iloilo August 25, 2010

How do you reconcile your belief in the shared good for humans on this Earth, and yet send those you are presently able to coerce, by threat of force, to kill others who have also been coerced to go to your war?

How do you reconcile your initiation of force against any individual, with your espousals that you are a person of peace?

It became not enough for me—one person, one mind—to merely go on strike, or even to invest some of the minutes of my life in recruiting others to go beyond striking.   To know and not to act is not to know.

I have needed to follow the questions that needed to be asked back as far as I was able to so, to answer for myself the question:  “What can one person do, what is a course of action beyond striking?”

Because, if one is a creative, competitive, curious, sentient being, one will want—once one has discovered what one can do beyond striking—to Act.   If one thinks that “To know and not to act is not to know” is an imperative—if not the paradigm—by which one may identify intelligent life, then one wishes to identify one’s self as an intelligent being.

So one must act.

Intelligence, today, is often attributed to those with titles.  Here, we humans continue to make the same mistake as did serfs, who attributed desirable human characteristics to kings.  “Yes, the king is wise and benevolent.” “Our beloved king is kind and the smartest man in the kingdom.”  Who persuaded the serfs that the king held these desirable human characteristics?.  Do you think it might have been the kings’ troubadours, court jesters, singers, and scribes, all paid from the king’s purse?  And how did the king fill his purse?

And where does that politician get that money?

What does a politician do with someone who cannot be coerced, and who refuses to take a bribe?  A politician sanctions the kidnapping, captivity, torture, and often the death of a person who cannot to be coerced.  For how can a king let someone live who refuses to pay the tribute, who refuses to relinquish ownership of self, or ownership of the product of labors?  How can a king let someone live who no longer sees the king as wise, benevolent, kind, and smart?  How does a politician let someone live free who now sees the politician as an armed robber who is paying off the court troubadours, scribes, singers and jesters with money stolen from the that person?

And once one knows that these are the facts of the illusion that is called government—whether that government is of kings or princes, dictators or governors, presidents or politicians—then the game is up:  either we are living on honest earnings from free trade among individual people, or we are living on stolen money and goods taken from the honest workers through taxation, conscription, war-making and debasement of the currency.

Once one knows, one must act.  I have found ways to act that make me proud of the state of my own mind and integrity.  No, neither of these characteristics of my identity are perfect.  I am, after all, just another flawed human.  I am working on it, though.

But I know this much: to the extent that we know, we must act, or we do not know.

I know that those who employ coercive force against us, hiring thugs with the money stolen from us, are engaged in a marvelous game of smoke and mirrors, where we pay the hoodlum not to beat us.  When, as do many animals, we give way to the angry bully, hand over our fruit to the bigger ape, give the alpha wolf the best eating place on the kill, and thus spare ourselves from being beaten, hit, or bitten, we are striving to survive.  Animals resort to force to settle disputes.

Humans have been given the gift of reason, if only we will learn to use it.

But if humans allow this sub-human use of force to continue, then how are we better than the primates who beat each other to get the piece of fruit, or better than the wolf who snaps to secure the best morsel from the kill?

How do politicians reconcile their sanction of the use of force to take our property from us, and to direct our hard-earned wages to making wars, to fulfilling their royal whims?  How to politicians justify using force to seize ownership of our lives, our bodies, and our children?  How do politicians and other government employees reconcile the use of force with claiming to be humans of reasoning minds?

They cannot reconcile the use of force and the claims of wisdom, kindness, benevolence and intelligence.  Rather than becoming wise, kind, benevolent and intelligent, the politicians have chosen to use force. Just as did kings of old. They fill their purses by using armed robbery.

It is very easy to see who are the sub-humans in society, is it not?  Isn’t it time to stop putting money into the purses of the war-mongering, subhuman kings, no matter by what name you call these power-damaged people?

iloilo

1 July, 2010

iloilo 26 July, 2010

See: Fully Informed Jury Association - FIJA.org

In Wood’s new and excellent book on Nullification, much is written about the use of nullification at the state level of government against the federal level of government, but less attention is given nullification by the individual juror. Yet, the essence of justice is that human rights and conscience exist and can be exercised only at an individual level. There is no “collective right” just as there is no “collective conscience.”

While the perceived collective political community may embark on collective political posturing for myriad reasons, it is only at the individual level that the elegance of the independent juror, capable of raising a standard of justice in anticipation of the coming tides in the affairs of men, that we observe the prescient nature of the individual human conscience in steering the ship of state through troubled waters.

