culturopathy

Dear Secret Governors,

2010-01-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Logic of the CON

by Marlow Uptake-me

Today's Approach to Running Global Empire:

Hello. My name is Marlow Uptake-me. In this "open letter" I have the honor of addressing secret governors of the world. Surely they do not these few notes of advice but perhaps they will derive a small measure of cheer from my redundancies.

1. Do not waste your time. Trying to control everything, everywhere, is a fool's game -- hubris. Authoritarianism is irrelevant. Make use of chaotic and orderly societies with equal ease. Maintain a flexible network of "shock troops" composed of private militias and dependable fragments within the military forces of many nations. Use them frequently enough to keep them ready but infrequently enough that they are not expended (as national military often is) in ongoing security situations. Such situations provide excellent cover but so do dozens of other phenomena. Be opportunistic rather than managerial. Nature, society and technology are in constant, complex flux. Be a symphony conductor -- not a control freak.

2. Carefully manage the "barons." Those individuals and clans which excel in greed, pride & brutality are either a useful tool or a nuisance depending upon circumstances. They are constantly engaged in economic, propagandistic and para-military schemes to enhance their control of global resources. Their single-mindedness and advanced equipment make them into unique chess pieces who are all too ready to believe that they are the secret and natural governing power of all societies. This perception is widely believed by the general public and provides excellent cover for your own operations.

3. Your first line of defense is obscurity. The grander and more complex your insight into the function of global systems the greater will be the gap between your psychology and that of national and tribal "citizens." Your status, identity and behaviors will appear ambiguous, slippery, difficult to identify.

4. Your second line of defense is the hysterical avarice reaction. Wherever you alter society or shift resources there will arise a swarming of near-delirious human animals who convince themselves that their own concrete advantage lies in "charging to the hoop." All conspiratorial operations, seen through the veil of these individuals and their military allies, will appear as simple mammalian politics (i.e. "we were really over there to get the OIL").

5. Your third line of defense is the Public Story. Remember that you have the whole world to consider -- a single national myth is inadequate. You must create a deluding plausibility which functions trans-culturally and can be customized readily by all story-tellers. The classic technique involves utilizing the law of opposites. A secretive public commission, limited in the data it can access, will provide an official account which allows "business as usual" to continue. Simultaneously, various pieces of data should be seeded which readily permit the discover of "hard, sinister facts" by those people are the most concerned about "domination of Nature, Wealth, Healthy, Family & Truth by demonic (sic) forces."

6. Stay on the horse. Human political society, like the human brain, is divided into complementary halves. The so-called "Right and Left Wing" orientations of the political instinct define the mainstream behavior of the populations under your control. Ignorance of these potions, identification with these positions and the struggle to find a bipartisan center reflect weakness -- the horse is charge of the rider. Instead, treat these two creatures as useful tools and sources of information.

7. The political compass is not difficult to read. Conservative instincts appear to advise a separation of Social Duty from Bodily Pleasure & a return to historically primitive forms of collective intelligence (governance). Ignore this. They provide a pre-factual ("gut feeling") read out of where the population is moving. They reveal the target. The topic about which they are "excited," positively or negatively is the goal.

8. Conversely, Liberal instincts appear to promote a fusion of Social Space and Particularized Life Pleasures, combined with an intellectual attempt to birth new instincts. Ignore this. They provide an evaluation of the target and an estimate of the means of its efficient attainment. Their apparently "idealistic, moral" critiques reveal the best-fit means of reaching the conservative referent.

9. Practice long vision. You are the visionary pharaohs for all the world -- and must be careful not to sacrifice steady progress for temporary satisfaction. Toxic and intimidated populations are immediately attractive but are unstable and unreliable. Better service is provided by human populations that are educated, healthy, happy, flexible and relaxed. Remember that social and technological innovation approach unpredictability so these areas must feature in your plans as very flexible circumstances.

10. Do not be deluded by mechanistic theory and primitive authoritarianism -- a high-functioning Heart is essential for health, understanding and efficiency. Emotionally stagnant agents suffer erratic diseases, confused thought, misreadings of others, and an inability to integrate the body and mind effectively.

11. Take virtue seriously. Be Socratic. Investigate all ideas through rational, open-ended discourse. Deepen your own power and clarity by the contemplation and practice of the civic virtues. Praise these virtues wherever you go. By the radiation of virtue the human animals recognize and defer to their masters. Use civic virtues as the explanation for each of your actions.

12. Always be aware that your plans may originate at levels unknown to you -- the unconscious, the biosphere, the patterning effects of media, the astral world, etc. It is the hubris of the common man to believe that he is the "decider."

13. Spare as little effort as possible defending yourself from rumors. Whenever possible, simply agree with the delusions of your critiques and adversaries. Myths are exploded by playing into them and revealing the hidden impasse upon which they are constructed. Casual admission is a hallmark of social dominance.

14. Practice trans-cultural thought. Treat each human being as a "human being, per se." Place all alternatives in a common frame -- there are no negatives, only competing positives in varying degrees. Nothingness does not exist. It is a false idea associated with cynical, fascist and nihilistic types. Forget sin and practice the view that the world is a competition of virtues.

15. Keep the one global human imperial civilization in mind. Prepare every culture for merger. Prepare global bureaucrats for ever larger regimes of organization. Encourage technology companies in the belief that there are enormous "profits" to be made from laying the communication, transportation and military infrastructure of the global socius.

16. Let go of nostalgia. Permit social transformations.

17. Minimize trauma to populations. Natural and military massacres create retardation of social restructuring. So-called "benevolent liberal changes" to societies are more efficient means of decreasing population, generating obedience, etc. War is a friend but Death & Pain are not. A shepherd directs his flock but must minimize stress, disease, etc.

18. The World's Military forces need to be combined into and superseded by Global Para-Military Police Legions -- these are essential an order to Knights to defend the realm.

19. Make judicious use of psychoactive technologies. The myth of the perfect cyborg "slave-agent" is a figure of popular paranoia. All emerging technologies are more or less useful for particular tasks but the dream of total mechanical control is generally neurotic rather than practical. It is a low level dream of military bureaucrats and unsophisticated barons and describes their fear of not being able to depend upon their allies. It is the byproduct of mild emotional illness and faulty protocols for collective intelligence.

wild bitch electricity

2009-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Silence Dogood writes:

She has slowly taken over the world since the 1700s. Who is She? Electricity. This wild bitch lightning that Benjamin Franklin harnessed at the dawn of America -- She is the engine of everything & the patterner of the matrix in which we occur.

