Philosophy of Second Life, Part 1: On the Origins of FIC Ideology
by Alphaville Herald on 07/07/07 at 7:58 am
(FIC propaganda poster stolen from Flipper’s FIC propaganda repository.)
Being Uri, there are moments when I look in the mirror and skeet. You would too! Imagine being a supreme visionary AND an alpha male (although ‘uberstud’ is the politically correct terminology I prefer). But then there are those days when I read my favorite philosopher, P. Luddie, and I think “I’m not worthy.” This is about one of those days.
There I was in Amsterdam chillin’ with the peeps at Submarine – those cross media Dutch masheruppers (them that brought us “My Second Life” and – even better – Lou Paradis) and the topic of virtual worlds and utopias came up. A vaguely familiar notion, I thought. When I got back to my crib in Toronto I dug through my endless pile of P. Luddie publications and found that yes! He had pontificated on this! Back when Philip and Cory were still in short pants, and due diligence requires that I say this: Luddie, you are such a freaking visionary!
What really smacked me upside the head though, was how Second Life’s central social conflict was predicted back then– the struggle against an H.G. Wells style “modern utopia” with its elite class — its Feted Inner Core (FIC) — with their technophile Jetsonian gadgetry and their total Lack. Of. Moral. Compass… its modern roots in the California techno-hippie liberatarian ideology, etc. (Luddie even used the word ‘fete’.) Well… how could I not share? I offer the following for your consideration. Please keep in mind that it was written in the Last Millennium if published in 2001. –Uri
From Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, MIT Press, 2001.
If we really are constructing new legal systems and institutions (or at least experimenting with them) is it also possible to speculate that we are in a unique position to optimize these institutions? – to actually improve them to the point where genuine utopias might emerge? Here it is easy to get caught up in some of the utopian fervor that is gripping a number of commentators on the digital revolution, from Kevin Kelly, to Douglas Rushkoff, to Lou Rossetto and John Perry Barlow.
Arguably, there is conceit in thinking that we can make better worlds simply by emigrating to the online world and starting over. This is one of the points that is made by Jedediah Purdy (Chapter 22) when he takes aim at Kevin Kelly et al and in particular at the general the moral perspective of the prophets of Wired magazine. About the flight by some to virtual communities, Purdy is hardly charitable:
A few people, mostly college students, have largely withdrawn from their embodied lives to participate in virtual communities. Kelly wants this practice to go much further, to see more people inhabiting specialized online communities, sometimes of their own making. Creating these worlds extends “life,” and “every creative act is no more or less than the reenactment of the Creation.” By entering these realms, their programmers reproduce the “old theme” of “the god who lowered himself into his own world.” Kelly identifies this theme with Jesus, but one wonders if Narcissus is not a more appropriate touchstone for his ambition.
But more generally, Purdy sees the Wired philosophy as being “contemptuous of all limits—of law, community, morality, place, even embodiment.”
The magazine’s ideal is the unbounded individual who, when something looks good to him, will do it, buy it, invent it, or become it without delay. This temperament seeks comradeship only among its perceived equals in self-invention and world making; rather than scorn the less exalted, it is likely to forget their existence altogether. Boundless individualism, in which law, community, and every activity are radically voluntary, is an adolescent doctrine, a fantasy shopping trip without end.
This criticism is obviously aimed at Wired magazine and it’s techno-libertarian ideals [nowadays called techi-wikki ideals – Uri] , but there are also lessons for online communities. Are they exclusively going to be retreats where libidos can run wild, or are some of them going to become real communities where persons depend upon each other? In section IV we saw a number of examples where virtual communities like Lambda MOO evolved away from adolescent fantasy worlds into real communities with (in my opinion) real laws. One hopes that many of those who opt for virtual communities will reject the Wired ideology and proceed to build viable communities. In building such communities they need not buy into Kelly’s hubris that they are thereby “reenacting the Creation.”
While it is certainly important to identify the Wired ideology and warn of it’s corrosive nature, it is also valuable to try and understand its origins and see how it fits into the broader context of American political life. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (Chapter 23) address this question by examining what they call the “California Ideology” underlying much of the thinking exhibited by Kelly, Rossetto, etc. In their view the ideology is the result of a tension faced by “hi-tech artisans” — the information technology professionals who are well paid, but are under contract and hence face uncertain futures:
Living within a contract culture, the hi-tech artisans lead a schizophrenic existence. On the one hand, they cannot challenge the primacy of the marketplace over their lives. On the other hand, they resent attempts by those in authority to encroach on their individual autonomy. By mixing New Left and New Right, the Californian Ideology provides a mystical resolution of the contradictory attitudes held by members of the ‘virtual class’. Crucially, anti-statism provides the means to reconcile radical and reactionary ideas about technological progress. While the New Left resents the government for funding the military-industrial complex, the New Right attacks the state for interfering with the spontaneous dissemination of new technologies by market competition. Despite the central role played by public intervention in developing hypermedia, the Californian ideologues preach an anti-statist gospel of hi-tech libertarianism: a bizarre mish-mash of hippie anarchism and economic liberalism beefed up with lots of technological determinism.
Mark Dery takes aim at another of the digeratti Nicholas Negroponte, the director of the MIT media lab and former essayist for Wired magazine. In Dery’s view, Negroponte’s utopian visions of the future are striking for the way in which they consistently leave out the social dimension of life:
Troubling thoughts of social ills such as crime and unemployment and homelessness rarely crease the Negroponte brow. In fact, he’s strangely uninterested in social anything, from neighborhood life to national politics. Despite his insistence that the Digital Revolution is about communication, not computers, there’s no real civic life or public sphere to speak of, in his future.
