I do not agree with your argument that people don't have to fix their Windows systems or follow instructions. This shit is deconstructing itself over time (I see it at the office), and needs constant attention.
Sure. I didn't mean that there's no need for some administration. Only that it's usually less needed. I myself see a lot of problems (I provide internal support in my job) that I must fix by editing the Registry etc. Completely uninstalling ZoneAlarm, for instance, is a PITA. But for the most part something like this isn't necessary, and when it is, people simply call someone who knows better to do the job.
Sorry to say this, but your understanding of human nature is too much colored by modern thinking. In classical education, and by that I mean the whole of Western civilization from the pre-Christian Greeks, Romans and Hebrews until the 17th Century, everyone understood that a person was either a child or an adult. The concept of "adolescence" as a stage between childhood and adulthood simply didn't exist. The man was a child until 12 or 13 years-old, earlier for women, and from that day onwards s/he was an adult.
I think of myself as a conservative, but not in the same sense that the word has in current political speech. A modern-day "conservative" is someone who wants to "conserve" the progressisms of the 18th and 19th centuries. The progressism of those that, at the time, fought against the old ways by trying to impose new, stricter, enforced social moral codes, who attempted to shield their children from the reality of the world.
This enforcement of morals is, in my dictionary, as much anti-conservative as the anti-moralism of liberals, because both reject the millennia old actual conservative approach: that morals is something you must follow, not something you must make others follow. Liberals reject that you must follow them. Pseudo-"conservatives" that you must not impose it on others. Both are modernists, although of different kinds, and both are wrong.
Your task, if you want to be a true conservative, is not to policy the young adults (not "adolescents", adults) that live with you. Your task is to offer them your strong example, to explain to them what you believe and why they should act like you, and to establish a minimal set of rules that they must follow if they want to keep being feed by you.
Anything you do in excess to this won't help them, quite the contrary, because it'll block the natural development of their adultness, turning them into these aberrant new beings that simply shouldn't exist: the "adolescents".
I know, and I certainly accept that. I am glad that the ubuntu guys have taken measures to provide easier codec installation. I am not sure what you mean with MS-style ease of use. No, seriously. To install any piece of software on Windows (and I need lots of basic utilities since compared to even GNOME, Windows comes with nothing at all and its window management is from the stone age), I need to go hunt for it.
Well, it depends on whether you're installing Windows from scratch or purchasing a pre-made system. A pre-made will usually already include everything a typical user wants.
But even if he must hunt something, it usually is in this form: call store/technician, he comes and does it for you or tells you to download, say, MegaCodecPack. You do so, click Next, Next, Next, Next, Next..., and suddenly all your videos play. Or he tells you to purchase PowerDVD or WinDVD. You do so, put the CD on the drive, click Next, Next, Next..., and done.
It's very difficult for a typical user to find a situation where he would need to follow a step-by-step text document. Or at least, extremely less typical than in a Linux distribution, at least yet. Thus, everything that lessens the use of the terminal is welcome, even if it's not that good on its first incarnations.
And by the way: even having all codecs installed on Linux, some videos I can play on Windows (with MegaCodecPack) I still cannot play on Linux. That's bad, but being able to run World of Warcraft in Wine really cut 90% of my Windows needs. So, for now I only enter Windows when I want to play those videos, and that's it.
Getautomatix is still down, I guess we have lots of users breaking their fresh Feisty installs;)
I hope not!:D But it's opening now, with news of a 7.04 compatible version available.
when Ubuntu developers tried to help and discuss improvements with him, he refused to listen and acted hurt and persecuted. I know, I was there and followed the discussion.
Yes, I've read some of the archived discussions. That's why I first went to Easy Ubuntu.
I understood making installation of unfree stuff simpler (although I still don't get what's so hard following the help), but this is taken care of in Feisty anyway.
Yes. But the thing is, if someone is installing something like Ubuntu, he's after easy of use, and Microsoft-style "easy of use", not what a sys admin would see as easy. I myself feel frustrated whenever I have to open the terminal to solve some issue, and I'm far from a newbie.
