absolutely. and even if you want to talk semantics here and argue that this does not coincide with the definition of slavery, ask yourself, if you had a better opportunity to claim absolutely the right to the spoils of your own labor without someone using your labor to their own advantage, do you not think that would be a more morally suitable way to work? would you not prefer this if given such an opportunity? there's an entire school of economics and politics about this concept that is even more well defined than the current economic and political model our society is based on and it has many subdivisions of it's own. the blanket term for this concept is libertarian socialism. if you are interested, there is a good wikipedia page on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

i don't personally know of anyone who lives on a commune, nor am i suggesting everyone should live on a commune (though housing collectives and communes would be acceptable, possibly even preferred in my view), but i do know of accounts of people living in housing collectives (which, i've been told by college students, are great) and communes (pre-1948 kibbutzim of the Third Aliyah and the Paris Commune ring a familiar bell) and there seemed to have been few issues arising from such living. this ideology is in no way opposed to a person or family living on their own in a house by themselves, as long as they build it themselves, build it commonly with friends who decide only to help them build it and deny their claim to the house, claim possession/usership of a house that is not currently in use, etc. in other words, as long as it is possessed by them in a non-authoritative, non-coercive manner, then i have no problem with and individual or family living in such a house; nor do i have a problem with an individual working for himself; independent trade/barter is fine by me as long as all transactions are voluntary. hell, someone can try to start up a hierarchical business in such a society for all i care. they wouldn't be able to grow to the size of a large corporation because of the structure of the society so i'm not worried about such a business structure becoming an epidemic. the point is for everything in society to be completely voluntary unless a burden of proof is met to show that authority is necessary.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

i don't put faith in them, per say; rather i look at the evidence. we can sort out our own affairs. anarchism has worked in the past but it has been crushed by outside forces; Francisco Franco and the fascists crushed Spanish Anarchism (a very prosperous time for Spain); Soviet Russia crushed the Ukrainian free territory; the State of Israel, backed by the UK and US, made it nearly impossible to maintain kibbutz life in the state it had been in for decades; and the Paris Commune was crushed by the French government. i believe, with good evidence to support my belief, that people can take care of their own affairs as long as there is no powerful outside force preventing it.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Although the bible is very useful tool for understanding, but i think there are too many things that people can jump on to argue their point, and things that christians can use to retaliate, so you have a situation where the arguments are always happening and neither side really wins. As for whether it condones slavery, it does promote indentured servitude which seems to be what all reality is anyways, and what the class-based system works from anyways and the ruling class elite like and profit from.

About MTV we can all choose to doubt out senses if we want. But I don't doubt what is televised. Recorded proof is good to me I don't care about edits, I interpret it for myself.

There was an interesting television show that came on like maybe two or three years back I think called Kid Nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_nation

When the children were left to run their own world classism, racism, sexism all appeared and thrived. I'm open to hearing new ideas but when you just open it up and say the current way has problems that doesn't work you need a viable plan that is not just experimental.

People do misuse the bible. But it is still coherent to read.

that's just the thing though. racism, classism, sexism, etc. came about and thrived because these kids when from the habitat from which their culture came and they supplanted their culture into a new society. first and foremost what needs to happen is the education system needs to be fixed. this is happening steadily as the number of democratic schools rises across the world, surprisingly mainly in the United States where the current model (Sudbury Valley Schools) was first erected. the education of children needs to come from within -- critical thinking. only then will there truly be a time to start such a system.

and even so, this "Kid Nation" is a terrible example. here are a few much better examples:

The Paris Commune
The Kibbutzim of the Third Aliyah (circa 1909-1948)
The Ukraine Free Territory
The Spanish Revolution
The Sudbury Valley Schools
FaSinPat

etc.

you act like i'm just saying "we need change" without proposing any viable solutions that actually involve change (which, ironically, is EXACTLY what Obama is doing). anarchist theory is one of, if not the most profound and fully developed political, social and economic theory in the world, and it is quite varied in addition as well. some economic theories include collectivism, communism, socialism, syndicalism (my personal preference), mutualism (which can work to complement basically all of the theories), and the most recent addition, participatory economics (it isn't a full theory, but rather one that works to make up for where syndicalism and other theories lack). wikipedia actually has some pretty decent articles to work from on libertarian socialist (synonymous for anarchist) ideals. you can start there and from there move to Rudolf Rocker's writings (which i still need to get around to) on syndicalism. here are some links:

Libertarian Socialism
Anarcho-Syndicalism
Participatory Economics

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Yeah that's why democratic education and schools based on this idea are actually better then your normal hierarchy run schools . And that example sucks you need a revolutionary force to bring about revolutionary change not put some random ass kids in a place to prove a point LOL .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School

