Socialism - Bottom Up -VS- Top Down

Fast forward to the politics of today.
If you force people into such a living arrangement, in the middle of a city, freedom loving people will revolt. In PJ2 we got to choose our friends & living companions. Not so with top down socialism. We individually chose how much to share of our own resources. Not so with top down socialism. We invented our own system of meetings & government. Not so with top down socialism.
Here I Use a God argument for the moment. If God had wanted to have control from the top down he probably wouldn't have disappeared from view & certainly wouldn't have granted human beings freedom. Sorry about that, nobody knows what God wants nor how to follow her reasoning. Anyway, governments that want to play God are an insult to humanity.
So, IMAO the current social question & the one that provides the most in the way of threefolding must grow out of designs that come from the bottom up. Forcing people to be charitable, collect in groups they don't want to be in & telling them how to live & what to eat & do will never work & will ultimately be overthrown. Let all those who grok that the nature of the human soul is freedom preserve that freedom by helping design out of the social organism those tendencies which move in direction of top down socialism.



Tags
- threefolding
- bottom up
- top down
Comments
Mark de LA says

An S & M extended discussion is here on Facebook. In considering the notion of a Synergy of Individuals of a cooperative economy i think that the synergy must not degenerate into symbiosis. OTOH, competition is almost universally worshipped in this country which emphasises polarity over possibly the next level of synergy - again a dynamic equilibrium is what is called for.

Mark de LA says
I penned the first piece of my Synergy of Individuals before the cast this AM on facebook, to wit:
Seth says
What are the treefold areas? Government (legal, human rights, definse) , Eductaion ( art, medicine) , Economic - commerce ?? I never could quite get those straight or remember a clear delineation of them.
Seth says
I was toying with the idea that control of behavior is vested in three
kinds of entities: (1) the individual, (2) groups and communities, (3)
government. It seems to me that the more control is in any of those
entities, the less must be in the other two. Some of those
relationships are fairly obvious. The more the government controls you
the less control you as the individual have yourself, and visa-verse.
Groups like corporations, unions, and churches, etc, work the same way
... the stronger the group is, the weaker is the individual within
it. But that also works between governments and groups: the stronger
the government, the weaker the communities, the weaker the corporations
... the stronger the church, the weaker the government, etc. None of
that is either good or bad, nor should it be controversial, and it is
almost true by definition.
Now i said all that to have a framework to examine one dynamic that is important to consider when designing a new social order. And that is, that you can have more freedom for the individual, where the government is stronger than corporations, unions, churches, and other groups. That is kind of the way it is in America today. That is also kind of why we tend to have more individual freedom here than is most other countries. Assuming we value our individual freedom, we don't want our corporations to get too big and strong, our unions to become dominant, or or churches to dictate our behavior. The individual gets a better shake, when our government steps in to moderate the power of groups.
Hopefully that is pretty obvious and uncontroversial.
Now i said all that to have a framework to examine one dynamic that is important to consider when designing a new social order. And that is, that you can have more freedom for the individual, where the government is stronger than corporations, unions, churches, and other groups. That is kind of the way it is in America today. That is also kind of why we tend to have more individual freedom here than is most other countries. Assuming we value our individual freedom, we don't want our corporations to get too big and strong, our unions to become dominant, or or churches to dictate our behavior. The individual gets a better shake, when our government steps in to moderate the power of groups.
Hopefully that is pretty obvious and uncontroversial.
Mark de LA says
The churches, synagogues, temples & mosques generally are not political & their power benign except in the theocracies of the present & the past. Your argument can generally be categorized as the philosophy of the individual vs the society or group which is meat for most political science classes. Your final paragraph depends upon its validity directly on how benign the government is & in particular the individuals with power to affect your life.
Fundamentally, the human soul yearns to be free. And it wills to be free whether to become a Mother Theresa or an Usama bin Laden. Consequences are a rare impediment.
I'm still looking for threefoldness, synergy & a new aeon of change not just an election or two to throw the soup stirring in a different direction: widdershins vs deosil or visa-versa. The fundamental content & character needs radical transformation.
Mark de LA says
seth 2011-05-16 13:50:26 15236
What are the treefold areas? Government (legal, human rights, definse) , Eductaion ( art, medicine) , Economic - commerce ?? I never could quite get those straight or remember a clear delineation of them.
The economic, rights-legal-political, & spiritual.
But you were on the right track.


Mark de LA says
IOW, (all the parts though) ....


Seth says
I'm just trying to deal with how you get there from here, assuming that is where you want to go to start with. For example, your Utopia seems to want medicine and education in the spiritual domain taken away from government and economic where it is today. Well today the spiritual domain is organized around church groups. Now some church groups run hospitals .... they run them as for profit centers. Church groups run schools ... madrasas and such. How do you see that evolving to what you have in mind?
C says
seth 2011-05-17 07:04:03 15236
I'm just trying to deal with how you get there from here, assuming that is where you want to go to start with. For example, your Utopia seems to want medicine and education in the spiritual domain taken away from government and economic where it is today. Well today the spiritual domain is organized around church groups. Now some church groups run hospitals .... they run them as for profit centers. Church groups run schools ... madrases and such. How do you see that evolving to what you have in mind?
RS railed against the idea that he wanted a Utopia. He called that ivory tower intellectualism with no contact to reality. Karl Marx was such an advocate. The spiritual life is not limited to churches etc. Art, education & medicine (the art of healing) - should be absolutely free. P.2470 in the Tai Shu Brain has tables of correspondence plus the blessing: In the mean while may you dwell in the somatic fraternity, psychic liberty & spiritual equality which achieves the Great Work!".
Last night one of my previous thoughts seemed viable as a start in medicine. In a collection of groupings remove taxes from all health care endeavors & charge those who benefit from no taxes improve healing & care for the sick from the ground up. Have them also remove the effect of lawsuits, lawyers, (which belong to the rights sphere). Where something like money is needed as a bridge to the future - invent a separate kind of dollar 15095. Our money is unsound & fictional now, anyway. Ultimately the healing arts will be supported by the excess produced in the economic sphere. If you are looking for flow charts & process diagrams you are somewhere back in top-down thinking of pointy headed, ivory tower intellectualism. Evolve & transform. I would expect starting by reforming the thinking that expects pointy-headed government to solve all the problems. Free up education so that we don't all think alike. Reform economies so that human work & time is not commodities. If you wanted to reform unions remove the polarity between workers as a commodity & corporations as employers & transform the unions back into guilds that improve the skills, talents & builds apprentice systems which are needed by the rest of society. Members of a guild who cooperated with each other to improve can serve the needs of society a lot better than those who merely negotiate with management for a bigger piece of the pie than others.
I don't have all the answers. Beware of those who are politicians & think they do. The answers reside in all of us as community & as individuals. The Synergy will begin soon!
I don't have all the answers. Beware of those who are politicians & think they do. The answers reside in all of us as community & as individuals. The Synergy will begin soon!

C says

One of the ideas in threefoldness is to have only people who actually teach in the present are qualified to organize the teaching agenda. Professional managers & administrators become history. You can extend that principle to other areas such as medicine, legal, etc. Where such functions are needed as administration & management people can serve part time in such areas or like a sabbatical serve for a limited time & then move back into the primary purposed areas. We need not think of one particular skill per person.

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