There, most of the communicating takes place between you and talkative doorknobs or “interface agents” such as the “eight inch-high holographic assistants walking across your desk.” In the next millennium, predicts Negroponte, “we will find that we are talking as much or more with machines than we are with humans.” Thus, the Information Age autism of his wistful “dream for the interface”: that “computers will be more like people.” Appliances and household fixtures enjoy a rich social life in Negroponte’s future, exchanging electronic “handshakes” and “mating calls”: “If your refrigerator notices that you are out of milk,” he writes, “it can ‘ask’ your car to remind you to pick some up on your way home.” Human community, meanwhile, consists of “digital neighborhoods in which physical space will be irrelevant”: knowledge workers dialing in from their electronic cocoons, squeezing their social lives through phonelines.
As Dery also notes, Negroponte’s utopia is often “Jetsonian” in it’s fetish for gadgets like holographic assistants and talking appliances there is something quaint and old fashioned about it. But the old fashioned nature of Negroponte’s utopia is not restricted to the technology. It also robustly manifests itself in the elitism of the digeratti the very same elitism which Jacobs, Purdy, Barbrook and Cameron took exception to. Dery sums this point up nicely:
[The digeratti] and the world they inhabit is a memory of futures past: the top-down technocracies of the 1939 World’s Fair or Disney’s Tomorrowland, socially engineered utopias presumably overseen by the visionary elites who “basically drive civilization,” as Stewart Brand famously informed the Los Angeles Times.
Sometimes we celebrate individuals as being cutting edge thinkers, when in reality they are nothing more than old time hucksters, repackaging tired ideas (perhaps calling them “wired” ideas) but breaking no new ground where it matters. No doubt the media will continue to fete these individuals and their “vision”. That does not mean that we must do so as well. The digeratti of the utopian visions of Wired are nothing more than repackaged versions of the Guardians of Plato’s Republic and the Samurai caste of H.G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia. To suppose that the digeratti are capable of driving civilization anywhere interesting is a mistake born of an old idea, adopted without reflection, and no doubt fueled by the boundless narcissism of this new class of elite. George Orwell once remarked that H.G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia was “the paradise of little fat men.” We might add that the utopian visions of the digeratti are the paradise of self-absorbed white guys.
marilyn murphy
Jul 7th, 2007
suddenly i want to go be a shaker. oh, wait….
anyway, it is historically incorrect to assume any small group seeking a utopian ideal will be successful. if enough people get involved, you have a better chance, vis a vis the menonites and amish. i want to point out that they are succeeding while seeking a simpler life, not a more complicated tech driven one.
the shakers died out because childbearing was forbidden. i find this very entertaining.
Kami Harbinger
Jul 7th, 2007
There are three options for the future of any society, SL in particular:
The first is libertarian: to let those who are smart, talented, and educated make the best decisions possible for themselves, letting the market sort out which one is right, while not forcing anyone to follow, except by example and offering a better lifestyle. The only acceptable use of force to a libertarian is for self-defense, and the best solution of all is to simply refuse entry to your private property to those you don’t like. There are no exceptions.
The second is dictatorship. Communists, fascists, theocrats, and Republicans use this model, because it allows a central committee of one fixed ideology to force their decisions on others, usually at the point of a gun. The requirement to join this cabal is always treachery and the ability to conform to group beliefs; intelligence not only isn’t a requirement, it’s an active detriment, and most of these dictators are borderline retarded (Bush is hardly unique in his stupidity, he’s just less articulate than most). Dictatorships always end up, very rapidly, with gulags and piles of skulls.
The third is the rule of the mob. Luddites and home-grown barbarians who don’t understand civilization and wouldn’t like it if they did spend all their time trying to attack and destroy everything around them, with nothing to offer in its place. In SL, the PN, b-chan, and other warring tribes of children who treat it as a videogame without real people on the other side. They will never have anything of value to say, and will never contribute anything. It is foolish to try to reason with them, negotiate with them, or educate them. The only rational response is to wall them off away from your land, shoot them when they trespass, and forget about them. Prokofy’s our local example of this: it attacks anyone who isn’t Christian, who has different politics, or who suggests that they actually like and understand technology and virtual worlds, which makes me wonder why Prok is involved with SL instead of being another Unabomber.
“Democracy” is just one of several possible means for a population to select between these options, it does not itself change the options.
The Wired philosophy, back when it had one 10 years ago, was indeed libertarian, as are almost all of the good people who built the Internet you’re posting your screeds on now. Utopianism is not a dirty word. Proposing systems and making products that support some part of your utopian vision doesn’t force anyone to follow, it merely offers a choice that the free market can decide between.
The other philosophies, the ones you’re quoting from, lead back to the Dark Ages.
The notion of someone who uses SL criticizing anything for being like the Jetsons is so ludicrous I have to assume Prok wrote most of that before editing to remove some of its crazy talk, or that you’re very, very drunk, Uri.
I’m somewhat appalled at your choice of quotes, though. Quoting from Mark Dery in particular is almost comically stupid. The idiot contradicts himself in the space of two paragraphs:
“there’s no real civic life or public sphere to speak of, in his future.”
“digital neighborhoods”
In any sane sense, that’s an obvious contradiction, either from stupidity or a blatant attempt to lie, and you can therefore mark his essay with an F and throw it out. There is another possible interpretation, but it’s even worse:
1. Mark Dery thinks only meat-to-meat communication is “real”.
2. Mark Dery writes on paper, he does not speak personally to every person he wishes to communicate with.
QED, Mark Dery does not communicate.
If that’s the best intelligence the rule of the mob can produce to oppose libertarian technocracy, I suppose we don’t have to worry.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jul 7th, 2007
‘the shakers died out because childbearing was forbidden.’
Now THERE’S a surprise!
Interesting article though. Utopia is probably one of the most meaningless words in the English language.
