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Good reading to become a mature (ie not just childish) anti-authoritarian: "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson and "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Robert Glover. I would also throw in "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover" by Robert Moore, and maybe an occasional dose of LessWrong.com (helps to know of cognitive bias pitfalls if one wants to dance to one's own tune). Rand, Aurelius, Thoreau, Emerson and Nietzsche might be cool too, for the philosophically inclined (what they all have in common is the belief in defining your own values, not just following others blindly).

Of course, the way I see it, being anti-authoritarian is just a corollary effect of being a mature, competent, self-validated man who is following his own purpose in life. Of course such a man is going to have trouble with those who want to foist their value-systems on him through threats, psychological manipulation, or subterfuge.

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I think as a corollary to your comment, the following is also true: Someone who defines his/her own values is extremely unlikely to list "holding power over others" as a primary goal.

Yet many seemingly self-actualized people do end up in positions of authority. Why? I'd argue that power over others is, like some drugs, highly addictive and often corrupting. Mature, self-actualized people rarely feel a void that makes holding this power desirable, since they vastly prefer to be respected than to simply be obeyed.

Yes there are some authority figures who are just and who inspire trust and motivation in others, but many others who appear this way at first and then disappoint -- I wonder how all the young Obama supporters feel now that he's expanded the drone program and continued all of Bush's most controversial and horrible policies.

Good description of this: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-center-tent

As one of those younger Obama supporters, I feel betrayed. Look to the Occupy movement to see how many of us are moving on and looking elsewhere for hope.

Maybe you should just stop looking elsewhere for hope period.

That's pretty much what participation is OWS is... The realization that we don't have a political system that can deliver and that it's time to take back control.

Are you the type of person who should be in power?

If not, work on that first.

And if you are, you don't need trendy SWPL causes-du-jour.

Excellent recommendations. I stumbled upon LessWrong.com a couple of months ago and its been a great source of interesting and useful material on practicing rationality and integrating it into everyday life.

LessWrong.com: it's like Call of Cthulhu in reverse.

(Ie you gain SAN stat from it).

'Call of Yudkowsky: a group of Christian adventurers hear disturbing rumors of abominations being programmed in SIAI House! As they penetrate to the core and pass various obstacles of cognitive biases, can they maintain their FAITH points, frustrate the sinister computations, and escape mentally intact?'

I'm going to have to recommend ditching "Prometheus Rising," it's speculative psychology a la Freud without even the benefit of case studies...

I think the model is spot on for the lower 4 circuits (Bio-Survival, Territorial/Emotion, Linguistic/Dexterity, Sexual/Social/Tribal) and explains a lot about why people are the way they are.

It's just a map, not reality itself. RAW himself would say as much.

Here's a form of case study, sleazy as it may be :)

http://bit.ly/xevfRN

Also, a working link to the PDF it was published in (article is on page 72): http://interestingtimesmagazine.net/archive/IT05.pdf

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