This is a lot better. You are learning to express your feelings on this with a good bit more control. I know it seems like I have been picking on you, but really, in order to lead, even by example, people have to understand what it is you are being an example of, and why.
When I think back to times I have changed my mind due to something someone said, it wasn't the words they used as much as the attitude they approached me with and what experience they had in the field we were discussing. No one listens to the knee jerk rant of someone who doesn't understand the subject matter, and has their facts all crossed up. In order to make a point you have to think clearly. You have to know the facts, and be familiar with what you oppose. You have to not only believe in your cause, you have to know why.
I am also familiar with common persuasion techniques. They come in a lot of catergories, which usually thought of as exclusive to a certain genre' but the methods can be used for anything. There is advertising, preaching, propagandizing, brain washing, mind control, and teaching. The most honest and long term method is of course teaching, but the others work, at least on some people... they are just dangerous. If I spot propaganda speak, or mind control methods in someone I am dealing with, I generally back off and proceed very cautiously.
I'll give you the pros and cons of each method.
First there is advertising. Advertising has to be subtle to work. It has to tickle not hurt. It is generally designed to make you feel like you need something you don't have... but it doesn't make you feel grossly inadiquate, and it offers a solution, and a lot of positive reinforcement and reassurance. It appeals to the id of a person, making them crave, or want. Making them seek something to complete them. It attacks the most childlike part of us. It has to be light, yet memorable, funny and something we can relate to. Most importantly it has to be short, and repeated frequently, so that it can sink in over time.
If you were going to use an advertisng approach to spreading your message, you would jokingly point out people's slavish devotion to money. You would just point it out in a non threatening, and non serious way. Something witty with irony, and good natured humor. You would do this consistently when talking to people, or posting. You could make cartoon strips, or jokes about it... and thus inflitrate people's thinking in a non threatening way. That is Advertising. Advertising tickles rather than tackles.
pros of advertising methods, are that it isn't unpleasant, and it only takes a short while at a time, but the con is that it takes a lot of tries on different days, so that a lot of time passes before you have your convert. Another pro is that people aren't likely to get irritated with you for it, because we are accustomed to this. This is the way our best friend the TV talks to us all the time, and not just during commercials. Commedians also use this method, as do most TV personalities. They don't do a whole show on one issue, they just hint at what they really want you to know, and then go on, only to come back to the issue in a few day.
Preaching... Preaching works for some people... I hate to say it... it works better on mid to low IQ people with guilt complexes, and people who miss their childhoods, and still feel a need to be corrected and bossed around. It tends to come off as authoritative, and thus if it gets pointed too squarely at someone it can be offensive.
Preaching aims to stir the super ego against the id, and thus cause conflict leading to self control... control of the id. It works on the conscience and guilt... but if you push the guilt button on someone one too many times you tick them off, especially if they decide you don't know what you are talking about. It sounds like scolding sometimes, like a parent ranting at a disobedient child, and thus the listener regresses into childhood for this episode, and either punks down like the child he is, or he avoids fruther contact with the speaker. It really depends on the person's childhood. If they were an obedient child, then they will be comforted by a new authority figure, but if they found childhood traumatic, they often rebel against preaching. Repitition is also part of that. Any effective form of persuasion uses some repitition.
Preaching was much more effective prior to the 1960's. It worked very well as a motivator during the dark ages, but most modern Americans don't generally appreciate it. It also doesn't work well with new ideas, because it assumes prior knowledge of the subject, or else requires additional teaching. Most good preachers teach a lot more than they preach. they often do this in seperate sessions. They will deliver a hell fire and brimstone sermon, on Sunday morning, but on Sunday night they will calm down and explain things calmly in detail. In general modern people prefer teaching sessions to preaching sessions.
Propaganda incites emotions, and relies on passion more than fact. It gives the message we are good, they are bad, simply because we are we, and they are they. It stirs the heart with the pride of life, while not backing up its facts. "We are better than the Iraqi's? How are we better and more deserving of life? What did they do to us?" Questions like these are never answered honestly in propaganda. Facts and figures mess up the rhythm of propaganda, and rhythm is very important. Propaganda has to be almost poetic, like blank verse. Catch phrases are repeated many many times during a speach, and in subsequent speaches. It becomes like the chorus of a song. The catch phrase becomes just a few words that conveys a whole lot of emotion directed at one thing... Catch phrases can be used to attack a rival group, or extol their own work. Catch phrases become dangerous because they tend to steriotype, generalize, and even demonize whole groups of people, without the use of facts or justification. It is merely that they are they and we are we.
