Today's Quibble
David bin Bedlam
I've long held the opinion that Liberty, Equality and Comradeship are
morally inseparable, that the movement that unites them the closest is
the one most deserving of support.
The question is whether such union of these qualities is practically
feasible or if one or more of these qualities must be deemphasized or
even sacrificed for a movement to succeed, and if any must, which.
Please advise.
D.
--
"I don't need no makeup, I got real scars."
................................................................
(C) 2009 'TheDavid(TM)' | All Rights Reserved World-Wide Always
Jim Kalb
DbB> I've long held the opinion that Liberty, Equality and
DbB> Comradeship are morally inseparable, that the movement that
DbB> unites them the closest is the one most deserving of support.
DbB> The question is whether such union of these qualities is
DbB> practically feasible or if one or more of these qualities must
DbB> be deemphasized or even sacrificed for a movement to succeed,
DbB> and if any must, which.
Aren't they all at odds with each other?
If people are free they'll be unequal since they'll choose different
things that turn out differently. And comradeship has to do with ties
forged in common struggle. Common struggle requires discipline and an
enemy, which puts it at odds with freedom and equality (discipline
limits choices and requires hierarchy, and my enemy is not equal to my
friend).
--
Jim Kalb
http://jimkalb.com
*Anarcissie*
He probably means just political and legal equality,
in which case equality is necessary to freedom (otherwise
some will rule others) and vice versa.
As for finding enemies besides other humans, there are
always God and Nature.
Jim Kalb
>> If people are free they'll be unequal since they'll choose
>> different things that turn out differently. And comradeship has
>> to do with ties forged in common struggle. Common struggle
>> requires discipline and an enemy, which puts it at odds with
>> freedom and equality (discipline limits choices and requires
>> hierarchy, and my enemy is not equal to my friend).
anarcher> He probably means just political and legal equality, in
anarcher> which case equality is necessary to freedom (otherwise
anarcher> some will rule others) and vice versa.
But liberty and equality tend to radicalize, since they're so
open-ended. Add "comradeship" instead of "fraternity" and it's
especially hard to imagine sticking with laissez-faire classical
liberalism.
anarcher> As for finding enemies besides other humans, there are
anarcher> always God and Nature.
But comradeship requires standing shoulder to shoulder fighting together
against a full-time enemy. Human enemies do the trick better than God or
Nature.
*Anarcissie*
> >>>>> "anarcher" == *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> If people are free they'll be unequal since they'll choose
> >> different things that turn out differently. And comradeship has
> >> to do with ties forged in common struggle. Common struggle
> >> requires discipline and an enemy, which puts it at odds with
> >> freedom and equality (discipline limits choices and requires
> >> hierarchy, and my enemy is not equal to my friend).
>
> anarcher> He probably means just political and legal equality, in
> anarcher> which case equality is necessary to freedom (otherwise
> anarcher> some will rule others) and vice versa.
>
> But liberty and equality tend to radicalize, since they're so
> open-ended. Add "comradeship" instead of "fraternity" and it's
> especially hard to imagine sticking with laissez-faire classical
> liberalism.
Never heard of corporate "team players", eh? This
was a sobriquet once awarded to me as a high term
of praise when I worked through the night to solve
someone's business problem, or some such
foolishness. Things couldn't have been more
laissez-faire; if I hadn't done it, the business would
have most likely sunk without more than a small
glug. If they succeeded, we were all going to make
millions of dollars. Laisser-noyer, on peut dire.
In spite of _Animal_Farm_, I think political and
legal equality is not open-ended. In fact, equality
_is_ a limit (to freedom, for a social animal acting
socially). Without equality, freedom would be at
once open-ended (I can conquer the universe) and
virtually non-existent (I must be constantly at war
against all other willful beings who will seek the
same totality of power).
> anarcher> As for finding enemies besides other humans, there are
> anarcher> always God and Nature.
>
> But comradeship requires standing shoulder to shoulder fighting together
> against a full-time enemy. Human enemies do the trick better than God or
> Nature.
You need to make the acquaintance of firemen.
And should fires not prove sufficient, humans can
find other things to fight. God and Nature sleep
not, and man is born to trouble as the sparks fly
upward.
