A companion to AofA

[Senna Jawa]

Whoever likes to talk about the Art of Agreement you're very welcome to do this thread here. And soon I'll create another thread which which will help to define the whole huge thing somewhat systematically.

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Let me start with an anecdote. I shared my definition of democracy:

Democracy is a political system
in which the ruling party loses.
​

wh, looong time ago​

The reaction of about everybody to my definition was lukewarm. Then one day I had my meal (yummy) at the New York Pizza Depot (NYPD -- in Ann Arbor, Michigan, next to the main campus), just like on several other occasions. But this time I was eavesdropping on a conversation at the next table. Two professors of the local political science department were having a discussion. Thus I presented them with my definition. One of the neighbors was typical in a not very sympathetic way (a bit snobbish, and more concerned with the way he is perceived then with a discussed topic as such). The other one was such that we could steal horses with him--that's a Polish saying; in other words he was great. When we were parting, he gave me his business card, and asked me to be a part of the department's life. Actually, he was at the time the director of the whole Institute of International Politics (or something like this). However, things were happening to each of us, and we met only several months later, just once--he was about to leave the local university for a more modest school in another state far from Michigan. That's it.

One can look at this small story in two ways. One simple and true interpretation is CHAOS. The other one, that indeed I am not meant to go out of my way to do organized social things, especially these days. When I meet a person, then we have a contact. I enjoy meeting people from every path of life. But beyond this... oh, well, it's all CHAOS.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Difficult start

It's hard to start. There is no easy way around it. Thus anybody capable and willing to listen needs just a bit of patients. It will get much more practical soon, perhaps already in the second post on the AofA.

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I intend to edit my AofA posts. When there is a significant modification then I'll inform about the changes in this Companion thread. This is one more role of this "A companion to AofA".

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Any discussion, including discussions about AofA, can succeed only when there is a positive attitude. Otherwise we waste time. This means that there is no reason to waste time on obvious things, they don't have to be spelled unless someone has genuine doubts. Thus I don't want to spend time on saying thet non-imposition realtes only toi adults who are mentally stable. Of course, even in the case of children and people mentally affected the principles of Art of Agreement can still creatively be applied as much as possible.

A long time ago I used to talk about "The Freedom Approach". But the reaction included a lot of nonsense. The quieter name indeed helped a bit. I was wasting less time on questions like "And what if someone will spit on the shopwindows?" Well, kick the guy, and kick the one who asks stupid questions --yes, this was a joke.

 

[Senna Jawa]

The best in existence (a sigh)

That's what people say, and for a good reason: as bad as democracy is, it is still the best system in existence. Something like this. Indeed, democratic countries were never at war. This is certainly an achievement. At the same time this seeming optimum is very depressing.

For a long time the democratic slogan was: majority rule. Communists loved this slogan. This obviously contradicts the non-imposition commandment. It's amazing how long it took people to oppose this majority rule principle. Logically, it is immediately clear how badly this slogan is wrong. Given any, say 30, individuals, you may have 25 gang up on the remaining 5, regardless of anything. According to the principle you can kill arbitrary 5 out of 30 (oh, you can alway provide a so-called rational reason to kill them). And historically, that's what was happening (don't worry about exact numbers ).

Then the democrats made progress, now their slogan says: majority rule, minority rights. Somehow don't worry about the inherit self-contradiction of this phrase. A contradiction or not, but in practice this was a huge improvement. And still this is far-far-far from what the things should be. This still contradicts the commandment, and on important occasions this should be meant with resistance proportional to the abuse.

*******

Democrats have their democratic commendment: you should alway vote. They often bother you: either way you vote is fine but do vote. Only by voting you participate in democrating governing the country (or whatever).

It's garbage. And whatever is the general opinion the reality is that people don't vote much. The common sense wins. More than that, in countries like Sweden, people don't even care to offer themselves as candidates for nomination.

*******

In the other thread I have presented the false alternative, which was inducing people to vote for or against legalizing the same-sex marriage. Why do people agree to vote on nonsense? Are they too busy to carefully consider the issue? If they are too busy then they should not vote. Actually, people spend a lot of time on this issue. They spend time but not on thinking--only on their sentiments. They get excited--it's stupid and immoral (while some of them claim being moral; the famous saying: moral majority is neither!, always makes me happy ).