It’s (jokingly) said that ‘democracy’ is ancient Greek for ‘Gods! How did we get in THIS mess?’
I’ve often suspected ‘utopia’ to be ancient Greek for ‘Time for a reality check guys!’
prettyboy fred
Jul 7th, 2007
I can think of one communitiy in General. *Vampires*
They are all start with *Utopia-Vamp safe Haven* ideology, but then it fails because either lack of leadership.
As a result, The billboard of *Safe Haven* and the handful of core *get-along clique* stays there but the everyone else come and go, because of the drama created by very ppl who openly advertise *We dont like drama*.
(You know, in SL you can do whatever you want , so you can throw fit in public, and eject ppl who are not agreeing with you.)
Coincidentally, sa Kami puts it, all the leader in those community pretending to be libertarian is in fact, *dictator* who puts gun(Threatening with ejection and ban. May it be a stupid stuff such as wrong song to request to the DJ…) to anyone’s head with their own dumbed down rules.
I can show you the notecards of *Approved genres of music to play* which circulated recently among certain Vamp sims.
For those seeking some kind of achievement, it can be achieved with spending money to the sim project/ charities.
If the clique likes you or if you are shrewed enough to convince them you are sincere buying out their leader, you might get officer position with *Royal* tag on your head, along side of the *unemployed-living with parents, but i can be alpha male in this little pixel world* kids.
which is sad? You have to stay their to feel like you are accepted somewhere, or You have to substitute family in Sl vamp sim to feel like you are one of the family…
Or worse, spending a lot of money to buy out the position just for the sake of achievement.. LMAO
Coincidental Avatar
Jul 7th, 2007
I find your analysis entertaining because you have to go a little bit more back in the history than you have done to find societies like SL. About 10 000 – 20 000 years
Back to our days:
“Communists”
Everybody knows that communists are doing rather fine in China. However, only few dare to say this.
“Democracy”
Well, this seems to work too. The oldest democracy is soon 800 years old. They invited the noob Abraham Lincoln as their honorary citizen.
American Anarchism. Well, the ideology is older than the Dark Ages
Is that a positive or a negative, is up to personal taste. But the ideology was outdated rapidly in the beginning of stone age. During 19th century Anarchism was promoted with terrorism. 19th century looks terribly similar to our 21st century.
“warring tribes of children who treat it as a videogame without real people on the other side”
I’m afraid that they just express freely what they think about real people. I see PN and other crap as natural consequences in SL.
And I try to mention in this thread first the name of the famous American plagiarist and propagandist, Adam Smith
Just in case if somebody wants to abuse/ misinterpret his propaganda stories based on stolen ideas yet again.
Coincidental Avatar
Jul 7th, 2007
“pretending to be libertarian”
They are not pretending to be American Anarchists. They are. Anarchists don’t comprehend that societies are built to resolve the conflicts between people. Anarchists want to replace the contemporary control of the society with their individual dictatorship. They are just unable to honestly watch ugly themselves in the mirror.
Paradoxically, the freedom is very regulated thing.
Anarchists have similar difficulties in perceiving themselves honestly as fundie Christians who become the incarnations of hatred while spreading the word of love.
“Or worse, spending a lot of working hours to buy out the position just for the sake of achievement.. LMAO”
Suddenly you made SL feel very much like RL. Or did you write about shopping and consumerism?
A random citizen
Jul 7th, 2007
Yes Kami. By browsing 4chan’s /b/ and being a fan of the jokes, that automatically makes me a voiceless barbarian destroying your culture. Sterotype much? lawl.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 7th, 2007
Excellent work, Uri, where would we be without your historically-informed critical analysis of ideological frameworks? I do swear to God that, while I have read some of those authors, I have not read Luddie and didn’t get the word “fete” from him! I really did conceive of the word and the concept on my own; but the concept is as old as high school and as new as anybody like Kami Harbinger posting here, thinking he and his posse are the “smart ones” and “surrounded by idiots”.
Jetsonian — yes. Jeffersonian — no. And yes, you can be quaint and old-fashioned by being “Jetsonian,” which, after all, was about Mom, Dad, Bub & Sis in outer space in a home, not about tentacled intelligent aliens on a Moebius strip.
You’re absolutely right that some of the New Right/New Left amalgam comes from the quintessential geek being in an anarchic/anarcho-capitalist context of computer coding, yet in a big IT company with bosses he hates who oppress him with old corporate organizational structures. Those bosses get to wear the string ties and fly around and attend interesting Metaverse conferences; he has to stay in his cubicle coding one step ahead of the Indians poised to take his job away, so he resents and festers.
And that’s where you get not only authoritarianism spawned from technological determinism (nothing says “dictator” like a peon with a grudge against a boss), you get these curious atavistic throwbacks like Gor, BDSM, Caledon — that is, techno geeks, self-professed techno-determinists, modern folk, IT guys by day, absolutely out on the edge in the Jetsonian future in a virtual world…but replicating the ancient societies of the past where males dominated, where tools determined humans instead of humans determining tools, where women were house slaves. So you get these IT guys becoming pagans, aquiring slaves, becoming weekend-whippers, although they are supposed to be about freedom and modernity.
It’s a cultural backlash against not only feminism but technological determination itself, if by that we mean social media that develops and empowers individuals who then do stuff like stand up to Kami Harbinger, or Intlibber Brautigan, who say, “let those who are smart, talented, and educated make the best decisions possible for themselves, letting the market sort out which one is right” — because they say, “Hey, you can’t determine the market, and hey, you’re not smart, but mediocre, if you imagine only your circle is the smart one.”
Re: “Sometimes we celebrate individuals as being cutting edge thinkers, when in reality they are nothing more than old time hucksters, repackaging tired ideas (perhaps calling them “wired” ideas) but breaking no new ground where it matters. No doubt the media will continue to fete these individuals and their “vision”.”