Throughout human history, we have moved from slavery toward the recognition of the unique rights and self-ownership of each individual human. With this journey has come the recognition of the evils of collectivist thinking at all levels of consideration. When we finally accept—as a cultural necessity—the inherent value and rights of each individual human, and when there are free markets and voluntary associations, we will still have need of juries to consider, to weigh, and to decide, what is justice and what is not.

In fact, one can readily thumb through history and find instances of brilliant juror nullification: cases in which the jurors anticipated later-recognized human rights; cases in which jurors raised the standard of justice to new heights. A recent reviewcarefully points up shifting sentiment toward nullification. At almost every instance within this excellent article, one could substitute the concept of the individual juror for the concept of the collective state government, and in that substitution, find the essence of the concept of the jury of 12 jurors: of self-determination on an individual level, as each juror accepts the authority to judge the law as well as the fact, based on individual sense of conscience, justice, and compassion.

Investigation of instances of failure of the jury reveal that such instances can be attributed more to government employees’ political jury stacking than to jury malfunction. In many instances, racism, sexism, or other factors kept juries from being truly representative of all those connected to the case.

(The economic implications are clear: re-open justice to the vote of the free market: let the people, as should be represented by the jury in every criminal case, determine those laws considered economically viable for enforcement. We might soon see only one law: no initiation of force or fraud for any reason whatsoever.)

Let the jurors act on individual motivation, and let bad laws fall before the conscientious, informed jurors who understand that they have the authority to judge the law as well as the facts, and that it must be their personal sense of justice which compels their individual verdict. Let there be no distinction of the right to nullify bad laws, whether at the state level or at the individual level, where one juror, acting independently in good conscience, has the same right to nullify as any government body.

The jury is one of the smallest, and therefore most significant, of duly constituted bodies involved in the application of laws and the mechanisms of justice. The elegance of 12 jurors has been examined from a mathematical perspective, found as Appendix I in Vin Suprynowicz’s brilliant Send in the Waco Killers, which I imagine you have all read. Read the Appendix I again. You will be enlightened about the role of the individual juror in serving as an essential and mathematically significant check on government employees’ tyranny and attempted usurpation of human rights.

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution,” a Virginia lawyer wrote … His name was Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson clearly understood that while self-serving government employees at every level would exceed their authority given any opportunity, they could be denied that opportunity by the people who would comprise the jury, who would refuse to enforce usurpations of individual human rights. Jefferson also understood the “anchor” metaphor, and chose it above the “cannon” metaphor, because the jury is a peaceful, necessary restraint to keep the ship of state steady and safe in serving its purpose: the protection of individual human rights. Jurors hold the authority and the ability to enforce the limits of the Constitution by refusing to enforce government employees’ attempts to violate Constitutional boundaries.

Find out more by visiting the Fully Informed Jury Association. You will want to stay for a bit and read up on one of the least-known rights in our Common Law country. It is a right, that when known, effectively can save us––through peaceful means––from the war the government has declared and is making against its own people, not so different from those wars against the people that inspired the Magna Carta.

It is the independent, secular, non-partisan juror who stands as the Fourth Branch of Government, capable of placing a veto on bad laws by refusing to enforce them at the behest of self-interested government employees, whether at the federal, state, or local level. After all, conscientious nullification resides, in the final analysis, in the independent mind of the thinking individual.

iloilo

15 July 2010

What is currency, if not a representational icon, depicting a specific value, agreed upon between two individuals, making a voluntary exchange of values?

If you and I agree to make a trade of corn for bananas, then both the corn and the bananas are currency, each representing a value in terms of another commodity: a half sack of corn is worth twenty-five bananas.  And twenty-five bananas are worth a half sack of corn.  Of course, this value of the currency assumes that both individuals sought out the most personally advantageous deal in free markets.

Yes, people tend to be happy with the  representational icon that is gold.  Yet, if you ask anyone the worth of gold, they will need to make reference to another representational icon to provide a comparison as to the worth of the gold.  Because, how does one define the intrinsic value of anything?  Is gold worth more or less than twenty-five bananas or half a sack of corn?  How much gold is equal in value to a banana? To a handful of corn?  You see, value is an individual assessment.  A kite is worth nothing to you if you want bananas.  But to the person who wants a kite, its worth might be a whole sack of corn.  Only a free individual, operating in free markets, can decide what objects have how much value for that individual.  ”Market regulation” is a fallacy: only individuals, by their choices, can “regulate” free markets by their voluntary choices.

