I find this discussion very interesting, though haven't had time yet to respond.

"I think your basic traits were formed early and evolved through all of
your experiences."

The traits you are describing run deeper than class, though they do have something to do with how we judge some classes better than others. So eg working class is more honest, more down to earth, more on the same level, upper class more arrogant, more rigid, more bigoted. But we also know these are caricatures, and easily reversed in practice.

I think what is here being described has to do with 'morality', something we rarely talk about because it borders on religion. Peer to peer attracts us because it is nearer to 'all of us being equal in the eyes of God'. This has nothing to do with a belief in God, but something to do with what Peter describes as "a dialectical and holistic disposition toward global social emancipation".

This also connects with Orsan's concern that people who appear to be 'on our side' are being used/funded by people with different intentions.

I've recently been reading neurobiologist Darcia Narvaez book 'Neurobiology and the Development of Morality'. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18378036-neurobiology-and-the-development-of-human-morality

What is clear from her research is that if a baby's needs are not met, eg if it is left to cry itself to sleep, which is a common practice in many western cultures, it is imprinted with the experience of a hostile world, which can affect its development and produce mental problems such as anxiety and depression later in life. The importance of the parent child bond in mitigating such experiences, and the resources that a baby brings with it, inherited and its own personality, all blend to produce a person's identity, which as you say, may be changed with difficulty. 

There is a growing movement which sees the necessity of welcoming the newborn with positive experiences, to counteract what appears to be the 'natural' tendency towards aggression and insecurity in our culture. Narvaez makes it clear that this needs to be a community effort, it cannot be done alone.

See the 20 presenters at the upcoming conference at Findhorn, Healthy Birth, Healthy Earth.  https://hbhe.co/presenters/

Anna

On 13 Aug 2016, at 10:44, Bob Haugen <bob.haugen@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 12:51 AM, peter waterman
<peterwaterman1936@gmail.com> wrote:

Are these classes a cause of their behaviour or a result thereof?

At least related, I think.

And, in

any case, are these 'classes' or 'identities'? I mean in any conventional

definition of classes.

Yeah, it's more complicated. If you believe in intersectionality in
the bell hooks sense (and I do) and in relationships of domination vs
relationships of partnership as described recently in this list (and I
do), then in the capitalist system you got polarities of domination
and subordination around gender, wealth and relations of production,
and culture/race.

People's individual personalities are formed in some interacting
combination of whichever positions in the two or three of those poles
they were enculturated in.

And it gets even more complicated than that.

I'm just trying to account for some phenomena in some way that is
discussable without writing a book.

Secondly, what DO you do?

http://mikorizal.org

Maybe I would either belong to or become a member

of the preferred class.

I'm not pointing fingers.

I think your basic traits were formed early and evolved through all of
your experiences. You can consciously change some of them through
struggle from and social practice with your comrades, but it ain't
easy.

On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 12:44 AM, Bob Haugen <bob.haugen@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm trying to connect to what I think I perceive in some of Orsan's

posts. This is a different angle on what Orsan has been talking about,

but I think it is connected and I think the subject line might be

closer to the essence.

We have recent experience with very different groups that we have

worked with in our "solidarity economy" software experiments. None of

which shall be named. Yet.

Some people in some groups have this sense of entitlement, as if we

are their employees or they are our customer, rather than us all being

peers in an open source project.

They complain a lot. Occasionally they offer helpful suggestions, but

mostly they like to complain. Sometimes when they do make suggestions,

they are way beyond anything that could be implemented, and if

implemented, they would not be able to use the results because the

results would be beyond their competence.

They are arrogant. They assume they our intellectual superiors. They

claim to have abilities that in subsequent events they fail miserably

to demonstrate.

We meet other groups where people claim to want to collaborate but

fail to do so. Often they are credentialed academics, and we are not.

(I don't even have a college degree. The horror!) They want to publish

papers in proprietary journals which will advance their careers. We

are not helpful in that pursuit. They also assume they are our

intellectual superiors.

We work with other groups who do not feel so entitled. Who are eager

to collaborate. Who jump in and work on the software. Who not only

suggest improvements to the software, they jump in and make the

improvements themselves! What a concept! Like a real open source

project!

It is so nice. Really.

I think we have class differences at work here. What do you think?

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