'The latest research on the effects of environment and genetics on personality...'

'I don’t think in terms of technological determinism. I think in terms of human vulnerabilities: technological affordances and human vulnerabilities. The technologies of mobile connection make us some offers we can’t refuse. Connectivity technology pushes every button. There’s this new research that shows that our iPhones light up our brains in the same places that love lights up our brains. We’re wanted. Somebody wants us, somebody needs us, somebody’s calling to us, somebody remembered us. -- We’ve cornered ourselves into a communications culture, where I think we’re spending less and less time reflecting. The issue for me is reflection and spaces for reflection. Social media satisfy some needs. People feel connected. In some online places, people do feel responsibility and belonging. But in fact, people can just leave when they wish; the friended is not a friend. What I’m finding in my work is that online life can create a sense of disorientation. The speed of online friendship is so fast: you get this sense of intimacy so fast and the sense of close connection; you feel that you’re getting right to the heart of things really quickly. You’re not going through all the hard things that come with a shared life and a shared community; you have the sense of cutting to the chase. That goes on for awhile, and then somehow you don’t know what you have. You don’t know what your responsibilities are. You don’t know what you can ask for. So then people wonder, “Do I have everything; do I have nothing? What do I have?” It’s fine if you have a couple of those ambiguous relationships; everyone does. But when ambiguous relationships become more and more of your life, people become very disoriented. I have tremendous respect for the support and the connection and the fun that people have online. But I think when we decided to call these online connections “communities” and “relationships,” we chose the words we had available to us, and we confused ourselves. -- ...the point is, when we’re with people we feel as though we’re getting some kind of authenticity, and we experience ourselves as authentic. Which is why we go see people in person—we know, no matter how much they’re made up or fluffed up or prepared, we’re going to see the real something. And that’s what these kids are trying to avoid, when they only want to text, when they don’t want to have a conversation, and that’s what they’ve become exhausted by. They’ve put themselves in a world where they are performing all the time. They have organized a world where they’re always at their screen. That’s when they just kind of crack and find some way to drop out for awhile. -- I’ve studied kids and dolls – whenever I do a robot study, I do a parallel study with a doll. And everything is different with a doll. With a doll you have the psychology of projection. A child will act out with a doll what is on her mind: a little girl with a Barbie who feels guilty because she broke her mother’s china will put the Barbie in detention. Because of its passivity, because it’s inert, the doll is a projective screen for the child’s imagination, fantasies, sense of wonder, anxieties. Everything’s projected onto the doll. But a relational artifact, a sociable robot, is in a position to initiate a conversation. The robot is in a position to voice an opinion. With a robot, one is not free to project what is on one’s mind. The psychology of projection gives way to the psychology of engagement. The robot is presented as active, in place to be a new kind of best friend. Why do we need robots to do that? With every technology we need to ask if it’s serving our human purposes. What is the human need? What human purpose does it serve to have imitation people, who really aren’t people, pretending to be people? -- it’s only a collective fantasy that a robot, a machine that does not recognize your existence, can address your loneliness. In my view, this is a fantasy. We need to understand its roots. My research suggests that its roots lie in people having a sense that no one is there to listen to them. We have to acknowledge this. So many of us are lonely. But it does not follow that something that will never experience anything about human life can understand the things we want to talk about, about our lives. -- A common reaction to my book has been: “What are you complaining about? The people in your book, the elderly people who are happy with their robots, can’t tell the difference. My grandmother wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Why not give them this thing? If the machines will be so good we can’t tell the difference, what does it matter?” I think it matters very much. I think our humanity is at stake. -- It’s as though we don’t even have the word “solitude” anymore where solitude is a good thing. I have heard this formulation, how we need to “solve the problem of solitude,” not just on this one occasion. So, for example, people think of always having a device at hand as a way to solve the problem of solitude. We have a very hard time thinking of a life that does not include reaching for a device when one is alone. And I think we have an increasingly hard time even imagining that, imagining anything but loneliness. And of course, our connectivity devices give us the fantasy that we will never have to be alone. The capacity for solitude is crucial to our ability to reach out to people, not in anxiety but with a genuine ability to forge relationships. ...where we expect more from technology and less from each other; we’re treating each other as less human.'

'We adults flatter ourselves when we think that we are the best models, guides, and teachers for children. Children are much more interested in other children than in us. Children are especially interested in, and ready to learn from, those others who are a little older than themselves, a little farther along in their development, but not too far along. Children are drawn to older children, and older children are drawn to adolescents. Adulthood is too far off to be of much concern. That is why age-mixing is crucial to children's self-education. #Younger children want to do what older children do: Children on the verge of being able to play strategy games, or read, or perform new operations on the computer, or engage in more advanced athletic activities, become motivated to do so by observing those activities in older children and adolescents. In our study of how and why children learn to read at the school, some told us that they wanted to read because they were envious of the older kids who were reading and talking about what they had read. As one student put it, "I wanted the same magic they had; I wanted to join that club." Younger children don't just blindly mimic older ones. Rather, they watch, think about what they see, and incorporate what they learn into their own behavior in ways that make sense to them. Because of this, even the mistakes and unhealthy behaviors of older children can provide positive lessons for younger ones. Young children talk endlessly about what they like and don't like about the activities of the older ones around them. Negative models can be as helpful as positive ones. -- #Older children are excellent helpers and advisors of younger children, partly because they do not help or advise too much: Children often prefer to ask an older child rather than an adult for help or advice, even when an adult is available whom they could easily ask. I suspect there are many reasons for this, but one of the main reasons, I think, has to do with control. Children seeking help or advice do not want to give up their own control of the situation. They don't want any more help than what they ask for, and they want to decide themselves whether or not to accept what is offered. So, here is a valuable lesson that we adults can learn from children about helping and advising children: Don't give more help, or more advice, than is asked for! Come to think of it, the same lesson applies to helping and advising adults. -- #Older children expand their own understanding through explanations to younger children: Everyone who has ever been a teacher knows that we learn more when we teach than when we are taught. The requirement to put ideas into words that others can understand, and the need to think through objections that others might make, leads us to think deeply about what we thought we knew. Often this leads us to a better understanding than we had before. In an age-mixed environment, children, not just adults, can learn through teaching. -- #Older children develop compassion and nurturing skills through helping younger ones: Even more valuable than the cognitive gains derived from interacting with younger children are the moral gains. To develop effectively as responsible, ethical beings, children need to have the experience of caring for others, not just the experience of being cared for by others. -- Sudbury Valley has about 200 students, who range in age from 4 on through high-school age (age 18 or so). It seems to work great for everyone in that age range, and I think such a broad mix is valuable for everyone. The 18-year-olds are sometimes almost like uncles or aunts to some of the 4-year-olds. They are, I think, learning to be parents. In our culture we provide very little opportunity for people to learn how to be parents, until they actually are.'

'Most of the feminists I've come across have concluded that this penalization of "girlie men" originates in the relative positions of men and women, and societal views of "maleness" as intrinsically superior or preferable to "femaleness".

That women have always been considered "less than" men. But you know what? I actually believe it's the exact opposite.

I mean, let's look at society as an employer. The employer wants all its employees to be useful and valuable, otherwise, there's no point in paying them. And what does our employer need in order to perpetuate itself and grow? It needs strong backs to do the work of making things happen, and it needs people whose job it is to provide more strong backs to replace the ones that wear out or retire.

Women provide those strong backs by bearing children. This is their primary role, because it's an important one and who the hell else is going to do it? Because this role is so important, and because women's ability to effectively do this job requires safety, support and assistance, women are often pigeonholed into a position where those needs can be efficiently and consistently met. They are "warehoused" in safe little cubicles, and not permitted to engage in work that could put them at serious risk of not being able to perform their primary function. Instead, they are relegated to safe, relatively easy tasks in between their periodic larger, more important projects.