We read and live by electric lightning, entertain ourselves with digital screen, telecommunicate around the world, see into Deep Space & the quantum world while we are cooking with electric switches or sharing our hearts "online." The humble telegraph and the electric street-lamp have passed into radio and television and then global internet on portable devices. Almost everything that is done socially and privately in the "post-Industrial" societies is a direct function of the capacies and forms in which physical electro-magnetism is available for usage. The inner tendencies of electricity are writ everywhere in the social world and pervade all electronic media.

There is a regime inside electricity.

When Benjamin Franklin, the author of American Independence, began toying with electrical devices and kites to see if he could "turn lightning on or off" a Republic as born which has dominated international affairs ever since. As this new nation "turned on" the British Mercantile Empire... the greatest resource-and-power machine since Genghis Khan -- stood no chance against them.

Later Tesla & Edison gave America the greatest socio-electric matrix in history. Now people would begin to be raised within spaces and activities directly patterned upon the moves by which electricity is harnessed. There was some resistance from the dying remnants of European and Asian Imperial Nations (Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan) but the most electrical of countries readily dominated. China hunkered; Russia glowered.

After the securing of the Maoist Dynasty in China the decision was made to keep their philosophical principles pure while secretly learning to use all advanced "Western" technologies. Despite their principles the people who learned to use electric tools in the cities became a generation that wanted more education, individualism, free market & internationalism. Some argue that America has drifted toward Socialism and state control since its inception among rowdy pragmatic individualists on the New Frontier. Yet all the while the strong attempts at Socialist State Control were either failing and decaying or slowly drifting toward a more American style. In Europe the hybrid Socialist-Capitalist-Parliamentary-Democracy was doing the same thing... approximating the emerging social organization the is being "unpacked" through usage by us of standard electro-magnetism.

These are the characteristics of the dominant and still-emerging Global Society:

Connectivity, High Speed, Divisiveness, Dislocation, Aurality, Retro (atemporality), Ecological Ethics, Unreality, Liquidity, Triviality, Customization, Medievalism.

Such a world cries out for B.S!

Some relevant links

2009-11-29T01:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a good basic introduction to some of the issues we are confronting.

A repost of the link about steady state economics.

For thos in western canada, here is a theoretician/practitioner of radical social freedom.

And a new concept of shelter, in theory and practice.

Also, these people.

Thoughts on Collective Intelligence and Decision-Making

2009-11-27T04:03:00.000-08:00

Adapted from Pascal

My basic idea is that all intelligence is collective & all collectives are intelligent. The first part of this merely indicates that intelligence is known through relational behaviors -- whether among brain cells, social groups or metaphysical entities. The second bit says that intelligence is inherent in structures. It doesn't have to be produced but must instead be excavated and enhanced. In principle we need to inhibit the primitive expressions of intelligence, thereby forcing it to migrate to higher levels of efficacy. Collective intelligence is primarily about inventing protocols which obstruct the lower tendencies of group intelligence. We do not know all of the problems which we need to inhibit, but we do know several important ones.

1. Prevent autocracy.

If 10 units (individuals) of intelligence are present and only 1 unit makes decisions there is an obvious failure to harness the available potential. If that 1 unit is ridiculously wise & gifted then monarchy can succeed for a period of time. This is seldom the case. Historically the 1 has been simply the beneficiary of military & economic might, either directly or by mere heredity. This is an extremely poor model of collective intelligence and typically generates abysmal living-evolving conditions for the bulk of the population. One example of an attempt to obstruct this "dictatorial collapse" is the Tibetan system in which the Lord Lama is rigorously trained in humility, discourse, reason and the embrace of the intelligence of others. Another way is the Cyclical Democracy in which definite term limits create a situation of regular shifting leadership. Protocol rules must limit the Powers and Financial Remuneration of officials.

Note - Although autocracies, and the hierarchies they spawn, are generally understood to be counter-productive in the political management of societies they are still tolerated in much of the business communities -- which is imagined along a "private fiefdom" and "managerial aristocracy" model.

Lola writes:

We must be careful here not to fall into the trap of the converse- namely that the other nine may lack the intelligence embodied by the one, and so reduce the whole process down to their level. Always we must have a way of quantifying and mediating intelligence, so that positive contributions are maximized and negative contributions minimized.

2. Prevent majoritarianism.

Rule by the majority is more intelligent than rule by 1 -- but not always very much more intelligent. In a 51% to 49% split it is easy to see how the "winning position" excludes the intelligence of basically half of its participants. In a multi-party state, especially where voter turnout is periodically low, it is possible for a very small group to assert itself over the general well-being. This model of democracy is popular because it is widely comprehensible... along the lines of "team sports." This problem can be obstructed by rules which require the outcome to be "averaged" -- representing a central nexus of the collective hunch rather than temporary victory for one gang or another. Experiments conducted on group intelligence show that the averaged guess usually outperforms the dominant guess.

Lola writes:

The singular flaw with the implementation of universal democracy is the same problem which vexed the founders of America, ie. how to prevent mob rule. If an averaged decision is to be reached, then we must move beyond binary choices in our elective strategies. Propositions cannot be simply ‘yes/no’ affairs, they must exhibit subtle gradations of possibility, such as what we see on polling scales- strongly agree, moderately agree, not sure, moderately disagree, strongly disagree. Even beyond this, we should be able to devise methods whereby individuals can easily quantify their thought-process with extreme precision.
It is interesting to note that it is not a lack of intelligence that is the problem in society, but rather the implementation of outmoded systems which deliberately limit the amount of intelligence available, ie. binary voting.
Part of the reason for this is that up until now we have not had the socio-technical processing power to deal with decision potentials in anything but their most limited expressions. This limit has now been fully transcended by networked electronic communications.

3. Prevent swarming.

Humans, like all animals, exhibit swarm behaviour when they are actively taking their behavior cues from each other. Mobs are an example of this primitive form of group intelligence. Hollow fads are another example. In order to prevent this "herd" activity there must be a minimum degree of privacy and autonomy among the participants. The innovation of the private voting booth has been a tremendous boon to society -- since it is well known that people will not "vote their conscience" if they are in danger of being observed by their peer group. The desire to hold people accountable for their votes is natural but leads to partisanship, bartering, and the replacement of intelligence consideration by an attempt to strategically position oneself after the vote.

