9/17/06
I wrote most of what follows on a yellow paper tablet soon after returning to Ontario in 2006 from Arizona for the warmer months (end of April to end of October). I put it aside without completing it, at the point marked ~~, because I didn't have a resolution or conclusion to verbalize. I came upon an item last week that has helped me finish ......
It has been many months since I last wrote anything in this section of MoreLife.org - not at all because I didn't have anything to say. In fact I've written quite a bit at various websites and blogs in response to statements made there - one can search on my name (Kitty Antonik Wakfer) and find them since I don't write anonymously. And then there are many items in the "Focus on Freedom" and "Misc Dialogues" portion of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project (SelfSIP.org). I also started an item here back in March that I soon decided was better to include in the Interpersonal Section of MoreLife ("Friends Don't Let Healthy Friends Commit Suicide").
I've kept Kitty Reflects for more introspective writing rather than for Outreach to others covering the subjects of life-extension and/or creating a society based on the principles of Social Meta-Needs (SMN) theory. The fact that I haven't written here since April of 2005 doesn't mean that I haven't done any introspection - I think on the effects for me of what I consider major issues, everyday. I and Paul discuss many of them as a regular part of everyday conversation. I do not always react emotionally to them in the same manner as he does and this difference too is a subject of discussion at times in order to understand why, and to change if alteration is evaluated to better promote our individual happiness.
It is disappointing to me that relatively few people have responded to me (or Paul) after reading our logical presentations on either the foundational principles underlying SelfSIP (provided in the SMN theory) or the essays and articles on derived subjects. The Internet is filled with websites bemoaning or praising the actions of governments and those who are emotionally motivated can select dozens (?hundreds) to support their justifications for changes to decrease or increase government intervention or even to retain the "status quo", which increases in size and effect daily.
And of course there are the many who demonstrate no interest at all in what the governments where they live actually do. These individuals are "too busy" at all sorts of activities which they consider unrelated to government or they have decided that any action on their part is pointless.
There are some who spend a great deal of time intellectualizing about personages or societies of the far and more recent past, but very little on the logical detail of what humans really need to interact for mutual benefit with all fulfilling the purpose of his/her (hir) individual life, optimizing hir own lifetime happiness.
~~
I left the tablet at that point feeling that I'd written myself into a fugue - a dull gray fog of "is there any point?", I wondered if we were having any effect beyond a small handful of young people who have come via online and email exchanges (with some in-person activities too), at different levels, to find considerable value in the ideas that Paul has presented.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise the first week of this month, to find in a comment on an Internet blog, the statement that Paul's writing about the distorted sense of "public" had changed the writer's thinking about and practice in his using of the word "we". However, on this naturist (nudist) topic site, where he also briefly described Paul's background and writing, he was apologizing to the blogger for having slipped back into his old habit of writing by using an undefined "we" in his original comment to the blogger's entry for that day, April 9th of this year. To his credit, the blogger had questioned, "Who is this 'we'?" Interestingly, the commenter added for further explanation regarding a relationship of Paul's writing to the subject of the site : "Paul would like to see the entire country gradually converted mainly to myriad private land ownerships where the landowner would determine dress code--not a government (although he has no personal interest in naturism, to my knowledge). Then, the public areas would be minimal." The Blog entry. (My "find" came as a result of following the referral link - one for a website I'd never seen in any of the tracking info before - on the website visitor tracking I have on a few of the many pages at MoreLife and SelfSIP.)
There have been mentions by others of Paul's (and sometimes my) writings in various locations on the Web, but it has been rare that someone writes that something one of us has written has brought about a change in fundamental ideas that the writer has held. After reading the comments by the above commenter, I have renewed confidence that Paul and I are reaching more people than we realized with our foundational ideas, and that some of those individuals are making changes for the better.
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