The attributes that are most valuable in a female employee are a willingness to take direction, an ability to make their individual needs known so they can be met, and the physical characteristics considered most helpful in performing that primary function many times over.

What role does that leave for men? It leaves them the job of being the strong backs. They do the heavy lifting, they tinker with the high voltage wiring that services the office complex, they go out into the dangerous world and return with provisions and office supplies.

While men are necessary as project contributors to assist in the primary function of the female employees, when it comes to this particular contribution, one man can do the work of many, if need be. Since there are always going to be men employed by the company, those men vary in their capacity to be useful to the company, and men pass on their attributes to the new strong backs they help to provide, it is in the company's best interest that only the most valuable men perform this particular function. It is of no value to the company if a man who is a slacker or otherwise unfit is allowed to contribute in this way, since the new backs he helps provide will not be as strong as others. And it is in the women's best interest, to be selective in choosing their project partners, since women's value to the company improves if the new strong backs they provide are exceptionally strong.

Can women fill those primary "male" jobs? Of course they can. And they have, at points all through history, where and when it's been necessary. While performing these tasks may put them at risk (which is to be avoided, if possible), and often puts a double burden on them in that they may be expected to do the work of two people, it's entirely possible for them to do it and still be of value to the company.

A woman can provide more strong backs while doing some of the heavy lifting and some of the more risky jobs, when that is required. And a woman can also fill her primary female job just by lying around doing not much at all. Even if she does next to nothing else, if she is performing, or potentially can perform, that function for her employer, she has value. She likely won't be paid that much if she's not being productive in other ways, but she's still entitled to a salary if she does her primary duty, or a retainer if she has the potential to do so. If she can't perform this primary duty, there are other tasks she can perform that have value, either in the male department or in the female one, and there's still the off chance of her managing to provide at least one future strong back. That primary function is SO important, that the company has policies in place to provide pensions for its female hirees, even if they've been unproductive in any way.

Can a man fill that single, primarily "female" job? Well, no. No he can't. Like not at all. His entire value to the company is in his ability to perform the more difficult, risky, strenuous jobs so that women can enjoy light duty while they contribute in more important ways. To perform these jobs, he requires certain attributes – physical strength, sanguinity in the face of danger, a willingness to take risks, a sense of putting others before himself, and a drive to perform. The more of these attributes he has, the more valuable he is to the company. The fewer he has, the more likely he is to get fired. He won't be placed on retainer or earn a pension if it looks like the company can't use him for anything, because if the company does that, he'll only be a burden on their payroll.

Men have to earn their value to the company. They can't earn their value through being good at secondary female tasks – there are tons of females in the company, and they can perform those secondary tasks while also performing their primary one. He's not going to get hired to do half a job, and he's not qualified to do the entire thing. The only role he can fill, while retaining enough individual value to the company to remain on the payroll, is the male role.

So in my opinion, men suffer more strict enforcement of their gender roles not because they are considered more valuable than, or preferable to, women, or because women are considered less than men. It is because women are and always have been more valuable, on an individual and inherent basis, to the company than men are. A woman retained that inherent value no matter how useful she was, because women as a group were considered so valuable that it was in the company's interest to keep the entire group on the payroll. A woman who could step outside her assigned duties and perform other ones when need be – that is, a woman who sometimes behaved like a man – was, to a point, more valuable to the company for her ability to do so. She was Woman Plus. She could do her job that only she could do, and then some. Conversely, she was Man Plus. She could do a man's job, and then some. She can be the strong back and the provider of strong backs, the most versatile and valuable employee there is. Men, on the other hand, had to provide value in order to maintain their employment. Their value to the company lay in performing specific tasks so that females wouldn't have to, and in being valued project contributors who had to earn their entitlement to work with females in this way. Men who did not act "like men" were Less Than Men. Likewise, they were Less Than Women. They were incapable of doing a complete job either way, so there was no added value in them demonstrating female characteristics without having a womb to go along with it.

And at that point, the company, for the sake of its own solvency, would either vigorously "retrain" them, or give them their pink slips. It is not that maleness is "better than" femaleness. It is that maleness has always been extremely limited in its useful and productive permutations, while femaleness is simply less so. The essential feminine can only be added to and gain value, while the essential masculine can only be subtracted from and lose it.

Many women have been able to completely abandon their essential feminine – their primary function – and still retain status as whole human beings with value to society, but men simply cannot do the same. When they abandon masculinity, they throw away all that makes their lives worthwhile to anyone but themselves.'

Transcript: http://bit.ly/HxXgl1

'Considering a husband was answerable for his wife's behavior in public and any wrongs or crimes she might commit against others, forbidding him ANY means of holding her accountable to HIM would have been an egregious imbalance of power within the institution of marriage. The law equally afforded men the right to correct the behavior of any individual for whom he was held legally answerable – children and apprentices, for instance.

Instead of "marriage is an institution to oppress women for men's benefit" therefore "husbands have authority over their wives" therefore "men are answerable for their wives since they could order those wives to do bad things", I'm going to posit a different sequence of logic based on a different primary assumption. "Marriage was an institution designed to serve children and protect women" therefore "women were entitled to the protection of their husbands" therefore "men must stand as a shield between their wives and the violence of the rest of the world, including that of the law" therefore "men must have authority over their wives." That is, if a man must be answerable for his wife in order to protect her from the consequences of even her own actions, then she should at the very least be answerable to HIM.

So I think it's reasonable to assume that in the past, a man was expected to stand as a shield between his wife and the dangers of the world, even when those dangers were posed by the legal or criminal consequences of her own actions. Does ANYONE believe it would be remotely fair to hand a man the job of bodyguard and handler, to hold him accountable not only for the safety but the behavior of his charge, and then give him no means to enforce his judgment on that charge? To say to him, "If this person is harmed, you will be held accountable for it, and if they commit a crime, you will be punished for it, but oh, by the way, they don't have to do one damn thing you say"?

Back then, when a woman married there was only one legal entity to which a she was fully answerable – her husband. A woman who beat her husband was seen as a HUGE threat to the stability of the community. Here was a woman capable of defying the socially enforced and legally endorsed norm of husbandly authority, a breaker of social and legal taboos. If such a woman – one already predisposed to ignore the rules of society – got up to malicious or harmful behavior outside the home, there was no way for the community to hold her personally accountable for her actions. That was her husband's job, and clearly he couldn't be trusted with it.

If she committed a crime, her husband might even be sent to prison for it, and if that happened, what little external constraint there'd been on her behavior – her husband's authority – would be out of the picture entirely. She would, in effect, be free to wreak havoc in the community, a socially irresponsible woman who is answerable to none.

Forcing a man to ride the donkey backwards served a couple of purposes within the community. For one, it put other men on notice, reminding them how important it was to social cohesion for them to exercise authority within their households and control misbehaving wives. Any man watching or participating in such a spectacle would be reminded just what things would be like for him if he failed the community in the same way this poor chump did. And secondly, it essentially stripped the battered man of respect and social status within the community, which was a consequence his wife – who shared in the respect and social status of her husband – could not avoid. She could not be punished directly for her behavior, but she could be punished through the public humiliation of her husband, and the decrease in her own social status that accompanied it. If the contempt of the community extended to such things as, for instance, job loss, she'd be forced to live with that consequence as well.

We've been tricked into believing the job of a husband was to be a bully rather than a bodyguard, and that "male-dominated" societies are oppressive to women because hey, when men are in charge they will always act in ways that benefit men without ever considering the wellbeing of women. We've been fooled into thinking the extra rights and freedoms men had were cookies given to them "just because they were men" rather than because women were biologically vulnerable and dependent on men, and giving men those extra rights and freedoms enabled them to do the job society expected of them – to support and protect women.'