Lola writes:

A secret ballot and anonymous ballot are NOT the same thing! Secrecy breeds suspicion, in that it fundamentally denies transparency. Obviously it was necessary at one point in time in order to prevent coercion, but now it has outlived its social usefulness. An anonymous ballot is different in that being non-binary no ‘absolute’ position can be tied to any one individual. For example, you can never be 100% for or against any initiative or representative, meaning that the stakes for any representative or initiative are considerably lessened, thereby eliminating the need for secrecy and ensuring the constant distribution of power.
These decisions are anonymous also by virtue of the fact that the collective results are weighted, rather than additive; thereby creating a spectrum of policy that cannot be attached to any one group or party. Decisions are the collective output of data, not the specific preferences of individuals, and this data will be transparently available to anyone who wishes to see it, a process which we might suppose would created more honesty and social responsibility, whilst simultaneously defraying the possibility of retribution since no one position can ever become dominant.
However, having said all this, it is worthwhile asking the question as to whether such a diffuse system can produce reliable and actionable results, or whether it will be burdened by the failure of indecisions and lack of leadership.

4. Prevent consensus.

This strikes many people as counter-intuitive. However, the consensus involves a mixture of swarming and majoritarian impulse. As people maneuver each other and themselves toward "popular acceptability" they jettison a great deal of the individual intelligence that they originally brought the discussion. Thus the result is generally the establishment of an abstract swarm-autocrat. If 1 unit of intelligence is combined and averaged with another 1 unit the resulting average is directly shaped by both participants. Their intelligence is synthesized. On the other hand if they collectively come up with a position to which they both agree then we have a situation in which 1 new opinion is combined with another identical opinion. The result is each party is now operating with something like .5 of an opinion.

Note - This illustrates a general danger that arises when individuals think about groups. We tend to image the group as a large individual -- which it is not. Thus we arrange ourselves to get 1 Personal Opinion out the group. This is an error by virtue of its inefficiency. A group can produce potentially many times more than 1 person's opinion.

Lola writes:

This is a crucial insight, one which is invariably neglected when discussion of collective intelligence arises.
A group decision need not be monolithic, some middle-of-the-road porridge that in its attempts to please all tastes become unredeemably bland. The social space for the expression of intelligence is much broader and accommodating than we might suspect. The narrow options of binary decisions serve to restrict freedom and the possibility of expanded intelligence. This creates tension and conflict, as there will always be some group that feels marginalized and chooses to act anti-socially on those feelings.
Expanding the space for action, and broadening the possibilities inherent in any social structure act to diffuse these tensions, since everyone’ input is considered valid.
What this means is that our future social spaces will necessarily be multiple in character, composed of many different expressions all working together and influencing each other. A hyper-intelligent social space has room for all possibilities, without the need for compromises (provided those possibilities are ecological and sustainable, and not exploitative).

5. Prevent ignorance.

My slogan is "participation, not membership." It means that a diversity of competent participants produces more intelligent outcomes than similar processes engaged in by official members. Merely to be "in the club" of citizens should not be the requirement for democratic involvement. It is not tolerable for individuals to vote on the basis of ignorance. Election outcomes would be of superior quality where they open to informed citizens of other countries and closed to uninformed citizens of one's own nation. The means of inhibiting the effects of "ignorant members" is to provide an on-the-spot skill-testing entry exam. It must be simple enough to be fair, objective enough to avoid taking sides in the decision making, free & amenable to multiple re-takings. The goal is not to exclude but to require basic knowledge of those who are included. In political elections, for example, a simple matching procedure between candidates' names, pictures, and stated policies might be sufficient. Doubtless several styles of exam may be provided for individuals with different learning styles.

Note - This is also a means of obstruction "non-representation." Many political problems exist when whole segments such as women, blacks, children, etc. are blocked from participation. The justification for such blockage is that these parties are not competent. A simple competence test does away with all need to include or exclude on the basis of caste, race, etc.

Lola writes:

This action alone would go a huge way towards decentralizing the globe’s nation-states and their entrenched and destructive identities. We must simply recognize that on a single planet there is no such thing as a consequence-free decision. Everything we do affects every other part of the world. Our policies are directly and indirectly impacting other members of humanity, and our selfish notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘nationalism’ are no longer valid excuses for acting in ways that undermine the survival interests of other people and the planet itself.
The ability to participate in social decisions, both great and small is not an inherent right, but a privilege born of responsibility. Everyone who is proven to be competent has an obligation to participate, and to educate and nurture those who are not yet capable.
Of course, this prescription will clash wildly with the industrial west’s cherished notions of ‘free individualism’ (which is easily demonstrated to be a myth) and ‘democratic rights’. Unfortunately, there is no circumventing it. An open and free society is by its nature a fragile thing, easily swayed by the passions of the ignorant, and steered disastrously by the selfish-interests of the power-hungry. It must protect its openness by being inclusive yet maintaining basic standards.

6. Prevent predatory influences.

The most obvious example are the so-called "lobbyists." Social anxiety and greed are powerful, insidious motivators which must be -- to the best of our ability -- prevented from interfering with decisions. Even in the decision about how to best proceed toward wealth we can see that the group intelligence would be undermined by the ability of individuals to profit from the group's failure. Insider trading on Wall Street and sabotage in warfare are examples of this same difficulty. It can be obstructed with a combination of clear rules, vigilance and rigorous investigation. In a more extreme sense this is the rule which means that interested participants cannot perpetrate violence or intimidation upon each other.

Lola writes:

Again we come back to the idea of transparent yet anonymous. For instance, lobbying could be completely eliminated with a simple measure stating that all campaign contributions must be anonymous, or, better yet, go into a public fund which is equally allocated to all members. Further, all financial dealings would be a matter of public record, open to anyone who wanted to see them.

7. Prevent dualism.

There is a persistent human tendency to simplify problems by reducing them to "two choices." This is useful but becomes a problem when the choices are conceived as "two sides" rather than "two directions." A thermometer is functional because it tells us more then just Hot vs. Cold. We already know that part. What it tells us is where we are on a scale between Hotter and Colder. We can see that evaluations made on a gradient have much greater utility than do mere pro/con choices. Pollsters take advantage of this fact with simple multiple choice options ("Always / Sometimes / Seldom / Never" etc.). A group decision on the basis of "Should we have troops in Afghanistan?" will necessarily have less granularity, less precision, than a group decision based on "How many troops should we have in Afghanistan?" This latter question includes "0" as a option but does away with the implied All-Or-Nothing mentality.