Human hours.   Yes, as with any other commodity, there will be the floor-swabbing and politician-talking sort of hours, not worth much at all in trade.  Then there will be the doing brain surgery sort of hours, where—if the neurosurgeon has good credentials and an impeccable reputation in the community—the hour trade rate might be 500 politician-talking hours for a half hour of brain surgery.  Sound about right?

What I hope to impress upon you, just in case you did not arrive at this page already knowing this fact; is that when currency is reduced to the hours of your life, you will trade very carefully, seek to make the utility—and therefore the value—of your hours as profitable as possible, and strive for leisure as much as possible, perhaps, or for more time for learning.  Learning might also increase the value of your personal hours on the open free market, right?

When hours are your currency—when your life is what you pay, directly, for what you want—I think you will trade with much more careful attention to the value given and received.

This concept of life as currency differs from all other currencies in one regard: it has no relationship to any bank, government, economic council, political inclinations, or other commodity.

It is an unused market, this market with the currency of time. Government has no ownership of your life, and so, they have no ownership of your time.  Yes, it is true that a draft or community service by force is certainly government owning your life for a fixed period of time.  Once you understand that all you have to trade are the minutes and hours of your life, you will probably begin to spend those time-bits far more carefully. If you think about it

iloilo

1 July, 2010

Response to person comparing gold market to time market:

I discuss the mechanisms of individual value of an hour being a free market-based concept: you negotiate for how many hours of the other’s life is your product/service worth.  It is an individual valuation of the moment: your hour inventory is fairly constant; that of another human is also.  The variability in an hour’s worth will be value added by individual attributes such as education, expertise, strength, beauty, handsomeness, and also availability and timeliness, to name a few attributes which could reasonably affect the value of the individual human hour.   An ounce of gold holds not nearly as many market-worthy variables, you see. Nor does gold have such a vast possible market of traders as does time.
I hope that helps.  Did you read the earlier essay on the site as well?

More to the same chap:

On local and global markets:  I am sure you are familiar with (market) matrix theory: growth of unit-interstices through linked structures.

Most of our time trading will be accomplished locally.  As we develop more far-flung systems, there is nothing wrong with a variety of currencies being deployed by various communities or families or clans.  Reputation is then added as a marketable characteristic of time value when it is symbolized by some other currency.

Ah, I have enjoyed that we also have the present technology of the pen and paper, and I have done some amazing, complicated, and value-burgeoning deals—some international, although none as of yet off-planet—with those two simple and elegantly-accessible forms of technology, often trading my time for many excellent things. Using a trusted  private courier, of course.  And my personal  seal .

I cannot think of anything that cannot be done for each individual to enjoy the necessary markets using time as a basis of currency, but there can be many currencies, with suitable exchanges, and individuals will do what they want and recognize as of the highest value to them, individually.

iloilo

August 25, 2010

I just don’t understand.  Take police. Or any other armed forces.  I am sure that when police or soldiers are with their own families and close friends, they are as tolerant, kind, self-effacing, and lovingly tender as the next person.  I am sure they are not only not reproachful, but probably soft-spoken and overly indulgent of their offspring.

What happens to them, then, when they don the costume and take up the badge and bludgeon?  What is the transformational catalyst of the kindly and peaceful individual into the savage master of violent injustices?

Is it the strain of trying to act the part of the power-created illusions?  Is it the fear of causing people to hate them?  Is it the fear of having their families learn of the evils they are taught to do while in the uniform of the “law enforcer” when they had brought with them to their employment and training their lofty dreams of being “peace officers?”  What causes this monstrous transformation?

I just don’t get it.

Are they trained in some training exercise in such ways that they come to love the sport of inflicting pain and punishment?  Are they trained to ignore their own humanity, and to see others as “enemy” rather than as other humans?  Are they trained to follow orders without question, and to inflict injury at every opportunity?  Are they taught that the proper response to their own fear is to cause more fear in others, or to harm or kill others?  Are they trained to think that such actions are normal, healthy, and human?  Are they trained to abandon their own conscience and thinking?

I would find it a tragic difficulty, indeed, to put on a costume and be forced by the expectations of those who ordered me about with so much cruelty of purpose.  I would consider it a tragic difficulty, indeed, should I need to find such desperate means to earn enough daily bread for me and my loved ones.  Better a dustman, or a maid, than to be forced by economic necessity to be paid to learn to kill other innocents, because some power-damaged insane person ordered me to do so to earn my survival, and I do not see any other way to survive.

