateful and/or cause more hate?

All too often, the response to hate creates more hate. And violence begets violence. Dysfunction spreads like a disease. If one sees hate and violence as like a disease, what is the right response to it? One set of idea:
"Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World"
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-True-Peace-Violence-Community/dp/0743245202

In general, as a society, how can we move beyond black/white thinking, to thinking in color?
http://www.anwot.org/

Still, there remains truth in your point, that there are people who hate, who are damaged, and others need to figure out how to respond to that situation (even if the haters are responding in kind to previous hate). It's a big challenge. And there is often a conflict, that the permissive policies that sometimes might prevent hate might allow existing hate to persist. It's not an easy thing to deal with.

A general field can be seen as Peace Making. Morton Deutsch outlines some ideas here:
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audiodisplay/deutsch-m

Dealing with hate and dysfunction is a core theme of some North Eastern Native American culture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadodaho
http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413

Ultimately, as Mr. Fred Rogers says, it's OK to have negative emotions like anger. The issue is what we do with them...
http://pbskids.org/rogers/songLyricsWhatDoYouDo.html

As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/

Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html

Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010

Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/

Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/

The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.

From: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

From there:

There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ...

The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.

We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

There are lots of alternatives I helped organize here for helping transcend an economy based around militarism and artificial scarcity:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

===

Anyway, so expanding "the war on the different" and the "war on the unexpected" is just more of the same...
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
"We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats."

Of course, that link is from one person on the list in the article about people publishing things being asked to be censored... Even if just "self-censored". In the end, most censorship only works by creating a climate of self-censorship.

From Noam Chomsky on "What makes the mainstream media mainstream":
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it's generally true of

Thank you for your willingness to risk everything for your nation.

Still, would it not be better if our nation adopted a defense posture that focused on intrinic and mutual security? Maybe then we would not need to have so many "secrets". Is security by obscurity really such a good thing, whether in cryptography or on the ground soldiering?

From what I suggest here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

===

The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.

We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

There are lots of alternatives I helped organize here for helping transcend an economy based around militarism and artificial scarcity:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Still, we must accept that there is nothing wrong with wanting some security. The issue is how we go about it in a non-ironic way that works for everyone. The people serving the USA in uniform are some of the most idealistic, brave, and altruistic people around; they just unfortunately are often misled for reasons of profit and power that Major General Butler outlined very clearly in "War is a Racket" decades ago. We need to build a better world where our trusting young people (and the people who give them orders) have more options for helping build a world that works for everyone than "war play". We need to build a better world where some of our most hopeful and trusting citizens are not coming home with PTSD as shattered people (or worse, coming home in body bags) because they were asked to kill and die for an unrecognized irony of using the tools of abundance to create artificial scarcity.

From: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?

Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?

Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?

These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. Here is some dark humor I wrote on the topic: A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene. See also a little ironic story I wrote on trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide because it feels "Burdened by Bags of Sand". Or this YouTube video I put together: The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income.

Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...

There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ...

We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

"I salute you. Not sure how meta you were trying to be, but I am grinning."

Glad someone else around here gets my jokes. :-)

I'm not sure either how meta I was trying to be. :-)

===

On your other point, I don't have much advice about women, and of course, men being around women tends to lead to kids which is a whole other issue. :-)

And of course, be careful what you wish for. :-)
"Bedazzled Trailer"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xUnFbyqNr4
And then there is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Parents

But I can tell you Morton Deutsch has good advice about relationships in general:
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm

If you can practice the things Morton Deutsch talks about, you will probably find more healthy relationships of all sorts than you have time for. :-)

Milton Mayeroff's "On Caring" is also worth reading, about how it is caring and being cared for (in all sorts of relationships with all sorts of different relationships) that matters more to feeling at home in the universe than understanding, possessing, and so on:
http://www.auuf.net/about-auuf/sermons/71-caring-sermon

The more people you interact with in a healthy way, the more likely you'll have good relationships of all sorts. There was some advice on basic conversation that says, talk with everyone, as you are improving your conversation skills, and you also never know who (someone's grandmother?) might connect you to someone else if they think you are a likeable sort (that is not to say to be ungenuine -- just to say to be out there interacting with the world in positive ways). Of course, you can pick where you spend a lot of your time:
http://www.idealist.org/

And stuff on life's ups and down and how even the down times are valuable:
"Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals"
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
"Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Are you going to hide out in self-delusion and distracting entertainments? Are you going to become cynical or depressed? Or are you going to open your heart to a mystery that is as natural as the sun and the moon, day and night, and summer and winter?"

And a lot of human interpersonal reactions have nothing to do with formal logic or politics, but with things like pheromones related to maximizing genetic diversity for disease resistance in offspring. :-) Or, from another angle, happiness in relationships also depends on many small things, as my undergrad adviser told me, if you like to sleep with the window open, and your wife likes to sleep with the window shut, you two are never going to be happy. But, as someone else told me (someone in the military, by the way :-), love is about working through those kind of things, so maybe my adviser was wrong about that specific thing, even as his point in general is true that little things make a big difference?