'...the four player types abstracted, we get: achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember these is to consider suits in a conventional pack of cards: achievers are Diamonds (they're always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them). Naturally, these areas cross over, and players will often drift between all four, depending on their mood or current playing style. However, my experience having observed players in the light of this research suggests that many (if not most) players do have a primary style, and will only switch to other styles as a (deliberate or subconscious) means to advance their main interest. -- ...a sharp reduction in the number of explorers for whatever reason could mean a gradual reduction in achievers, who get bored if they're not occasionally told of different hoops they can jump through for points; this could affect the number of socialisers (the fewer players there are, the less there is to talk about), and it would certainly lower the killer population (due to a general lack of suitable victims).'

Human Action vs Repetition Compulsion @ 47:47: "The truth is, players change the rules [of a game or society or community] as they go. So there's this reflexive action... And the kinds of problems that players attempt to solve are, frankly, intractable and impossible to solve. The brain loves intractable and impossible-to-solve problems; these then become [*laughs*] high-retention devices." -- Monkey doh!

'The big secret, for both consumers and providers of psychotherapy, is that there really is no such thing as generic "psychotherapy" per se: only wildly disparate theories and divergent techniques adopted by vastly varied clinicians with dissimilar personality styles, life-experience, training, values, goals, neuroses, complexes and world-views practicing what, only in the broadest possible sense, we have collectively come today to call psychotherapy. When someone says they have been in psychotherapy, or practice psychotherapy, the reality is that his or her experience with therapy may differ radically from another person's. Psychotherapy is not – and never will be, despite efforts to scientifically systematize, manualize, objectify and make it more formulaic – something consistently or reliably predictable, prescribed and predetermined. Rather, it is, as Rank and Jung understood, an archetypal healing process that is, of necessity, at its best re-invented with each new patient and by each practitioner. -- Merkin's memoir reveals her own hard-won recognition of how unrealistic, infantile, romantic or magical expectations about what psychotherapy is and is not, can and cannot do, tend to undermine the process when not explicitly addressed during treatment. To begin with, I believe Ms. Merkin may underestimate what she has learned cumulatively from psychotherapy all these many years. First, that the fantasy of finding the "perfect therapeutic match" is, like looking for the perfect mate, just, that, a fantasy. Second, yes, it is entirely possible to "stay in therapy forever without much real progress." Which is why both unsuccessful and successful psychotherapy must inevitably end at some point. Thirdly, that, inescapably, in therapy, "the weight of responsibility is borne almost entirely by the patient. . . . " Fourth, is the recognition that constantly searching for growth, transcendence, "self-transformation" or "character change" may be a means of refusing to accept oneself for who and what one truly is. ... And last but not least, ninth, her profound perception, albeit disillusioning, that behind every all-powerful "Wizard of Oz" she and others so desperately seek and project onto a physician or psychotherapist, there is always "just another little man behind a velvet curtain." Or little woman. Another imperfect, only human, flawed fellow pilgrim plodding through life as productively as they can. There are no perfectly analyzed analysts. No totally enlightened teachers or mentors. Psychotherapists, no matter what their orientation, are not omniscient, omnipotent nor superhuman, much as we might wish them to be. -- "Above all," writes Merkin, " it provided a space for interior examination, an education in disillusioned realism that existed nowhere else on this cacophonous, frantic planet." An education in disillusioned realism indeed! Acceptance of reality, both past and present, as it is and on its own terms, rather than as we desire it to be. Of ourselves as we are. Of finitude, fate and destiny; the tragic existential facts of life. Of harsh (but also beautiful and mysterious) reality without excessive sugar-coating, buffering, sedation or anesthesia. This is a powerful lesson her antidepressants apparently never provided. Painful, expensive, frustrating, imperfect and time-consuming as it may be, any psychotherapeutic treatment that provides a good "education in disillusioned realism" can't be all bad.'

'The reality of self-ownership' -- "We must not manifest what we criticize."

'Women are human beings, and consequently have all the natural rights that any human beings can have. They have just as good a right to make laws as men have, and no better; AND THAT IS JUST NO RIGHT AT ALL. No human being, nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to say that they are the masters and owners of those of whom they require such obedience. The only law that any human being can rightfully be compelled to obey is simply the law of justice. And justice is not a thing that is made, or that can be unmade, or altered, by any human authority. It is a natural principle, inhering in the very nature of man and of things. This natural principle, which we will call justice, and which assigns to each and every human being, is, I repeat, not a thing that is made, but is a matter of science to be learned, like mathematics, or chemistry, or geology. And all the laws, so called, that men have ever made, either to create, define, or control the rights of individuals, were intrinsically just as absurd and ridiculous as would be laws to create, define, or control mathematics, or chemistry, or geology.'

'The geo-economic remedy for the cycle is the public collection of rent (PCR), also known as land-value taxation (LVT). When future rents are collected, the profit is taken away from real-estate speculation. The Austrian remedy for credit manipulation is free banking (Selgin, 1988), a banking system without a central bank, with unrestricted branches and with competitive private bank notes ("money substitutes" redeemable into base money such as gold or a frozen quantity of federal reserve notes). Hence, the geo-Austrian policy to eliminate the major business cycle would be the combination of PCR/LVT and free banking. The collection of the land rent by governments or by voluntary civic associations (Foldvary, 1994) would also provide revenue without interfering with price and profit signals, and without hampering the entrepreneurs who, in Austrian theory, play a key role in economic advancement. -- The 18-year cycle in the US and similar cycles in other countries gives the geo-Austrian cycle theory predictive power: the next major bust, 18 years after the 1990 downturn, will be around 2008, if there is no major interruption such as a global war.'

Trusts: The Holy Trinity: #The Father/God/Testator/Executor/Administrator/(Beneficiary acting as Executor/Administrator/Director)/(Beneficiary-appointed Power of Attorney/Executor/Administrator/Director) ORDERS—> #The Holy Ghost/Legal Fiction/Corporation/Government/Justice/Lawyer/Employee/Agent/Public Servant/Public Trustee/Fiduciary/Trustee FOR THE BENEFIT OF—> #The Son/Man/Share-holder/Equity-holder//Sole Beneficiary/Beneficiary/(Grantor) -- "You're not showing up at court as a legal person. You're showing up because a hearing is being conducted for a legal person you have an interest in. The NAME doesn't matter, only your function, what role you're there to play. If you're a Man then you're the Beneficiary and the Executor/Administrator – not the Trustee. You set policy. Statutes only apply to Public Trustees. Your Birth Certificate is evidence you are the sole shareholder. It is your receipt for the investment which makes you the shareholder. You own all the equity in that NAME."

'The struggle to understand the infant-mother bond ranks as one of the great quests of modern psychology – one that touches us deeply, because it holds so many clues to how we became who we are. What do children need, at a minimum, in order to feel that the world of people is a positive place and that they themselves have value? What experiences in infancy will enable them to feel confident enough to explore, to develop healthy peer relations, to rebound from adversity? What custody or foster-care arrangements will best serve their emotional needs if the family should dissolve, and at what point do we decide that a neglectful or abusive mother is worse than a kind stranger? Which of us are at risk of being parents who will raise insecure children, and what can be done to minimize that risk? These are all questions of huge theoretical and practical interest.'

'"He stumbled up to the urinal and started mumbling on about the depressed housing sector or something," said Kampman, who claimed Bernanke had to use both hands on the wall to steady himself. "Then after a while he just sort of stopped and I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying." "Then he puked all over the sink and the mirror," Kampman added. Customers at the bar told reporters the "shitfaced" and disruptive Bernanke refused to pay for his drinks with U.S. currency, claiming it was "worthless." Witnesses also confirmed that near the end of the evening, Bernanke put money into the jukebox and selected Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" to play five times in a row. "This is what it's all about," said Bernanke, who reportedly danced alone in the middle of the dark tavern. "Fucking love this song."'