it's not bullshit. people tend to fail to see the true abilities of the human mind when they are allowed to flourish. extensive documentation circulates the net about the Sudbury Valley Schools (which have been around since the 60's and are a more radical form of the Summerhill school which has been around since the 20's) including videos on YT, one of which shows a girl who is 11 that is learning algebra and another kid who is obsessed with math and learning high level mathematics as well. the perception that these schools are promoting irresponsibility by letting kids "sit there all day if they don't want to learn" is false. they are not at all doing this. they simply aren't forcing kids to learn (which is what the school system does on a regular basis and time and time again we are made to realize the harsh reality that this doesn't work). kids will learn on their own terms. that is the only way they will learn. they may give off the facade of learning but most of the information kids are taught at school is simply memorized for the test they are about to take and then discarded. how often do you try to recall information from a class you took a few years ago? i guarantee you remember a minimal amount of information from every class you've ever taken and the information you do remember, you only remember because it wasn't forced upon you, but rather you were genuinely interested. additionally, the assertion that these kids "learn to read at the age that they choose" is also false. it is not a kid's choosing to learn, as you will see if you study a bit more about these schools, that leads them to learning. it is a combination of observing the world around them and finding out for themselves what they need to learn and learning at the rate which their brain allows them to learn. these schools encourage the natural process of learning, plain and simple. kids who go to such schools don't brush off learning to read because they realize that if they don't learn to read they will slip through the cracks. such a school makes a kid aware that if he or she slips through the cracks, it is because they've failed themselves, not because the system has failed them, because, after all, there is no system that could possibly fail them, so they simply do not let themselves fail. the kids from the schools have been active in documentaries. not a single kid interviewed could recall anyone who didn't learn how to read that they went to school with. they all learned at about the same age as the majority of other kids. the beauty of this system, however, is that these kids actually internalize the material they learn, whereas we (the kids who go to "normal" schools) memorize 90% of what we learn and so we repeat the crap we've been fed like the mindless drones we are.

lastly, you said that you "also watched the video on teacher.tv When kids are educated by themselves they know what they know". i ask, what is wrong with that? if a kid knows what he/she knows, he/she knows exactly what he/she wants to do with his/her life from a very young age. they are able to go through a natural process of dissemination between things they like and dislike and so they discard what they dislike, making them more confident of what they want long before they enter the workplace.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

It is a good best practice the free schools and Sudbury type. But it's too much of an extreme. It's not viable in making students globally sound. Today people got to not be an expert because information is everywhere. They got to know how to about the world. Students can't reinvent the wheel on that. Students have to be cultured into that.

There are a lot of practical concerns about converting the current educational systems over to a free school type. First what about all the teachers currently now that have mastered subjects are they just supposed to become unemployed. What incentive do teachers have to sustain knowledge if they do not have classrooms to teach. How do teachers stay sharp? They become to feel useless if all students are pursuing knowledge independently. Then when a student approaches a teacher to get information that is not attainable without a conversation the teacher is soft and is not transmitting that information. Second most of these students at these private schools are children of the independently wealthy already. So how does the non privileged benefit from a system that is not including them. Education is established to uplift the entire society. Not to promote just a wealthy class. The kind of resources that are available to these students cost a serious amount of money how is free schools supposed to be implemented on a wide scale that is sustainable economically. This school caters to only one learning style those type of students who learn by independent exploration. Some students especially those from diverse backgrounds need a firm direction learning style because there is a confusion over codes of power. If a teacher from a culture different from theirs says to one student would you like to....., instead of go and do this it is confusing because the students who are not from a background where they are taught codes of power will not have the experience of learning the culture of those in power and being able to successfully navigate it. Because to secure economic resources today a person has to know how to deal with a culture of power. Fuck the status quo viva la revolution yeah I'm down. But these kids have to all learn to be entrepreneurs because this system is not preparing them for life. And the economy now is not one where a person can easily kick off a buisness.

this point seems, to me, both misguided and null.

you seem to assume that there are no teachers at such a school. it's simple. students, contrary to what many people seem to believe, actually WANT to learn. because of this, when a student finds it hard to learn a subject on his or her own, there are many ways of going about learning. most commonly they will go up to a staff member (yes, these schools have staff members who do have expertise in specific subjects) and ask for guidance and the staff member will help the student come to the correct answer. also, students can get students and staff members together and start classes (which are usually much less formal and more conversational) which would basically be independent study groups. you also assume that teachers are all about being in control of classrooms with traditional curricula, complete control over the learning process, etc. talk to any exceptional teacher, especially one well-versed in philosophy, and they will tell you that they wish that kids weren't so conditioned to what other teachers were doing by lecturing, giving the kids the answers, not setting up a conversational atmosphere, not actively involving all of the class in conversation, etc. and they all realize that this lack of critical thinking is a result of the current school system which many unwillingly oblige with. i know this because i go to city council meetings about the local high school and middle school and frequently talk to some of the schools' most outstanding teachers. hell, even some of the not so great teachers applauded me when i grilled the principle of the local middle school on what they were doing to improve critical thinking skills, and what is funny is that these were the same teachers that were defending the merits of the schools when it comes to learning. this system isn't one that is anti-teacher. rather it is pro-learning. and anyways, we are all, in essence, students of life, and for that matter, we may also act at times as teachers. right now you and i are both teachers and students of each other with equal standing. this relationship is what such schools promote. if i know more than you, you learn from me and question what i say and it helps me also learn from you where the holes in my logic are. if you know more than me, i take in information until we are at an equal level and the same process begins. here are some videos about Sudbury:

http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=eqGXfFGSpRU
http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=BLBaVRg7kiM
http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=6aio_Xi5Dj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=MR42-XG2Sak

etc. watch the whole series if you like.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Yeah that's why this world is going downhill and getting dehumanized by the day passes in schools children are trained to be robots and in the workplaces they are so stripped down by independent thought that they become repetitive machines and idle drones . Look at the apathy and anti-sociability of the world how humans became isolated . I am disgusted . A society based on both individualism and cooperation is healthier and achieving such a society starts from transforming your average school and workplace . Look at the stats worker cooperatives and democratic schools are not only more efficient but they empower people and give them a conscience it draws them out of isolation .