********

It's clear that we need Art of Agreement. Politics is like walking in a totally dark labyrinth, where one of your legs is a bit shorter. You know, everybody's one leg is a little bit (or a lot ) shorter than the other one. Thus in the dark your imperfect legs make you turn and bump against a wall. Then you decide to go in the other direction, and you bump against the other wall. even when you learn about your legs, you may either not appreciate the difference, or you may overdo your correction. One way or another, you keep bumping against the wall regardless ofnthe names painted on the walls. Thus you need to look from above. And then surprise-surprise--you should go straight to reach the goal. Just take the simplest, the most direct route. But you need to be trained in Art of Agreement, so you don't vote on false alternatives. You need to realize the existence of false alternatives, you should not fall for them. Granted that you are sufficiently stable person, not a racist or a religious freak filled with hate, or similar.

People are not willing to think. They only want to win, to convince others or to dominate them, they follow their political sentiments which they call views without any justification. So, they VOTE. But it's unethical.

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I'll present more false alternatives (later). They are all over the place. One needs to be alert to them.

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To write a Ph.D. thesis may take years, or as a minimum one has accumulated sufficient background and expertise to do it faster, but altogether it still takes years of profound deep thinking to get doctorate at a high level institution.

But when people vote and decide on more important issues of well being for many, people just are not thinking but convincing others. And then they vote. And then people hurt, people suffer.

If this time and energy on voting went into profound thinking, as in the case of high-level Ph.D theses, then they would come up with incredible solutions wbhich would make the world a way more happy place. But it takes IMAGINATION which matches the imagination which goes into the best dissertations.

You can't even imagine the imagination. Read what geniuses from Archimedes to Perelman achieved, and have the drive to do as well in politics just a 1/1000 of what they did.

 

[Senna Jawa]

A typo (but frustrating!)

In the last paragraph of post "Marriage, law, government." I missed word "not"--oh no!!!--how frustrating! I fixed it, and I made the whole paragraph a bit clearer and more explicit.

 

[Senna Jawa]

AofA is peaceful (NOT violent!)

Let's see the absolutely important, dramatic differenced between AofA and the language and views of "political poets".

A political poet addresses a simple folk. Political poet tells the simple folk that a simple folk should really slaughter a financial mogul, who is the source of all evil.

Now MrX is a simple folk. He reads, without going into any needy-greedy, a poem. So, he attempts to find the financial mogul MrY. It was easier to find 5-year old daughter Ms.Y, so he slaughters the 5 year old girl, and is happy for his good deed.

And when the slaughter starts in earnest then not only MrX may be slaughtered (unlikely) but huge numbers of other simple folks. And some of those most capable of organizing the slaughter will become even greater moguls, and will keep slaughtering the simple folks just out of habit.

*********

According to AofA you don't want to do any violence. But much more than that. You simply don't want to do anything bad to anybody, it's not your goal, it's not your preoccupation, there is no room for hate in AofA.

All you want to do is to do your own thing without anybody bothering you. For instance, you may want to educate your own children on your own, and nobody should force you to do things differently. But it does not mean to slaughter a board of education (despite the fact that they deserve a 1000 times over--you should still leave them alone). Amish people want to insure each other, and no Obama should force Amish or me or anybody to accept any bureaucratic insurance. Etc. It doesn't mean that you want to burn the 10 story high insurance company buildings. You just want to have your own solutions. Government should stay out of it. Etc. No violence. No threat's which "political poets" love so much. You don't even want to say a bad word about any moguls, huge insurance institutions, etc. You just want to be left alone.

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The problem is that it is easier to promote slaughtering than thinking.

 

[Senna Jawa]

True political poets contra political pseudo-poets

Vladimir Vysotsky wrote several great songs, including "Comrad Stalin" and "AntySemits' song". Stalin was dead long before but the Soviet system kept being still very intimidating, so such songs took guts--read Brodsky's bio. Nevertheless Vysotsky never used any aggressive language, was not using seriously any of those horrible political cliches--except jokingly, to make fun of those cliches. He was making fun of the ugly guys in an ironic good natured way.

Vysotsky was a great artist but others were poets even more so. Thus there were Russian poets like Akhmatova, Cvetaeva, Mandelstam who payed the price, Brodsky who endured gulag, ... And there was writer Babel, who also payed the price. None of them used this ugly, aggressive language of the cheap political newspaper cliches. That one can call such cheap political language poetry is beyond me. People should be allergic to all those cheap tired political cliches.

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Read the great Polish poet Baczyński, killed by Germans in Warsaw Uprising. During WWII the young soldier Baczyński wrote easily over a hundred poems. He never even mentioned name German but may be once or twice, and without any hate. He was concerned about his own soul, if his soul can survive under such terrible conditions. He didn't want any ugliness which oozes from the so-called political poetry.