Effective propaganda stimulates nostalga and national pride. It has to key in on childhood pleasant memories, and it has to persuade, not with ideas but by evoking feelings. It's goal is to evoke an emotional response, which can include outright fear, of a threat not just to self, but to one's homeland and mother. It can stir loyalty, or at least compliance. It can alternatively give feelings of security... and usually does both, like and either or decision where one choice stirs fear, and the other stirs comfort.
I notice when someone is giving me more emotion than fact. I notice when someone keeps repeating catch phrases, instead of giving me real answers. The days when someone said "Burn the witch," and everyone took up their torch immediately to do so, are hopefully over. LOL
Mind control and brainwashing occur when someone has overt control over another person. Prisoners, School children, and members of cults, are obviously vernerable to brainwashing, but sometimes people subject themselves willingly to TV for instance. Now traditional brainwashing requires physical discomfort, threats to safety, and the brainwasher holding authority over a person. However imposing certain elements of culture on people constantly every day, while they zone out and take it all in, can result in mild brainwashing. Technology including but not limited to torture devices are sometimes part of brainwashing. People very rarely realize they have been brainwashed.
Unlike the commercial and the propaganda, or even the preaching, Brainwashing doesn't have to be pleasant. It only requires a captive audience... and sometimes the person zoned out in front of the TV does constitute a captive audience, not because they can't change the channel or turn it off, but because they won't.
The five techniques is an obscure torture method which at first seems quite humane, but it is the most cruel torture there is, and it will break a person much more completely than any other form of torture known to man. It is more effective than pulling out fingernails by far. The five techniques consist of sensory deprivation, fatigue, and deprivation The five techniques are -wall-standing; hooding; subjection to noise (usually white noise like a fan); deprivation of sleep; deprivation of food and drink. After a certain amount of time under the five techniques a prisoner will believe what he is told, often having halucinations to back up the suggestion. He will co-operate with his captors, believing them to be family and friends, because he imagines them to be people he knows. He will be so disoriented that he is no longer aware he is a prisoner.
Now I know that the TV and video games do not starve you, nor do they force you to prop aganst a wall in an awkward position, but it seems possible to me that passive viewing for hours on end, does have a mind numbing effect... not as profound as the five techniques, but still perhaps disorienting enough to make people suggestable, at least sometimes.
Anyway all thes forms of persuasion are a turn off IF the victim realizes these things are happening. If a person realizes that someone is trying to persuade them, by using propaganda techniques, or by preaching at them, they are offended. If you can get away with it though... well I guess it still isn't nice.
Therefore Teaching is the only acceptable method for persuasion. Teaching is just explaining, and demonstrating a skill. It isn't forced, nor deliberately persuasive, just informative.
Personally if I had to pick a style for your usual rant, I'd say your delivery comes off as preachy... you tend to say it is wrong, without explaining why. You assume that we know why, and are just being sinful in using money, when in fact we know of no other way, and see little or nothing wrong with the old way.
Unless people are born into a culture where something is common thought, it is hard for him to understand a new set of values.
There are a lot of things we can't easily live without in this society, and money is a way to get most but not all of them. We can pay for electricity, food, rent, and a car, with money. Money can't buy love, loyalty, or respect. Money can't buy happiness, or beauty. It can't buy tallent or brains. It can't buy motivation, strength,skills or health. IT can offer cheep substitutes for these, but not the real thing.
Without strength, skills, health, brains, motivation or tallent, then a person is screwed. They can't produce in any society with or without currency. To the degree a person or animal for that matter, does have these attributes, they can earn money, catch rabbits, pick berries, or whatever.
It matters very little whether your problem is you can't get paid for picking the berries, or you can't pick them for yourself. It is all the same thing. The only difference is that your employer, or some fellow employee might actually teach you a berry picking technique or two if you listen to him. However if you go off picking berries by yourself you have to know what you are doing. I know that applies to being self employeed and it probably applies to this situation. It takes skills to live, and you have to be taught... kind of like apprenticeship. When i first finished school, I was not prepared to be self employeed. I had a college degree in my field, and some experience, but I needed a lot more experience, training and mostly I needed to observe other businesses before I could work on my own. Every job I ever had, I learned how to do something, that I needed to use in my own business. I learned not only what to do, but what not to do, and that has been invaluable. Working for other people gives a kind of education you can't buy anywhere on earth, but you can get paid to get it.