Absolutely. And the tired idea they are repackaging is “authoritarianism” or even “totalitarianism” discredited from the last centuries. That’s why I dare to talk about Leninism, to general hilarity, because it’s spot on about the Bolshevik end justifying the means and the revolutionary expediency.
You didn’t mention the Singularity people (I’ve started a movement against them called The Pluralarity) who believe that yes, embodiment is expendible and we’re all going to be either uploading our brains (the richer, smarter ones of course, like Mr. Noble!) or joining a Hive Mind that will of course be directed, willy-nilly, by the smarter, feted set. In the Pluralarity, we’re not only going to be downloading minds that ought to remain only in libaries, we’ll be smashing the Hive with a big stick.
Now why haven’t you commented yet on the Provisional Revolutionary Junta that was declared at Ludium in Indianapolis?!
Prokofy Neva
Jul 7th, 2007
BTW, it’s spelled “tekkie-wiki,” and I coined that term, too.
““contemptuous of all limits—of law, community, morality, place, even embodiment.”
yes, totally. And those who are contemptuous of all law and other kinds of restrictions like morality and place (geography, anyone? contiguousness??) wind up engaging in corrosive fuck-you hedonism that restricts everybody *else* even as it enlarges the erm…Liebensraum of those tekkies. They always imagine like-minded “right sort of people” to share their sense of what kind of Liebensraum should prevail.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 7th, 2007
>Everybody knows that communists are doing rather fine in China. However, only few dare to say this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
Um, below Russia, Albania, Brazil, Thailand, Samoa. No, quite the opposite, only a few dare expose the Big Lie of communist “developement”.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 7th, 2007
>They are not pretending to be American Anarchists. They are. Anarchists don’t comprehend that societies are built to resolve the conflicts between people. Anarchists want to replace the contemporary control of the society with their individual dictatorship. They are just unable to honestly watch ugly themselves in the mirror.
>Paradoxically, the freedom is very regulated thing.
>Anarchists have similar difficulties in perceiving themselves honestly as fundie Christians who become the incarnations of hatred while spreading the word of love.
Very well said, and really, the essence of anarchy, which is not only about taking away other people’s freedom; ultimately it’s about foreclosing your own future through licentiousness.
My only correction: not American anarchists, Leninists, of the Eurasian type.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 7th, 2007
Oh. Wait. Just. A. Minute. *Smacks self upside the head for being retarded.* Unless “P. Luddie” is an obscure sci-fi writer with a tombstone in Maryland, he sounds like the pen name for one Peter Ludlow who wrote the book about the Pirates published in 2001. And since you knew me then, you know you lifted my word “fete” even then, it’s a word I’ve always had, since the 1970s.
IntLibber Brautigan
Jul 7th, 2007
Its understandable that Prok’s Irish Catholic Democrat form of Kennedyesque “what you can do for your country” brand of nationalistic new deal PTA fascism just doesn’t seem to comprehend what anarchism really is unless its distorted by her rather thick coke bottle glasses of translating Russian at the UN for decades (and who knows what other agencies).
Now that the FIC has been explained by Uri, I’m proud to say I’ve been FIC since before I joined SL, in mind and spirit, if not in active association.
American anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, has as its central ethic that it is immoral to initiate force or fraud against others. An emphasis is made upon “initiation”, as self defense is always righteous.
What this means is that all ethical human interactions are consensual, both parties must agree. That is the basis of how markets work, so all human society in an ‘ancap’ society is market driven.
Any human interactions which are forced, coerced, manipulated, or otherwise imposed without prior consent are therefore criminal.
It is not surprising, however, that the Orwellian socio-fascist attitudes of Prok try to reverse this all, declaring that freedom is slavery, war is peace, free speech is griefing, and property ownership is theft.
SL was founded by LL on my own principles of an anarcho-capitalist society, not Prok’s vision of a global socio-fascist christian state. When she declares me an ‘extremist’ she is really declaring herself an extremist with respect to Second Life. Prokofy Neva is the outsider, the invader, the interloper, attempting to infiltrate and subvert that which SL was founded upon with her own vision of tyranny of mediocrity.
WitnessX
Jul 7th, 2007
>>Yes Kami. By browsing 4chan’s /b/ and being a fan of the jokes, that automatically makes me a voiceless barbarian destroying your culture. Sterotype much? lawl.
Nope that doesn’t make you mindless, a sheep yes but not mindless. It makes you a borderline monster, but not mindless. Now you’ll give the “legion” speech and try to defend the various horrible and awfuld things on /b/ by claiming it’s just and “image board” and it’s “only for the lulz”. Ready. Set. Go.
Jim Schack
Jul 7th, 2007
>They are not pretending to be American Anarchists. They are. Anarchists don’t comprehend that societies are built to resolve the conflicts between people. Anarchists want to replace the contemporary control of the society with their individual dictatorship. They are just unable to honestly watch ugly themselves in the mirror.
What? Conflicts can be solved without government coercion and theft though private dispute resolutions centers and arbitrators. Arbitrations exist today especially in the real estate industry and work better than government courts. The market place can handle any government function better, faster, cheaper and efficiently. Government is force, theft clumsy and always incompetent. also, ad hominem attacks are a logical fallicy and a sign that you’ve already lost the argument.
>Paradoxically, the freedom is very regulated thing.
Government cannot grant rights, period. The right to life, free speech, bear arms, religion …etc. are inherant in man and constitutions were designed to protect them, not give them. As we can see just in the Bush presidency alone, those rights can be infringed even with constitutional “protections”
>Anarchists have similar difficulties in perceiving themselves honestly as fundie Christians who become the incarnations of hatred while spreading the word of love.