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Read our Internet poet LeeAnn Heringer and her beautiful poem about Mexican workers in the US:

where God sits
at the end of the day
​

It's not any 30-40 line long cliched cheapo which patronizingly uses a Latino name; and the language of "where God..." is not filled with any hate toward anybody, the author doesn't use any threatening language (toward "white employers"). It's just very humane and beautiful poetry.

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In my "Affinity" there is "golden IRS building", there are homeless guys, there is some rough stuff mentioned... But it still is poetry. In "the city of the cities" there are DOD contractors, there is talk about tax payer's money... and still no threats, no violence, just poetry. The "Einstein's window" (which was celebrated during the early r.a.p. and outside of it too) is a story about the Holocaust, and not a trace of any violence. There is a story about a small child scared of terrorists, and no of any tired political cliches, etc. etc... And many more poems in Polish, some about Holocaust too, some about Polish politicians, ... and never any trace of any hateful language, of any threats, nothing like this.

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One may try to complicate the issue, one may have all kind of complicated ideas and excuses, to promote their political views. There is no excuse anyway, not whatsoever. If you really mean to write poetry then write it cleanly. Remember Baczyński. Not even the most horrible reality would affect his internal beautiful soul. What excuses do you have today under your relatively peaceful conditions to practice a hateful language of threats? You may deny those ugly tired cliches all you want, it will change nothing.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Can Bogu's post be moved here, to "A companion"?

Can Bogu's post from "AofA" be moved here to "A companion of AofA"? Please, let. Somehow I have inertia, and came here back a few times. This time, if Bogu's post is not moved, I am tired of all this enough to leave and not come back to Lit anymore. It will immediately make the cockroaches stink around without limits Just in case-- the few others, best to you.

 

[butters]

''thou shalt not impose''

 

[Magnetron]

Can Bogu's post from "AofA" be moved here to "A companion of AofA"? Please, let. Somehow I have inertia, and came here back a few times. This time, if Bogu's post is not moved, I am tired of all this enough to leave and not come back to Lit anymore. It will immediately make the cockroaches stink around without limits Just in case-- the few others, best to you.

No one threatened to leave Literotica when you began posting negative criticisms in New Poem Recommendations.

 

[pelegrino]

Let's see the absolutely important, dramatic differenced between AofA and the language and views of "political poets".

A political poet addresses a simple folk. Political poet tells the simple folk that a simple folk should really slaughter a financial mogul, who is the source of all evil.

Now MrX is a simple folk. He reads, without going into any needy-greedy, a poem. So, he attempts to find the financial mogul MrY. It was easier to find 5-year old daughter Ms.Y, so he slaughters the 5 year old girl, and is happy for his good deed.

And when the slaughter starts in earnest then not only MrX may be slaughtered (unlikely) but huge numbers of other simple folks. And some of those most capable of organizing the slaughter will become even greater moguls, and will keep slaughtering the simple folks just out of habit.

*********

According to AofA you don't want to do any violence. But much more than that. You simply don't want to do anything bad to anybody, it's not your goal, it's not your preoccupation, there is no room for hate in AofA.

All you want to do is to do your own thing without anybody bothering you. For instance, you may want to educate your own children on your own, and nobody should force you to do things differently. But it does not mean to slaughter a board of education (despite the fact that they deserve a 1000 times over--you should still leave them alone). Amish people want to insure each other, and no Obama should force Amish or me or anybody to accept any bureaucratic insurance. Etc. It doesn't mean that you want to burn the 10 story high insurance company buildings. You just want to have your own solutions. Government should stay out of it. Etc. No violence. No threat's which "political poets" love so much. You don't even want to say a bad word about any moguls, huge insurance institutions, etc. You just want to be left alone.

**************

The problem is that it is easier to promote slaughtering than thinking.

It is not very persuading as a story... just try harder.

 

[pelegrino]

Can Bogu's post from "AofA" be moved here to "A companion of AofA"? Please, let. Somehow I have inertia, and came here back a few times. This time, if Bogu's post is not moved, I am tired of all this enough to leave and not come back to Lit anymore. It will immediately make the cockroaches stink around without limits Just in case-- the few others, best to you.

It is admirable and formally pure that you want the "A of A" not interfered with.
But think: We are in the internet, once you publish something you cannot avoid this short of thing happening. We are all guilty of it sometimes, no reason to leave Literotica for such small irritations.