'How to help the poor without pointing the gun at everyone else.' -- "If a majority of people want to do something, compelling them to do it is not rational." -- And if a majority of people don't believe that other people want to do it or if people don't want to do it themselves – and if people still want to claim the virtue of doing it and want to avoid the anxiety that follows from not doing it and want to avoid the anxiety of having relationships with people they don't believe want to do it – they will eagerly submit to a group of people with guns who will force everyone to talk about how much they're doing it, precisely because everyone knows they aren't.

'...people first become hypervigilant and paranoid as catacholamine imbalances and serotonin depletion lead them to expect attack, then engage in sacrificial restaging rituals that are usually both sadistic – inflicting the trauma upon others – and masochistic – destroying your own wealth and even sacrificing your own lives. The result is a feeling of relief that we have survived the apocalypse in our heads plus a feeling of triumph produced by the manic opioid surge. Thus our early traumas become wired into separate emotional memory module and become projected onto the historical stage in such a manner that they appear to be happening to the group rather than being internal, creating group-fantasies so intense and compelling that they take on a life of their own, a life that is imagined as happening in a dissociated sphere called "society." These group-fantasies are dissociated and seem to have a life of their own, a life we term "social" or "political" or "religious."'

'The term “capitalism” has been the most successful propaganda term in human history. ...the term “capital” masks the underlying and more fundamental interest that receives governmental privileges: ... the big landowners. If you want to understand the economic policies of governments world-wide, and the main cause of social problems, it becomes clearer if you grasp this proposition: The main purpose of government is to serve the big landed interests. ...the biggest subsidy to landowners is implicit: it is the enormous increase in land rent and land value due to the public goods provided by government. Streets, parks, security, schooling, transit, etc., all make land more attractive and productive. The rich pay high taxes, but they get it back, and often much more, in higher land value. Taxes fall most heavily on the middle class, as the state tax-confiscates about half the wages of a typical worker, including the taxes the pay when from their remaining wages they buy taxed goods.'

'...settled civilization is a fundamentally Gollumizing force. It makes you comfortable, stupid and addicted to the security and accumulated fruits of your labor. ...a settled civilization grows old, stupid and tired, and a vigorous barbarian culture swoops in and takes over from the top, and gradually gets civilized and stupid in turn, until it too is ripe for destruction by pastoral nomads on its periphery. ...intelligence in design is fundamentally a predatory quality put in by barbarian-Masters. Refinement in design is a non-predatory quality put in by civilized-Slaves. We miss this dynamic because of a curious phenomenon: history is only written by the winners if the winners can actually write. At their apogee, when civilizations have the most surplus wealth, they indulge in the most refined forms of writing: writing histories with autocentric conceit, they focus on the visibly-refined glories of their own age, rather than the higher-barbarian sensibilities at the foundations.'

'Extroverts are not willing to have 1:1 encounters with anyone unless they’ve been properly introduced into their social fields. Extroverts tend to enjoy spending a lot of time with people they know well. Talking to strangers is less rewarding to them because most E-E transactions are maintenance transactions that help maintain, spend or appreciate the invested capital in the relationships. It is E-I interactions that create interesting tensions. Extroverts accuse introverts of selfishness: from their point of view, the introverts are taking out loans against jointly-held wealth, to invest unilaterally in risky ventures. Introverts in turn accuse extroverts of being overly possessive and stifling, since they cannot draw on the energy of the relationship without the other party being present. The confusion is simple if you note that the introvert is thinking in terms of two individually held bank accounts, while the extrovert is thinking in terms of a single jointly held one.'

'Today in the Middle East, either by stupidity or design, the Federal Reserve's perpetuation of the dollar and treasury debt Ponzi schemes is now dependent on the survival of a few dictatorial regimes staying in power in the Persian Gulf while surrounded by spreading freedom revolutions [initially foreign intelligence-engineered for regime change]. This is the most dangerous region in the world and the focal point for conflict between Iran and America, the freedom revolution and authoritarian regimes, Sunni and Shiite, Israel and the Arab world, vast oil resources and the oil needs of the West and China, and where the decision will be made to price oil in depreciating dollars or in other currency alternatives. Of all the conflicts and threats in the region, the question as to whether oil continues to be priced in dollars and the dollar remains the world's reserve currency for now and the risk of a US dollar and debt collapse are the greatest threats facing America and the West.'

'To be a professional organizer of delusions, you need to focus on delusions that it would actually benefit you to believe, at least temporarily, and then figure out how to adopt them for just as long as they can serve you. Your overall goal is to create plausible deniability, even within your own mind, to defend against the accusation that you don’t believe something that you are pitching to others. Your lifeline back to reality is your capacity for doubt, which prevents plausible deniability from turning into a pattern of [persistent] denial... It is much easier to do this if you discipline yourself to only work with delusions that are a sufficiently complex mix of metaphysics, morality arguments, metaphor, narrative and facts. This is why you get the most fundamental axiom in delusion organization theory: the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell, and the biggest ones, bigger than even the civilization-scale ones, are the ones you deliberately sell to yourself.'

"This is a message going out to you, the Holders. We are Anonymous. You know who you are. The men behind the curtain, the overlord pulling at the strings of your puppets. You hide and you plan and you scheme in the dark alleys; in the vehement anticipation that your draconian plans will come to fruition. The dreams of a thousand men crystallized in one moment; one moment that approaches with every hour that passes. The time is upon us. You have shaped the Earth in your image. Shaped its people, its customs, its morals. In your eyes the control is complete, your contrivance beyond absolute. You have poisoned and corrupted this world, turning its people into willing slaves for your own gain. Mass murder, torture, perjury, embezzlement, fraud, deception, treason. These are just a few of your many crimes against humanity. You see yourselves as a higher order, that rules are a concept to which you are foreign. You are mistaken."

“Your propagandic channels are being discarded for real journalism and independent news sources. Your attempts to incite mass violence and rioting in the populace has failed. The ruse of your monetary system has been uncovered, and when it collapses your infinite pool of wealth will be depleted. The domino effect of enlightenment has already begun. A number of us unwilling to sit neutral in the path of your tyranny... The only way that Anonymous will be satisfied with the end of this conflict is the complete and utter triumph of the citizenry. The general populace are now realizing their inherent power. You are instead, beginning to realize your inherent weakness – your inhumanity. It is a pity that you could not join us, as your persistence in reaching your goals has been legendary. It is ironic that your persistence of classic techniques is the reason that you are coming short, as you are unwilling to adapt to a changing world. You are going to lose this war."

'Ever since this site was created, we've tried to make the point that the dominant social themes of the Anglo-American elite are gradually unraveling. The world, in fact, is engaged in a massive contest between what I've called the "truth-telling of the Internet" and the long-established fear-based promotions of Anglo-American power elite. -- Many people cannot conceive (even today) that the entire Western world has been reconfigured over the past century to support the power-elite's drive for world government, or that every facet of Western society – education, finance, politics, media – has been hollowed out and repositioned for this purpose. The conspiracy is vast, the ambition so extraordinary, the arrogance so overwhelming that it is difficult if not impossible to comprehend. It has to do, of course, with the credibility of the "big lie." The larger the lie the more people will believe it as they cannot fathom untruth on such a vast scale.'

'The key to WikiLeaks was that its true revolutionary ambitions and its moderate liberal public face would be difficult for opponents to disentangle. ..."we'll take our torch to all." -- In early April 2010 hardly anyone had heard of Julian Assange. By December he was one of the most famous people on Earth, with very powerful enemies and very passionate friends. A future extradition to the US was almost certain to ignite a vast Left vs Right global cultural war, a kind of 21st-century equivalent of the Dreyfus Affair. Ironically, if that broke out, his staunchest and most eloquent defenders were likely to be people such as John Pilger or Tariq Ali, whom Assange privately had once derided as followers of the "Progressive Commie Socialist" agenda... He would also be championed by millions of "average shy intellectuals" across the western world who had watched on passively as the political and business elites and their spin-masters in the US and beyond plunged Iraq into bloody turmoil...'