You haven’t talked you a real anarchist then. The punker who hates cops is not a true anarchist. Read For A New Liberty by Murray Rothbard if you want to hear a good argument for a stateless society.
>Very well said, and really, the essence of anarchy, which is not only about taking away other people’s freedom; ultimately it’s about foreclosing your own future through licentiousness.
you’re going to have a hard time explaining how liberating people from the tyranny of the state with focus on personal liberties infringes on my right to free speech and bear arms. Hell you have a hard time explaining anything for that matter. I get more meaning and rational thinking reading the rantings of Charles Manson than I’ve ever gotten from reading anything you’ve had to say Prok.
urizenus
Jul 8th, 2007
Prok, we did not meet until 2003 (on the mean streets of Alphaville). So clearly, you must have gotten the word ‘fete’ and the anti-FIC ideology from me (perhaps in the Russian translation of the book). But I’m ok with that. It comes with the territory when one is the leading cybervisionary of the age.
Anonymous
Jul 8th, 2007
Jim Schack
Fuck, just go away please. At least Prok is fun to make fun of. Seeing your damn name in every thread is getting damn annoying your getting to a Prok level of posting in everything and your horrible at trolling. Get off my internets.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 8th, 2007
>Prok, we did not meet until 2003 (on the mean streets of Alphaville). So clearly, you must have gotten the word ‘fete’ and the anti-FIC ideology from me (perhaps in the Russian translation of the book). But I’m ok with that. It comes with the territory when one is the leading cybervisionary of the age.
I’ve been using the term “cossetted and feted” since at least 1978, Uri. I didn’t get the ideology from you, sorry to say, though your credentials as Leading Cybervisionary are unparalleled — but I did indeed get these notions all my own from my education and experience long before ever meeting you. I’ve never *read* the pirates book, only seen it listed. Russian translation?!
You never used the word “fete” in the Sims. And I’m certain we met before 2003. I joined the beta early on but we were there in 2001-2003, I can go look up our ages on our profiles. Surely you came before 2003?
Yeesh, Intlibber sounds like a goddamn Freeper. It’s hard to know where to start to begin the methodical argumentation one needs to counter all his raving lunacy. I don’t have coke bottle glasses; I don’t work for the UN, but at the UN independently with accredited status; I have never worked for any government intelligence agency, that’s silly. I guess accusing Irish Catholics of totalitarianism is as bigoted as it gets.
Intblubber’s notion of “consensual” is just damn wierd. His harsh, oppressive world of fuck-you hedonism under the banner of “Freedom” in fact leaves no room for the Golden Rule, for good neighbourliness, or cooperation and collaboration and even compromise. A few basic rules in SL would go a long way to achieving better harmony on sims, but with the extremists of the left and right prevailing as they do, even the radical middle has a hard time prevailing with common sense. I’ll bet Intlibber is one of those extremists like Banking Laws on the forums who refuses to give up even 16 m2 of his non-ban-linked-security-orbed waterfront to allow boats to pass. To do so would be non-consensual ROFL.
Jim Schack would be scary, if he weren’t above all ridiculous and silly ROFL. Any grown man who has to follow evil grief kiddies on to my sims for sport has no life, and no hope of getting one, first or second.
Coincidental Avatar
Jul 8th, 2007
About the recent (last 200 years) history of anarchism in Europe and USA.
Anarchism as an ideology didn’t survive the darwinian test in Europe, but has not yet become extinct in the USA. Partly because the voting system in the USA is so lame and archaic.
You can get a good picture of American Anarchism by reading about it from 19th century books. (At the same time European anarchist terrorists tried to establish Anarchism by bombing their state).
Anarchism by definition excludes capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism just means the brand of capitalism in which the capitalist class is above the law. (When you hear nowadays somebody saying that the USA is a capitalist country (s)he means that politicians are for sale.) There are people in SL who behave like anarcho-capitalists. It is part of entertainment provided by SL to watch if RL law enforcement will do anything with them and when.
In an anarchist society you yourself provide all your means of living. Not even simple trade has its place in an anarchist society. Or money, for god’s sake! I laugh when somebody says that right to bear a gun is an inherent right in an anarchist society. It is, if you can make a gun!
Arbitrations do not by any way belong to an anarchist society. The primary conflict resolution mean is low population density and constantly moving around. Or your fists.
The anarchist society implodes as soon as the population density starts to increase and trade develops. Tribal robber groups like PN led by blood hungry art professors emerge to harass their neighbors who organize to form JLU (trademark rights unknown) to do the same thing.
Where are all the anthropologists of SL when they could make field studies from their home?
People here promoting American Anarchism are cherry pickers. They want to have it both ways. I suspect that an average anarchism promoter is a small crook who somehow wants to glorify his selfishness as an ideology. You see, similarly Satanists are mostly mental cases glorifying their low IQ as a religion.
I have seen peeps in business suits crying for anarchism (so called self-regulation). As soon as they have been robbed or burned, they somehow stop promoting anarchism
What comes to this common habit of humankind, killing people, I remind my American fellows that conquering of Americans equaled to killing 1 billion people nowadays. Somehow Americans have forgotten this during the last 150 years. The war of Vietnam killed more people than Nazis managed to kill Jews. And here they go again in Iraq etc. So who should advice who?
I have not read directly that LL were promoting anarchism. Instead of ideological base, the reasons for the current state of affairs can be derived from laziness and incompetence. I believe much in Occam’s razor, lazy and stupid people; and very little in sales pitch or what people lie about themselves.
