What you represented is not what I maintain, but I don't have the time now to give a correct assessment of my views.

But the near-infinite capacity of human ingenuity somehow seems to disappear when we talk about feeding the world's poor...the ability of small groups of people to get along peaceably in the absence of an Imperial Military State...sustaitable, self-supporting communities could exist happily without a zillion hi-tech "labor-saving" gizmos

But people are selfish, and ingenuity comes from laziness. We use our ingenuity to make our lives easier, not better. Ingenuity works against technical problems, not against social problems. All the problems you listed are social problems, not technical problems.

Social problems are thousands of times more complicated. Could we feed the worlds hungry? Sure, quite easily, if all the corrupt governments which are the cause of the problem ceased to exist.

Could small groups of people get along peacably without a military state? Definitely. But those small groups will always lose out to the big power hungry groups, who have the same human ingenuity, but more of it, and far more manpower and resources, and the desire to spread their influence.

Could we go back to farming naturally and living closer to the earth? Definitely, if you reduce the population of the earth to a small fraction of what it is right now. But it's a social problem, most people don't want to live that way. Life is much harder work that way, and we're lazy.

But those small groups will always lose out to the big power hungry groups, who have the same human ingenuity, but more of it, and far more manpower and resources, and the desire to spread their influence.

I would suggest that this is exactly the situation we currently find ourselves in, but most people have been propagandized into believing that the "big power hungry groups" either don't exist in our country today, or are basically benevolent, or are "on our side", when in fact they relate to most of the population more like a farmer values his livestock than as fellow human beings.

"Your enemy is not surrounding your country. Your enemy is ruling your country!" --George W. Bush.

How to solve this problem is something anarchist thinkers have been thinking and theorizing about for generations.

Ingenuity works against technical problems, not against social problems.

I disagree. For an exapmle, look at what the Venezuela's government has been accomplishing under Hugo Chavez. In a recent interview on Democracy Now (currently the only U.S. media outlet that's actually bothered to talk to him), he discussed what's been happening there.

You ask me then, in the Bolivarian revolution, the role of the grassroots communities, the women and men, as well of course. But the grassroots and communities, their role is vital, and it’s more dynamic. It's very beautiful in the roles they have to play. Just to give you an idea of some of the experiences we have had in Venezuela. I leave for Venezuela this weekend. Next week we are going to have an event in Caracas with thousands of people who are part of the Urban Land Committee, the C.T.U. in Spanish. These committees of urban land are all over the country. They are in each neighborhood, poor neighborhood. You have a committee. The members of this committee should watch the whole neighborhood. And then they draft the map of the neighborhood. They go house by house, family by family and they assess all the problems. If they lack running water or if some of the houses are unstable and they could fall down. How many children they have. The schools. The health care system in the neighborhood and so on. So these are the urban land communities.

We also have the technical commissions of water. These technical commissions of water interact with the urban land committee. They take care of the water supply and also the sewage system. There are other technical groups to take care of energy supply, electricity supply especially. We have also the health committee. The rural land committees in the rural areas. We also have housing cooperatives. In large networks of grassroots organizations, as you know, in the constitution that we have drafted, in the government we foster these grassroots movements. Here we have been trying the democratic model. It is the revolutionary democracy. But it is not only a representative democracy. It is a participatory democracy and beyond that it is a fully and meaningful democracy. And Abraham Lincoln already said this: the government of the people, for the people and by the people. That what we say here is to transfer power to the people, especially the poorest of the poor. If you want to get rid of poverty, we need to empower the poor. Not to treat them like beggars. [emphasis mine --B] And this week we're going to give money, we’re going to give financial resources to these neighborhood committees, grassroots organizations, we’re going to give them technical resources, equipment, we are going to carry out the housing schemes, infrastructure schemes, water supply, electricity supply schemes. So this is a beautiful task we are conducting.

Human ingenuity can be applied successfully to social problems if resources are directed into it. The problem we have is that our government, corporations, and those who control most of the allocation of resources just don't consider it a priority. (In fact, they'd rather keep a lot of people poor, as that makes for an easier to exploit labor pool.) If the government spent as much money to hire the best minds for the task of helping people (or figuring out more effective ways to do so) as it does on paying them to design weapons, we'd be well on our way.