8. Prevent aimlessness.

Consider the difference between the following three questions: "Choose an Individual from the following list," "Which person on the following list should be our next president?" "Which person on the following list will be the most competent president?" Decision making is a task. Many brains have difficulty perform a task if it is insufficiently specified. If they do not know exactly what to do they will begin guessing and quickly fall back on established habits and selfish interests. It will be a half-assed performance. In order to select a name off a list, or to make any kind of evaluation, I must have something against which to evaluate it. The third question contains an evocation of the virtue of competence. I can therefore check these individuals against must sense of what "competence" means. Without a very specific criteria I will not be able to provide myself with feedback during the decision making process. A choice is aimless when the individual participant lacks a standard against which to make the choice and/or when the individual is not provided with information about how to make a decision. A great deal of confusion could be avoided, for example, if voting ballots included the following suggestion, "Please take a minute to compare your knowledge of this topic against your emotional response and try choose as comprehensively as you can."

Note - The use of virtues in phrasing questions also helps to unify all participants in the ethical work of arriving at the optimal decision. Ethical behavior is largely a matter of practice and people must be reminded to access that part of themselves.

Lola writes:

The results of our decision process will only ever be as good as the methods we use to determine them. The more intelligence that goes into the start is directly proportional to the amount that comes out at the end. Good decisions can never be made on the basis of bad information. With that in mind, a concerted effort must be made to provide accurate and truthful information on all topics, and learning to see propaganda, obfuscation, and emotional appeals for what they are- attempts to cover over a gross lack of high-quality information.
One possible step would be to anonymize the candidate, making the focus issues and policies rather than personalities. People would provide their input on specific actionable proposals, thereby doing away with the need for politicians altogether.

9. Minimize secrecy.
The idea of "transparency" is the popular assertion of this point. Some things must be concealed, at least temporarily, for the common good. These must be actively debated and minimized. An intelligent group decision requires that participations can access as much or as little information as they deem necessary in order to make a choice. For example, our collective "guess" about the status of UFO phenomena is clearly inhibited by the fact that we cannot freely access the relevant classified military documents. Our average guess will be distorted by this secrecy. Likewise if we have to pay to acquire the basic facts of a situation then those who cannot pay are forced to provide an inadequate contribution to the collective intelligence. This harms everyone. Free and open access to the maximal number of information sources on the matter in question is a pre-requisite for intelligence decisions.

The Reintroduction of Relationality

2009-11-23T02:55:00.000-08:00

The modern world is characterized by a complete breakdown in relationality, a dissociation of people from one another, themselves, and their environment. Every other problem can be seen and interpreted in light of this primary trauma. No one knows where the products that fill their lives come from, how they are made, or who makes them. Industrialization serves to anonymize products and processes, because the primary concern is economic efficiency. But this notion of the economy is itself pathological, albeit, it should be noted, of historical necessity. But having had been necessary or not, it is now time to move beyond its negative limitations, by introducing a new economic structure based on a radically different set of principles.
What is needed is an ecological economy; a self-limiting, stable system. An ecological economy seeks its increase through diversity rather than endless growth. Although growth is necessary, it is meant to pave the way to maturity, not be an end in itself. Any growth process which does not reach a point of satifying its basic parameters becomes a cancer. Maturity does not equal stagnation- change is constant, but must be translated into a deepening, not an expansion.
To reintroduce relationality into our products and processes is to automatically reintroduce it into our social structures, thereby undoing the harmful effects of industrialization.
When the food we buy is so heavily processed, packaged, and 'clean' that all traces of its biological origins are removed, then we have arrived at a point where our divorce from nature is complete. These actions, these metaphors of production, are not inconsequent- they produce changes both subtle and gross in our experience and in our being. An apple shrink-wrapped and displayed under constant flourescent lighting at so many cents per pound is not the same apple that is picked off of the tree. Biochemically they may be identical, but on a more abstract, intangible level they are profoundly different. These effects are felt most fully in the realm of our awareness, and the constant assault it endures adds up over years and decades, slowly eroding the potential for a full and true exppression of our humaness. We are being deliberately stunted and weakened in order to be controlled.
A populace psychically starved is unwilling and often incapable of asserting its most fundamental truth- that it is free. Freedom has always been the enemy of control, to those who would rule under the guise of efficiency and social necessity. But it has never been the case that the few have advanced the interests of the many better than they themselves could. Always we witness the pretext of unity, which becomes code for homogenity and compliance. There is no unity in the politically conservative sense, despite their best wishes and efforts- only unity through diversity, a principle of ecology. Therefore all forms of tribal thinking, from racism to nationalism, fail, because they refuse to confront what is, prefering to see things on the limited basis of how they desire them to be.
But all of this brings us back to questions of production, ie. how to create enough of what we need in the most ecological way possible. This is where the central problems of relationality lie. We must begin always with an inventory of ourselves- our needs, and our expenditures of time and energy. Everything is interlocked, and we must discern the patterns which shape our lives and have control over us. If we complain of a lack of time or money we must pursue these conditions to their heart, seeing that our time is consumed through trivial, meaningless work, and the money recieved through it spent in support of a system that generates the bondage of debt instead of the freedom to create. When we have taken account of ourselves this way, we will see how so much of what we do is not only counterproductive, but self-destructive and socially destructive.
We must reassert basic need, and live within it, rather than being betrayed by the artifice of want. Furthermore, we must all engage in the vital process of providing for the needs of each other, rather than shifting responsibility to remote and antihuman corporations. Yet we must always bear in mind that our most basic need is expansive, and cannot be confined to the false equality of a lowest common denominator. An equality of impoverished being is no achievement to be celebrated, but instead a betrayal of our noblest aspirations. Equality is always a matter of possibility and access, not of conditions and concerns. The inequality of resources in an ideally equitable society can only be addressed by shifting our view of the material processes around us. A forest then is not a resource to be argued over and exploited, but a living system to be entered into partnership with. Resource exploitation means using something up and producing unwanted waste- it is a unidirectional flow. Partnership means an equal exchange, a bidirectional flow of energy, information, and sensation. This is the heart of relationality.
There is enough for everyone because everyone's genuine needs are minimal. There are three foundational things which should and must always be free to all humans: healthful food/clean water, shelter, and energy. Everything beyond this is secondary, and must be negotiated collectively in terms of the overall benefits of fulfilling a want or desires versus the true costs and impact within the total human socioecosystem.
A simple adage is this: the minimal necessary freedom for all is the natural limit on the maximum possible freedom of any.
One can replace the term freedom with any other quality or concern, such as safety, material comfort, posessions, etc. Freedom is a good rubric in general because it contains through implication all other considerations. What this means in an expanded sense is that a society based on radical freedom is nonetheless not a society without rules or structure. It is not anarchy as conceived of in the naive popular sense. This kind of freedom contains its own limits, ones based on the realtionship between the group and the individual. Consequently, the greater the freedom of the group, the greater the freedom of the individual. The two are consonant with one another. No longer can a small elite weild such disproportionate power over the majority, nor can any irrational majority impose its will on other minorities.
A more pressing concern is in how we define the 'minimal necessity' of freedom. Freedom presupposes equality, an equality based on a lack of coercion. A society not based on coercion would be utterly unrecognizable to us, so completely inured are we to the daily manipulations of force both overt and covert. Equality implies that all actions are based on consent, a consent which is only valid if entered into with full and complete knowledge. It is for this reason that we can claim that a radically free society is a fully open society, where nothing is hidden, and all contracts and organizations are transparent. Of course, this can only flourish where profit motivations arising from competetion are removed. Likewise, in an open and free society there would be no private property, only private space. This is a critical distinction, which is not easy to grasp. It means that property is recognized as the means towards some social benefit, not merely the personal enrichment of an individual. Property must serve some function, not be an end in itself. Private space is that space which an individual constructs out of his own awareness, and which can be accessed only by invitation.
So how then do we regulate the distribution of differences? If we have ten plots of land of differing quality and value, and ten theoretically equal individuals, how do we determine who gets what in an open and free society without resorting to a centralized bureaucracy or tyranny? This point is central to the whole endeavour, and must be resolved before any real progress can be made.
The first step is in recognizing the nature of property or resources as the common inheritance of humankind. When we ask 'how do we dristribute the land' we are already presupposing that it is someone's to distribute, usually a government or a coprporation. But this is flawed reasoning. Rather we should reevaluate our incessant attempts to divide the world up into a multitude of bordered domains. In a free society there would not be ten plots of land- only land and ten individuals making claims upon it. It is here then that we hark back to our fundamental adage that 'the minimal necessary freedom for all is the natural limit on the maximum possible freedom of any'. In this way, the use of land, or any 'resource' for that matter, becomes a project to determine how best it can benefit the needs of all without regards to the limited wants of any. In practice this means that the most desirable land, ie. waterfront, agricultural, etc. cannot be controlled by any one individual, but must instead serve the needs of all. Such lands and resources would thereby be held in common trust, preserved from exploitation, but open to use by those who can generate the most benefit.