Jonah Thomas
So you had some people who did whatever it took hoping to make millions
of dollars, and then surely you had some who had managed to sign on but
who did nothing, figuring that if it sank without a trace they weren't
out much and if somebody else made it work then they'd get millions. And
the existence of some parasites wasn't enough to make you give up your
shot at prosperity.
> In spite of _Animal_Farm_, I think political and
> legal equality is not open-ended. In fact, equality
> _is_ a limit (to freedom, for a social animal acting
> socially). Without equality, freedom would be at
> once open-ended (I can conquer the universe) and
> virtually non-existent (I must be constantly at war
> against all other willful beings who will seek the
> same totality of power).
If you play the game with no rules, then you have total freedom. Power
philosophy. You can do anything you can get away with. If it works
that's proof that you can do it. If it doesn't work then it turns out
it's something you can't do. When there are no rules but the laws of
physics and chemistry, there's still the question of what you want. Most
people don't want to kill everybody and live out their lives alone. But
they're happy to kill people they think want to kill everybody....
Groups of people notice they have goals in common, and then they try to
enforce their will on the rest of us. If your goal is to kill everybody
and live alone, then almost everybody else will be against you if they
find out. But to the extent that your goals line up with the dominant
group that's enforcing its will, you haven't lost much freedom you'd
care about. If they put up blast barriers on the highway that keep me
from driving into the opposing traffic, I don't much mind. I didn't want
to drive there anyway. If they make it harder for me to buy tobacco
products I don't mind. I have no wish for tobacco. If they restrict my
ability to get information I care about, I strongly object. Nobody
should have the right to any privacy from me, though they might deserve
to have considerable privacy from the government. Well, I face a lot of
restrictions I don't care about and some I do. I have to live with that
until I can persuade the dominant group to do things my way.
> > anarcher> As for finding enemies besides other humans, there are
> > anarcher> always God and Nature.
> >
> > But comradeship requires standing shoulder to shoulder fighting
> > together against a full-time enemy. Human enemies do the trick
> > better than God or Nature.
>
> You need to make the acquaintance of firemen.
> And should fires not prove sufficient, humans can
> find other things to fight. God and Nature sleep
> not, and man is born to trouble as the sparks fly
> upward.
Nature is unreliable for that sort of thing. Where I live, if your car
breaks down on the road nobody will stop except the police. They assume
that you will have a cellphone to call for professional help that you
can afford. It's very very rare here to see a car broken down on the
road. Far more commonly we see cars stopped by the police. And of course
nobody stops to help them or even slows down much or displays any open
curiousity. It isn't safe.
There is hardly any concept of helping random strangers. People assume
that everybody can take care of themselves.
But recently there were weather reports predicting 10 to 20 inches of
snow. This was something that people were not prepared for. The roads
shut down for awhile because it isn't worth having enough snowplows,
because it happens so rarely. So suddenly everybody went out to the
grocery store to buy milk. It's a tradition, when you think you might be
snowed in you buy milk so you won't run out of milk in a snowstorm.
(It's illegal for people here to have their own cows. My father's daily
chores when he was a little kid included milking the cow. I've never
done it and I don't particularly mind not being able to. But as a result
I have to buy my milk and I can't just go out to the back yard to get
it.) Jen sent us to the grocery store, I think because she wanted time
alone. We had a shopping list. Soda. Chocolate. Cake mix and frostin.
Apple juice. Pringles. Milk. Etc. There was a giant traffic jam. There
were no parking spaces at the grocery store, there were cars circling
around waiting for somebody to leave so they could park. We parked in
another store's parking lot and walked a ways. In the grocery store
people seemed excited and kind of happy. Something special was going on,
something that hadn't been planned for. They were kind of excited and a
little bit friendly. The milk was sold out. The people I saw seemed to
lose their enthusiasm standing in a very long line waiting to pay for
their food. We left and drove home very slowly through the traffic jam.
There was very little commonality because people didn't need it. Being
snowed in gave them time off from work that wasn't their fault, and a
break in schedule, but there was no reason for them to work together for
anything. They will wait at home until the government-paid emergency
workers get the roads clear.
