vinyl upholstery works great on the floor too!
Gerteeville on a cold and sunny fall morninglow 20, high 65!
I don't think everyone shares the same ideas about what a livable community means.
My idea of a livable community is Gerteeville, Alaska where I now live. I can guarantee you, not very many people would agree with me. Too many summer tourists tell the local kids I'm "weird" for living in a tent year round.
So how does the livable world system based on perfectly managed urban density accommodate people like me? I know most Americans don't live my way, but other people do all over the world. And if we think those people aren't happy because they don't have a fully plumbed government inspected apartment and a cell phone, we are mistaken.
I really love what I've accomplished here, and I'm rather proud of it too. I've hand built every dwelling we have using both new and used materials. We have no indoor plumbing and use wood stoves for heat and cooking. We burn as much beetle killed spruce as we can get access to (difficult when there's no public wood cutting areas). We haul freshwater from the community well and use about 50 gallons per week for a household of three people. I get electric off the grid.
There is no local government here. There is no county or borough government. Our only police are State Troopers whose offices are 40 miles away. All privately owned land is tax free. There are no land use regulations and no inspectors. We have an all volunteer fire department. We live side by side with moose, fox, lynx, ravens, eagles, owls, dogs, wolves and bears.
We have severe winters and nasty summers. It was 20 above this morning at 8am. I had to get up and saw a load of firewood with a broken chainsaw that barely gave me 4 pieces of slab. Every day presents new challenges, and the only time I get to be lazy is when everything is done. But these are prices I'm willing to pay. I like my independence and honor the personal responsibility I have for my own health and safekeeping. I love opening my strange little home to strangers who meander through our wilderness. I am nourished by the closeness I feel in spirit to the people who live in our neighborhood (except for the WISE bunch, who also happen to be the communitarians out here). We are not isolated nor are we alone, and it's funny that old acquaintances who live antiseptically alone in big beautiful Seattle homes think we are. Will people ever stop projecting their own limited views of life on others?
I was introduced to Building Livable Communities in Seattle, WA in 1999.
Seattle planners told us they were rebuilding our neighborhood to be more livable. They had many new ideas for how they could possibly implement what they called our "local" vision for the future. Several of the ideas included using federal police to gather our private data.
To verify their claims that our rights to privacy and property had been "balanced" against the community, I went door to door on my block (N.E. 65th Street entrance to Roosevelt H.S.) and not one of my neighbors had any idea about the plan to build a livable community.
Over the next year I asked hundreds of Seattle residents what they thought about their plan, and the answer was always, "What Plan?"
Everyone I knew also insisted I made up the quote from the Seattle Police's Mission Statement: "To increase livability by reducing fear." Seattle neighborhood planners refused to define Livability for me. Seattle Democrat Nancy Rising thought it all sounded completely ridiculous. My repeating the planners terminology in my letters to the planners got me branded as a wacko.
My original opposition to Building Livable Communities was based on the fact that the planners lied when they claimed it was what the whole community said they wanted. When I learned Livable Communities was a communitarian idea and that a old Israeli terrorist named Amitai Etzioni was the guru for the big new idea for livability, my opposition expanded to be based against the communitarian theory behind building livable communities.
A recent commenter raised the point that our opposition appears to play into the dialectic. We've pondered that ourselves many times at this blog. The ACL Manifesto is obviously, by default, the dialectical opposite of Etzioni's communitarianism. If communitarianism is not the perfect unnamed final synthesis in the Hegelian Dialectic, it does need opposition to morph into the next planned evolutionary phase. Our antithesis proves it is not the perfect final solution to unjust social systems, because Marxist teachers told us the final dialectical synthesis/solution would be so perfect it gives rise to no opposition. We exist, therefore it cannot be perfect.
So now the question I'm sure most rational readers ask is, does the ACL exist merely because we recognized their imperfect lies or because we are their agents and we're frauds? Are we truly independent opposition or are we controlled opposition? I have no way of proving that to you. All you can wonder is why the hell we're the ONLY dedicated opposition research in the world. If there's supposed to be a "movement" arising from the people that opposes communitarianism, then based on the way that's NOT happening I'd guess we're going to be stuck in the communitarian phase of the Hegelian dialectic for a looooooong time.
Other writers have some evidence communitarianism is just another Hegelian phase of the forced evolutionary process, and I linked down on the right to Bobby Garner's Dialectical Tetrad article for those interested in the theory of Transcendence. Much of the idea is based on Alice Baily's writings, which I've yet to find time to study, and I'm guessing I'm going to learn more about it from Manley Hall when I find time to read his works. Will I stop being the opposition if I become convinced I am only helping move society toward the final Stutopian solution? Good question.
My idea of a livable community is Gerteeville, Alaska where I now live. I can guarantee you, not very many people would agree with me. Too many summer tourists tell the local kids I'm "weird" for living in a tent year round.
So how does the livable world system based on perfectly managed urban density accommodate people like me? I know most Americans don't live my way, but other people do all over the world. And if we think those people aren't happy because they don't have a fully plumbed government inspected apartment and a cell phone, we are mistaken.
I really love what I've accomplished here, and I'm rather proud of it too. I've hand built every dwelling we have using both new and used materials. We have no indoor plumbing and use wood stoves for heat and cooking. We burn as much beetle killed spruce as we can get access to (difficult when there's no public wood cutting areas). We haul freshwater from the community well and use about 50 gallons per week for a household of three people. I get electric off the grid.