ADDENDUM

2009-11-14T05:12:00.000-08:00

It could be persuasively argued that the best method of defending human life is by working to reverse all those tendencies in human and institutional nature which lead to aggression in the first place. In this view, the military would not simply be a fighting body of soldiers following orders, but an affiliated organization of agents capable of independent action and thought- decision-makers with the tools for social betterment, ie. skills in conflict resolution, engineering, education, etc. Of course, in a radically decentralized society, almost all members would have these kind of qualifications.
An open-source, free society would dissolve the traditionally rigid boundaries which demarcate one 'occupation' (no pun intended) from another. Everyone would bear the costs of their freedom- the responsibility for assuring the security and prosperity of every other member. In this way, there would be no distinctions between various 'classes' of profession, no external police force, no external judiciary, no external legislature, and no external military. These 'necessary activities' would be an intrinsic part of every social actor, rather than an extrinsic lever for controlling behaviour.

THE MILITARY vs MILITARISM

2009-11-14T03:06:00.000-08:00

It was recently brought to my attention that out of my (understandably partial) list of social institutions that need to be remade along an open-source, user-directed structure, the military was notably absent.
I should now like to expend a few words in regards to this subject.
We can start, as we always should, by asking of any given thing, 'what is its role', what purpose does it fulfill? Further, what is its original intent, and how has its contemporary incarnation deviated from this supposed ideal?
And so, as to the issue of the military, we can state quite confidently that its original purpose is defense. It is the structural manifestation of the verb 'to defend'. This definition and understanding allows us tremendous flexibility in our further analysis and in the formulation of alternative expressions. To defend is not equivalent, either morally or technically, to attack. Defense, as understood philosophically in martial arts, entails any set of actions designed to unbalance or immobilize an opponent which proceed from a position of focused equanimity. True defense then can never consist of motivations based on revenge, loss of face, anger, righteousness, or any other debased emotional state. It must always remain a direct response to an immediate and grave existential threat, not merely "...the continuation of political activity by other means." (Clausewitz)
The military serves the purpose of defense by defending human life, not by extending government policies via force through the world. The military, above all other institutions, must uphold universal rights, not serve as the means of extracting economic advantages for elites. Of course, the current situation is exactly the opposite of this idealized perspective. Today's industrialized militaries are no longer in the business of defense (except in the most literal financial sense), but are engaged in an expansive form of corporo-political imperialism, and have been ever since the end of the second world war. The modern military is less concerned with upholding the law and maintaining the integrity of national borders than it is with trying to reshape the world forcefully to a set of dominant ideologies. Interestingly, despite its almost inconceivable material and technical superiority, contemporary armed forces have repeatedly been 'defeated' by small, decentralized guerrilla armies. When i say defeated, i mean only that they have, through their tenacity and idealism, managed to avoid domination, by bleeding away popular support in the aggressor country until continuation of the war becomes politically impossible.
These historical circumstances should be a clear indication that the 'grand narratives' of politically based warfare are wholly without merit, merely symptoms of the sickness of imperialism, dressed up in the dangerous garb of national pride.
So the problem is not, as some on the left have framed it, simply the military, but rather, as with so much else in the world, the ideological addition of those three little letters, ism, to the end of it.
A strong and properly organized military (both structurally and purposefully) is something deserving our support and respect. Militarism, on the other hand, should be condemned and rejected to the utmost by every aware thinking and feeling human being on this planet.

On Irrationalism

2009-11-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

Irrationalism has two distinct meanings.

On the one hand, it refers to masses of men and women who are not yet adapted to the cultural skill of rational inquiry. It also refers to a smaller class of individuals who "believe" in the power of irrationality. These two categories blend, and reinforce each other.

The first group is growing. As the world's population skyrockets, so do the numbers of people in the least educated, least cultured places. Add to this a host of new communication tools which incline the pre-rational masses to a habit of exchanging and consolidating ignorant opinions. There is no sin in this -- only simplicity. These people are key unconscious actors of History. Perhaps we can reduce them as a percentage of the total human population but we will also need to account for them and not to deride them for their subtle primitivism. Their impulses may be useful and must be managed in a manner that renders them largely harmonious and generally beneficial. Some ancient rituals were used for this purpose. When mass irrationality has no constructive role in society -- it can then have only a destructive and corrosive role.

The faux-rational are a more interesting problem.

