Check out existing Discussions
(Quintessence has made a major contribution to this page,
while these discussions also include letters to the editor that have been published in previous issues of Quintessence's zine Optionality).
Before you start to actively participate in discussions, it is recommended to also
check out FAQ Frequently Asked Questions;
and to note the Policies Page.
Then, enter your details and comments on the Optionality Suggestions Page
This question is rather rhetorical, as the concept optionality defies a single definition. For supporters of optionality, the concept optionality implies that there can be no single "official" definition of what optionality is supposed to be. Instead, supporters of optionality readily accept, even insist, that there are a number of interpretations and implementations of the concept optionality, some of which are listed below.
Quintessence is an authorized user of the trademark Optionality and uses the concept optionality as a perspective in consultancy. Quintessence has also published a monthly issue of its policy magazine Optionality from January 1991 to December 1996, after which Optionality has been presented as a WEB-zine. The question What is optionality? has been discussed in a number of articles that have appeared in Optionality.
Another user of the concept optionality is Don Paragon, who has written many songs about optionality. Many songs and lyrics have been published by Quintessence. The song That's Optionality gives an idea of Don's interpretation of the concept optionality. Don Paragon likes to express himself through his music, rather than through articles, and Don dislikes defining and categorizing concepts.
Noting the above, Quintessence has described in many articles how optionality for Don Paragon is an ideology and a belief, superior than religion. In the article Vision of the Future, Quintessence describes how, for Don Paragon, optionality is an approach superior to science and competition.
Multimedia production and consultancy firm Optionality has designed a lot of work that Quintessence has published over the years. Consequently, Optionality holds many of the rights associated with the content of these WEB-pages. Users of the concept optionality can request to be listed under the domain Optionality.com, which is administered by Optionality.
In Quintessence's WEBzine Optionality, the Editors often regard optionality as an attitude, a mentality, a state of mind. To express this attitude in articles and discussions is sharing this attitude with others.
Quintessence was incorporated in Queensland in 1990 as Quintessence Pty. Ltd. (the suffix Pty. means it is not a public company) and is registered in Australia as ACN 050 415 391. The postal address of Quintessence is P.O.Box 50 Caboolture 4510 Australia.
Quintessence is active in areas such as consultancy and marketing and has issued many publications, of which the magazine Optionality appears online. Also, Quintessence promotes work by artists such as Don Paragon.
Quintessence provides consultancy aimed at raising policy outlooks, awareness and profiles. Quintessence's preferred approach is to comparatively analyze policy positions from the perspective of optionality - optionality in the sense as it has been formulated by Don Paragon and frequently described in the magazine Optionality. Quintessence's WEB-pages give a further impression of its work and its background and of optionality as a concept.
What about copyright and other rights?
Optionality and Vision of the Future are trademarks and Quintessence is an authorized user of these trademarks. Copyright, rights to names, designs, logos and trademarks, rights of referral, lending, citation, quotation and other rights subsist in the content of Quintessence's WEB-pages. Only content clearly marked as "Public Domain" can be regarded to be exempt from such claims. The fact that access is granted to content on these WEB-pages, does not imply any transfer of rights, but instead all rights remain reserved. Moral rights are asserted.
Quintessence is sometimes said to have a "commercial attitude" and to "endorse the Government's legal system" by asserting such rights. The following comments should be considered in this regard. Firstly, Quintessence does not make profits and has not made profits since its incorporation. Secondly, by mentioning that rights are reserved, Quintessence discourages commercial organizations to grab (parts of) Quintessence's pages and claim ownership over the content. Finally, the rights to trademarks such as optionality and Vision of the Future are not held by Quintessence. It is a deliberate policy of Quintessence not to seek legal control over "intellectual property". Rights associated with the content of articles, songs, comments, etc, are generally not held by Quintessence. Instead, Quintessence merely makes suitable content available on the WEB. As such, Quintessence takes responsibility for the content of these pages. Quintessence encourages every one who is like-minded to make hyperlinks to Quintessence's WEB-pages.
Who are the Editors?
This question is often asked regarding Quintessence's magazine Optionality. There is no single, specific, physical person that is "The Editor". Instead, there are various persons who may all simultaneously or subsequently be assigned by Quintessence to fulfill editorial functions. Quintessence takes responsibility for comments made and actions taken by such persons. Quintessence's Board of Directors acts as an appeal board against decisions taken by the Editors. At Quintessence, the Editors are often jointly referred to as Edwin Thor, or Ed for short, but this is just a virtual name referring to the position, rather than to a specific person. The Editors can be reached by sending message from the Optionality Submissions Page or by postal mail to: The Editors, Optionality, PO Box 50 Caboolture 4510 Australia.
I have read some of the articles in your magazine. I understand that you have some problems with property as a concept. Perhaps the concept property is more easily acceptable when taking into account that property does not always imply ownership of a valuable asset, but comes with acceptance of liability for this property. Such liability may in fact turn property into a negative asset, e.g. because the property requires a lot of maintenance. The waste at a rubbish dump is an example of property that generally has a negative asset value.