So, when presented to a choice between the "good" (the point-and-click Automatix experience), the "bad" (following step-by-step terminal instruction on a howto) and the "ugly" (Easy Ubuntu usage is unintuitive when compared to the other Ubuntu package managers, and the user interface is way below Ubuntu standards), the choice is clear: the "good". Even it's merely "good enough", not perfect.
Anyway, I see your point very well. Some years ago I loved messing into config files. But nowadays I just want something that works with minimal study right out of the box.
I cannot check for the other stuff (scripts) since getautomatix.com is down.
Well, I'm interested in reading your comments on the scripts. I really don't know whether the current ones are good of bad, but so far they've worked. But the day something better appears I'll surely adopt it. I'm not that attached to a software to stand for it no matter what.:)
What it does is to add two or three additional repositories with useful 3rd party packages, such as Wine; list for single-click install some little known but very nice software available from Ubuntu's own repositories; and offer scripts that download and install software for which no.deb exist.
I guess you've been reading old criticisms targeted at Automatix 1.x, who was kinda buggy. Nowadays it's on version 3.x, and most of those problems have been worked on and solved. I know because at the time I was first thinking on installing it I also had read those criticisms and become worried. But on further research I discovered that for many months it was mostly FUD. So, I went ahead.
Anyway, on upgrading to 7.04 I'll discover how much was FUD, and how much wasn't. Once I've completed the upgrade (I only have time for these things on weekends) I'll let you know.
If they had any value the market would have assigned them a price
Lol. Libertarians are the first to tell you copyright and patents are anti-market devices. Don't be surprised by them doing what they preach.
Anyway, there's an article explaining in details why the books are being freely offered for download (excerpt below). It's an interesting reading on its own, and even more so for those who, not understanding what "free market" actually means, show the kind of misjudgment you expressed. Give it a try.
Many people find themselves mystified as to why the Mises Institute puts books online for free that it is also trying to sell (...). Below is a detailed account of how we arrived at the policy that as many books as possible should be made available online and offline--and why we think it would be a good idea for all publishers to do the same. (...) The point is to expand the market and not assume a fixed number of consumers. Books online and offline reinforce the viability of each other, just as movies in theaters boost movies in rental, and free radio helps the market for CDs for purchase. It takes some thought and entrepreneurial judgment to understand why, but the history of technological development informs the case. As one commentator put it on the Mises blog: "Nor did ideas written down in scrolls or illuminated manuscripts undermine the teacher/guru. Nor did knowledge in mass-printed books undermine schools/colleges." (...)
Yes, I know it's troublesome, but it made my Ubuntu so INCREDIBLY more useful I couldn't resist it. I had also tried Easy Ubuntu first to be on the safe side, but it pales in comparison to Automatix. Anyway, it's good to see many of the features that Automatix delivers being incorporated into standard Ubuntu. I hope it won't take much time for them all to be integrated.
Anyway, thanks for the links. I hope this isn't as difficult as it sound.;)
Sorry, I mentioned incorrectly the version I have. It's actually 6.10. I had originally installed 6.06, then net-upgraded it in short time to 6.10, but forgot this when looking at the CD cover, which states 6.06.:P
You can usually find libertarian analysis on each specific kind of reason regulators develop for the need of regulation, but a simple answer to them all at once isn't available. Not that I agree with all they say on each and every subject, but that they do work deeply on all of them, they do. At the Mises Institute website alone you'll find tens of thousands of articles, or even full length books (downloadable for free), on all these subjects, including the ones you mentioned. They're worth reading, if for no other reason than to better know the many arguments available.
Does someone know how the upgrade process from 6.06 to 7.04 work when one have lots of Automatix and Automatix Bleeder packages already installed?
My main concern is not managing to load X after the update. I'm currently using the nVidia beta drivers provided in Bleeder, and it would be really painful if the update doesn't address this in a good way...
This made me remember the plot for the LucasArts adventure game "The Dig".
(Warning: spoiler follows.)
The aliens there had discovered much time ago the two extra time dimensions, and a way to transition from space-time to 3-time (I don't remember whether this is the in-game name for the concept, but you get the idea). That worked, they discovered that in 3-time they are practically immortal, and as a result the whole alien species transitioned, losing the ability to come back, since there was no one left in space-time to activate the portal. After some centuries in 3-time, however, the aliens perceived it was a mistake, due to their livings losing all meaning since in 3-time nothing changes, ever. In the end, the humans discover this history, reopen the portal, and allow the aliens to come back into standard space-time.