I've gone to college and while a few of the the things I learned were quite useful, most of the academic stuff was stuff I could have learned anywhere. Only the techinical experience parts were unique, and could not have been gotten out of a book, or found on line. I mean anyone can find plenty of history, english, etc on line, but most of what you really need to know, can only be learned by working, under the supervision of someone who already knows how to do things the way the company requires them done. In this way you learn the right way to do things to save time and effort. You also watch your employer's business practices, what he buys for you to work with, and how he goes about getting them.
For you the main thing I worry about by you not working because of the money issue, is missing the experience of actually learning the processes people use to do things. Work is an education all its own. Working a job teaches us how to work.
WE are a gifted species, but we are also a complex species, and many people are prone to attitudes that hold them back from success, at whatever they try to do... or subconsciously don't try as the case may be. Also people have different abilities. Some are strong physically, some are smart, and some are creative. People also have different preferences. Some people might be happy living alone and growing a garden to sustain their lives, but honestly those people are few, and I am not one of them. Some people are social and they want to spend time with a variety of different people. Some people hate doing drudgery and want a job where they can be creative. Other people are ambitious. They want a job where they get recognition, and a job that makes them feel good about their own capabilities. They take pride in their work, and get a deep feeling of satisfaction from their jobs.
If it were not for currency, I don't see how people could be Artists, or crafts people, or how they could have an intelectual job. I don't see how people with physical disablities could level the playing field for themselves if they couldn't find jobs that used their brains and not their bodies. Without currency everyone would be worked to death trying to raise food, hunt and foreage, whether they liked farming and hunting or not. I for one, loved being in business. I liked figuring profit margins, and making up quotes on jobs. I liked doing the work, and getting paid for it. ON the other hand I've done enough farming in my life to know that I do not like gardening. How, without currency would an artist make a living. It is hard enough with currency.
It has been my experience that circumstances of necessity are usually what prevents me from doing what I want. I would have loved to persue my career, and I think it did some kind of damage to me to stop, but with my kids and my parents, and my husband needing me to expend efforts at home, with the various things that happened over the last dozen years I have had to give it up. Mostly because I WAS pulled down into survival mode, and believe me, to me it was a huge come down. I was doing a job I loved, and a job that was a service to the community. I was happy. It was not the need of money that drove me to quit. It was the need for my efforts in other areas. Survival areas. I do not enjoy getting my self esteme from a clean house. It is like a so what. Besides, the house was much cleaner when I worked, and felt good about myself, than it is now that I feel like some kind of house slave. I tried gardening, and it sucks. Sure I could do it but why. I hate it, and there is no profit in it.
Giving up my career was necessary, and enough time has passed now to where I don't know the modern production techniques I would need to know to go back to work. I kept up just fine when I was working every day, but in the last 12 years technology has moved on without me. Overall I made a sacrifice out of necessity... not necessity for money. It was a huge sacrifice of money, but out of necessity for my labor at home. Too many people needed too much of my time for me to work, so I became a support person. I have a job now, as you know, but it isn't as time consuming... It is also not as creative, and I don't enjoy it or feel as good about it as what I used to do. I feel wasted, intelectually, and if there is anything I regret it is giving up my dream career, but I had no choice, and I did.
I respect you following your dream, if that is what you feel is right for you to do, but no I do not like survival mode. I've been living it for 12 years now. I don't like staying at home. I don't like not having the opportunity to earn money, and as a result I am not the person I was. I am becoming more and more introverted, and unhappy. I am not effective in what I am supposed to be doing, and it is extremely discouraging. I have many tallents, or I used to. I can paint, and write very well. I can figure out how to make most anything. I like carpentry, though I am not quite as good at it, as the other things. I like making money for the sake of it. I like having money in my pocket and knowing it is mine, and that I got it because I am good at what I do. I hate being made to feel like a failure, because I am NOT good at cleaning, and don't really care about it. I hate being expected to drop everything I care about the moment mom gets a hair out of place, or Bear comes home from work. I am not good at certian things I have tried to do around here. There are things I am good at, but I don't have time to do them, because I have to perpetuate the family. I love my family, and I wouldn't give up on them, or let them down if I could help it, but I am so miserable I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror.