I wonder what would happen if we needed to evacuate this area. I don't
right off see a natural reason to do it. A 60 foot rise in sea level
wouldn't reach us. Etc. But say it was needed. The bus system could
deliver about 500 people an hour to the DC Metro, assuming that the
Metro could take them someplace safe. And then there are the cars. Our
Interstates get big traffic jams twice a day, and things get very slow
if there's an accident on the road. Our local roads can't handle the
traffic from the people who buy milk before a snowstorm. There's a
railroad station in an out-of-the-way place with a few hundred parking
spaces, that takes people to DC and back. If people could get to it and
if the railroad scheduled extra runs they could take as many as 5000
people into DC, or else to points south in the general direction of the
Quantico Marine base.
It looks like over a million people who are not really a community but
more just commensals, who follow their routines and bet their lives that
there won't be any serious disruptions.
If we had regular natural disruptions where people needed to help each
other, then we'd develop those customs. But nature doesn't do that often
enough here for it to be an issue.
Jim Kalb
>> But liberty and equality tend to radicalize, since they're so
>> open-ended. Add "comradeship" instead of "fraternity" and it's
>> especially hard to imagine sticking with laissez-faire classical
>> liberalism.
anarker> Never heard of corporate "team players", eh? This was a
anarker> sobriquet once awarded to me as a high term of praise when
anarker> I worked through the night to solve someone's business
anarker> problem, or some such foolishness. Things couldn't have
anarker> been more laissez-faire; if I hadn't done it, the business
anarker> would have most likely sunk without more than a small glug.
anarker> If they succeeded, we were all going to make millions of
anarker> dollars. Laisser-noyer, on peut dire.
Congrats. The original issue though had to do with comradeship as a
basic principle for organizing society. In a laissez-faire liberal
society, as you point out, it can pop up here and there with respect to
a particular effort of a particular group of people. It's not the
routine basis for organizing the society as a whole though.
anarker> In spite of _Animal_Farm_, I think political and legal
anarker> equality is not open-ended. In fact, equality _is_ a limit
anarker> (to freedom, for a social animal acting socially). Without
anarker> equality, freedom would be at once open-ended (I can
anarker> conquer the universe) and virtually non-existent (I must be
anarker> constantly at war against all other willful beings who will
anarker> seek the same totality of power).
It sounds like you agree that freedom and equality are at odds.
anarker> You need to make the acquaintance of firemen. And should
anarker> fires not prove sufficient, humans can find other things to
anarker> fight. God and Nature sleep not, and man is born to trouble
anarker> as the sparks fly upward.
Fighting fires isn't a general principle for organizing society at
large. Ditto for fighting God. I can imagine that fighting nature would
support a general sense of comradeship in a hunter-gatherer band during
an Ice Age, but that's not our situation. And fighting God is fighting
the general implicit order of things, which seems an odd basis for
social cohesion and functioning.
Anarcissie
Jim Kalb <jim...@gmail.com.INVALID> wrote:
> >>>>> "anarker" == *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> But liberty and equality tend to radicalize, since they're so
> >> open-ended. Add "comradeship" instead of "fraternity" and it's
> >> especially hard to imagine sticking with laissez-faire classical
> >> liberalism.
>
> anarker> Never heard of corporate "team players", eh? This was a
> anarker> sobriquet once awarded to me as a high term of praise when
> anarker> I worked through the night to solve someone's business
> anarker> problem, or some such foolishness. Things couldn't have
> anarker> been more laissez-faire; if I hadn't done it, the business
> anarker> would have most likely sunk without more than a small glug.
> anarker> If they succeeded, we were all going to make millions of
> anarker> dollars. Laisser-noyer, on peut dire.
>
> Congrats. The original issue though had to do with comradeship as a
> basic principle for organizing society. In a laissez-faire liberal
> society, as you point out, it can pop up here and there with respect to
> a particular effort of a particular group of people. It's not the
> routine basis for organizing the society as a whole though.
Actually, I think it's an expectation of those who
designed liberal, laissez-faire societies -- or at
least states, which is where a term like laissez-
faire really applies -- that people will combine,
usually voluntarily or at least under non-violent
social pressure, to get needed things done and
to carry on business in general.
We start hearing about individualism when
this social order becomes more coercive and
corporate. Obviously freedom, for those who
are not omnipotent, depends on self-discipline
and "the community of affections".
