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129 comments on Campfire and Human Capital - What Do You Want to Learn?
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129 comments on Campfire and Human Capital - What Do You Want to Learn?
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I'll second jokhul above. Note the related point of how my housing "co-operative" was transformed by a human grub into the very opposite of cooperative (and I ended up evicted by the team of harassers)- www.2020housing.co.uk.
Plus--similar/related theme, how communities need to be set up to function successfully. Some may already have noticed that I am a severe critic of aspects of the Transition Towns model. Something on that.
Plus--"marketing" material for getting people aware and or involved. My reckoning is that too many overlook the need to approach people in a discussing way, with questions rather than dumping on them with a lecture.
(I don't envisage writing any of the above posts myself unless pigs start flying in my life.)
(P.S.--Have just about finished my article about whether or not there will be an abrupt collapse. Perhaps that would do for a Saturday slot?)
One thing I've noticed is how each community I've personally had experience with has had a definite culture or identity that, once established seems to be very hard to break, and that it might be very important to have the skills needed to 'shop around', and let oneself OUT of a relationship with a community that doesn't work for you. So, not only to be able to establish ties, but to remember that we don't have to tie it to some notion about re-forging the 'ancient tribes', in which we're stuck with whatever one we've got. (And as that goes, even in a single town, there'll be various subsets.. you might see them as cliques, but ultimately you need to settle in with the people you fit with somehow)
It's like the shorthand I've used for Career choices. Every occupation comes with some BS.. you just have to find the kind of BS that you can deal with..
Bob
(oops, I've been away causing some riots in Tehran....)
You need to get out of not only a community that doesn't work for you, but also from one that isn't going to work for anyone. As per below.
PS- I don't agree that every occupation comes with some BS. My mother and 2 brothers are teachers of music (performance). There's zero BS in music and its teaching and if there was it would quickly get binned. Sure re some of its practitioners. Very high BS level in the instrument (esp piano) sales biz though.
Hi Robbin,
I took a look at your website and read some of the material there. Boy have you had a rough trot but i admire your tenacity in going to the lengths you have to out these people. I can't beleive that they would falsify minutes of committee meetings. The common law of duty of care should have convicted these people pretty quick smart. Do you have a Residential Tenancies Act in the UK or something similar? I know the tribunals in Aus (NSW at least) tend to side mostly with tenants. Co-op housing and managment might come under a different Act. Good on you for sticking with it and putting up a website shaming the scoundrels. Should I ever come across them, I shall say nasty things about their character on your behalf. Ian
Well, one firstly didn't have the choice, either fight or give up. Secondly, one doesn't know how much there is ahead. Common law of duty?--common my arse! As said I firstly found that they were crooks, then the parent org, then the Housing Corporation, and finally the uk's so-called justice system is pack of liar crooks too!
But have now had a little victory. I had no intention of going back to a court which is such a scam of liars anyway. But I bluffed that I was still going ahead with my counterclaim (accusing them of outrageous crimes of course). They in turn didn't want their day of shame in court either, and I'm sure their solicitor could see they were vile crooks too. So they ended up with an out of court settlement, letting off my (unjustified) £6500 costs debts even though my counter was (improperly) limited to £5000. My ECtHR application 5604/08 remains ongoing.
There are official warm words about tenants but in practice they are considered to be a subhuman life-form subsidised by proper people who pay their way. Tenancy has shrunk to a minority in last 30 yrs post Thatcher, but now increasing again thanks to housing collapse.
There was a book years ago (forget the title) written by an ex-hippie who researched all the communes that were founded in the 60s when there was a very idealistic organic/macrobiotic back-to-the-land movement.
The communes had all collapsed and the main reason was that a small handful of people did all the work and the others were basically just free riders. But the people who had the drive to do the work didn't get any special consideration or recognition, because that was counter to the egalitarian spirit of the times. Eventually they just left, disgusted at having to support the parasites.
My experience as a trustee of a sectional-title block of flats is no different. People are not interested in communal affairs. They want to stay in their own little bubble. They won't lift a finger unless it is some way personally rewarding.
I don't know what the answer is. For myself, the rule from now on is, "Never volunteer." (But I suppose my good nature will get the better of me again.)
This is a general human dynamic, it seems; certainly I've lived through it too many times. And while I wouldn't have called them "parasites", it's true that organizations tend to devolve into the mediocrity of maintenance drones who are more effective at social positioning within the organization than interested in the original mission.
And it's not just communes. It's any directed endeavor in which egalitarianism - what I call "monkey fairness" - is presumed to be an utter prerequisite for any solution to any problem. Currently, most humans consider human egalitarianism a more important consideration than the anthropogenic mass extinction. This may ultimately be one of the most dangerous delusions of all.
Moreover, if such a thing as this is uttered, the majority who disagree would assume that I wish to be in an "elite", and deny something to others, since that's the way monkeys model social interaction. But I mention it just as a central structural problem of the human existential pickle. That even as we head into situations in which our world and species will be drastically impacted, any solutions which seem "monkey unfair" are generally met with capuchin screams and thrown feces.
"Fairness" works well in small tribes. It's dysfunctional to try applying it on large scale, "correcting" any natural variations which seem unfair. Paradoxically, it will lead to greater "unfairness", particularly to those monkeys not here to scream for themselves since they're trapped in a diminishing future.
greenish,
Just a thought, concerning those who might mistake your willingness to desire or wish being in the "elite". What can we do to avoid such a misunderstanding? Let's think....oh, here's one...stop referring to others as feces throwing monkeys. Is it really that hard to refer to humans in the human sense and use our language to describe us? Are humans to be permitted not one shred of dignity in the new communal dream/horror/utopia?