These people learn the "form" of facts & arguments but maintain an inner cynical distance toward these tools -- in effect, refusing the sting of reasoning. Prior emotional and social commitments are maintained, protected. They exhibit a perverse pleasure, or vanity, associated with the sense of "beating the system." Those who take reason and progressive ideals seriously are assumed to be "dupes" or to have broken instincts. There is also present in these individuals a physiological resistance to that peculiar emotional friction which is involved in the contact between old opinions and new data, between old commitments and sincere pondering.

There is an element of this in all of us.

Any effort to create a "bulwark of progressive social rationalism" must be reinforced by the proliferation of additional supportive tools. There must be therapeutic treatment modalities which attempt to purge the inner obstacles that resist the results of data & reasoning. This is especially critical since the defeat of many progressive political agendas may be directly attribute to the subliminal conservative sympathies within the bodies of progressive thinkers.

There must be a common call for serious independent pondering and experimentation. There is no final attainment of Reason but rather an attitude of perpetual progress toward greater impartial clarity. In order to proselytize this attitude, progressives must embody it. It must be lived and expounded with the seriousness of a moral duty. Such an attitude was associated in certain times and places in History with a culture that accords socio-political honor to those who are perceived as having the "deepest, most comprehensive understanding."

Social actors, as my colleague has written, must cultivate the courage to disregard the irrational -- but not the extent that the irrational is left unchecked to organize itself against the society of more coherent thinkers. They must not be excluded but rather taught a habit of evaluating themselves more appropriately. Society does not flourish unless those who are not wise know that they are not wise. And this knowledge must be experienced with natural shame rather than public opprobrium.

Irrationalism and the New Society

2009-11-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

One wonders constantly how to respond to the seemingly ever-growing din of irrationality being propagated through our culture. It is as if the very ability to engage in civil discourse is decaying, collapsing under the weight of the fetid paranoia infecting it. Of course, there have always been strong currents of irrationality through our cultural history, but generally they have been held in check by being denied the legitimacy of a voice in the media or mainstream thought. It has always been a fringe phenomena- up until now. What we are witnessing on a grand scale is an intolerance for the very discursive mechanism which under-girds any productive civilization, that is, the open exchange of ideas, rather than the mere propagation and defense of ideologies.
Part of the reason this has become so entrenched is due to the sickness of epistemological relativism. When reality becomes nothing more substantial than opinion, then there is no longer any method of determining the truth of one position in relation to another other than by shouting match. But reality is beyond any opinion, consisting of a tangible, and consequential ontology. The search for truth is complex, and may in fact be fruitless, but this doesn't mean that the effort is without value, or that the truth is itself non-existent. When we approach questions of what is real based on a methodology of personal whim, either due to laziness or vulgar egotism, then we court a grave danger, preparing a fertile soil of credulity to receive the seeds of extremism which will eventually and inevitably bear a bitter crop of sorrows.
For no opinion can be more precious than one's own, and in the absence of the restraint provided by the self-awareness and humility born from encountering a greater reality, the certainty of one's convictions become an end in themselves, to be defended at all costs, and with whatever violence deemed necessary.
So what then is the antidote to this poisoned spasm of irrationalism? There are several recourses, the first of which is creating a bulwark of progressive social rationalism. Second, refuse to engage in 'debate' with irrationals based on 'facts'. Facts have no value or weight for epistemological solipsists because they are imaginary quantities- a set of real facts cannot refute artificial facts when there is no substantial foundation of reality to appeal to. Irrationalists lack the capacity to either discern, or submit their ideation to, a larger field of actuality. Instead, we must constantly work to uncover and erode the edifice of their delusion through intensive and constant questioning- getting them to define and explain every word, term, and 'fact', asking for verification of every claim, demanding rational justifications for their assertions, and refusing to accept their nonsense at face value. Debate merely serves to legitimize a position which is fundamentally illegitimate, and so serves no constructive purpose.
Thirdly, the tactics of marginalization must be employed, by recreating a free, open, and inclusive society. Irrationalists are by their very nature self-excluding, deriving validation through perceived victimization. They have no interest in being part of a functional society, only in creating schisms. They are destructive in their tendencies, never creative, defining their identity through constant opposition and their persecution complexes.
A rational society is best counter to irrationalism- like a noxious weed, it must be starved until it goes extinct.

