[EM] Free Association / Delegable Proxy FAQ - Preface

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:12 AM 3/2/2006, Jan Kok wrote:
>Hi Abd,
>I'm glad to see that you are continuing to develop your ideas about FA/DP.

Thanks.

>Unfortunately, I still find these ideas very abstract.  I'm having a
>hard time visualizing how they might work in practice.  Maybe I should
>just throw out a bunch of questions...  (And maybe you should answer
>them on your beyondpolitics.org wiki, to save yourself some time and
>to encourage people to participate in the wiki :-)

Well, I'll answer them here, and anyone can transfer them to the 
wiki. I'll do it when I have time, if someone else hasn't. Note that 
if the only person working in this way (attempting to build a broad 
understanding of either FA or DP or both) is me, it is not going to 
go vary far. So if these ideas intrigue you, notice, please, that Mr. 
Kok has asked a series of fairly obvious questions (that is, the 
questions are obvious; answers -- and there will be many answers -- 
are only obvious to those who have considered this for some time, or 
a *very* few who seem to get it immediately, probably because of some 
aspect of their experience that allows them to see beyond the 
immediate and natural reaction of most people -- which includes many 
very knowledgeable and intelligent and educated people.

That these questions have largely been unasked before shows the main 
difficulty I face in bringing wider involvement to the issues. People 
*have* these questions, but they don't think of them as questions. 
Rather, they think of them as fatal flaws, and since these supposed 
flaws are obvious, the one presenting the ideas must be a nut case, 
intelligent perhaps, but definitely off. These people are following 
normal, natural, and functional thinking process which just happens 
-- maybe -- to lead them astray in this particular case. What it will 
take to overcome this obstacle will be the participation by a few 
people, not very many, really, but certainly more than one. This may 
be a place in history where one person can make a difference, not, in 
my opinion, in whether or not these ideas will eventually be 
implemented, but *when*. And *many* people are suffering early death 
and ongoing oppression due to the status quo.

So I'm going to answer the questions here, and hope that the 
information is transferred to the beyondpolitics.org wiki as well as 
anywhere else that anyone thinks it might be useful.

I'm breaking the answer down into individual questions to facilitate 
its subsequent organization, as well as to make it easier for people 
to read. I'm wordy, if you haven't noticed. Anyone who thinks they 
can make this better or clearer by editing it down, please do so. Or, 
if you think it is wrong, please challenge or question it. What I 
will write here are *my* opinions, they fully define neither the Free 
Association nor the Delegable Proxy concepts, they are merely 
considered proposals, even if I sometimes write them with an air of authority.