'A live action example of how to take down your inner Nazi.' -- "With great power comes great responsibility."

'Give something to your audience – even warm tingles, and they’re one step closer to being happy customers. Give them something and let them beat the bad guy, and they’re yours for life. Everyone wants to have stories to tell. If they’re in the stories, they tell them better. And more often. This storytelling/folklore is the best part of the whole equation, because your audience loves you for making them part of the story, and they help you get the word out at the same time. If beating the bad guys and taking their stuff is the incentive that gets people involved with you, then telling stories is how you can get existing customers to indoctrinate new people into the club and keep them there. How many people here run businesses that live and die on referrals? What’s a referral? Uh-huh. It’s someone telling others how smart they were to choose you. They’re telling the tale of how they conquered the Great Black Beast of Q1 Sales Goals. #Slay monsters #Take their treasure #Tell the tale'

'It is no coincidence in our view that one now finds Assange and his WikiLeaks at the center of many recent “historical” events. He is to be subject of a major motion picture and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (shades of Barack Obama). He is being promoted. He is a “special deal.” Transparency works well as a faux-rallying cry for Internet rebels such as Assange because it does not imply a wholesale change in the way that modern societies are built or operate. Governments, according to Assange, are not intrinsically bad—even regulatory democracy itself is tolerable. What is necessary is accountability, provided by far-seeing democratic activists such as himself. With so many of its dominant social themes essentially foundering in the era of the Internet, the powers-that-be may have launched their “blond stranger” promotion without fully vetting the consequences. Ironic is it not? In a somewhat panicked reaction to the Internet, the powers-that-be may have miscalculated.'

'Ways to stop self attacking and free yourself from your inner critic.'

'Every organization and company is a tribe, or a network of tribes-groups of 20 to 150 people that form naturally, in which everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows of them.' -- The same person displays different stage behaviours in different tribes and contexts. -- #Stage Four (We're great/Triadic): Values (authentic) drive activities/relationships. Spontaneous match-making having assumed shared values. -- Lower stages, shared values can't be assumed. -- #Stage Five (Life is great): A common enemy 'them' takes the form of an abstraction rather than another tribe. Hard to benchmark. Visit don't stay. -- Don't just hire best and brightest else you will stagnate at Stage Three. - #Stage Three (I'm great/Dyadic): Endless cloning/individuation cycles. Values have to be made explicit before attempting match. @44:05 See tribe stage types in social network map. Hub-and-spokes meshed using triadic connections. -- Rhetoric: Shift up stages with deliberative; stabilize with demonstrative.

"Women are raised as slaves. They have to oppose everyone's emotions: you can't feel too much of this, you can't feel too much of that. The constant desire of the slave is to oppose any strong emotions, to monitor the master's moods and to head off trouble before it comes, to manipulate and to reframe slavery as morality. And this slave morality is so common in women. The only morality is don't confront because a slave can't confront anyone. Slaves have to make forgiveness a virtue. Why? Because all a slave can do is forgive. A slave has to swallow all insults and if a slave is struck, they must slink away, beaten. And so what is a slave going to do? The slave is either going to fight or redefine all of the subjugation and insults and battering and humiliation and contempt they experience into virtue. If women are slaves, we're ALL slaves. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. If women make slavery and the effects of slavery a virtue, then we shall never be free."

"I refuse to create a set of standards for women that is less than would apply to men. Because that would be to say that men have the strength to achieve virtue but women do not. And women do. But the degree to which we excuse women's vices and violence and corruption and control and abuse and verbal attacks – the degree to which we excuse that is the degree to which we damn women; it is the degree to which we say: you are beyond help; you cannot be helped; you poor women, you don't know what you're doing, you're not strong enough to be moral so we have to make up all these excuses for you because we think you're just that pathetic. Well, I don't think women are pathetic. I think women are incredibly strong; I think men are incredibly strong. I think that when you lower standards for people, you debilitate them, you weaken them, you destroy their moral fibre, you undermine their upright natures. So I won't accept any lower standards for women because that is the worst cruelty of all."

"I think it is something so respectful of women to say that they are subject to the same moral laws as men. If we excuse women from the just and universal application of moral laws, are we not then saying that they are a different and weaker species, a different and weaker gender? If we excuse female violence by portraying them in the role of victims – then we insult ALL women; we insult all women who ARE moral. So we really do have to avoid this notion that women are the gentler sex, and the weaker sex, and they need to be protected, and they need to be saved from themselves, and they need to be excused, and they need to be managed. Women DO NOT need to be managed. Women are subject to all the same moral laws as men, and they are EQUALLY as powerful a moral agent as men. Whatever men are capable of morally, whatever men are responsible for morally – women are capable of morally and responsible for morally."

Gisted/Quoted -- The problem with the idea that men are defective and that women are just better is the basic issue that nobody talks about: that men are raised by women. Women give birth to men; women raise men; and then if men turn out bad, all you get from feminists as an explanation is propaganda about "the patriarchy". There is no greater power disparity – there is no greater victimization – than that which is possible between a mother and a child. Power disparities in society are no more prevalent than the relationship between the mother and the child. That is something which is absolutely unspoken of in society. There is no possibility for society as a whole to look at female violence directly and straight on in the face. Men are raised by women and it's not just women in the home, it's women in the daycares, women in the primary schools. If you want to get to the root of violence and corruption in society, you've got to look at the mothers.'

"The cycle of life is that children are inconvenient when they're very young, and parents are inconvenient when they're very old."

'It's hard to get upset with people who are so deluded...' -- "Politics is violence. Government is force. 'Laws' are violence. Prison is coercion. The police kidnap and imprison. National debts are theft from the unborn. Taxes are theft. Tariffs, regulations are all the initiation of force. The State is a monopoly agency for the initiation of force in a geographical area. The State is the very definition of violence. Government is exactly what people don't want to do because they have to be forced. Whatever someone is doing when they have a gun to their head, is exactly what they don't want to do."

"If you really love someone, you owe it them to correct their crazy... You owe them an intervention if you want to continue to claim you love them."

'...I would still have the human decency NOT to try and publicly mitigate that guilt by conversion to shame because I know that if I succeed then it becomes okay for someone else. How I deal with guilt has an effect on how someone else will. -- What infuriates you is the idea that anyone or anything has control over us. You don't like to be told they aren't allowed to do something. "As long as it doesn't hurt anybody, I should be allowed..." You want complete freedom – which you will use to conform to very ordinary standards of living that you impose on yourself. ...the very thing that allows you to exist in a world of complete freedom are those internal controls and not the social controls – laws and shames – that you think bind you. Shame will never be enough – when your identity is "strong" enough nothing shames you... The laws will never be stronger than you. -- I am not trying to stop progress or technology, I'm telling you to be careful with your lives.'

'Most of the time, parents simply reinflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child's explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn't get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture. Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.'

'Dominant Social Theme: These hackers are simply irresponsible. -- Free-Market Analysis: All of a sudden, as a result of Julian Assange's imprisonment, a dominant theme that we never expected to be challenged so soon is front and center. The idea of state monopoly justice has suddenly come under fire by a group of young hackers that are questioning how the state defines criminality. ...we believe that we are witnessing, therefore, yet another important turning point in the evolution of Internet technology. A meme (state monopoly justice), one we did not imagine would be much questioned for years to come, is right in the middle of the current news cycle and larger news conversation. Whether the it is controlled or not is almost beside-the-point. Larger issues are now on the table. We would anticipate over the next few years that the whole issue of Admiralty law will become a good deal more high-profile.'