RC
We're all apes, and it's sometimes more accurate not to couch everything in human euphemisms.
I can think of nothing which ultimately more endangers actual human dignity than the delusion of a worldview woven of anthropocentric euphemism.
And it's your assumption that feces-flinging monkeys don't have dignity. I don't doubt they feel they have the moral as well as tactical high ground.
Sorry you don't like the metaphor. I support dignity for all creatures.
(mental note: eat Roger first)
Ardvark,
You can keep your good nature from overworking you by reading Animal Farm wnenever the urge to volunteer starts bothering you.
The biggest single problem with all socialist/welfare schemes I have knowledge of is that there is no easy solution to the free loader issue.The next biggest is that if ambitious individuals cannot accumulate property,they subliminate(?) thier urge to do so by accumulating power.
There is (so far as I know) a commune still running in Louisa Va that at one time used a points system to assign jobs.The number of points earned for each defined task was adjusted until all tasks were done.If you wanted a particular job,you got it by offering to do it for less points.Cooking breakfast might take four hours and pay fifty points.Cleaning the toilets might pay fifty pionts for only two hours as it was a much less desirable job.Everybody had to earn a certain number of points to pay his share of the communes expenses.
I visited the place back in the early eighties when I lived near there.
Oldfarmer, it has nothing to do with "socialist/welfare schemes" - at least not as they are commonly known. I suspect you are using the wrong knife because I doubt you include Wall Street and the Corpos generally on your welfare list. Nevermind that they are the welfare clients taking in most of the money, eh? What does it cost you to buy a bottle of Nestle's Poland Spring water? Bottled in Maine. They pay the state $0.005 per gallon [Range Pond contract]. The state pays to keep the water clean, for the roads, for the police to keep people from blowing up their trucks, yadda yadda. Of course, Nestle's isn't exactly a "freeloader"; they are a developer doing good things for Maine.
Yes, freeloading is part of the "human condition", but it is exacerbated by the current culture. Would it be different if cultural norms were different - bear in mind we put a criminal elite at the peak - that we train our "best and brightest" to be like the kleptocrats in power. Freeloading is a fitting systematic response. Get away with everything you can. I'm old enough that doesn't work for me, so I know it is not a fixed human "value".
Maybe only idiots plant seeds and trees. Certainly that's true by the Summers/Obama yardstick.
Anyway, you are right about the freeloading. Just don't blame it on the "socialists" and the welfare moms in the pink caddys. It's the corporations that have honed freeloading to the fine art. Hey, Wal-Mart, Hannaford and health care? What's the best chance US gets single payer health care? When the corporations can dump all the costs.
Freeloaders sure, but name them.
cfm in Gray, ME
Dryki,
You are correct in that I was thinking mostly about income redistribution schemes and should have composed my comments to make that clear.
As far as corporate welfare goes I am in agreement with you.Corporate welfare spemding and subsidies probably dwarfs human welfare spending by a factor of ten at least,I'm just guessing,It might be a factor of one hundred.
You may be guilty of painting fast with a broad brush regarding the rest of your reply but that was my mistake too.Written communications are time consuming,and we aren't getting paid (in cash).
I was thinking about that old saw from Soviet days-they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.
I once knew a young lady who lived across the street from me who collected about eighty percent of my single guy take home pay(and I had a good job considering the time and place) in various ways for herself and her two little kids.She got a rent free house,free school lunches ,free books,nearly free doctor visits,food stamps,heating assistance and a cashable check every month.
She also had a steady boy friend to keep her well supplied with beer who more or less lived in and probably contributed maybe one third more to her income.
She would occasionally come over and work four hours or so cleaning my house for twenty bucks cash-this was forty years ago-but she seldom cleaned her own.She never had to worry about getting fired or laid off either.
She traded baby sitting with other local girls and lived as well or better than I did w/o putting in forty or commuting every week.You could find a party at her house at least twice a week.I had a standing invitation and attended most of them.
Otoh,one of my very elderly aunts who had worked her butt off could not get a nickel because she owned her old falling down house and five acres of scrub and rocks-which at that time and place were worth only about seven or eight times my free loading nieghbor's annual rent subsidy.
So nowadays it is not unusual to hear some guy who has worked his ass off all his life bitterly comment that he would have been better of to have spent his life drinking beer when he hears about his never-held-a-job nieghbor getting a couple of hundred grand free medical-which is pretty damn common-and which would have bankrupted HIM.
I have a life long friend who has collected ebough in salary and benefits making sure that landlords don't get over on rent assisted tenants to have bought and given a free house to at least fifty such tenants.
So it all cuts both ways.I am quite sure the corporate types are far,far ahead,and will remain so.
I could list up dozens of cases that have run into the billions each,but my typing finger is getting tired.
Aardvark--Here's fact #1 of psychology, aka secret #1 of psychology:
People are not all the same.
Some people, many people, Are interested in communal affairs. Some risk their lives as in Iran this week.
A decadent society in breakdown (as per Toynbee A study of history) oppresses such heroes, promoting amoral authoritarians in their place. But they still exist, the living proof that you can kill J Christ but you can't kill his spirit (thanks to the way natural selection works and that few people want a crook for a partner).
The account of communes failing due to free-loaders is a familiar one. I suspect one factor is that such community enterprises are initiated by naive optimistic do-gooders who have excessive faith in human nature and their delusion that criminals will become nice people if given enough rope to hang everyone else with.
That's where I see Transition Towners getting derailed with their devotion to inclusiveness of everyone living in an area regardless of suitability (except for racists etc).