> anarker> In spite of _Animal_Farm_, I think political and legal
> anarker> equality is not open-ended. In fact, equality _is_ a limit
> anarker> (to freedom, for a social animal acting socially). Without
> anarker> equality, freedom would be at once open-ended (I can
> anarker> conquer the universe) and virtually non-existent (I must be
> anarker> constantly at war against all other willful beings who will
> anarker> seek the same totality of power).
>
> It sounds like you agree that freedom and equality are at odds.
It's a curious kind of "at odds" since one is necessary
to the other (in a community of social animals, that
is).
> anarker> You need to make the acquaintance of firemen. And should
> anarker> fires not prove sufficient, humans can find other things to
> anarker> fight. God and Nature sleep not, and man is born to trouble
> anarker> as the sparks fly upward.
>
> Fighting fires isn't a general principle for organizing society at
> large. Ditto for fighting God. I can imagine that fighting nature would
> support a general sense of comradeship in a hunter-gatherer band during
> an Ice Age, but that's not our situation. And fighting God is fighting
> the general implicit order of things, which seems an odd basis for
> social cohesion and functioning.
God would be a worthy opponent. Another possible
solution to the human need to fight, should God fail
to show up on the battlefield, would be to organize
gladiatorial combats.
You do point out a definite problem here. Humans
evolved as fighting animals to the point where at
least in groups they could defeat anything except each
other (and microbes, maybe), which meant that they had
to fight one another to satisfy the primordial drives
which an unlucky evolutionary history had endowed them
with. But now their weapons have become so powerful
their future existence is threatened by them. It is a
tragic fate, I guess. Struggling against it might be a
way of fighting God.
David bin Bedlam
>
> I've long held the opinion that Liberty, Equality and Comradeship are
I used "Comradeship" as a non-college synonym for "Fraternity" and a
non-sexist synonym for "Brotherhood." (I would have used "Camaraderie"
but I was talking about something "deeper" than boozing buddies.) So
the subsequent semantic discussion is just too cute.
Cheers,
*Anarcissie*
> In alt.angst 'David bin Bedlam' <theda...@null.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I've long held the opinion that Liberty, Equality and Comradeship are
> > morally inseparable [....]
>
> I used "Comradeship" as a non-college synonym for "Fraternity" and a
> non-sexist synonym for "Brotherhood." (I would have used "Camaraderie"
> but I was talking about something "deeper" than boozing buddies.) So
> the subsequent semantic discussion is just too cute.
We're glad to lighten the dullness of your existence
with a little of our own.
David bin Bedlam
> We're glad to lighten the dullness of your existence with a little of
> our own.
Thank you, Comrade!
D.
--
"We're legally crippled, it's the death of Love."
pataphor
> It looks like over a million people who are not really a community but
> more just commensals, who follow their routines and bet their lives that
> there won't be any serious disruptions.
>
> If we had regular natural disruptions where people needed to help each
> other, then we'd develop those customs. But nature doesn't do that often
> enough here for it to be an issue.
We have a river here that was regularly flooding some parts of the city
(flooded cellars and such) and that would cut off some nearby villages.
The river is a natural border with Belgium. On the Belgian side they
countered the problem by speedily building high walls, containing the
river. However, on the Dutch side, the problem now became worse since
all the water had only one way to go and there was less room for it too.
Also, there were people with good intentions who wanted a more natural
dispersion of the water by giving it more room to exceed the rivers'
boundaries temporarily. But who was going to pay for all the digging? A
consortium of grit diggers was enlisted who would deepen the river and
sell the sand and grit that they had to remove. But what is worse, a
river taking away your land for a few weeks, or a mega consortium
literally digging away the ground under your feet so there is nothing
but water and 'nature' while they get filthy rich?
Another thing. Where I live, it is a kind of problematic part of the
city. Incomes are low and there is not much business, and a lot of
people are old, or unemployed. There are also a lot of foreigners with
little money, who are not very well integrated. The housing corporation
wanted to tear down the whole city block and replace it with expensive
apartments for renting and some houses for house owners. I once went to
an information gathering they organized. The part of the city I was
supposed to be living in was infested with drug dealers and there was no
social cohesion. There were a lot of fires and people were afraid to
cross the street. All of this according to the people who wanted to tear
the houses down and make a lot of money by building new ones. But the
houses are in good condition and the problems the people have are the
result of being poor, not the result of being criminals. Also, it is not
as bad on the streets here as they were claiming.