I should find it a tragic difficulty to even need to think of myself becoming a part-time orc, of working spiritless and mindless violence against the innocent.  Yet, if this is my assigned job, in my financial desperation, how would I find an escape?  How would I come to be aware enough to realize that if I stayed, I was going to slowly transform into one of the full-time orcs, and perhaps descend to being a politician or other of the law-makers and the law-givers.  I would be fearful that I might come to eat happily at the feet of my cruel and power-damaged masters.  I would fear becoming a cruel and power-damaged person, myself.

I just don’t get it.

How do people who must perform heinous acts against other humans reconcile their uniformed behavior with their loving treatment of their wives and children, all of whom might soon be carrying on similar activities, such as peacefully demonstrating, carrying a placard, or handing out peace-promoting literature?  How do “law enforcement” employees reconcile their treatment toward the children and spouses of others with how they treat their own families?  Does it bother those in uniform that they are using such violence against the peaceful children and spouses of others, such treatments as they would not want visited on their own families?

I just don’t get it.

How does one reconcile being a costumed brutal monster, ordered and controlled by others to perform heinous acts, with being a loving parent and spouse when out of costume?  What is the rate of mental illness among such people, whose conscience must be in conflict?

I would find it a tragic difficulty to look at myself in the mirror.

I would find it a tragic difficulty if my children have any inkling of what I was doing at the orders of my masters.

I wonder if those who don the uniform, and take up the badge and bludgeon, have these difficulties.  I wonder if they are looking for other work, or if the heady sense of power of life and death, of mastery over other humans, of the license to sue force to create suffering, pain and fear, become addictive to them, and cloud their visions with blood lust and power hunger. Have they become fully as power-damaged as their masters?

How do they hide it from their families, and go on?

I just don’t get it.

Knowing the horrible evils perpetrated by such employment, would not an honest person choose to work two other jobs where they are not ordered to inflict pain, or death?  Is money so dear, and a new vehicle so necessary, is a new big screen, and a fancy vacation so important, that people will sell their humanity for a few coins?

I just don’t get it.

iloilo

1 July, 2010

There is no reason I can think of why every woman on Earth should not be making a difference in the one place we can certainly make a difference: in our own families. We carry the culture, celebrate the milestones, and nourish and comfort.  How much easier our obligations will be when we have successfully taught our families Peace.

Teach Peace, do not celebrate war.  Teach your menfolks the truth of life: evolved humans find other ways to settle disputes than through warfare.  I am not speaking of passive acceptance of death here, for I believe every human has the fundamental human right to protect their life and the lives of those they love, as well as the fruits of their labours.

I am speaking of teaching our menfolk the folly of going to war for some leader, king, politician, dictator, or prime minister.  I am speaking here of teaching the refusal to kill anyone who is not directly threatening you or your family.  Begin now, to teach our menfolk that we need them as doctors, artists, builders, farmers, creators, space explorers: that we do not approve of any action they take on behalf of any leader, state, clan, tribe, religion, or government that enforces its edicts through violence, either at home or in other peoples’ lands.

Teach your menfolk that they must be keen shots and able to defend themselves and their loved ones–and learn to defend yourself, too.  Teach them to defend their homes, fields, farms, and children. Teach them that going to war on behalf of any institution that initiates force—whether through taxation, forced obedience to edicts, or through war industry and warfare—is an abomination to the entire concept of human rights and human intelligence.

We can each do this as individual women; daily, hourly, singing songs of brilliant men who are heroes because they refuse to take up arms for kings, politicians, or any other “leaders” who would send them off to kill people they do not know.  Teach your menfolk to be their own leader, for truly, their minds are as capable of right thinking, and perhaps more capable, than anyone who would call them to war as a means to settle a dispute or enforce some “law.”  Those who make calls to war are the power-damaged ones, the ones who lust for power over other humans.

Teach the menfolk right now—today—that they can be brilliant, blazing with beauty, and bountiful in service when they renounce warfare.  This warfare is a mindset that men have been taught in many cultures to believe is the gateway to their dreams of glory and power.  Give them new dreams of glory and power: dreams that do not include the shedding of innocent blood.

This Peace-teaching is the role for we Women of Peace; on an Earth whose men are crazed with warfare, damaged by power cravings, insane with lust for control, and addicted to the initiation of force to “win” over other humans.  Refuse to applaud war.  Refuse to pretend pride, when your heart is mourning the carnage and evil of war. Refuse to justify any leader using force against innocent and harmless people, whether in warfare, or in confiscation of peoples’ grain, goods, or gold.

For when leaders use force, in any instance whatsoever, they are making war. Leaders who are addicted to using force have power-damaged minds, and must not be followed. Humans are meant to cooperate voluntarily, not to be coerced violently.