'All mourning is ambivalence. You're never too far from age 2, when your rage is magically powerful. ...the unconscious never forgets even the briefest of hates. Sometimes the guilt has a convenient narrative: caring for a cancer-ridden, demented parent who exhausted your physical and emotional resources, and then finally(!) dies. -- In most (all?) zombie movies, there is always a scene in which a main character confronts a loved one turned zombie. The rest of the previous zombie attacks are merely prelude to that one, specific, pivotal interaction. Quick, bolt the door, ambivalence is coming. Movies give the loved-one zombie a momentary flash of the old self – is it remembering, is it a trap, or are you seeing what you want to see? ...how the living negotiate that bit of mourning determines if they'll be able to put the dead to rest, or are going to have be tied to them forever.'

'Choice is quality.'

"Uncorking the volcano."

'The genesis and evolution of humiliation.'

'Economic life, too, only evolved as childrearing and the psyche evolved. Tribal societies both in the past and in the present could not trust, because parents were untrustworthy, so they could not allow much wealth or surplus out of which they could create economic progress. Ownership was felt to be dangerous selfishness, envy ran rampant and ambition was feared... Those who acquired too much were expected to either engage in gift-exchange and other redistributive rituals or else to periodically destroy their surplus in cleansing sacrificial ceremonies. "Money is condensed wealth; condensed wealth is condensed guilt…money is filthy because it remains guilt." What held back economic development for so many millennia was that early civilizations were so abusively brought up that they spent most of their energies chasing "ghosts from the nursery"—religious, political and economic domination group-fantasies—rather than joining in together to solve the real tasks of life.'

'...there is the question of what happens when you stop providing a reward, which is referred to as "extinction." As a general rule, extinction involves a lot of frustration and anger on the part of the subject. We expect the universe to make sense, to be consistent, and when the contingencies change we get testy. Interestingly, this is not unique to humans. In one experiment, two pigeons were placed in a cage. One of them was tethered to the back of the cage while the other was free to run about as it wished. Every 30 seconds, a hopper would provide a small amount of food. The free pigeon could reach the food but the tethered one could not, and the free pigeon happily ate all the food every time. After an hour or so of this, the hopper stops providing food. The free pigeon continues to check the hopper every 30 seconds for a while, but when it's clear that the food isn't coming, it will go to the back of the cage and beat up the other pigeon.'

'...advertising isn't our window on society, it is society's window on individuals... It isn't about being white or being a guy, but about the class of people who have inherited the earth and then withdrawn from it, leaving it to entropy. Those people are the privileged middle aged – the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists In The History Of The World, and society hates you. Society is disgusted by all of you, even as you are disgusted by it. But look up at the ads, the ones who have to suffer for it are the next generation. The ones you suffocate with your physical presence. ...the larger point is that everyone around you feels your apathy, it senses that you are zombies going through life, you would much rather be elsewhere. Like on your phone. That withdrawal from reality has not gone unnoticed – not by your kids or your spouse... ...the problem is you. It is always you. And unless you change that thing first, everything else will be futile.'

'Dominant Social Theme: Gold provides hope for the world. Let the government get out of the way. The proper function for the authorities is merely to set the standard and then leave it alone. -- Money is being argued about again, which is a good thing. But as usual (it seems to us) the argument is being framed in terms of what "ought" to be done. This is a kind of promotion, a dominant social theme, whether or not one wishes to admit it. Of course in the current day, government is a given—a necessary reality that until recently has been accepted with the same stuporous acquiescence as one tolerates bodily functions. But we will predict that acceptance of this most fundamental of all memes is beginning to shift. As the truth-telling of the Internet continues to have an impact, government mendacity is increasingly exposed and its logical fallacies are revealed, along with its false promotions. No, nothing SHOULD be done. That's the whole point. Money is private! Let the market work.'

'It hurts to be wrong. Not just emotionally, but physically, especially when it’s public... The horror of it is almost cinematic. The more artificially pumped your ego, or the more brainwashed with academic pretension, the more terrifying that moment of realization is, that moment when all your assumptions are dashed aside like a three-year-old’s alphabet blocks. To a certain point, it is understandable why so many people live in such violent denial, however, this does not detract from the perils of that denial… Useful idiots talk, they don’t listen. They ask lots of questions, but never wait to hear your answers. For them, questions are not a search for information, but rather a method of antagonism. It is a way to keep everyone else on guard while making themselves feel superior. In this game, the useful idiot never has to expose his ignorance because he never has to enter into a meaningful dialogue with anyone who has an opposing view. All he has to do is attack, attack, attack.'

'Yeah, it might not actually be the fault of the kids...' -- How many fingers, Winston?

Pay-walled. Recommended. -- When a pyramid scheme nears its inevitable end... "...the public insist on being handed the empty bag because they think they're going to make money, they want in on the game, everyone else has been making money, they feel left out so they insist on buying these things at the peak, and they are the ones who lose everything."

"You can't have any more empathy and love for yourself than you can have for the weakest around you." -- "Everyone is always talking about their family when they're talking about politics." -- "The reason that you would need to be addicted to the pathetic and destructive rush that comes from literally stealing candy from the hands of babes is that you have learned from somewhere that power is composed of two things: #1. An ugly grab and #2. A triumphant moralizing." -- "Whenever you are cruel to those around you, you raise a need for a state in their mind especially when they're helpless." -- "The primary reason for sadism is that it is an attempt to overpower and master feelings of intense helplessness... If you will not accept those feelings of helplessness and agony of being brutalized by power, then you must normalize the brutalization of that power: you project your own helplessness onto other people and then you torture it because the only other possibility is that you feel it."

"Who is liable for the name?"

'Like an affidavit, an un-rebutted Birth Certificate stands in commerce. The presumption is that all agree. He who creates the liability must also provide remedy for its discharge. ...statutes apply to ‘persons’ and not to flesh and blood men and women. (At least without their informed consent.) ...if man comes to a realization of who he really is, man and not THE NAME and informs government of same, then there should be zero resistance from government to the exit of that man from the system of commerce. Everything that exists and is created by man is legally owned by government either directly or indirectly by registration in THE NAME that government holds the rights and liabilities in. -- I do not hold the rights in THE NAME. Therefore, I cannot have the liabilities either. I didn’t create it. I can only control that which I create. Government created THE NAME. Government is liable. Keep your flesh and blood body separate [from] THE NAME at all times and the presumption is rebutted.'

"We claim common law jurisdiction before we enter this vessel. Do we have an accord?" -- Err... Parlay?? -- "MAN OVERBOARD!!!" LOL

'In this video a Freeman-On-The-Land is interviewed by a Police Constable. The video shows the Freeman separating himself from the legal fiction (Straw Man). The Net result is that the Police Constable is interviewing the Birth Certificate which represents the Straw Man/Legal Fiction. In other words he has to ask the questions of the Piece of Paper as the Human Being cannot speak for the piece of Paper. The outcome of this was the Director of Public Prosecutions decided that it wasn't "in the public interest" to prosecute in this matter. I think in reality it was more likely that they looked at the statement from the piece of paper and realised that there was no way they would ever get the Human Being into a court. Please note that this video is NOT a reflection on the Police Constable in the video—he acquitted himself and is a credit to himself. If only all Police Officers were more like him.' -- Who is liable for the name, Officer? Are you willing to be liable for the name, Officer?

'Here we see Englsih Freemen standing in court as Lay Advisors to another Freemen. This is for a Council Tax Liability Order hearing in Cwmbran Magistrates Court in South Wales, There were 14 Freemen in attendance. The court was never convened as the Freemen never handed juridiction to magistrates or the clerk by standing up when ordered to do so and the magistrates never sat down. The magistrates twice abandoned the court (the ship) and it was the Freemen who called the Police and at one point the Lay advisor can clearly be heard calling attending Police Constables to arrest the magistrates for impersonating judges. There were many criminal acts committed this day by the company personnel (Magistrates, solictors, security and the clerk) and Police complaints are under way pending prosecutions for Fraud among other things. But for the real shocker of how these people think they are above the law ... Watch until the end!' -- Haha! WHO IS LIABLE FOR THE NAME?!