Another thing is that people change over time, even as relationships may endure. To an extent, a relationship is somewhat a separate thing than the people in it.

Also, if you wo

See: http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
on "The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc.".

I wrote most of that weeks ago, but was getting it ready to post coincidentally on seeing this slashdot article.

From there

Summary: This note is essentially about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such FOSS "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430 ...

How does one figure out what is right in such a manifesto and what may be
very wrong in a manifesto (or the actions that accompany it)?
"Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence....

Again, better sensemaking tools could help with that. :-) Both for making
sense and for educating people who use such tools.

For example, if that despairing and angry guy had known, through a global
sensemaking process, that we could make self-replicating space habitats with
room for quadrillions of humans, maybe he would not have said so much about
"human overpopulation" in his Discovery manifesto? The Earth may have
limits, but space is limitless as far as we know (although we may reach
limits, but they are 1000s of years away). He might have learned that the
major problem in the industrialized world is actually lack of population
growth, not a high birth rate:
"[p2p-research] Peak Population crisis (was Re: Japan's Demographic Crisis)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-A...
Likewise, he might have seen that the problem is not lack of solutions
(because they were nicely cataloged in such a tool, including some with
their SKDB apt-get instructions), but the problem was more in lack of broad
understanding of the solutions we do know about, and lack of the will to put
them into action more quickly or think them through systematically, in part
from economic dogma? And then, rather than threaten the Discovery Channel
with a bomb, he perhaps could have seen a non-violent way forward to improve
his local community through contributing to the gift economy, democratic
resource-based planning, lobbying for a basic income, and helping improve
local subsistence production in a stronger community?

Instead, lots of people went through a lot of stress and he is dead, and
some police officer has to live with having killed him, because of a failure
of effective sensemaking on his part, and, I might suggest, a lack of FOSS
public sensemaking tools that might have made the process easier for him.
And in the proc

To echo your point on religion, here is another thing Albert Einstein wrote:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"""
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""

You might like the rest there too.

As I mention here:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
We the People, based on deeply held humanistic and spiritual values, need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. In order to end arms races, promote world peace, and also save money we can direct to civilian needs, we need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").

"Hey, why not disband the countries army then? Violence is not the answer, you know."

Military expenditure as percentage of GDP, Venezuela: 1.06% of GDP
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=venezuela+military+spending

Military expenditure as percentage of GDP, United States: 4.28% of GDP
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=usa+military+spending

With its larger economy, and if you included interest payments and all related expenses (including incurred future obligations like for disabled soldiers), the USA spends about a trillion dollars a year on the military, so the more accurate figure may be closer to 8% of the US GDP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

There is nothing wrong with spending some on security if the focus is mainly about mutual security (so, everyone feels secure and part of a mutual security community, as in "We're all secure together."):
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and intrinsic security (sustainable resilient infrastructure as civil defense, as in "We're secure in our core infrastructure regardless of typhoon, earthquake, electromagnetic storm, crop failure, plague, or bombs."):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

But the USA has pursued mostly a doctrine of unilateral security ("We're secure because you're insecure") and extrinsic security ("We're secure because we have soldiers everywhere guarding insecure installations.") This approach persists because it is extremely profitable for a narrow part of society, as two-time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC) said:
"War is a Racket"
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

For all the money spent, the USA is one of the most insecure countries on the planet (with long energy supply lines, long food supply lines, long goods supply lines, an unhardened and unecrypted civilian communications infrastructure, no comprehensive national health care system scaled for disasters, and in many other ways). This can't be fixed by spending more money the same way on more soldiers and more weapons -- the USA passed the law of diminishing returns on that decades ago. These fundamental insecurities can only be fixed by spending the money differently.

For example, for one half of one year's military spending, the USA could go all solar with improved energy efficiency and no longer have to defend oil supply lines:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
(while also improving human health and environmental health and creating many jobs). As part of that, free luxury electric cars to everyone in the USA would greatly reduce our taxes for defense and care of the sick:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

Likewise, for a fraction of one year's defense budget, the USA could put in place local flexible manufacturing facilities that remove the need to defend shipping lines to China, as I suggest here:
"21,000 Flexible Public Fabrication Facilities a

Mutual security is a better answer than unilateral security (and even deterrence):
    http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security (sustainable, resilient infrastructure) is a better answer than extrinsic security (soldier-defended infrastructure).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

The problem is that unilateral extrinsic security theater that actually is insecure and spawns more enemies (like in Iraq) is very profitable, according to a US Major General:
    http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

So, we may need to move to a society that is moving beyond the profit motive to have true security. To do that, we need a basic income, an expanding gift economy, improved local subsistence with 3D printing and organic gardening, more resource-based planning, a push to turn work into play, and other similar things, if we are to be reasonably secure. As long as war is profitable and profits are worshiped, we will have endless war.

Censoring the games won't fix that. People tend to turn to addictive behavior when they are under stress.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
We need to improve society so there is less bad stress. One part of that is improving general human health now that we all spend so much time indoors:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Another part is making sure everyone feels secure in the basics.
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
And then more things flow from there.