[I think that Prokofy can't tolerate Lenin because they are too similar. Both have impractical ideological visions and the capability to flood text. Maybe she had a bad love-affair with a handsome comrade in her teenage years too.]
urizenus
Jul 8th, 2007
Prok, Urizenus was born in 2003. You should know an historically important date like that. In spite of your impoverished education in Interweb History, I will send you a copy of the Russian translation of Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 8th, 2007
Wow, Uri, I thought Urizenus was born in Second Life in 2003 — that squares with my recollection — but had thought your avatars in The Sims Online were born earlier, no? I suppose not, and it’s merely that in the dogyears of TSO and SL it seems longer.
I’m recalling this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/technology/15SIMS.html?ex=1389502800&en=b10316fe8b64b250&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
It’s in January 2004. So I guess your banning from TSO came in 2003 — but I thought you joined TSO in 2001 or 2002.
Humdog will be able to recall!
urizenus
Jul 8th, 2007
I joined TSO and SL about the same time — August of ’03.
Kami Harbinger
Jul 8th, 2007
@Coincidental Avatar: You really do need to get a broader education in what the word “anarchism” means, because your assertions are wrong. Rothbard is a good start, or Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” is a cracking good read (if you find fairly rigorous philosophical logic a cracking good read, anyway). You’ve also got a very poor understanding of history. Finish high school, please. 90 TRILLION people were killed by the false statistics you just made up.
@prettyboy fred: Landowners deciding what they want and do not want on their land is not dictatorship, it is the correct way for people to arrange the world to their liking, *without* imposing their will on others. Dictatorship is attempting to come onto privately-owned land and tell the owner what to do with it. You have no right to force anyone else to conform to your desires, you have no right to trespass on someone else’s land if they don’t want you there. If you want to play Britney Spears, buy your own land and build PerkyGothLand. You try to tell me to play Britney Spears, I’m gonna hit you with my banstick.
@A Random Citizen: If you associate with people who use Nazi and racist symbology, who declare hatred for others based on their appearance and who they fuck, you’re a barbarian and not welcome in my home. You can buy your own sim and fuck around with each other all you like, but when you come out into public, you have to live by civilized peoples’ rules. I don’t care what your excuse for it is, I don’t care if you “just” think it’s funny–if anything, that’s more appalling, that you are simply too stupid to understand why you’re despised by civilized people.
Kami Harbinger
Jul 8th, 2007
Oh, and Prok? I didn’t read any of your crap. Don’t waste the Herald’s disk space responding to me, I can identify your crazy cat lady writing pretty quick and just page down past you. You have nothing of value to say.
Jim Schack
Jul 8th, 2007
>Jim Schack would be scary, if he weren’t above all ridiculous and silly ROFL. Any grown man who has to follow evil grief kiddies on to my sims for sport has no life, and no hope of getting one, first or second.
This is coming from a crazy cat lady who spends her day feeding trolls and giving grefers a reason to attack her. Aslo who thinks that anyone who is in a sim while one person is greifing is involved in an SL wide conspiracy with all the SL bigwigs to take her cats away. Do you REALLY wanna play the who has no life card Prok?
According to the New England Skeptical Sociality’s list of 20 logical fallacies you manage to break 5 in the post.
Argument from Personal Incredulity – I don’t understand anarchism/Anarcho-captitalism, therefore it cannot be true.
False Continuum – The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful: There is a fuzzy line between chaos and anarchism, therefore it’s the same.
Ad hominem – Do I Need to go into this?
Unstated Major Premise – This fallacy occurs when one makes an argument which assumes a premise which is not explicitly stated. For example, Because anarchism is an extension of libertarians, Int must also be a geo-libertarian and a hypocrite of that philosophy because waterways and roads are privately owned.
But pointing out logical fallacies in Prokofy’s “logic” is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s neither difficult nor productive.
>Anarchism as an ideology didn’t survive the darwinian test in Europe, but has not yet become extinct in the USA. Partly because the voting system in the USA is so lame and archaic.
Social Darwinism and anarcho-capitalism are not the same where as the philosophy denies and dissalows the existence of charities. An-caps address helping the less fortunate on a voluntary basis. It’s the replacement of government programs and functions into the hands of private individuals and organizations in the marketplace.
>Anarchism by definition excludes capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism just means the brand of capitalism in which the capitalist class is above the law. (When you hear nowadays somebody saying that the USA is a capitalist country (s)he means that politicians are for sale.)
So you are accepting the Karl Marx definition of capitalism which is actually called corporatism, mercentilism or fascism. Capitalism can only exist in the absence of government regulation. America is not a capitalist country. Also, how can you have a capitalist class or laws in a stateless society?
>There are people in SL who behave like anarcho-capitalists. It is part of entertainment provided by SL to watch if RL law enforcement will do anything with them and when.
If you are in SL, you are participating in a fee simple land based anarcho-capitalism with evident divine intervention. If the Linden gods see troublemakers, they use the all-wise all knowing abilities to investigate and squash them. I’ve yet to hear of a trial or tribunal of any kind in SL.
>People here promoting American Anarchism are cherry pickers. They want to have it both ways. I suspect that an average anarchism promoter is a small crook who somehow wants to glorify his selfishness as an ideology. You see, similarly Satanists are mostly mental cases glorifying their low IQ as a religion.
As I explained to Prokofy, ad Ad hominem are a logical fallacy. But I will address a point you make about selfishness. What activity do people engage in that is NOT selfish? There is nothing that humans do that is not in their own interest. Even acts of “selflessness” are driving by a passion to feel good about themselves.
>I have seen peeps in business suits crying for anarchism (so called self-regulation). As soon as they have been robbed or burned, they somehow stop promoting anarchism
It’s kind of hard to apprehend or arrest individuals in SL yourself or with private security like it is in RL. Until I can restrain mootykips or Nep Plasma for voilating my property, I have one other choice, don’t I?