Gisted/Quoted -- The degree to which you need to invent scare stories to keep yourself in an existing relationship, is exactly the degree to which you really hate that relationship. Everybody who is not enlightened will always try to put you in a master/slave relationship. Slaves attempt to master each other by mimicking the state in every interaction. That's how deep it goes. The state replicates all the way down the chain because it comes from all the way up the chain from the origins of the family. Everything slaves do is to try establish dominance – yours or theirs, depending on their trauma. But philosophy is not the language of dominance, it is the language of humility, the language of truth derived from nature which is non-dominant, non-personal and universal. That's why if you speak the truth people will get so frustrated, so angry, confused, frightened – and lash out at you – because philosophy is shattering their paradigm of hierarchy right there in the moment.

On self-esteem and social levelling: "One of the problems with self-esteem is mistaking the accidental for the personally virtuous. You don't want to place your self-esteem on the accidental characteristics that you may have."

'The scientific evidence underlying the near-universal resistance to reason and evidence. If you want to change the world, you first must understand the unconscious barriers to thinking.' -- '"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Western said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaledoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then get massively enforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

'Clearly the fact that some people are sensitive to the suffering of others proves that the destructive urge is not a universal aspect of human nature. So why do some tend to solve their problems by violence while others don't? After studying the matter for years, it seems clear to me that information about abuse inflicted during childhood is recorded in our body cells as a sort of memory, linked to repressed anxiety. If, lacking the aid of an enlightened witness, these memories fail to break through to consciousness, they often compel the person to violent acts that reproduce the abuse suffered in childhood, which was repressed in order to survive. The aim is to avoid the fear of powerlessness before a cruel adult. This fear can be eluded momentarily by creating situations in which one plays the active role, the role of the powerful, towards a powerless person. ...the offense is ceaselessly repeated. A steady stream of new victims must be found...'

'The constitution not only binds nobody now, but it never did bind anybody. It never bound anybody, because it was never agreed to by anybody in such a manner as to make it, on general principles of law and reason, binding upon him. -- It is a general principle of law and reason, that a written instrument binds no one until he has signed it. The laws holds, and reason declares, that if a written instrument is not signed, the presumption must be that the party to be bound by it, did not choose to sign it, or to bind himself by it. And law and reason both give him until the last moment, in which to decide whether he will sign it, or not. The fact that the instrument was written for him to sign, or with the hope that he would sign it, goes for nothing. Where would be the end of fraud and litigation, if one party could bring into court a written instrument, without any signature, and claim to have it enforced, upon the ground that it was written for another man to sign?'

Dear America, -- 'Yet again and again, throughout your speech, you repeat the idea, that this so-called constitution, which nobody ever signed, which few people ever read, which the great body of the people never saw, and about whose meaning no two persons ever agreed, is “The Supreme Law of this Land!” Sir, where did this wonderful constitution come from, that you should describe it as “The Supreme Law of this Land?” Did it originate with any body who had any rightful authority to impose it upon the people of this country? Sir, this declaration of yours, that the constitution (so-called) is “the Supreme Law of this Land,” is utterly, flagrantly, shamefully false. Justice alone is the Supreme Law of this land, and of all other lands. And it is not because your “Supreme Law of the Land,” the constitution – but because the supreme law of justice is “neglected,” “forgotten,” “disregarded,” and “disobeyed,” that our liberty is lost; or, rather, never had an existence.'

'...nerds want to show off their non-social skills, and so require social games so that there are others who can observe their impressive performance. But nerds seem to prefer more social interaction in their games than having a mere audience requires. Another explanation is that while nerds like to socialize, they are terrified of making social mistakes. This explains why they tend to avoid eye-contact – it is too easy to make the wrong eye contacts. Games let nerds interact socially, yet avoid mistakes via well-defined rules, and a social norm that all legal moves are “fair game.” Role-playing has less well-defined rules, but the norm there is that social mistakes are to be blamed on characters, not players. An third explanation is hinted at by the fact that we use the word “game” to refer both to “fun/frivolous” and to “seriously selfishly strategic.” While social norms usually forbid overt strategic selfishness in social behavior, such strategic selfishness is allowed in games.'

'We all pretend we have a mind of our own. But actually few walk the path. It means literally to form our own perspective, feelings and opinion about every moment of life. But we don’t do that. We’re talking on the cell, to our friends and acquaintances, blogging, blurting, shouting, face-booking, emailing… etc. almost all the time. We’re too busy watching each other, being like each other, bragging to each other, keeping somebody around all the time – merging into one people… except in how we style our hair or tattoo, dress, prance around, have a life style… all of which have the outward appearance of specialty without the substance. So what is this substance? To have our own opinion… alone, without any need for companionship, including convincing everyone else to agree with us. Just naked aloneness for some length of time, to notice, feel, think, see the contradictions in our self… to commune with us. Indeed one has to have a passion for self-discovery or it will never happen.'

'Negative emotional experience just happens to be the only place we’ll find new information trying to access our life, offering us the chance to see some part of ourselves differently, thus capable of changing us. Positive feeling experience is wonderful. It’s no surprise or sin that we want to spend as much time inside it as possible. Nothing else makes more sense. But that doesn’t mean to kill the baby with the bathwater. We all want to ease distress and unhappiness as efficiently as possible. But positive emotional energy doesn’t offer anything new; that’s what’s so good about it – no hassles. Learning always disturbs. That’s what makes it such a good carrier of new information. The question is whether, in being happy, we avoid taking even a moment to pluck just one valuable piece of new information out of our unhappiness before abandoning it? That’s all it takes to learn, to build upon that one piece.'

'The huge advantage of addressing human problems in the individual form is beyond comprehension. The most obvious boon of this altered way of coping with human suffering is the elimination of violence. It’s true even today that the extent to which people address their emotional experience internally, instead of inflicting it together, socially upon some issue or cause, measures the extent to which violence has already been partly defeated. Eventually we will realize that studying the self as an ecosystem, which contains both beneficial as well as contradictory parts, is the most important kind of education we will ever undertake or accomplish. This self-learning will no longer have the sting that “illness” attaches to it; thus it will no longer be called “psychotherapy”. Instead it will become the core of all education, funding every other kind of exploration with the wisdom of self-knowledge.'

'We do not control our fate; we just influence it. We are programmed by those who raised us, not as a villainous happening; just normally in the course of events, because of who they are and what they know, or don’t know, and what happened to them, or didn’t. We all know this in part; but we retain our belief in the conscious power of intentionality as the agency that runs our personal psychic experience. When it is emotional memory that runs it, convincing us beyond any reasonable doubt that the past is still running our life, though the characters doing it have changed; yet they’re behaving just like people have always treated us, good or bad, making the past still true in the present. This spurious assumption is seldom examined; tragically one has to regard them selves as “mentally ill” in order to qualify for the learning opportunity of reexamining their assumptions – what we call “psychotherapy” – in order to explore, and improve upon their parent’s programming.'

'Adults may trigger each other’s original traumas, but they don’t cause them. The real, indeed the only source of our deep suffering is always the same—our family of origin, and for one simple reason: it’s only as children that we’re vulnerable to being so deeply hurt by how we’re loved. The absence of love, even acts of thoughtlessness can tortures us as children. If it’s bad enough, we don’t even develop emotionally and intellectually. Severe neglect can turn a brilliant child into a grossly underachieving dunce that thinks of herself as a worm. Who’s done the brainwashing? Curiously it’s we, the children, who have done most of it. Children are the very best of unconditional lovers. They have no other choice; their parents are it. Whatever’s missing in a child’s life, they will provide for everyone, if necessary by sacrificing part of themselves—almost always the part of them that, independently of their parents might see a truth that could hurt everyone by finding fault in them.'