I'd wish/. editors would use unambiguous terms, such as months, quarters or the like. I live in the Southern hemisphere, and whenever I read something that mentions seasons I must check to where it's referring, and if it's to the Northern hemisphere, mentally translate the northern season name into its southern equivalent. Not nice, really.
Objectively, there is nothing impossible or invalid about the voluntary society. Philosophically, what could possibly be accomplished through coercion -- besides injustice -- that couldn't be accomplished through voluntary association? Logically, and with respect to human nature, voluntary association can accomplish anything. That should be self-evident, even after years of indoctrination.
Philosophically nothing can be accomplished, since Philosophy isn't about accomplishing things, but about understanding things. Anyway, the point is simply that, people being different, there are people for whom voluntary association works, and there are people that are different from these in that for them merely voluntary association doesn't work. Thus, this isn't an absolute refusal of the idea of voluntary society, but a relativization of it. It is indeed possible, for some people. For others, it isn't. It's simple as that, and profound as that.
Let's take the case of the Amish, wich you mentions. They, as everyone else, have people with the Ruler psychology. But Rulers, as everyone else, are born and risen in a given cultural framework, incorporating these values, and Amish rulers are no exception. Thus, they will pursue power according to the limits established by his deep belief in the Amish faith, self-limiting themselves. What kind of self-limitation? The self-limitation of relying almost exclusively on rhetorically-induced compliance. He still commands, but his commandments are in the form of carefully crafted words that cause their fellow Amishes to act in the way he wants, while still believing they themselves have chosen what to do. In other words, he still rules, but his rulership isn't self-evident. And any kind of real-world, historically existing anarchy is exactly like that. You still have a system of rules and rulers. What you don't have is a visible, institutionalized system of rules, and visible, appointed (or self-appointed, that makes no difference for this argument) rulers. But they are still there, always present, always acting, always being what they must be.
A system of pure anarchy, where everyone has the same amount of power is utopic for the sole reason that only a small handful of people in any human group has the Ruler psychological type and abilities. In the extremely rare cases where there's no one with the Ruler psychological type present, either Entrepreneurs or Intellectuals take the load (and by not being tailored to it they also aren't very good at it, but they manage). In any case however, there's simply no situation where everyone is equally enabled to rule. This simply doesn't happens, and at a minimum there's always someone, or a small group of persons, whom everyone else listens to and whose "suggestions" they almost always obey to the letter. Including, yes, on how to coercively deal with non-cooperative members.
So, if you want to change how the Rulers act, your only option is to act as an Intellectual by changing the cultural framework inside which they work, so that this new cultural framework both limits and orients them. This is a very long process, and please note that attempts at socially engineering it usually fail due to unintended consequences. Also whatever results you might expect from it, whether they'll happen as planned or (more likely) not, will usually be noticed only many, many years after you're dead. Any belief that this can be done fast, or that is suffices to replace a group of rulers with another, or worse, that is suffices to kill all rulers, is delusional. Any new group will still work under the same or at least a very similar cultural framework, thus gravitating towards its consequential forms of power practice.
Regarding the remaining of your text, I don't know whether I agree or not. It's possible that yes, a voluntary society would be crushed by the currently existing powers. But this is by no means certain. Some attempts are being done at such a destruction in, I
All right, we will assume the truth of your proposition. Next question: what gives rise to these personality types?
Sorry, but I'm neither a geneticist nor a neurologist. These are the people tasked with answering this question. My job is simply trying to describe what happens. "How" and "why" it happens like this and not like that is and entirely different matter, but for it to be pursued someone must first show the "what".
Actually, you know what, fuck it. Just admit it: You pulled that out of your ass, didn't you?
Nope, sorry. I don't admit it and the answer is "No, I didn't.":)
People have been taking incredible risks throughout all of history just to get laid. Whether the risk is two underage kids getting grounded, screwing the biker neighbour's wife, losing status in a prudish environment, going to jail for homosexuality, not having a condom and having sex with a stranger anyways, paying a prostitute while the wife and kids are at home...... people take all sorts of risks for pleasurable sensations. Not to mention the risks involved to snort a bit of coke, drop a couple of tabs of acid, drink underage, or smoke an occasional joint. People do this stuff all the time. I suspect much more regularly than they cheat on their taxes for the sake of profit.