Anyway as I was saying I respect your having this dream of the way you want to live, but it is not my dream. I don't want to live like my Great great grandmother lived... I practically do, since I am a traditional wife, but I don't like it. It mostly sucks.
Money is inanimate, it doesn't fight crime... there is no Captain Dollar! LOL
It is all in how you look at it, and what you enjoy. Working was not a sacrifice for me. I liked it. I especially liked doing freelance art for money. I don't like to work unless I have a market for my work. I hate nothing worse than painted canvas laying around unsold. It makes me feel like a wanna be... like those hobby artists... and I hate that. I wasn't sacrificing my soul to paint for money, I was expressing it. I want people to look at my work. I don't want to toss it on the pile on top of the freezer. I can't think of anything I would rather do with my time than do freelance artwork, or produce a publication. I don't like working at the flea market nearly as much, but I still prefer that to just being a home person, taking care of survival needs. I would prefer most any paying job to that.
The thing is though that I have stayed home to the point I am phobic to try to do anything. I've lost confidence, as people do when they are confined, and told they can't do anything. Everyone thinks I am incompetent now, because I got so depressed and discouraged, and because I don't like the tasks that I am supposed to be doing.
People want more than money from their work. They want satisfaction at a job well done. Maybe they want to help people, or feel useful. Some want to work in fields that are not as high paying as some because that field is what interests them. In addition some people subconsciously fear success, while others just don't have the drive to push hard enough. I have watched though and people with ambition can make money no matter what. People with less ambition, or who limit themselves with self doubt, fear of failure, or with various pride issues, of being too good to do certain things... well the more of those issues you have the harder it is. Also if circumstances, family, friends, or other people are working against you, then you first have to deal with that. Circumstances, attitudes, and lack of drive, limit people, but a truely ambitious person can overcome all of that. It takes a lot of push though, and not everyone has that.
People prosper even in hard times, while others starve or nearly starve in good times. People can make it if they really really want to, and if they want to consciously or subconsciously they can. That is not to say that all poor people chose to be poor. That is far from the truth, but the choices they have made in the past and the ones they continue to make limit their horrizons. Also there is not a state in this country that doesn't have plenty of soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Generally every town has at least one, and if not their neighboring town does. If people are starving it is their choice. There is help out there for people who can't make it any other way, no matter why they are having problems. Sometimes people get in such bad shape mentally and emotionally that they can't function. I know... been there done that and bought a wardrobe of tee shirts. I mean I function, but not on the level I want to... but deep down, I know my problem is between my ears, not in my wallet. I mean I function more or less, but I could do much more with my life if I had more freedom, and as I explained my lack of freedom has nothing to do with money, or lack of it. It has to do with the fact I am too busy doing everyone else's bidding to take care of my own stuff, and that I cling to what I have rather than take risks of loosing that to get what I want. These things are why people fail to make money.
The definition of lazy varies from person to person, but in general people do what they want. If they have a career they love they bust their butts to do it. If they have a job they like OK then they do pretty good at it too, but if they have a job they hate, and that they aren't getting enough monatary or emotional reward from, well they do tend to get lazy. Also people get depressed when they feel they have no choice, and that kills their drive, their ambition and their confidence.
I don't want to kill a buffalo, and I don't like to think about cows being murdered either, but I do like eating out, and no I don't know where they get their beef.
My uncle raises Beef, and we used to get meat from him all the time. I know many local farmers who do the same. I still buy meat from other places though. Overall I don't care though. that which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. Of all the meat borne diseases, I only fear mad cow, and we just have to trust it hasn't contaminated American meat producers. If it has we are all screwed anyway.
You speak of a commune. IN a community people work on their own, at whatever they do, and trade with currency, or barter. IF my uncle raises a cow, I have to pay him for it. He does give us free corn sometimes, and free sausage once a year, but that is cause he is nice, not because we share things communally. I don't expect I have anything he wants to be honest. He rents our land and he pays my mom for that. It could be bartered I guess, but as I said, I doubt I have anything he wants.
It mostly matters if we are motivated or not. If we are motivated enough we might could get some free seeds somewhere. We could make friends with the gardening supply guy in our city, and offer him some barter of labor once he gets to know us. We might make friends with anyone who could help us, most anywhere. ONe way around the need for money is networking with other people. For example most people will give you stuff if they know you want it, and they have it to spare... but they have to meet you first.