Reading this IS the New Politics

2009-11-08T02:28:00.000-08:00

When a system has become so corrupted that it cannot maintain its establishment functions, then there is no hope of recovery, only replacement. All current theories of government are outdated, based on social foundations that are obsolete and irrelevant. For government to function successfully in the modern age, it must embody a radically new structure, one based on an open-source, collaborative decision-making process.
So-called representational government is insufficient for the simple reason that millions of individuals with competing interests, intelligences, and personal histories cannot be adequately defined by a few broad categories of political ideology. Whenever individual power is ceded in favour of remote, elite 'leaders', corruption is the natural outcome. Any political organization, or business for that matter, built on secrecy is incapable of being held accountable for its decisions and actions except through legal force, a legal force it should be noted, heavily skewed in fovour of those very same wealthy elites.
But a alternate view of politics, founded on genuine freedom, boldly asserted and enacted, is possible. It has required the advent of mass personalized communication technologies to allow this radically new type of organizational structure to emerge. We are now in a dire race to stop the squandering of intelligence that characterizes our current forms of government.
The true function of government is not to enforce ideological conformity, but to protect the collective social structure and to facillitate the efficient flow of goods\information. Its purpose is to distribute effectively the collective wealth\intelligence of society so that all might benefit from it. Up until now government has had to centralize in order to secure these functions, necessarily becoming stronger than any of the groups it administers to. This power differential has lead to the worst forms of abuse and imperialism, as this centralized political organism pursues its own goals and ambitions without regard to the consequences of its actions or the wishes of its supposed constituents.
This situation is now wholly avoidable, yet does not require the kind of mass mobilization that chanracterizes political force historically. Almost everyone is already engaged in the forms of socio-political action that are the foundation of this new concept of governance. Polity and society are inseperable- they represent two aspects of a unified system of action. So, rightly, we can say that polity guides society, and society guides policy. Change one, and the other naturally follows. The only reason that social actions are seldom recognized as inherently political is because of the degree to which politics has alienated those who bear its brunt. Once a government no longer functions, having become both remote and intrusively bureaucratic, then it must be overthrown- not by armed revolution (which is premised on the moral failure of violence), but by better, more directed social actions. In this way, the renewal of social action itself becomes the new form of government, without the need for power struggles or compromise. To govern, ultimately, is to direct one's own actions towards certain goals. Government can never be a system external to those it affects- such a structure betrays immediately its own illegitimacy.
The main component in this shift/revolution is not technical, but conceptual- in other words, individuals must become aware of themselves as social actors rather than simply as social beings. This distinction is crucial, but not obvious, and bears some examination.
A social being is at best a limited identity, a convinient label for a set of beliefs and preferances in relation to other social beings. It is generally speaking a passive orientation, absorbing influences from culture and recreating them as self. Social beings experience themselves as at the mercy of overwhelming social and historical forces, powerless to alter them. Their only options are to react, through protest (engagement) or altered consumer habits (endorsement). Neither of these efforts produces results of significance because they lack the leverage needed to encounter power on its own terms. We must become aware of the potent myths which have sprung up as validations of the social being, and counter them with the hard reality, that the consumer is not king, the citizen is not in charge.
On the other end of the spectrum however, a social actor is the inverse of the dysfunctional social being. He\she presupposes (and expresses) an identity not as a thing shaped by culture, but as a process- a state of ever-shifting goals and perspectives, no single one of which remains dominant. The social actor is a study in flexibility, capable of subsuming their personal interests within a greater field of benefit, always towards an ever-expanding sphere of inclusion. At heart, all social beings are simply social actors unaware of themselves, and it is this degree of unawareness which stands as the only tangible difference between them. The social being lacks the ability to see himself as an actor, fully capable of not merely reacting to socio-political circumstances, but effectively directing them.
Unfortunately, this task of education is enormous, opposed by a myriad of forces bent on the promotion of selfish individualism and socially destructive tribalisms. These forces are generally economic; corporate organisms which derive benefit from fragmenting social cohesion, by relentalessly advancing the flattering myth of individualism. But let us not imagine that the dangers of rampant individualism can be averted through some species of vulgar collectivism. Quite the opposite in fact. And while the individual is not more important than the group, neither is the group more important than the individual. This apparent paradox is easily resolved once one begins to look at the world through the lens of social action rather than social being. The social actor is a being, but also more than that, in the same way that a group is made up of individuals, but at the same time embodies principals and functions greater than any single person. The strength of a group is characterized not by uniformity, but by diversity. The the greater the degree of individuality exhibited by its members, the more resourceful, resiliant, and flexibly intelligent that group will be. True individuality and they myth of individualism stand in stark contrast to one another.
Individualism holds that one is alone, the center of one's social universe, an egocentric view wherein one's personal desires (and the fulfillment thereof) are the paramount concern, at the expense of all other considerations, both social and ecological. Contrast this to the fully realized individual, who sees and understands clearly that he is an integral aspect of a cohesive network of relationality, and that his actions are never without consequence. This realization acts to temper whatever purely selfish motivations dwell within him, allowing them to be transformed into constructive social action which thereby benefits the whole as well as the individual. Indeed, the greatest benefits to the individual come from those actions which increase the functioning of the group. And yet, if we are to take the proposition of freedom seriously, this cannot be accomplished through coercion or by external pressures or threats. Rather it must emerge organically, as a response to a greater degree of self-understanding.
Where this leaves us then is in a position to formulate and enact a new 'social operating system', one based on open-source principles and values.
The goal is to establish alternative institutions to the corrupt ones now in place. These institutions will be economic (banks, financial structures, investment rules), productive (businesses, manufacturing, R&D), infra- and intra-structural (transportation, energy, structure), legal (arbitration courts, reward compliance, punish defiance, disciplinary), educational (school, university, knowledge and information management), etc., founded upon core principles, rather than static documents from an historically remote past. They will be upgradable, open-source (ie. fully transparent), and user-managed\mediated.

Jon Stewart: America's Most Trusted Reporter?

2009-07-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Opposite of Pascal's Opinion:

Jon Stewart's comedy represents a sane, critical perspective on the ideological machinery of modern "news entertainment," -- and a voice against Right-Wing hysteria.

Study my actual opinion at:
...but NOT the Jaguar!

An Open Letter on Visual Culture

2009-07-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

Here's is what I do NOT believe:

Human culture is becoming less verbal and more visual.

To read my actual opinion...

An Open Letter on The Politics of Serfdom

2009-07-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Opposite of Pascal's Opinion:

The term "redneck" is inappropriate to describe Right Wing political interests -- since these are simply the rational assertion of the self-interest of free citizens. This is a sincere modern political stance which reflects an authentic religious disposition and a deep concern for the prosperity and security of the Nation. As in the example of the American Republican party these individuals stand up for the rights of "the little guy" against the manipulations of the Powerful.

There are no such things as "green-necks" since, by definition, those people who put the interests of planetary ecology, organic farming and local community values are progressive Liberal thinkers.

For my actual opinion visit Culturopathy's Echo

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (tm)

2009-07-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

1.What is most critical to the overall progressive momentum of the human species -- sealing the catastrophic ruptures afflicting the most challenged areas of the world, OR causing the leading edge of humanity to go even farther forward?

Obviously it’s not an exclusively either/or type of situation, but, perversely, perhaps the best course of action would be to let the ‘failing states’ burn themselves out, and rebuild from the ashes. Intellectually this seems acceptable, but emotionally, morally, and aesthetically it is almost too horrible to contemplate. It takes far more energy and commitment to build something up than to destroy it, so in the long run, over the next 20 years, it will be critical to establish fully functioning, robust networks that can absorb the impact of destabilizing forces in the world. A visionary model, as lived through extrordinary individuals will be vitally important to the continuation of civilization. What is the nature of these individuals? They are information synthesizers and meta-distributers- in the parlance of P2P networks, they are the global ‘seeders’, cross-disciplinary loci of awareness, processing, communication, and action.

2.What sort of world will exist in 50 years if both the most liberating and regressive trends of today are carried forward together?

This is difficult to acertain, since so many unforseen factors can tip the balance in favour of one side or the other. I think an analogy to the early universe would be apt: we will see cooling and condensing ‘clumps’ of coherent intelligence emerge from the hot chaotic global state. Small groups of highly technologically sophisticated people will essentially ‘recolonize’ the wastelands left by the die-off of the regressives. This to my mind is the most likely scenario, and follows the same kind of development patterns seen after any historical mass extinction event. We just have to make sure that we are decentralized and portable enough to withstand the accelerating social breakdown.

3.What type of inner practice for individuals is most likely to steer their being in the direction of effective socio-political and ecological action?