Yes, but this enters another topic, complementary and related to the four psychological types, but not directly deriving from them. The four types are -- let's put it like this -- long term, external-oriented, objective driving forces that don't change much or at all through the life of the individual. But there are also four somewhat unstable, changeable, internally-oriented, subjective driving-forces that couple to the previous four: "sensualism", "material well-being", "social role accommodation" and "meaning seeking". Note that neither these nor the four types I've been talking about are rational choices, but psychological orientations. Thus, if the person is at a moment in his life where seeking sensual pleasures of many kinds are at a high (what usually happens in youth), this can and usually will make his psychological type less noticeable. But other than this, the other three subjective forces fall within the clear scope determined by the psychological type the individual has.
So, the material well-being of an Intellectual, his possible social roles, his eventual seeking of meaning, won't be the same or even similar to those of a Ruler, or of a Entrepreneur, or of a Worker. And even when the sensual force is at its peak the four types won't show it in quite the same way. The Intellectual would be more of an aesthetical sensual seeking, even when it comes down to sex, while the Entrepreneur might focus more on the "conquest and show to all" aspect of it. And so on and so forth.
Of course, nothing on this apply to people whose mind is or become damaged. These cases are exceptions that must be dealt with so that they can someday, maybe, reenter society, not parts of society per se. This isn't a "psychology of the abnormal". It's a psychology of normality. And it works in contradistinction to more common psychologies which, don't having a theory of normality, at best tried to describe what normality is through statistics or, at worst (more common in the first half of the 20th century), tried to understand normality by observing tons and tons and tons of cases of abnormality.
Anyhow. You have an interesting understanding of human beings.
It's not mine. Billions of people share it. I only articulate it as well as I can. Common sense sounds good when expressed in an intelligible way.;)
People whose minds are damaged obviously don't fill any of the four roles. They aren't part of society, they are something with which society must deal. How to deal with them is one of attributions of Intellectuals and Rulers. Intellectuals, by setting frameworks upon which proposals can be developed, and developing the proposals themselves. Rulers, by selecting among these proposals those that are actually doable and applying them. Everything set so that the wealth generating abilities of Entrepreneurs as well as the stability craved by the Workers don't get damaged.
This is a subtype of "stability". The person for whom his self pleasure is the most important things is afraid of anything that might disrupt the fulfilling of these pleasures. Contrary to those who pursue power or profit, he won't take risks that might have as a possible consequence he not being able to enjoy these pleasures anymore, unless the enjoyment is the risk itself. But even so, it's a very specific kind of risk, and he won't depart from the routine of experiencing this specific kind of risk if he can avoid it. Provided the means for his pleasure attainment are permanently available, he will want to keep things unchanged for as long as possible, and this is all there is to his goal in life: for things to stay exactly as they are.
So, your first attempt didn't work. But feel free to try again.
f) All of the above.
I didn't say a person couldn't have more than one goal. But one is prevailing. A ruler, for example, will usually do everything he can to avoid losing power, except maybe breaking some moral code he follows. Thus, in this sense he also seeks stability. But the goal of having power forever won't prevent him from risking this same power if, by being successful in this pursuit, he could end up with even more power. On the other hand, he can shape his pursue of power in a way that also yields economic gains. But the main factor continues to be power. Everything else is secondary.
Instead of thinking on these four goals as static wholes, which it seems to me to be what you're doing, you consider them to be axis, with one of them being the main and the other three secondary, with the person staying on differing positions on each one, it'll become clearer. It's a tool for understanding complexity, not a way to avoid it.
Human is way more complex and nuanced than you're positing.
Yes, they are. There are lots of types and subtypes of each kind of goal: knowledge, power, profit and stability. And yet, there isn't a 5th category beyond these. Try to find one and I'll show you why and how it's actually part of one of the basic four.
Sorry your attempts at sounding academically informed have failed, but I'm going to have to ask for some sort of reference or series of studies which corroborate your assertion.