>What comes to this common habit of humankind, killing people, I remind my American fellows that conquering of Americans equaled to killing 1 billion people nowadays. Somehow Americans have forgotten this during the last 150 years. The war of Vietnam killed more people than Nazis managed to kill Jews. And here they go again in Iraq etc. So who should advice who?
So because big governments kill people so will individuals? That is a non-sequitur, Coincidental.
>I have not read directly that LL were promoting anarchism. Instead of ideological base, the reasons for the current state of affairs can be derived from laziness and incompetence.
Read “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson which is what they said they are modeling SL after.
> Maybe she had a bad love-affair with a handsome comrade in her teenage years too.
Who’d wanna sick their dick in that?! o_O
>Get off my internets.
NO U!
Anonymous
Jul 8th, 2007
Jim Schack: “NO U!”
Cute. You prove my point.
GOOD DAY SIR!
Jim Schack
Jul 8th, 2007
—-typo—
According to the New England Skeptical Sociality’s list of 20 logical fallacies you manage to break 5 in the post.
—correction—
According to the New England Skeptical Sociality’s list of 20 logical fallacies you manage to break 4 in the post.
that’s still 1/5 of the top logical fallacies.
Coincidental Avatar
Jul 9th, 2007
I wrote earlier about Anarchist terrorist in Europe in 19th century. Of course, I should have pointed out the Oklahoma City bombing by two American Anarchists in the late 20th century.
@Jim Schack
Your text flood combined with ignorance amazes me. Often people who don’t restrict their productivity with critical intelligence are “productive” but useless.
“What activity do people engage in that is NOT selfish? There is nothing that humans do that is not in their own interest.”
That’s so common myth that I bother to educate readers: Individuals are not selfish, their genes (etc.) are.
I don’t believe that peeps in LL have sufficient brainpower to model any kind of society. They are followers, not leaders and lack the capability to anticipate.
********************************************************
And about reading anarchist crap.
If you read something anarchist crap touted here, remember while reading, that money is owned by the state and managed by the central bank.
********************************************************
Europeans are less religious than Americans, not because they know more about science, but they know more about religion. I bet that Europeans know more about politics too, as a result of Darwinian processes.
Jim Schack
Jul 9th, 2007
>I wrote earlier about Anarchist terrorist in Europe in 19th century. Of course, I should have pointed out the Oklahoma City bombing by two American Anarchists in the late 20th century.
Ohh so because 2 people who share a philosophy with countless others bomb and kill people we need to paint them ALL with the same bush? You, are a bigot. Mind you conservatives bomb abortion clinics because a few did. All Christians protest funerals of dead solders because a few do it. Are all socialists and collectivists Nazis?
Also, you might need to do your homework again, McVeigh and Nichoals are/were not anarchists.
>Europeans are less religious than Americans, not because they know more about science, but they know more about religion.
who cares?
>If you read something anarchist crap touted here, remember while reading, that money is owned by the state and managed by the central bank.
Wrong. Lindens are backed with some kind of currency and are non inflationary (at least in world) because Linden doesn’t inflate the money supply leik a central bank does.
>I bet that Europeans know more about politics too, as a result of Darwinian processes.
No, that’s called battered wife syndrome. Socialism and collectivism has put shackles on the Europeans for hundreds of years and abused and in one case slaughters millions of Jews. Yet for some reason they keep going back to it. Not to say America is a shiny beacon of liberty either, but at least I can still carry a gun to protect me from big government.
>Your text flood combined with ignorance amazes me. Often people who don’t restrict their productivity with critical intelligence are “productive” but useless.
Well, I’m trying to have a rational debate with you about the non-aggression axiom and your lobbing cat shit faster than Pokofy. Notice how I never called you names or ad hominem attacks. Because you do, i can assume that you feel threatened and are conceding the debate.
Brace
Jul 9th, 2007
zzzzzZZZzzzz….
more nakie robots PLEEZE!
this is played out boring shit
SqueezeOne Pow
Jul 9th, 2007
I think SL is a prime example of basic Tribal Anarchism with a little moderation by LL. You basically have groups of people (we’ll call them “tribes” in this post) that trade and interract with each other but have their own grounds with their own sets of tribal rules (Caledon, Vampires, Gor, Furries, Star Wars fans, etc.).
The only rule of the entire land is (in general) live and let live. This is enforced by LL…some would say inconsistantly, but it’s the thought that counts I guess
Despite the few bad apples that this system naturally creates (script-wielding griefers and their more stealthy counterparts the social griefers and “busy-bodies”) I think it’s working. People can make their money or play war or be as fruity as they wanna be.
There is always going to be waste in any type of productive society. The only thing the rest of us can do is try to convert that waste into someone that has value to be added to the community they choose to take up space in.
HOWEVER, I don’t think this would work on a large scale such as the “real world”. For all it’s diversity, all SL residents have a couple things in common: they have at least a basic knowledge of technology and they are (or were at one time before they got bitter) willing to try new things and explore new ideas.
A majority of the world’s population doesn’t share these characteristics.
The consumerist “tech-tard” (I’m coining a new, cooler phraze as of NOW) utopian philosophy isn’t based on reality and is somewhat ethnocentric. Sure these new technologies will let people in Africa or Honduras or Afghanistan communicate and have the same level of visibility as a kid in Malibu, but what are the tech-tards doing to help everyone even AFFORD it?
I hate to agree with Bill Gates but he summed it up with his criticism of the “Laptop for Every Child” program. He said that this program was pointless because what good is a laptop to a kid who that can’t get enough to eat and has no home?
This was a great article. I wish there were more things like this coming out of the Herald!