Comments by:
The Editors, for discussion use the Optionality Submissions Page
Date:
19 January 1997
In response to:
Above comments.
We fail to see the point you are making. Are you suggesting that the owner of a rubbish dump has managed to turn rubbish into a valuable asset? That the rubbish dump is the right place to dump rubbish? That good citizens should remove rubbish from their property, because they are liable for the smell that might affect passers by? Is the owner of the rubbish dump exempt from such liability? Please elaborate your comments!
Comments by:
Jim (no further details)
Date:
20 January 1997.
In response to:
Above comments.
What I mean to say is that perhaps it is better to talk in terms of responsibility to understand the concept property. My feeling is that by rejecting property as a concept, you do not merely reject capitalism, but you also reject responsibility for any objects in your care. A private owner will look after things far better than when they are publicly owned.
Comments by:
The Editors, for discussion use the Optionality Submissions Page
Date:
21 January 1997
In response to:
Above comments.
Firstly, our problems with concepts such as property and capitalism do not imply we are communists or that we in any way promote public ownership. If we have problems with ownership, than we have problems both with private and public ownership. In fact, we have more problems with public ownership than private ownership, but that is another story.
We have no quarrel with the fact that one can expect actions to have an impact. But what does the word responsibility mean? Does it imply that one has to respond in court to certain allegations about one's behavior? If that is the case, then our we have similar problems with responsibility as with property.
What we do object to is the way the legal system, courts and judges operate. A judge will typically rule who is to blame for certain events and order specific remedies, while enforcing this judgment with the full wrath of the law, punishment, imprisonment and so on. We object against the singularity of such an approach.
Similarly, the concept property is rather empty without legal enforcement. Everybody can make certain claims. The problem is that the legal system selects one claim out of many as the one and only true claim (of ownership) and enforces such a judgment again with the full wrath of the law. The concept property stands or falls with such legal enforcement. The problem we have with property as a concept is that it goes hand in hand with the law and all the dictatorial aspects of its enforcement.
Many people believe that the problems with monopolies can be solved by enforcing competition policy. But how can one measure how much competition there is? The article The Evil Side of Sport, in Optionality October 1996, described a situation that suggested fierce competition among rugby players out in the field in Australia, while the system was rigged from the top down. More generally, one can seek to create more competition in an individual sector, but at some stage one will hit a brick wall and discover that things are controlled by Parliament, by the Law, by Court, in ways that are alien to the concept competition.
The article Measuring Freedom, in Optionality February 1996, contained the following paragraphs:
Competition is largely manufactured by law, without much input from consumers. Competition is what takes place between suppliers, it does not focus on the end-users. Consumers may benefit from competition, but they are not in control.
Instead, it is the law that creates what it deems to be a competitive situation. Without continued legal enforcement, competition would collapse.
Competition is something that is constructed by law. If regulations are relaxed, such competitors collude and form cartels. Eventually, such competitors fight each other until a single winner emerges. After all, their primary focus is competition, not consumer satisfaction. Potential competitors with a different inclination are taken out of the market, not because they are inferior suppliers, but because they face the wrath of the law. Competition is a selection process that favors organizations that structure themselves in ways to exploit loopholes in the law (e.g. in tax) and that aim and have learned to work on the edges of the law.
Competition is a concept that goes hand in hand with law enforcement. Instead, optionality as a target makes more sense. In contrast with competition, optionality rejects such legal constructions. Once it is there, optionality will continue because it is appreciated, not because it is enforced.
The fact that competition calls for law enforcement makes it hard to measure competition in terms of optionality. Competition is preferable to monopolies, but remains part of a culture refereed to by Don Paragon as the Era of the Government (see Vision of the Future).
As you know, the Weapons Amendment Bill 1996 was presented in the Queensland Parliament recently. This Bill requires every gun in Queensland to be registered and every gun owner to get a new, five-year licence before 30 September 1997. Personal protection will not be accepted as a sufficient argument in obtaining such a licence. Automatic and semi-automatic guns will be prohibited, except in very special cases.
I don't like guns, but I think they are a necessary evil. I believe the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Article 7 of the English Bill of Rights (1688), which says: subjects . . . may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and allowed by law". This Bill of Rights in my opinion continues in force today in Queensland. I am aware that some politicians argue that the Bill of Rights has been (partly) repealed by various Acts of Parliament. But I take the position that such an important document cannot be simply waved away by the Parliament of the day.
Independent MP Liz Cunningham, who holds the balance of power in Queensland's Parliament, also rejects the view that the Bill of Rights has been (partly) repealed and she recently said that by both belief and custom, people have established the view that self-defense and the defense of one's family are valid reasons for responsible possession of weapons. The view that the Bill of Rights, in the area of weapon ownership, has been impliedly repealed by previous gun control legislation is disputed.
My view is that a free and safe society depends on certain basic rights. If you really are libertarian, then you should publish this letter and similarly declare your support for the Bill of Rights.