But who said anything about academic study? But now that you mention it, I believe you'll find a lot on the subject at the Department of Religious Studies of Paris University. Not sure whether you'll like it though. Or maybe on the original Academy, not its follow ups.
20th and 21st centuries psychologies are so down. Minus 4th is way more on the spot.;-)
Anarchism doesn't work for a single reason: because there are four basic kinds of human personality with four different life goals. They are:
a) Intellectuals: driven by knowledge; b) Rulers: driven by power; c) Entrepreneurs: driven by profit; d) Workers: driven by stability.
An Anarchist society cannot work because it doesn't address the needs of all the people that have the Ruler or Entrepreneur personality. And even if you fine tune it to allow for free market, as the anarcho-capitalists do, thus filling the needs of the Entrepreneurs, the Rulers still stay out of it (with lots of Workers, who lose much of their cherished stability).
A working society must allow for all new born persons to have a place. And so far, a government with well known powers under a constitutional framework offers a good place for Rulers to battle their battles without disrupting (much) the life of the other three kinds.
It's either this, or back into utopic profilings and pre-emptive killings of any person who showed traces of non-compliant personalities. As revolutionary marxists used to do with anyone showing signs of Entrepreneur behavior.
I'm not a parent, much less married (yes, I'm a typical nerd), but I know a guy now in his 50's who has 8 children, none of whom turned into bad persons, quite the opposite. When asked how he managed to do that, he always answers that in the beginning he very consciously choose to be an "yes" father. What he means by that is threefold: that he was himself a permanent moral reference for their children, so that his example would speak by itself more than mere words spoken by him; that he made know to his children that whatever new thing they were interested in doing by themselves, they had to ask him first; and that for the vast majority of these questions his default answer would be "yes", even if the thing in question was in some way dangerous. This way, in the very, VERY, VERY rare occasions where he absolutely HAD to say "no", this "no" had weight. How much weight? The weight of the many hundreds of "yes" that came before it, of many they knew would surely follow it, and of the fact they knew his father was being absolutely honest on the necessity of that specific refusal. So they simply accepted it and carried on.
(This of course doesn't include things the children wanted that he couldn't purchase. In those case an "I'm Sorry, but we don't have the spare money for this. But you can save and purchase it yourself in a few months if you still wish it by then." solved the issue.)
On the other hand, I know families, one of which of close relatives, which put lots of restrictions on their children, as if the parents had opted to be of the "no" kind. And I don't see in those families the same level of success the "yes" guy had, even when the "no, no, no" comes coupled to a strong moral example. In these cases, it seems, no "no" distinguishes itself from the other "noes", all being seen as equally limiting, and as a result, disobeying one doesn't seem that much different from disobeying any, for disobeyed most of them will be, no doubt about that.
Now, I know these are all anecdotal examples, but they will nevertheless push myself into the "yes" kind of parenting if and when I'll have kids. Provided the good example is present (in person or in memory) 24 hours a day, the few hours they'll be playing those hyper-realistic violent video-games won't matter that much.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry to say this, but your understanding of human nature is too much colored by modern thinking. In classical education, and by that I mean the whole of Western civilization from the pre-Christian Greeks, Romans and Hebrews until the 17th Century, everyone understood that a person was either a child or an adult. The concept of "adolescence" as a stage between childhood and adulthood simply didn't exist. The man was a child until 12 or 13 years-old, earlier for women, and from that day onwards s/he was an adult.
I think of myself as a conservative, but not in the same sense that the word has in current political speech. A modern-day "conservative" is someone who wants to "conserve" the progressisms of the 18th and 19th centuries. The progressism of those that, at the time, fought against the old ways by trying to impose new, stricter, enforced social moral codes, who attempted to shield their children from the reality of the world.
This enforcement of morals is, in my dictionary, as much anti-conservative as the anti-moralism of liberals, because both reject the millennia old actual conservative approach: that morals is something you must follow, not something you must make others follow. Liberals reject that you must follow them. Pseudo-"conservatives" that you must not impose it on others. Both are modernists, although of different kinds, and both are wrong.
Your task, if you want to be a true conservative, is not to policy the young adults (not "adolescents", adults) that live with you. Your task is to offer them your strong example, to explain to them what you believe and why they should act like you, and to establish a minimal set of rules that they must follow if they want to keep being feed by you.