Prokofy Neva
Jul 10th, 2007
Squeezeone, I totally agree with how retarded the “one laptop” thing is. It’s infantilizing to the peoples of Africa, and profoundly racist at some level, to select out only that portion of their societies that constitutes “cute kids” and only do for them, and not for adults who are obviously needed as much if not more in society. I’d rather have “one $100 extra in every medical person’s salary” than this idiotic plan which is more of that infatuation old dead white guys have for young live brown boys. Projects like this are like taking monkey glands or something, they relive their youth and style themselves as heroes of mankind.
Tech-tards of course abound in SL, but i disagree that the masses don’t try new things. They’ve learned to swipe cards and bank online and check stock online and everything else. It’s not the specialized arcane knowledge that the tekkies imagine.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 10th, 2007
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>According to the New England Skeptical Sociality’s list of 20 logical fallacies you manage to break 5 in the post.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Argument from Personal Incredulity – I don’t understand anarchism/Anarcho-captitalism, therefore it cannot be true.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>False Continuum – The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful: There is a fuzzy line between chaos and anarchism, therefore it’s the same.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Unstated Major Premise – This fallacy occurs when one makes an argument which assumes a premise which is not explicitly stated. For example, Because anarchism is an extension of libertarians, Int must also be a geo-libertarian and a hypocrite of that philosophy because waterways and roads are privately owned.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>But pointing out logical fallacies in Prokofy’s “logic” is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s neither difficult nor productive.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Anarchism as an ideology didn’t survive the darwinian test in Europe, but has not yet become extinct in the USA. Partly because the voting system in the USA is so lame and archaic.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Social Darwinism and anarcho-capitalism are not the same where as the philosophy denies and dissalows the existence of charities. An-caps address helping the less fortunate on a voluntary basis. It’s the replacement of government programs and functions into the hands of private individuals and organizations in the marketplace.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Anarchism by definition excludes capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism just means the brand of capitalism in which the capitalist class is above the law. (When you hear nowadays somebody saying that the USA is a capitalist country (s)he means that politicians are for sale.)
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>So you are accepting the Karl Marx definition of capitalism which is actually called corporatism, mercentilism or fascism. Capitalism can only exist in the absence of government regulation. America is not a capitalist country. Also, how can you have a capitalist class or laws in a stateless society?
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>There are people in SL who behave like anarcho-capitalists. It is part of entertainment provided by SL to watch if RL law enforcement will do anything with them and when.
>If you are in SL, you are participating in a fee simple land based anarcho-capitalism with evident divine intervention. If the Linden gods see troublemakers, they use the all-wise all knowing abilities to investigate and squash them. I’ve yet to hear of a trial or tribunal of any kind in SL.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>People here promoting American Anarchism are cherry pickers. They want to have it both ways. I suspect that an average anarchism promoter is a small crook who somehow wants to glorify his selfishness as an ideology. You see, similarly Satanists are mostly mental cases glorifying their low IQ as a religion.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>As I explained to Prokofy, ad Ad hominem are a logical fallacy. But I will address a point you make about selfishness. What activity do people engage in that is NOT selfish? There is nothing that humans do that is not in their own interest. Even acts of “selflessness” are driving by a passion to feel good about themselves.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>I have seen peeps in business suits crying for anarchism (so called self-regulation). As soon as they have been robbed or burned, they somehow stop promoting anarchism :-)
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>It’s kind of hard to apprehend or arrest individuals in SL yourself or with private security like it is in RL. Until I can restrain mootykips or Nep Plasma for voilating my property, I have one other choice, don’t I?
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>So because big governments kill people so will individuals? That is a non-sequitur, Coincidental.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Read “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson which is what they said they are modeling SL after.
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Who’d wanna sick their dick in that?! o_O
Why were you in the sim, Jim?
Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And Id like to take a minute just sit right there
Ill tell you how I became the prince of a town called bel-air
In west philadelfia born and raised
On the playground where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school
When a couple of guys said were up in no good
Started making trouble in my neighbourhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
And said youre moving with your aunte and uncle in bel-air
(only the first three episodes of season one)
I begged and pleaded with her the other day
But she packed my suitcase and sent me on my way
She gave me a kissin and she gave me my ticket
I put my walkman on and said I might aswell kick it
First class, yo this is bad,
Drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass
Is this what the people of bel-air livin like,
Hmm this might be alright!
I whistled for a cab and when it came near the
Licensplate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror
If anything I could say that this cab was rare
But I thought now forget it, yo home to bel-air
I pulled up to a house about seven or eight
And I yelled to the cabby yo, home smell you later
Looked at my kingdom I was finally there
To settle my throne as the prince of bel-air
Jim Schack
Jul 10th, 2007
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
>Why were you in the sim, Jim?
If you are not going to listen, either will I.
anonymous
Jul 11th, 2007
Coincidental Avatar: “I wrote earlier about Anarchist terrorist in Europe in 19th century. Of course, I should have pointed out the Oklahoma City bombing by two American Anarchists in the late 20th century.”
Firstly, they were not anarchists, they were white supremacists, who tend to be populist/socialist in their politics. Though don’t let that confuse you with the facts, your mind is obviously made up.
Secondly, they attacked a government facility, which automatically makes their attack NOT terrorism, since the definition of terrorism is to attack civillians to put them into a state of terror. Attacking government facilities is a legitimate act of lawful warfare, ergo the Oklahoma City bombing was not terrorism, no matter what the media and the government claim.
However, the Murrah Building bombing WAS a War Crime under the Geneva Conventions, because McVeigh specifically detonated his bomb when he knew the daycare center for government employees was in operation. So McVeigh deserved to die for his crime.
However, the Geneva Conventions also state that it’s a War Crime for a government to use non-government persons or civilians as human shields to protect themselves against attacks. So the US Government is as much a war criminal for the deaths at the Murrah building as Tim McVeigh is.