Hi everybody! This blog is a roadmap to acquiring the practical skills necessary to make real connections with other people and collectively work to find ways for us to all just get along without state-sponsored initiation of aggression against the governed. This blog will be different from other voluntaryist blogs in an important way: the roadmap outlined here will be a comprehensive guide for
* understanding key aspects of moral perception, psychology, and reason that prevent us voluntaryists from effectively reaching out to statists (my background is research methods in psychology with some applied research in areas of moral perception and models of environmental behavior),
* understanding the limits of what we can know about our social reality, and
* applying the scientific method to the abundance of political, religious, and moral beliefs that function as barriers to reducing state-sponsored initiation of aggression against the governed.
Some readers might be sensitive to the mention of "science" above. Rest assured that my proposal for achieving peace does not involve an assault on religion. I will, however, make two requests that are related to religion:
1. that you (and every other person on the planet) seriously consider what it means to be imperfect (which means that some of our most cherished religious beliefs might be imperfect or inaccurate), and to therefore
2. have compassion for others who have not yet received your religious message, and do so such that you do not force others to do things against their will to achieve your religious goals.
The roadmap outlined in this blog will not be an easy journey. Along the way, I will challenge your most cherished beliefs, and you will find that the most difficult tasks involve changing yourself as opposed to learning clever phrases to shout down your opponent. If your first commitment is to truth, and if you have a preference for nonaggression, then I have great confidence that you can become a local leader on our greater road to peace.
The main work of my blog is to share methods of communication and reasoning that will enable you to work cooperatively with a statist so that you can both find ways for us all to get along without the types of coercion and aggression that characterize modern governments. When I say "communicating," I am including all aspects of your physical and verbal actions that affect how the other person perceives your message.
I did not start my academic studies with a goal that had anything to do with voluntaryism or statism. I started many years ago with a desire to understand the cognitive biases that lead people to conflict, environmentally destructive behavior, and what appeared to me as senseless aggression. I won't talk much about the natural environment in this blog, but perhaps I will do so in another blog in the future. My limited academic research was on moral perception, research methodology related to that, and mostly applications related to environmental behavior.
Rather than starting with verbal judo to engage in a direct assault on your partner's political beliefs, we will learn to create an environment in which you and your partner feel like you are mutually working toward a common goal. This brings down everyone's defenses and allows two or more people to make a connection. By following the examples, you will acquire the habits of speech, thinking, and behavior that will help you to make a profound impact on yourself, the people around you, and possibly your extended community!
This will not be an easy voyage. Early on the road to peace, I will attempt to challenge some of your most cherished political (and possibly religious) beliefs. I do this because you will be asking your partner to do the same thing: critically examine your most cherished moral and political beliefs, and then endure the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that you have been profoundly misguided. If you personally endure the pain of freeing yourself from old, unwarranted beliefs (beliefs that people use as a justification for taking from others or harming others), you will be better able to empathize with your partner who is struggling to free him or her self from the beliefs that trap statists in a world of self-contradiction and aggression.
This blog will NOT be about:
* winning debates,
* winning opinion polls, elections, or popularity contests,
* showing everyone how smart you are,
* showing everyone how stupid another person is,
* pacifism, or
* using rhetorical devices to gain support for a conclusion when there is no rational basis to reach that conclusion.
Follow me on Steemit! I will post more articles this week.
Images are from https://pixabay.com/, with some editing by me.
