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comment by lm
lm  ·  2646 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Interview with Brian Eno

I'm not sure that it's libertarianism per se, but Eno's philosophy definitely shares some ideas about decentralization &c. with it. (Namely, I don't think libertarianism does enough to protect against bad actors and long-term power accumulation, but in a band analogy, neither of these† are major problems.)

The fascinating thing I see with Eno is the focus on structures; I've long been interested in these as well, but mostly from a math and programming perspective, rather than music and people.

† with the possible exception of bad bandmates, but you can always kick 'em out...





user-inactivated  ·  2646 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've always been fascinated with the idea of a communal control. Every community produces X to survive and/or trade with others, and each community communicates with others for certain commodities in exchange for certain items or services. Some rules are agreed upon (you get the item or service you asked for - you pay), and whoever's breaking them is no longer a viable trade partner.

The difference between this kind of community and what would eventually turn into capitalism is that each community agrees to operate on its own, joining forces when necessary but having it apart most of the time. You can compare it to a self-sufficient person who doesn't need other people to satisfy himself but enjoys the company when it's good, organizes parties when good people are willing to come and asks for help when needed. This is how I've always imagined a libertarian community to be.

lm  ·  2646 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You might find anarchism interesting to read up on. There are a lot of smart people who realize that "no central force/authority" means that you need communal means for providing some sort of organization and have spent a lot of time writing about ways that might be achieved. (Sadly I don't have much in the way of suggested reading on this, as I've hardly scratched the surface myself.)

Devac  ·  2645 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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user-inactivated  ·  2645 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The only good cautionary tale about Unabomber is that you shouldn't break people by talking. You know how he got to the point of terrorism? He took part in an experiment that was designed to break people.

    In his sophomore year at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a personality assessment study conducted by Henry Murray, an expert on stress interviews. Students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student. Instead, they were subjected to a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment". During the test, students were taken into a room and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study. According to author Alston Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest he was emotionally stable when the study began. Kaczynski's lawyers attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control techniques to his participation in this study. Furthermore, some have suggested that this experience may have been instrumental in Kaczynski's future actions.

-- from Wikipedia

I get your point: good people and bad people - but I wanted to make this matter clear. Ted Kaczynski may not be "the internal terrorist" because, though responsible for his own actions that he has, he may have been pushed down that path. He wasn't very politically active until after the experiment, and it seems to be a particular incident that drove him into bombings directly:

    The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days' hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it... You just can't imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.

-- Ted Kaczynski, from Wikipedia

lm  ·  2645 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Absolutely. Anarchism is hardly a unified philosophical standpoint--many anarchists have vastly different ideas about how social coordination ought to happen (or if it ought to happen at all).

Devac  ·  2645 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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