'...information of a traumatic nature has been forced to bury itself where even the symptomatic person can never find it – that is without skilled assistance. Why? Because this information is very dangerous to know, particularly in the mind of a small child who is still alive within an adult person – who believes anything, most particularly an idea – can magically kill people, and even destroy whole worlds. The fact that this person has grown into adulthood doesn’t change the secret, buried inaccessible-to-awareness aspects of that still hidden information – i.e. that mother is a dangerous person who might poke my eyes out if I don’t stop seeing her meanness, and learn to pretend that it’s not real, that she’s just wonderful. Such buried key information that defies what good sense would perceive, holds conflict within a psyche. That’s what creates symptoms… that parts of the psyche are operating against other parts, keeping secret what the mind needs to know in order to heal.'

'Dominant Social Theme: A new cold (or hot) war is gaining force. How did this happen? Will the bombs drop soon or is there another plan? ...he's a very paranoid person. ...he believes that the powers-that-be may have intended to have a US president with a Muslim background and a Nobel Peace Prize at this point in time. The idea was, he believes, that the president, using his mixed heritage, would in some sense bridge the gap between East and West, emerging as a hero and problem solver—even if tensions remain. This would bring Islam further into the West's orbit while making the West more amenable to Islam. Muslims have to be Westernized if global governance is to proceed, he points out. Israel and America have plans to bomb Iran back to the stone age if the leadership starts enriching uranium—and that could happen as soon as tomorrow. We give the power elite a lot of credit, but planning and creating a new cold war over a 50-year interval ... well that's a stretch. Isn't it?'

'The various systems of government used in the ISDG masks a deeper conflict about whether teams are playing just to have fun, or to establish their supremacy of the game. Each team realises that the reputation of their entire website – in some cases, numbering in the tens of thousands – rests on their quality of playing, which requires a certain discipline that precludes any messing about. ‘Diplomacy on crack’ is one way to describe the ISDG... The combination of a highly complex strategy game with hundreds of players defies normal categorization into the normal genres of MMORPGs or simulation games like Everquest or SimCity. Even experienced Civilization players find the concept of the ISDG alien, since the delay between turns adds such a bewildering array of negotiation, debate and power politics that aren’t seen in normal games. To win the ISDG, a team will have to perfectly balance conflict and co-operation, not only with other teams but between its own members.'

'A democracy game is just like a normal single player game of Civilization, except with over a hundred people sitting beside you arguing about what to do. The Intersite Democracy Game takes the concept one step further by involving eight website teams scattered across the globe. Over three hundred players are spread among the teams, many of whom have played Civilization for over ten years and possess an enormous ... amount of knowledge about the game. Each team represents one civilization within the game. The ISDG revolves around savegames. It’s when a savegame arrives that teams can get down to the serious business of actually moving units around and issuing orders instead of just talking about it. Teams wait for savegames in the same way that children wait for Christmas ... Any delay in their arrival, usually caused by email problems, or (as is suspected occasionally) nefarious behind the scenes diplomacy, is a source of immense distress and rampant speculation for players.'

'The greatest danger for slave-owners is that they will lose control of the moral definitions of “slavery” and “freedom.” The worst and most terrifying aspect of slavery is that you have to pretend that you are not a slave. If you are a slave, and you want to become free, the solution is simply this: Stop acting like a slave! Slaves are not allowed to tell the truth. So – you start off by telling the truth. This is the core of the Real-Time Relationship (RTR). The Real-Time Relationship is about empiricism and curiosity – fundamentally, it is the scientific method applied to our relationships. If our emotions tell us that we will be attacked for telling the truth – and we have not been telling the truth – it is because we wish to avoid confirmation – i.e. certainty. If we wish to “avoid” certainty, it is because we are already certain. Thus it is not really “certainty” that we wish to avoid, but the results of accepting what we already know to be true.'

'We humans are uniquely fortunate that ambivalence pervades everything we experience, think, feel and intuit, or we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have. Within the scientific realm dealing with tangible objects, we have become very accustomed and skilled at managing and using contradictory possibilities and options. In fact that’s how science has progressed. It’s the art of putting things together that previously weren’t supposed to be married, and taking apart things that were supposed to remain together. But when it comes to dealing with ambiguity in the intangibles of human life—we suddenly lose it! We stumble into ambiguity-illiteracy. We try to make reality caveman-simple, of which good and evil is the best example; in making the most important decisions of life we have only two options instead of a thousand or more. Violence is one of the principle outcomes of simple-mindedness. Ambivalence is the key skill necessary for the creative management of multilayered comprehension.'

Gisted -- All of the evil, corruption and predation in the world follows from the moment when this invisible apple is offered that you are told you must believe in or die (or be condemned at the very least). If you get a sense of the agony the world is in at the right now then you get a sense of the horror of this moment of ultimate betrayal and soul murder that inevitably pushes people into becoming either sadistic, amoral, exploitative abusers; or masochistic, compliant, passive-aggressive victims. Either way, abuse or victimhood is made into an absolute so that you can avoid the pain of knowing that people chose to hurt you when they could have chosen otherwise and to repress the pain of acknowledging that your sole means of survival, your capacity to understand things rationality, was under direct attack by those who claimed to love you. But that pain still exists in the world and whatever we don't permit ourselves to feel we end up causing other people to feel ten times over.

Challenging the accepted history/theory that fixed weights were the standard of value for money metals and arguing instead coins were simply credit money tokens. -- 'The value of a credit depends not on the existence of any gold or silver or other property behind it, but solely on the “solvency” of the debtor, and that depends solely on whether, when the debt becomes due, he in his turn has sufficient credits on others to set off against his debts. If the debtor neither possesses nor can acquire credits which can be offset against his debts, then the possession of those debts is of no value to the creditors who own them. It is by selling, I repeat, and by selling alone—whether it be by the sale of property or the sale of the use of our talents or of our land—that we acquire the credits by which we liberate ourselves from debt, and it is by his selling power that a prudent banker estimates his client’s value as a debtor.' -- Also mention of tally sticks, aes rude and tablets.

'“The biggest problem if you’re trying to figure out ‘What is this stuff? What are they trying to do?’ is that I think even they don’t completely have a grip on it,” Scott says. “This thing — the Internet, online culture — allows you to engage with interesting people who you otherwise might not be aware of or interesting people who are, themselves, unaware that they’re interesting.” ...BuzzFeed is organized by its readers’ shorthand response to what they view — sections include LOL and OMG. “The way people interact with media is more about someone’s reaction, an emotional or even intellectual reaction,” Peretti says. “That is a kind of cultural shift. It’s not ‘I love to read the Style section,’ it’s ‘I love all the LOL stuff.’ ” “You see the news break,” Peretti says, and “the next day or 12 hours later, people are hungry for the parody of it or the comic relief.” '

'...one can gain much understanding of current events by paying attention to Western power-elite rhetoric in all its varied manifestations. Anyone can perform the kind of analysis the Bell attempts to provide. Simply accept (a terrible and fearful thing to be sure) that there is a power elite – a group of extraordinarily wealthy and powerful families and individuals engaged in an intergenerational conspiracy to create world governance – and then begin to track the dominant social themes that they utilize to shove a hitherto-unsuspecting public in the desired direction. -- ...the Internet has ravaged elite memes. Suffice it to say that what is happening now is a kind of huge and unstoppable tidal wave, one that is sweeping all before its path. Cultures and belief-systems will be reconfigured before all this is over. We believe the elite may have finally recognized this – certainly we see rhetorical indications that it has. (Perhaps elements read the Bell?)'