Anything you do in excess to this won't help them, quite the contrary, because it'll block the natural development of their adultness, turning them into these aberrant new beings that simply shouldn't exist: the "adolescents".
But even if he must hunt something, it usually is in this form: call store/technician, he comes and does it for you or tells you to download, say, MegaCodecPack. You do so, click Next, Next, Next, Next, Next..., and suddenly all your videos play. Or he tells you to purchase PowerDVD or WinDVD. You do so, put the CD on the drive, click Next, Next, Next..., and done.
It's very difficult for a typical user to find a situation where he would need to follow a step-by-step text document. Or at least, extremely less typical than in a Linux distribution, at least yet. Thus, everything that lessens the use of the terminal is welcome, even if it's not that good on its first incarnations.
And by the way: even having all codecs installed on Linux, some videos I can play on Windows (with MegaCodecPack) I still cannot play on Linux. That's bad, but being able to run World of Warcraft in Wine really cut 90% of my Windows needs. So, for now I only enter Windows when I want to play those videos, and that's it.I hope not!
So, when presented to a choice between the "good" (the point-and-click Automatix experience), the "bad" (following step-by-step terminal instruction on a howto) and the "ugly" (Easy Ubuntu usage is unintuitive when compared to the other Ubuntu package managers, and the user interface is way below Ubuntu standards), the choice is clear: the "good". Even it's merely "good enough", not perfect.
Anyway, I see your point very well. Some years ago I loved messing into config files. But nowadays I just want something that works with minimal study right out of the box.Well, I'm interested in reading your comments on the scripts. I really don't know whether the current ones are good of bad, but so far they've worked. But the day something better appears I'll surely adopt it. I'm not that attached to a software to stand for it no matter what.
What it does is to add two or three additional repositories with useful 3rd party packages, such as Wine; list for single-click install some little known but very nice software available from Ubuntu's own repositories; and offer scripts that download and install software for which no .deb exist.
I guess you've been reading old criticisms targeted at Automatix 1.x, who was kinda buggy. Nowadays it's on version 3.x, and most of those problems have been worked on and solved. I know because at the time I was first thinking on installing it I also had read those criticisms and become worried. But on further research I discovered that for many months it was mostly FUD. So, I went ahead.
Anyway, on upgrading to 7.04 I'll discover how much was FUD, and how much wasn't. Once I've completed the upgrade (I only have time for these things on weekends) I'll let you know.
Anyway, there's an article explaining in details why the books are being freely offered for download (excerpt below). It's an interesting reading on its own, and even more so for those who, not understanding what "free market" actually means, show the kind of misjudgment you expressed. Give it a try.
Yes, I know it's troublesome, but it made my Ubuntu so INCREDIBLY more useful I couldn't resist it. I had also tried Easy Ubuntu first to be on the safe side, but it pales in comparison to Automatix. Anyway, it's good to see many of the features that Automatix delivers being incorporated into standard Ubuntu. I hope it won't take much time for them all to be integrated.
;)
Anyway, thanks for the links. I hope this isn't as difficult as it sound.
Sorry, I mentioned incorrectly the version I have. It's actually 6.10. I had originally installed 6.06, then net-upgraded it in short time to 6.10, but forgot this when looking at the CD cover, which states 6.06. :P
You can usually find libertarian analysis on each specific kind of reason regulators develop for the need of regulation, but a simple answer to them all at once isn't available. Not that I agree with all they say on each and every subject, but that they do work deeply on all of them, they do. At the Mises Institute website alone you'll find tens of thousands of articles, or even full length books (downloadable for free), on all these subjects, including the ones you mentioned. They're worth reading, if for no other reason than to better know the many arguments available.
Does someone know how the upgrade process from 6.06 to 7.04 work when one have lots of Automatix and Automatix Bleeder packages already installed?
My main concern is not managing to load X after the update. I'm currently using the nVidia beta drivers provided in Bleeder, and it would be really painful if the update doesn't address this in a good way...
This made me remember the plot for the LucasArts adventure game "The Dig".
(Warning: spoiler follows.)