OOOOH good question. Welfare in nature is when a preditor makes a kill, and doesn't eat it all. Vultures are all about living on welfare. They just fly around looking for dead animals to eat. Ants for all their busy activity are always up for a hand out, and because they are so small no one misses their crumb.
Man provides a lot of animal welfare kind of by accident. Animals eat from our garbage cans, and scrap piles. They eat road kill, we kill in our cars. Ants and yellow jackets frequently attend our picnics.
As for why we have welfare, it is mostly so that people will not starve as you described earlier. Their are programs set up by Federal, State and Local Governments, Churches and Secular Charity organizations, which are set up to feed, house, clothe and otherwise look after the poor. People want to help others.
The government though has a lot of complex paperwork in order to get their help. They are however most consistent in helping the poor. they are the only group to my knowledge that just sends a check every month.
Dependent is in the eye of the beholder. I do not feel dependent when I earn money. I just don't feel about it the way you do. I see you as forced into a dependent state by your own ethics. I am very excited that you have found a way out of your predicament into a way that will work with your ethics. Since I do not feel any guilt for making money, and don't feel dependent by having it, any more than I feel sinful watching a movie... which many of my christian friends feel is sinful. I don't, and I don't worry about other people's morals. People either live by their morals or they don't, but their morals have nothing to do with me, and what I do or don't do. That is up to my morals, and my morals say Money can be used for good, as easily as bad.
People also have the ability to adapt to their environment, and the stuation. I don't play video games a lot. I don't have time, and what time I do have, I like typing long annoying posts to you, more than I like playing games. You are a real person, and that is much more fun than sim people.
As for addictions, we are all addicted to a lot of things out of society... Homes with heat and air conditioning are very addictive on a physical level. People are no longer used to being too cold or too hot, and so they get sick if the temperature isn't being controlled. Of course they probably also got sick before, and just died. My civil war ancestor died from pneumonia. I could see where that would happen to a lot of us, if we tried to live out in the bushes, or even in an unheated cabin. We have adapted to the condition of having perfect climate in our homes, cars, work places, and shoping locations. It would really strain our bodies to change from that. We are also addicted to having clean water, and clean food sources. Our stomaches can't process the bacteria that might be found in creek water.
There is enough free information on line to keep you constantly educating yourself for the rest of your life. Experience is different though. Somethings you can do at home with very little material. Just practice I guess, but the directions for doing most everything are on line. Academic information is plentiful on every subject I can think of. I look up everything on line.
Most people would not think of the above as easier than working. I always liked to work... and even something I hate like cleaning the house, is preferable to killing people.
I question your right to judge others for their so called failed ideals. Maybe they like their ideals? Maybe they are doing what makes them happy and fulfilled.
I think that is the real reason people aren't living off the land like you suggest. With 300 million people in the US there isn't enough good farm land to go around. There aren't enough rabbits and dear for that many people to hunt either. We can't all live off the land, we'd rape it worse than we are now, and as soon as everyone cut down a few trees to make a cabin we'd be out of trees before everyone got one. We'd be out of bunnies before nightfall of the first day... presuming everyone was able to hunt successfully, and we would be plowing every available acre, and still people would be unable to get a plot of land worth the trouble.
Thus I think we would already be butting heads with mother nature if we tried your system, but this system will no doubt take a dive even fruther down than the last one eventually... It is the same in nature. Bunnies over populate, and then bunnies get warbles, Bunnies die of warbles, and there are very few bunnies for a while, then suddenly there are plenty again... then too many and then more warbles. No body has the stomach for seeing people go through that though, so we find cures, and other ways to live, which make us take less room. High rise condos for example provide much more living space per square food of ground area than single family homes with huge lawns.
Unfortunately G.W. just proved that politics can stop the eating process.
YOu can bet he worked for it though. Probably he worked harder and endangered himself more than we modern people can imagine. Given a choice, he might have pulled a ten out of his pocket and ordered a ten pack of tacos.
It is a miracle that the opportunity has arrisen at all, and I wish you tons of luck on it. You should be able to follow your dream, and I am glad this is all happening for you. It is not exactly what I always wanted, but it is your dream, and I am happy for you to have the opportunity.
Kim