You have a point in protecting others from additional bullying as the next victim. Still, what do you do if the bully is two years older than you, outweighs you by fifty pounds, is trained in some combat skill (martial arts, wrestling, etc.), might be packing a weapon, and is popular with his/her cohort?

Also, many social situations have an element of ambiguity; what if things then become a cycle of feuds and violence, perhaps escalating in various ways?

Some bullies are also often excellent at playing a role in a social hierarchy and making themselves look like the victim, so the consequences of trying to go one-on-one may actually just make you more the victim in some situtaions. Also, you are assuming physical violence, what about verbal assault, especially the kind of stuff that goes on with the toxic girl culture?

Community is more of an answer that works in more situations. There are other solutions to conflicts than either violence or threats of it. See, for example, ideas about mutual security:
    http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Lots more ideas:
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=solutions+to+bullying

Still, another aspect of the bullying problem is that the normal behavior for people being bullied might be to avoid the bully; but compulsory schooling makes that impossible, and bullies take advantage of that, whether in a classroom, in a school yard, or on a bus. And as I said, compulsory schooling is bullying at its core as well (derived from Prussia),
    http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
and almost every teacher standing up in front of a class is essentially setting an example of how to use authority to bully. Bullying is essentially another negative externality of compulsory schooling. John Taylor Gatto, NYS Teacher of the year, goes so far as to say in his writings that the schools become co-dependent on bullies and other violent students to keep the status quo going by keeping children living in fear in various ways.
    http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle513-20090405-03.html
"""
School order came to depend upon maintaining good relations with the toughest bullies, covertly affirming their right to prey upon whiners and cry-babies (though never cry-babies from politically potent families). The intellectual dimension was removed from almost all classrooms as a matter of unwritten policy, and since test scores are independent of intellect, those teachers who tried to hold onto mental development as a goal, rather than rote memorization, actually penalized their students and themselves where test scores were the standard of accomplishment.
"""

Bullying may happen in other compulsory settings tool, like the typical workplace, but here are some ideas about that too: :-)
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

Security approaches: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic; Mutual vs. Unilateral.

How about decentralizing the "brittle power" system more in the first place, so you have "intrinsic security" so it degrades slowly under attack rather than rely heavily on "extrinsic security" through guards or passwords for controlling some central system? For example, renewables such as solar panels and fuel cells at each home would make energy production in a country difficult to interrupt intrinsically (assuming there was no single point of failure like automatic software upgrades of embedded controllers).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"""
Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current.
"""

And while we're at it, how about a little "mutual security" too, instead of a "unilateral security" policy that as often as not seems to provoke attacks? From an interview with Morton Deutsch:
    http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
"""
Q: You're starting to see the analogy to international conflict, or intractable conflict on a larger scale?
A: Yes. Well, I wrote a paper about preventing World War III. That was during the height of the cold war, I think I wrote it in 1982, it was called "The Presidential Address to the International Society to Political Psychology." And there I took the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union and characterized it as a malignant relationship, which had some of the characteristics that I was talking about with the couple. It was right for both the United States and the Soviet Union to think that the other was hostile, would undo it, would damage it, you know, all of these things. The relationship was a malignant one. They had to become aware of the malignancy, and the only way out really was recognizing that it's hurting, recognizing that there is a potential better way of relating. And that better way of relating involves having a sense that one can only have security if there's mutual security. And that's true in most relationships. That's particularly true to recognize groups that have had bitter strife where they've hurt each other. They have to deal with the problem of how to get to where they can live together. It may be ethnic groups within a given nation or community. They can only live together if they recognize that their own security is going to be dependent on the other person's security. So each person, each side, each group has to be interested in the welfare of the other.
"""

This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".

Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html

As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.

More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g

This three to eight year lag is the spread of cyberweapons is supposed to reassure us? :-( What other weapons have three to eight year lags in being available to everyone?

We need to move beyond war, in part because it is too terrible to contemplate at this point:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

We need to transition to "intrinsically secure" infrastructure:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
that we protect by means of "mutual security":
    http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

We need to move beyond current defense ideology in the USA based on competitive profit-maximizing centralized brittle infrastructure that we try to defend by unilateral dominance (at a cost of about a trillion dollars a year in the USA).

Yes. A simple example:

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, the American War in Vietnam and the Vietnam Conflict

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

In the Western World it is called "The Vietnam War", for the Chinese for example it is "The American War (in Vietnam)". Both are biased.

That's one of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians - both think, their narratives are right and truthful. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/narrativ es/

Winning the argument depends on first explicitly defining the terms in a way that is advantageous to your position.

Arguing with a superior is rarely a healthy career move. Positional Bargaining is rarely sucessful unless your position is overpowering ...

... because arguing tends to ruin working relationships and because overpowering positions tend to leave the other party feeling less than confirmed.

End Result: Potential unemployment or the potential glass ceiling to advancement.

It would be far better to find common ground and work from there without resorting to arguing from a position AND solidify the working relationship with one's own superiors. It's far easier to get what you want from superiors, who may not have the technical knowledge you have, when they actually like you!