(I'm not necessarily saying I think the socialist model is the best way, as governments do tend to become ever more inefficient with scale. But if you're going to have the government doling out billions of dollars anyway, better to have it go into at least trying to improve lives than finding ways to destroy them.)

I would also suggest that the line between technical problems and social problems is not so clear-cut. Technology (which itself inherently contains both positive and negative aspects) can be applied to social situations. Think about the example Chavez talked about of getting clean water to everybody. Is this a technical issue or a social one?

Perhaps the social aspect is simply having somebody with the power to affect change deciding that something needs to be done (instead of just throwing our arms in the air and saying "the poor will be poor", as previous administrations had done). But finding ways to get the water to those who need it is most definitely technical in nature. Do pipes need to be installed, or would it make more sense to have water trucks make deliveries? Etc etc.

Could we go back to farming naturally and living closer to the earth? Definitely, if you reduce the population of the earth to a small fraction of what it is right now. But it's a social problem, most people don't want to live that way. Life is much harder work that way, and we're lazy.

Barring something totally unforseen, the earth's population will be reduced by a large margin. Maybe in 5 years, maybe 50, maybe even 100 (although that's pushing it). The factors that have allowed it to become as large as it has depend on conditions that are rapidly changing. I'm not just talking about oil. The rate at which other species are going extict, destroying eco-systems that humanity depends on (even if we don't realize it), global warming. All point to the realization that we are eating away at the last pieces of string that are holding us up, metaphorically speaking.

Regarding "farming" and "living closer to the earth". While farming is certainly a step closer than most of us currently live, it has also been called the worst mistake in the history of the human race. Since this comment is plenty long already, I'm not going to elaborate further, but anyone who wants to learn more, and have some pervasive myths dispelled, can follow that link.

I'm not going to address your points in order, just in somewhat random fasion. (Yanthor, maybe some of what I have to say here you might agree with, but since these are some of my more radical views, chances are you probably won't agree as strongly with everything I say here.)

So Bitscape, quoting from the article you linked:

Horticulturalists have the most efficient lifestyle

You're claiming farming in general is the worst mistake in the history of the human race. But what I was referring to was more horticulture, not modern agriculture, which is what that article was talking about.

I have to admit, there is a great appeal to me in abandoning the life I know to live a life much closer to nature. That call was much stronger when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, I've become lazier and more dependant on our culture. I see that as a bad thing. But really, I have a hard time imagining myself surviving off food in the wild even if I do know what I can safely eat. Our food is so foreign compared to what a hunter gatherer would consume that I imagine it would probably wipe out at least 95% (99%? 99.99%?) of the population because of inability to live that lifestyle, and because human development has destroyed the environment which people were able to live those lifestyles in (thoughts of Bill Cody killing 10,000 buffalo come to mind). Our lifestyles have become optimized for other things, and we don't have the survival skills. I probably have more knowedge in this area than the vast majority of Americans (I can construct shelter from materials from the environment, I can make fire without matches or a lighter, I've helped skin animals and I know some theory of hunting and stalking prey, but lack experience), but even what I do know wouldn't be anywhere near enough to create a quality survival.

The place where I gained a lot of my knowledge on wilderness survival was home to the Miwok tribe of native americans. Some of their food I could probably survive on, but I was told that one of their food sources was from trapping mice! I don't know maybe they were just a delicacy, but I can't imagine living off of mice. Ewww!!

I have a book I keep wanting to loan to you, by Tom Brown, Jr. that I'm curious if it will interest you, I just hardly ever see you, and never have it with me when I do. As I see the direction your ideas are moving, even if I might have very different ideas from you in many areas, I think this is one area in which you might be moving philosophically towards my position.

On to the other topic:

Human ingenuity can be applied successfully to social problems if resources are directed into it.

Exactly. That's exactly what I was saying. Sort of. Those problems have technical solutions which can be obtained, it's the social approach that's preventing them from being put into action. Therefore it's a social problem, which can't be solved just by ingenuity. Does that make sense? The not directing the resources itself is the problem, and the reason they're not being directed is a social problem. So to answer this question:

I would also suggest that the line between technical problems and social problems is not so clear-cut... Think about the example Chavez talked about of getting clean water to everybody. Is this a technical issue or a social one?