Next, yet another thing, we have an important road here where traffic
goes from the north of the Netherlands all the way to the south of
France without ever needing to stop, except here, a few hundred meters
from my apartment. The plan is to put the whole road underground and
this will enable the neighborhood to become more green and also it will
connect this part of the city to the center and to other parts of the
city, all the while letting the traffic from outside go through easier
and freeing up local roads from all that outside traffic.
If one googles all these 'helpful' projects one invariably finds only
the official pages with 'resonance' groups where local initiatives are
being given space to voice their discontent. However, the sites never
provide room for people who oppose the plans and want to stay where they
are and get help for the problems they have, instead of the problems
being 'solved' by removing the people themselves, and their houses or
even the ground on which they live. The opposition against these plans
is countered by a coalition between big companies who profit while
claiming to 'solve' some problem, and the local governments who sell the
very ground the people are living on, while endorsing the companies'
propaganda.
It resembles a bit the situation of rain forest Indians, whose
ecosystems are destroyed by companies cutting away the trees, and
building roads, but the people here do not see these analogies and think
they are 'helped', or, if they don't think that, they don't believe the
local government would just sell them.
In a broader sense, the way the big banks are being given trillions of
dollars to enable them to 'help' solve the financial crises, is also
something that follows this pattern, only now on a much bigger scale.
Instead of a local thing, or, as in my case, a combination of three
local things, which means the people are triple fucked, it is a very
very very big global fucked up situation, so in the end it is even worse
than a combination of three local sellouts. Of course, the local
problems do not prevent the global problems. It all adds up.
I've looked up 'commensals' in wikipedia, but these are not the kind of
patterns that I could categorize under that term. Also, parasitism, or
mutualism are not applicable. I guess, when one organism (or a mega
corporation; I'm trying to analogize here) just destroys everything and
replaces it with something new, we can't say what is what anymore. Like
an elephant eating away the trees, resulting in the forest turning into
grass land, the organisms living in the trees just have to switch into
grass dwellers or else perish.
I wonder what kind of relation that would be in biological terms, when
we have the ecosystem being destroyed or changed, so that there is no
fixed reference frame anymore in which one could define relations of
commensualism, mutualism or parasitism.
P.
J Thomas
> We have a river here that was regularly flooding some parts of the city
> (flooded cellars and such) and that would cut off some nearby villages.
> The river is a natural border with Belgium. On the Belgian side they
> countered the problem by speedily building high walls, containing the
> river. However, on the Dutch side, the problem now became worse since
> all the water had only one way to go and there was less room for it too.
>
> Also, there were people with good intentions who wanted a more natural
> dispersion of the water by giving it more room to exceed the rivers'
> boundaries temporarily. But who was going to pay for all the digging? A
> consortium of grit diggers was enlisted who would deepen the river and
> sell the sand and grit that they had to remove. But what is worse, a
> river taking away your land for a few weeks, or a mega consortium
> literally digging away the ground under your feet so there is nothing
> but water and 'nature' while they get filthy rich?
What you're not ready for is worse than what you are ready for. When the
belgians sent the extra flood water your way, it affected people who
weren't ready for it and those people would want the flooding gone. And
they don't know ahead of time what the consortium will do. If that turns
out intolerable at least it will be officially temporary. Except of
course once you start dredging a river you have to keep doing it or it
will fill in again.
> Another thing. Where I live, it is a kind of problematic part of the
> city. Incomes are low and there is not much business, and a lot of
> people are old, or unemployed. There are also a lot of foreigners with
> little money, who are not very well integrated. The housing corporation
> wanted to tear down the whole city block and replace it with expensive
> apartments for renting and some houses for house owners. I once went to
> an information gathering they organized. The part of the city I was
> supposed to be living in was infested with drug dealers and there was no
> social cohesion. There were a lot of fires and people were afraid to
> cross the street. All of this according to the people who wanted to tear
> the houses down and make a lot of money by building new ones. But the
> houses are in good condition and the problems the people have are the
> result of being poor, not the result of being criminals. Also, it is not
> as bad on the streets here as they were claiming.