There is no local government here. There is no county or borough government. Our only police are State Troopers whose offices are 40 miles away. All privately owned land is tax free. There are no land use regulations and no inspectors. We have an all volunteer fire department. We live side by side with moose, fox, lynx, ravens, eagles, owls, dogs, wolves and bears.
We have severe winters and nasty summers. It was 20 above this morning at 8am. I had to get up and saw a load of firewood with a broken chainsaw that barely gave me 4 pieces of slab. Every day presents new challenges, and the only time I get to be lazy is when everything is done. But these are prices I'm willing to pay. I like my independence and honor the personal responsibility I have for my own health and safekeeping. I love opening my strange little home to strangers who meander through our wilderness. I am nourished by the closeness I feel in spirit to the people who live in our neighborhood (except for the WISE bunch, who also happen to be the communitarians out here). We are not isolated nor are we alone, and it's funny that old acquaintances who live antiseptically alone in big beautiful Seattle homes think we are. Will people ever stop projecting their own limited views of life on others?
I was introduced to Building Livable Communities in Seattle, WA in 1999.
Seattle planners told us they were rebuilding our neighborhood to be more livable. They had many new ideas for how they could possibly implement what they called our "local" vision for the future. Several of the ideas included using federal police to gather our private data.
To verify their claims that our rights to privacy and property had been "balanced" against the community, I went door to door on my block (N.E. 65th Street entrance to Roosevelt H.S.) and not one of my neighbors had any idea about the plan to build a livable community.
Over the next year I asked hundreds of Seattle residents what they thought about their plan, and the answer was always, "What Plan?"
Everyone I knew also insisted I made up the quote from the Seattle Police's Mission Statement: "To increase livability by reducing fear." Seattle neighborhood planners refused to define Livability for me. Seattle Democrat Nancy Rising thought it all sounded completely ridiculous. My repeating the planners terminology in my letters to the planners got me branded as a wacko.
My original opposition to Building Livable Communities was based on the fact that the planners lied when they claimed it was what the whole community said they wanted. When I learned Livable Communities was a communitarian idea and that a old Israeli terrorist named Amitai Etzioni was the guru for the big new idea for livability, my opposition expanded to be based against the communitarian theory behind building livable communities.
A recent commenter raised the point that our opposition appears to play into the dialectic. We've pondered that ourselves many times at this blog. The ACL Manifesto is obviously, by default, the dialectical opposite of Etzioni's communitarianism. If communitarianism is not the perfect unnamed final synthesis in the Hegelian Dialectic, it does need opposition to morph into the next planned evolutionary phase. Our antithesis proves it is not the perfect final solution to unjust social systems, because Marxist teachers told us the final dialectical synthesis/solution would be so perfect it gives rise to no opposition. We exist, therefore it cannot be perfect.
So now the question I'm sure most rational readers ask is, does the ACL exist merely because we recognized their imperfect lies or because we are their agents and we're frauds? Are we truly independent opposition or are we controlled opposition? I have no way of proving that to you. All you can wonder is why the hell we're the ONLY dedicated opposition research in the world. If there's supposed to be a "movement" arising from the people that opposes communitarianism, then based on the way that's NOT happening I'd guess we're going to be stuck in the communitarian phase of the Hegelian dialectic for a looooooong time.
Other writers have some evidence communitarianism is just another Hegelian phase of the forced evolutionary process, and I linked down on the right to Bobby Garner's Dialectical Tetrad article for those interested in the theory of Transcendence. Much of the idea is based on Alice Baily's writings, which I've yet to find time to study, and I'm guessing I'm going to learn more about it from Manley Hall when I find time to read his works. Will I stop being the opposition if I become convinced I am only helping move society toward the final Stutopian solution? Good question.
I got an error on two previous attempts to publish this. This version doesn't contain any links.
ReplyDeleteCommunitarianism is of (built upon and supported by) the present, historical, traditional world power structure. It's the product of the world powers in partnership with their aligned nations and NGO's through the United Nations, Agenda 21 programs. It's designed to empower World Government in the tradition of the historical succession of world powers while maintaining the elite power base and suppressing the people. Communitarianism is the synthesis of the preceding period of conflict (thesis/antithesis), which began among the events surrounding the outbreak of WWI, and ended with the collapse of Communism in the 1989 period.
As I made the point in my article on the Dialectic Tetrad, the theses vs. antitheses are not two distinct stages, but a process of conflict, which is followed by a period of conflict resolution, or problem solving, which is the synthesis. Third Way Communitarianism is focused on conflict resolution, and therefore, is the synthesis. The Book Social Disorganization says "This new order will be drastically different from the society which it superseded, but it too will be a transitory phase. Eventually a "third organization of society" will appear which may continue for generations."
That "third organization of society" hasn't happened yet, but it is coming onto the radar screen. It has a name and a new manifesto.
The New Communist Manifesto defines the Third Way (and Communitarianism?) as "... the fiction created by modern corrupted neo-liberalised social-democratic parties willing to serve the interests of the Big Global Bourgeoisie and preserve capitalism."
It's principles are intended to have the broadest appeal. It will feature Tribalism and Self-Management, which was the main (but unachieved) goal of Communism:
...the Soviet Constitution affirmed: “The supreme objective of the Soviet State is the construction of a classless communist society in which a socialist communist self-management will be able to develop” - Tribalism or Self-Management: the Next Step after Communism
The present, ongoing collapse of the power based system will likely usher in the Transcendence to this New Communism, but possible under a different (as yet undefined) name which would appeal to even non-communists.
My article on the Dialectic Tetrad was validated by the author of Decline of the Age of Enlightenment, by David J. Krus, Ph.D, when he picked it up as a review of his work.