Refuse to give kind words or any praise to warfare.  Refuse to sanction warfare. Refuse to sanction the initiation of violence for any reason whatsoever.  Expose the lies of those “leaders” who justify initiation of force.  If we Women of Peace do not raise the cultural standard—if we do not set the ethical standard for humans as a higher standard than that of beasts—then we are not doing our job.  Teach your menfolk that there are peaceful alternatives to the initiation of violence.  Teach your menfolk that there are brilliant alternatives to warfare.  And shame them if need be, to show them the error of their power-damaged minds.

Teach Peace.  Set your table with Peace.  Light the dinner candles for Peace.  Serve the bread with Peace.  Learn to defend yourself and encourage others to be able to defend themselves as well, but only against the individual who comes to your farm or apartment, your condo or tent, with evil intentions.  You have a human right to defend yourself and your property, for this is a right of every human on this Earth.

Do not go seeking war.  Do not go off to fight in wars.  Teach the menfolk that their death in warfare serves no good purpose, because they were born for peace, just as much as you were born for peace.  Teach them to stay home, and build a better life.

We Women give life.  Let us now protect life by teaching Peace.

iloilo

Mother’s Day, 2010

Lovely, really lovely.  May add a bit to humankind’s present conversations against the initiation of force.

I’m more of an agorist than an anarchist, and I have been labeled as both.  Time will tell.  I am definitely in agreement with no initiation of force.

I like this entire concept.  When my children were small, we belonged to a sitting cooperative, where you simply earned hours and spent hours of sitting with people who were in the cooperative.  Worked wonderfully. And the time bank could be used in other places with other cooperative time banks as well.  Points earned in Peoria could be used in Utica, if there were sitter cooperatives in both places.  Charming.  The time-keepers got a credit every month for doing all the time-keeping records, by the way: you lost about a quarter hour a month in fees, but it was well worth it.

I like that people are continuing this cooperative concept and extending it to hours of trade for all sorts of stuff from plumbing to particle acceleration (okay, so maybe we aren’t quite there yet) and trading on an hour-for-hour basis.  Or on any basis that is agreeable to both parties involved.

When we are trading the actual minutes and hours of our lives for what we want, with no symbolic medium of exchange such as fake paper money in the mix, priorities certainly become much more significant in making decisions of how to allocate one’s time.  I like this.  People are all free to trade their hours in any way they please, but the human hour of effort holds the same worth across the market.  And if people don’t want to trade straight across, I guess they will work out a bargaining system. Say, trade one hour of curative medical care, with all those years of medical training amortized over the hours to be traded, for maybe three hours of garden hoeing or lawyer work.

Trading hours means a much closer scrutiny of the actual worth of what one is getting in trade, for aren’t the hours of our lives the most valuable commodity we have to trade?  That being so, begin to ponder:

How many hours will you trade to the grower of your food?; to the bringer of your firewood to heat your house?; to the maker of the cloth for your clothes?; to the officer who gives you a ticket for going five miles over the posted speed limit on an empty road in dry daylight; to the politician who passes laws to limit your human rights?; to the dentist who fixes your broken tooth?; to the tax collector?; to the chap who plows away the snow?; to the county assessor?

Removing phony money made of paper from the equation reveals a reformation in how we prioritize where we spend our lives, doesn’t it?

I am going to think more about this.

iloilo

April 29, 2010

If someone tells you that they are joining the armed forces, or are already engaged in the war industry, a peaceful response might be:

“I’m so sorry, so truly sorry that you are working for the war industry.  You were born to be a person of peace.  When you get out, if you need someone to help you to heal, please let me know.  I would like to help.”

I am thinking of how I might articulate the proper cultural cues so that people would easily recognize the horrible injury that war does to anyone involved in this enterprise of death and destruction.   I want to condemn the war, not the person.  The person needs help.

I cannot think how we can advance humanity and civilisation while we are continuing with the industry of war.  There are better ways to solve human disputes.  No one has the right to initiate force against anyone else.  And self-defense does not involve war: it is an individual matter, after all.  Neither is self-defense the initiation of force by the individual.

I will probably write more on this as I continue to think about it.  Meanwhile, teach your children that reason is more valuable that force, and cooperation more valuable than any form of government.  Government is the industry of war, after all.  Individual humans do not make war–they cannot, by design–only government can steal enough to construct war machines and force people to go off to places they have never been, to kill people they have never met.

I am so very sorry for anyone who is compelled, by conscription or economic desperation, to work for a war industry.  These people need to be healed.