Yes, that's standard, isn't it? Where I live the city bought some land
for "green space". They put up big signs saying that this green space
inside the city would be kept so we could have a natural environment. And
it was very nice. There was a fox living on the hillside behind our house,
and a small herd of deer regularly came through and so on. Ducks sometimes
in the creek and once I saw a heron. But the Police Teen Soccer Department
said they didn't have enough soccer fields for the number of kids who
needed them. There were only 28 soccer fields in the city plus some they
could use in the surrounding county. They needed half of the green space
for a soccer field, plus they needed two other new soccer fields. Ours
would cost around $8 million, including the restrooms and parking lot and
widening the road etc.
So the city had a plan to build two new soccer fields behind my house.
There was currently a ridge between me and the place they would go, and
the plan weas to bulldoze mose of the ridge away. To protect my privacy
they would build a 6 meter wall on my side of the creek, but the plan
included 25 meter towers for the floodlights they would use for their
night games.
After word of that got out, they had a big revolt from the local people.
And they couldn't find anybody who was responsible for the plan. They
said it was a miscommunication, that it had somehow grown without
anybody noticing, and they couldn't figure out who had done it at all.
So they cut it back to one soccer field, and limited lights, and they
wouldn't bulldoze the top of the ridge. And they said that this was a
good compromise. They were only taking half of the green space and only
one soccer field instead of two, and everybody ought to be happy.
I pointed out that since the PTSD said its membership had increased 8%
this year, two new soccer fields weren't enough to make up for the new
members and they'd be back next year to demand more new soccer fields.
Better to find some other solution now. The city could pay for more
soccer fields in the county, or encourage the PTSD to take up soccer,
or whatever. But they did it their way. Now the soccer field is built.
It cost $8 million. They bulldozed out a big hollow section of the
ridge and put in retaining walls so it wouldn't collapse, but they
left the ridgeline and 2 meters below it alone. The deer don't come
through very often, or maybe they don't linger, because they have
only one side of the ridge to use. But the giant traffic jams that
some people predicted have not happened because the soccer field is
hardly ever used.
We have a saying in america that goes "You can't fight City Hall".
They are real estate moguls who mostly decide things to do things to
increase the value of their property and force their real-estate
competitors to sell to them cheap.
> Next, yet another thing, we have an important road here where traffic
> goes from the north of the Netherlands all the way to the south of
> France without ever needing to stop, except here, a few hundred meters
> from my apartment. The plan is to put the whole road underground and
> this will enable the neighborhood to become more green and also it will
> connect this part of the city to the center and to other parts of the
> city, all the while letting the traffic from outside go through easier
> and freeing up local roads from all that outside traffic.
>
> If one googles all these 'helpful' projects one invariably finds only
> the official pages with 'resonance' groups where local initiatives are
> being given space to voice their discontent. However, the sites never
> provide room for people who oppose the plans and want to stay where they
> are and get help for the problems they have, instead of the problems
> being 'solved' by removing the people themselves, and their houses or
> even the ground on which they live. The opposition against these plans
> is countered by a coalition between big companies who profit while
> claiming to 'solve' some problem, and the local governments who sell the
> very ground the people are living on, while endorsing the companies'
> propaganda.
>
> It resembles a bit the situation of rain forest Indians, whose
> ecosystems are destroyed by companies cutting away the trees, and
> building roads, but the people here do not see these analogies and think
> they are 'helped', or, if they don't think that, they don't believe the
> local government would just sell them.
Small groups of citizens who are not rich can sometimes mobilise larger
groups of citizens. They can delay city plans for a year or more, or
force the plans to be changed in random ways. But the people who want to
make money off the plans will keep trying until they get their money,
while the citizens get tired. And large groups of citizens can't maintain
their outrage indefinitely, and also they can't handle many tiny details.
How could it be different?
> In a broader sense, the way the big banks are being given trillions of
> dollars to enable them to 'help' solve the financial crises, is also
> something that follows this pattern, only now on a much bigger scale.
> Instead of a local thing, or, as in my case, a combination of three
> local things, which means the people are triple fucked, it is a very
> very very big global fucked up situation, so in the end it is even worse
> than a combination of three local sellouts. Of course, the local
> problems do not prevent the global problems. It all adds up.