Comments by:We have a lot of problems with your suggestion that we as "libertarians" should support the gun ownership lobby.
Firstly, we reject any legal or political framework as "The Solution". A Bill of Rights may list certain rights, but it still is part of a legal framework. Any law is inherently oppressive and in conflict with optionality. Supporting one specific part of legislation implies supporting the total framework.
Secondly, we oppose violence - and guns are undoubtedly instruments of violence. We prefer the development as pictured in Don Paragon's Vision of the Future in which violence will become less and less prominent in future, as more relationships will be based on virtuality. Virtual presence has many advantages over physical presence, including less risk of being assaulted and getting accidents and diseases. Virtual presence also allows one to quickly switch from one virtual location to the other and to be present at many different virtual locations simultaneously.
Don Paragon furthermore suggests that products become ever cheaper and their physical possession thus becomes less enviable. Progress in Information Technology also makes that unacceptable behavior will be exposed more and more. Video security cameras are just one example. Today, legislation (e.g. on privacy) protects the identity and location of criminals. But it takes only one download of the data from police records for such information to be online and globally available. In countries with the least restrictions in this regard, organizations will inevitably compile, update and edit such records and make them available worldwide at a small cost per request. There will also be black markets for CD-ROMs with more restricted details. Such exposure constitutes a better security than the right to bear arms.
I read your invitation for people to send in contributions to the debate about science. I like to contribute the remarks made by the late Richard Feynman, American Nobel prize-winner in physics. Richard once prefaced a lecture on quantum mechanics with the comment that, while it is said that there may be no more than 12 people in the world who fully understand the theory of relativity, I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. Do not keep saying to yourself "but how can it be like that?" because you will get in a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
Quantum mechanics shows that when particles gain or lose energy, this occurs in shocks, rather than in a straight line and while making such quantum leaps, particles do not have a fixed location in space.
The biggest mistake scientists make is to presume that, if one searches long and hard enough, one will get to know why nature behaves like it does, that one can understand and predict nature. Instead, "reality" "proves", if I can use these words, that such presumptions were wrong in the first place. The presumption that things were to behave in a uniform, singular way is simply wrong.
Dear Editors. Why don't you present your ideas as a program, just like political parties do? I don't agree with you, but I am sure that if you can convince enough people that you are right, you will gain enough votes to push your plans through in a democratic way. The fact that you seem to reject democracy can only make people wonder about your motives. Are you suggesting that a minority or even a small group of people like you should rule society?
The reason why I believe that you will never be convincing is that you offer no solution to violence. To control violence, some kind of law must be enforced. Any political system that leaves this out can only be utopian.
If you want to establish "optionality", then I suggest you present your case in politics and accept that what you will achieve has to abide by the law and is conversely backed up by the law.
Comments by:
The Editors, for discussion use the Optionality Submissions Page
Date:
Roughly as printed in Optionality, June 1996.
In response to:
Above comments.
We don't want anyone to rule society, not a majority and certainly not a minority or a small group of people. There has been a long debate about politics and activism in general in the magazine Optionality, culminating in the conclusion that such methods are too much associated with the way the Government operates.
From October 1993, (the magazine) Optionality has decisively expressed preference for Don Paragon's Vision that we do not actively have to end the Government, because it will simply slide into irrelevance by itself as its failures become more and more exposed.
Rules are a thing of the past, whether they are democratic rules, dictatorial rules or "natural" rules. Any political system is based on rules and thus incorporates an element of coercion. Optionality is primarily an intellectual achievement, an attitude that is cherished rather than enforced. To think that optionality can be achieved by force is an intellectual error. Violence, or the use of force in general, is how matters were ultimately settled in the past. Control over physical matters is becoming less and less important, as Don's "Mobile Revolution" challenges the singularity that comes with such control. All around us, singular control is being replaced by optionality, as the result of on-going improvements made in technology and other areas.
Suggestions of violence are now socially unacceptable and sound ridiculous in commercial practice. The Mobile Revolution will make the application of force, such as in territorial conquest and implementation of law and order enforced by military means, a bad idea that inflicts more damage than that it achieves any perceived gains. This becomes more and more clear from all kinds of perspectives, including economic, social, moral and philosophical perspectives.
If your concern is that violence should be controlled, then we suggest that, in these days of modern communications, acts of violence can be quickly exposed to global audiences. Violent behavior will be regarded as intolerable, as it victimizes everyone. Violence should not be regarded as a private and personal matter between perpetrator and victim. The one who inflicts violence will more and more have to justify (as if that is at all possible) such behavior in front of global audiences that can exercise tremendous pressure in terms of market economics. Such audiences will demand to know why no alternative solutions were considered to solve whatever the problem what perceived to be.
No dictator will be able to stand up to such scrutiny. Manipulation of the masses by controlling the media is becoming more and more difficult due to progress in communications combined with greater awareness that there are alternatives, that there is optionality.
To submit a discussion to be added to this page, use the Optionality Suggestions Page
- Get your own Free Home Page