The aliens there had discovered much time ago the two extra time dimensions, and a way to transition from space-time to 3-time (I don't remember whether this is the in-game name for the concept, but you get the idea). That worked, they discovered that in 3-time they are practically immortal, and as a result the whole alien species transitioned, losing the ability to come back, since there was no one left in space-time to activate the portal. After some centuries in 3-time, however, the aliens perceived it was a mistake, due to their livings losing all meaning since in 3-time nothing changes, ever. In the end, the humans discover this history, reopen the portal, and allow the aliens to come back into standard space-time.
I'd wish /. editors would use unambiguous terms, such as months, quarters or the like. I live in the Southern hemisphere, and whenever I read something that mentions seasons I must check to where it's referring, and if it's to the Northern hemisphere, mentally translate the northern season name into its southern equivalent. Not nice, really.
I've replied to the OP. Give it a look! :)
Philosophically nothing can be accomplished, since Philosophy isn't about accomplishing things, but about understanding things. Anyway, the point is simply that, people being different, there are people for whom voluntary association works, and there are people that are different from these in that for them merely voluntary association doesn't work. Thus, this isn't an absolute refusal of the idea of voluntary society, but a relativization of it. It is indeed possible, for some people. For others, it isn't. It's simple as that, and profound as that.
Let's take the case of the Amish, wich you mentions. They, as everyone else, have people with the Ruler psychology. But Rulers, as everyone else, are born and risen in a given cultural framework, incorporating these values, and Amish rulers are no exception. Thus, they will pursue power according to the limits established by his deep belief in the Amish faith, self-limiting themselves. What kind of self-limitation? The self-limitation of relying almost exclusively on rhetorically-induced compliance. He still commands, but his commandments are in the form of carefully crafted words that cause their fellow Amishes to act in the way he wants, while still believing they themselves have chosen what to do. In other words, he still rules, but his rulership isn't self-evident. And any kind of real-world, historically existing anarchy is exactly like that. You still have a system of rules and rulers. What you don't have is a visible, institutionalized system of rules, and visible, appointed (or self-appointed, that makes no difference for this argument) rulers. But they are still there, always present, always acting, always being what they must be.
A system of pure anarchy, where everyone has the same amount of power is utopic for the sole reason that only a small handful of people in any human group has the Ruler psychological type and abilities. In the extremely rare cases where there's no one with the Ruler psychological type present, either Entrepreneurs or Intellectuals take the load (and by not being tailored to it they also aren't very good at it, but they manage). In any case however, there's simply no situation where everyone is equally enabled to rule. This simply doesn't happens, and at a minimum there's always someone, or a small group of persons, whom everyone else listens to and whose "suggestions" they almost always obey to the letter. Including, yes, on how to coercively deal with non-cooperative members.
So, if you want to change how the Rulers act, your only option is to act as an Intellectual by changing the cultural framework inside which they work, so that this new cultural framework both limits and orients them. This is a very long process, and please note that attempts at socially engineering it usually fail due to unintended consequences. Also whatever results you might expect from it, whether they'll happen as planned or (more likely) not, will usually be noticed only many, many years after you're dead. Any belief that this can be done fast, or that is suffices to replace a group of rulers with another, or worse, that is suffices to kill all rulers, is delusional. Any new group will still work under the same or at least a very similar cultural framework, thus gravitating towards its consequential forms of power practice.
Regarding the remaining of your text, I don't know whether I agree or not. It's possible that yes, a voluntary society would be crushed by the currently existing powers. But this is by no means certain. Some attempts are being done at such a destruction in, I
I have answered a reply similar to yours on another point in this thread. Please read the whole thread and reply there if you so wish. :)
So, the material well-being of an Intellectual, his possible social roles, his eventual seeking of meaning, won't be the same or even similar to those of a Ruler, or of a Entrepreneur, or of a Worker. And even when the sensual force is at its peak the four types won't show it in quite the same way. The Intellectual would be more of an aesthetical sensual seeking, even when it comes down to sex, while the Entrepreneur might focus more on the "conquest and show to all" aspect of it. And so on and so forth.