It's a social problem, and it has technical aspects to it which need human ingenuity to solve. But at the risk of being repetative (risk? hah, I already passed repetative looong ago), the key to implementing that technically sound policy is the social issue of having a government that's willing to actually do that.

Hmmm, maybe we agree on more than we thought we did. It just comes down to defining terms.

The Tom Brown site certainly looks interesting. I'd love to look at the book you have whenever we happen to bump into each other again. When it comes to such practical knowledge, I feel like I'm woefully lacking.

Actually, maybe I could bike over there sometime if that would be easier. I have no idea what your schedule is, but there must be sometime when neither of us have other commitments.

I almost never go anywhere. You can call ahead just to make sure, but when I'm not at work (work = 7:30AM-5:30PM M-F), I'm almost always at home. Just come on over sometime.

I'm thinking maybe I'll wander down that direction late Friday afternoon, provided I'm feeling energetic enough after work. In the neighborhood of 18:00 or something.

I had a hard time trying to define what the book I loaned you really is. If I sit and contemplate it, I can probably come up with a better explanation than I could on the spot.

Mainly, it is an introduction. It doesn't give a lot of details on exactly how to do things, but it explains things so that you can begin learning on your own.

The book is mostly stories, but the stories aren't just there as stories, they're there to explain a philosophy, a way of living, of seeing things, of understanding and observing.

This area of study is like any other discipline, the only way to become skilled at it is to practice. It doesn't matter how much you read about it in a book (although a book can help give direction to what you're doing), what matters is how much time you actually spend doing it.

What little abilities I actually have didn't come from any book, they came from being around people who were into this kind of thing, being taught directly.

A couple of people I worked with were really into this stuff. One of them studied directly under Tom Brown himself. He still hadn't graduated from college (even though he was actively attending) at age 28 because he spent so much time practicing his skills. He was legendary in our part of the woods for his skills at tracking and stalking (a general term for an important skill to have for those who hunt, but has gained negative connotation. Think of the way a cat stalks its prey, not the way a "stalker" follows around someone he is obsessed with).

Your discussion about human ingenuity, priorities, and politics reminded me of one of the speeches Dr. Martin Luther King gave that Republicans don't talk about. From his speech, "Beyond Vietnam":

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

...

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

...

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

A great irony is that today we celebrate Dr. King as though his vision had become a reality. Yes, he gave a speech about racial equality, and arguably on a road to that. But later in his career, he saw, as he put it, the triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.

And here's the thing: Dr. King lost. The bad guys won. Have we given up racism? Did you see any white people in New Orleans during Katrina? "They're underprivileged anyway." -- Barbara Bush. As for materialism and militarism -- I don't think there is any debate that the America is more militaristic and materialistic today than it's been in at least a century.

Bottom line: Dr. King failed. The autopsy does Vietnam.

I often think about the past as it relates to our present. The present is made up of the sum of everything that has gone before.

American history (and world history) is full of stories of great people, great events that have shaped the way things have been since. But what if we only see them as great because they're the ones who won?

Example: what if the French had been successful in colonizing America instead of the British? The French were much better at relations to the native americans and living in harmony with nature than the British colonists. But they lost. You look before that and the same thing happened on the British Isles with the Norman conquest destroying the Celtic culture.

And you multiply that by hundreds, by thousands, by millions. When evil prevails over good, it doesn't just have immediate consequences, it has consequences for the rest of history. And how much of what exists now has come out of those consequences, and we don't even realize it.

And each person can look at their life in the same way, as a product of all their past choices, good and bad.

And history may help us understand why we are where we are, but there's nothing we can do to change it. Instead, we are given the responsibility of shaping the future by our present actions. So maybe Dr. King didn't achieve everything he set out to do, but that doesn't mean our generation can't work to correct those past mistakes, even as we make new ones.

Hey Linknoid, thanks SO much! You said exactly what I wanted to reply, but in many less words than I would have used, and thus your response was much better.

Thanks, your response saved me from having to respond. :-)

Hey, maybe if I wait around long enough to reply, Linknoid will reply to Bitscape's latest reply too! ;-)