Agreed.
> I've looked up 'commensals' in wikipedia, but these are not the kind of
> patterns that I could categorize under that term. Also, parasitism, or
> mutualism are not applicable. I guess, when one organism (or a mega
> corporation; I'm trying to analogize here) just destroys everything and
> replaces it with something new, we can't say what is what anymore. Like
> an elephant eating away the trees, resulting in the forest turning into
> grass land, the organisms living in the trees just have to switch into
> grass dwellers or else perish.
>
> I wonder what kind of relation that would be in biological terms, when
> we have the ecosystem being destroyed or changed, so that there is no
> fixed reference frame anymore in which one could define relations of
> commensualism, mutualism or parasitism.
I think that might better be classified as "invasion". Some organisms
manage to change the environment to the point that the previous
inhabitants can no longer compete with new arrivals.
By "commensal" I was talking about my neighborhood. A place where people
mostly just coexist without any particular relationship. They mostly
don't do much to hurt each other, they don't help each other, they're
just there. If you have a problem you don't ask your neighbors for help,
you call a professional.
pataphor
> What you're not ready for is worse than what you are ready for. When the
> belgians sent the extra flood water your way, it affected people who
> weren't ready for it and those people would want the flooding gone. And
> they don't know ahead of time what the consortium will do. If that turns
> out intolerable at least it will be officially temporary. Except of
> course once you start dredging a river you have to keep doing it or it
> will fill in again.
What happened is, first (decades ago) they built a canal next to the
river on the Dutch side. Now, the Belgian side of the river is fortified
and the Dutch side of the river is widened and dredged, piece by piece,
all the way to the canal. The villages and house owners trapped between
the river and the canal had no way of preparing for that. Myself, I seem
to be trapped between a big road and a railway *and* both are going to
be rebuilt *and* there were plans to tear down this city block that only
massive resistance succeeded in postponing.
> Yes, that's standard, isn't it? Where I live the city bought some land
> for "green space". They put up big signs saying that this green space
> inside the city would be kept so we could have a natural environment. And
> it was very nice. There was a fox living on the hillside behind our house,
> and a small herd of deer regularly came through and so on. Ducks sometimes
> in the creek and once I saw a heron. But the Police Teen Soccer Department
> said they didn't have enough soccer fields for the number of kids who
> needed them. There were only 28 soccer fields in the city plus some they
> could use in the surrounding county. They needed half of the green space
> for a soccer field, plus they needed two other new soccer fields. Ours
> would cost around $8 million, including the restrooms and parking lot and
> widening the road etc.
I just hope this whole affair didn't cause you a Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder.
> Small groups of citizens who are not rich can sometimes mobilise larger
> groups of citizens. They can delay city plans for a year or more, or
> force the plans to be changed in random ways. But the people who want to
> make money off the plans will keep trying until they get their money,
> while the citizens get tired. And large groups of citizens can't maintain
> their outrage indefinitely, and also they can't handle many tiny details.
> How could it be different?
Yes. That is exactly what is happening here now. The whole thing was
"canceled" after a lot of local people protested their houses being torn
down. But instead there is now a "progress in phases" approach wherein
they are waiting like vultures for individual people to leave. Then, the
new people who get in have to pay only half the rent but they have to
agree to be ready to leave at one month's notice. This is not very good
for social cohesion, having people in the same apartments for half the
price. Also, some of those new people are moving from one demolition
area to the next and they get 5000 Euros each time they move. Some of
them are doing that for the third time now.
> I think that might better be classified as "invasion". Some organisms
> manage to change the environment to the point that the previous
> inhabitants can no longer compete with new arrivals.
Yeah. If I could only turn into an invader, I could halve my rent. Maybe
I should read up on my biosemiotics.
> By "commensal" I was talking about my neighborhood. A place where people
> mostly just coexist without any particular relationship. They mostly
> don't do much to hurt each other, they don't help each other, they're
> just there. If you have a problem you don't ask your neighbors for help,
> you call a professional.
For your sake I hope no one finds this to be a problem because I fear if
some organization would feel the need to 'help' you guys it could
result into removing the people from the area and replacing them with
new people who don't have those problems.
P.