Of course, nothing on this apply to people whose mind is or become damaged. These cases are exceptions that must be dealt with so that they can someday, maybe, reenter society, not parts of society per se. This isn't a "psychology of the abnormal". It's a psychology of normality. And it works in contradistinction to more common psychologies which, don't having a theory of normality, at best tried to describe what normality is through statistics or, at worst (more common in the first half of the 20th century), tried to understand normality by observing tons and tons and tons of cases of abnormality.It's not mine. Billions of people share it. I only articulate it as well as I can. Common sense sounds good when expressed in an intelligible way.
So, your first attempt didn't work. But feel free to try again.I didn't say a person couldn't have more than one goal. But one is prevailing. A ruler, for example, will usually do everything he can to avoid losing power, except maybe breaking some moral code he follows. Thus, in this sense he also seeks stability. But the goal of having power forever won't prevent him from risking this same power if, by being successful in this pursuit, he could end up with even more power. On the other hand, he can shape his pursue of power in a way that also yields economic gains. But the main factor continues to be power. Everything else is secondary.
Instead of thinking on these four goals as static wholes, which it seems to me to be what you're doing, you consider them to be axis, with one of them being the main and the other three secondary, with the person staying on differing positions on each one, it'll become clearer. It's a tool for understanding complexity, not a way to avoid it.
Show me a 5th type and I'll agree. :-)
20th and 21st centuries psychologies are so down. Minus 4th is way more on the spot.
Anarchism doesn't work for a single reason: because there are four basic kinds of human personality with four different life goals. They are:
a) Intellectuals: driven by knowledge;
b) Rulers: driven by power;
c) Entrepreneurs: driven by profit;
d) Workers: driven by stability.
An Anarchist society cannot work because it doesn't address the needs of all the people that have the Ruler or Entrepreneur personality. And even if you fine tune it to allow for free market, as the anarcho-capitalists do, thus filling the needs of the Entrepreneurs, the Rulers still stay out of it (with lots of Workers, who lose much of their cherished stability).
A working society must allow for all new born persons to have a place. And so far, a government with well known powers under a constitutional framework offers a good place for Rulers to battle their battles without disrupting (much) the life of the other three kinds.
It's either this, or back into utopic profilings and pre-emptive killings of any person who showed traces of non-compliant personalities. As revolutionary marxists used to do with anyone showing signs of Entrepreneur behavior.
I wonder what my Reputation Level with the IRS is. From Hated to Hostile it's 36,000 points. At 1 point per tax filling that's a long path ahead.
Damn, I hate grinding.
I'm not a parent, much less married (yes, I'm a typical nerd), but I know a guy now in his 50's who has 8 children, none of whom turned into bad persons, quite the opposite. When asked how he managed to do that, he always answers that in the beginning he very consciously choose to be an "yes" father. What he means by that is threefold: that he was himself a permanent moral reference for their children, so that his example would speak by itself more than mere words spoken by him; that he made know to his children that whatever new thing they were interested in doing by themselves, they had to ask him first; and that for the vast majority of these questions his default answer would be "yes", even if the thing in question was in some way dangerous. This way, in the very, VERY, VERY rare occasions where he absolutely HAD to say "no", this "no" had weight. How much weight? The weight of the many hundreds of "yes" that came before it, of many they knew would surely follow it, and of the fact they knew his father was being absolutely honest on the necessity of that specific refusal. So they simply accepted it and carried on.
(This of course doesn't include things the children wanted that he couldn't purchase. In those case an "I'm Sorry, but we don't have the spare money for this. But you can save and purchase it yourself in a few months if you still wish it by then." solved the issue.)
On the other hand, I know families, one of which of close relatives, which put lots of restrictions on their children, as if the parents had opted to be of the "no" kind. And I don't see in those families the same level of success the "yes" guy had, even when the "no, no, no" comes coupled to a strong moral example. In these cases, it seems, no "no" distinguishes itself from the other "noes", all being seen as equally limiting, and as a result, disobeying one doesn't seem that much different from disobeying any, for disobeyed most of them will be, no doubt about that.
Now, I know these are all anecdotal examples, but they will nevertheless push myself into the "yes" kind of parenting if and when I'll have kids. Provided the good example is present (in person or in memory) 24 hours a day, the few hours they'll be playing those hyper-realistic violent video-games won't matter that much.