If we are speaking of so-called ‘regualr’ folks, the best course of action i could suggest would be to undego a crash-course of self education via the internet. There is an astounding quantity of high quality freely accessible information out there, such that a moderately intelligent and open individual could have a solid foundation with about a years worth of intesive study. Once the knowledge base is in place, the next step is application of that knowledge through technological liberation, ie. the creation of genuinely sustainble systems of living, such as permaculture food production, micro-scale renewable energy harvesting, and ecological manufacturing via design-on-demand, digital fabrication, and good ol’ fashioned recycling and reappropriation. Then its a simple matter of spreading this knowledge/application through networking with other individuals, building up larger and larger sustainable structures.

4. Which 3 technologies, about to emerge, have the greatest potential to disrupt even our best anticipations and estimates of the overall situation?

I think those i covered in the last question are the biggest ones, but rapidly emerging fields like nanotechnology and open-source biology are going to be big. I think the dark horse in the race will be some form of strong AI in the next two decades, which will radically accelerate our design capabilities as well as information management. Human-machine interfacing is a logical outgrowth of nanotech coupled with strong AI, but it remains to be seen if this will be truly viable. A good book on the subject is Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Also, this shows some more intriguing fields of developemt.

5. Which saints, heroes, visionaries or events are among the most applicable symbols for the needs of any current transformative movement?

There are almost too many to count! And i think this is fundamentally the strength of this movement, that it doesn’t have any real leaders, but is a confederacy of equals, all working, all contributing. It is a systems approach that sees everything as inexorably linked together into a non-linear web of causality. For me the greatest sign is that this movement has already become so decentralized that no one person or organization can claim to speak on behalf of its goals and concerns. Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest details this phenomena, and i would direct anyone who is interested in these sorts of things to check it out for a fuller exploration of this process.

5 MORE FINGERS BUT NO FIST

2009-07-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

2.What sort of world will exist in 50 years if both the most liberating and regressive trends of today are carried forward together?

3.What type of inner practice for individuals is most likely to steer their being in the direction of effective socio-political and ecological action?

4. Which 3 technologies, about to emerge, have the greatest potential to disrupt even our best anticipations and estimates of the overall situation?

5. Which saints, heroes, visionaries or events are among the most applicable symbols for the needs of any current transformative movement?

An Open Letter in reponse to "CLARIFICATIONS"

2009-07-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the "Clarifications" proposal -- I had a hunch that incrementally increasing the amount of disagreement in my posts might stimulate greater interactivity & self-definition within the blog.

#1) Do you believe we are headed for an ecological collapse?

I believe that we must act as if we are headed for a ecological collapse. Our science contains many ideological blindspots and still-primitive failures but this should not dampen our spirits. The true extent, nature & human leverage over the current biospheric situation is either catastrophic or irrelevant. We cannot say either with certainty but this voice, this Other voice speaks in our hearts, demanding that we move with urgency. And so we must.

#2) What is the correct form for human social structures?

This is too broad a question... and "correct" waits upon thorough testing. However, here is what my heart speaks -- trans-democracy, trans-capitalism, culture-religion, decentralized globalism, ecological ethics, permeable organic castes.

Politics must absorb, improve and willingly pass beyond current quasi-democratic regimes. Economics must produce a maximally safe and vigorous socialist-capitalism which must produce two rivals -- a flourishing, ethical market economy & a vast "free economy" of equivalent strength. Culture must reawaken to its function as religion. Planetary governance is balanced by technologically enabled decentralization of decision making -- at least into custodial cultural-ecology zones as suggested by the Dalai Lama for the Greater Tibetan Region. The biosphere, and the abstract mathematics of "naturalness" must become the ethical demand placed upon social action & flexible, developmentally-ranked organic castes/classes perform specialized functions incl. governance, technological development, military-policing, priesthood-coaching, ecological enforcement, etc.

#3) Can you describe the role of politics/government in the next 10-20 years?

Governments must begin to become both more activist & less controlling. National governments have to begin by shifting tone, up-taking the best available data, and pushing through as many regulatory modifications as possible. Nations must be streamlined, improved in health & intelligence and re-produced as capable of making the necessary changes. International good-will and crisis-response need to prompt potent international regulatory bodies that are empowered to act against violations. Financial regulation, ecological retooling & large-scale international military intervention are their obvious world-historical tasks. They must "starve and steer" the most self-destructive regimes while training their populations to become capable of addressing planetary-scale situations. This will necessarily involve an increase of seriousness and good cheer, transparency & pragmatism, flexible openness & an increasing planetary-imperial aesthetic.

#4) What is the best method of attaining reliable information?

Our knowledge of this subject must improve greatly in the years to come. For now, at the individual level, we must look to, and combine, the opinions of the experienced & the broadly minded -- placing special importance upon the conclusions of minds who integrate vast numbers of positions into coherence and also minds which produce unexpected positions. Logical thought and popular data must be combined with intuitive and physiological knowledge.

Interpersonally we can best rely upon the conclusions that are averaged results of voting-estimates, produced as a gradient marker in response to a specific query, by a maximally formally diverse and permeable set of participants who prove minimum acceptable coherence of communication and knowledge of the subject matter and who are able to process information and articulate their position anonymously and free from consensus or organized persuasion. And, increasingly, the services of mass-coordinating intelligence software operating at ultra-high speed to detect linear and non-linear patterns among humanly incomprehensible algorithms and data sets.

#5) What specific changes are needed, and how many will make them?

The list is vast. Here are just a few: implementation of simple, general, re-takeable entrance exams for democratic elections; mandatory application of multiple-intelligence testing in schools, government and businesses -- intellect, emotional intelligence, ethics, aesthetics, etc. -- and this information freely available online; mandatory meditative or contemplative practice in schools; removal of the security council veto from the United Nations; active inter-penetration of global military forces; decriminalization of drug use and partial decriminalization of drug sales. Drastic increase in investment for alternative and very alternative energy sources & water purification systems. Large scale public works programs laying down new electrical and transportation infrastructures in all nations. Widespread promotion of free video streaming for all materials. Municipal de-automobilization wherever possible. Proliferation of new and more tenacious recycling plants. Medical pathologization of problematic emotional conditions. Creation of an international eco-navy, or else the support of existing models such as "rainbow warrior." De-urbanization by all those who can manage it.

Who will undertake these and other tasks? As many as are emotionally impressed by the weight of planetary duty, or else who trust in the instincts of such people. This is a highly flexible percentage of the population, dependent upon the credibility, creative energy, urgency AND optimism of seers.

I will shortly post five alternate questions in order to elicit your articulate responses.

CLARIFICATIONS

2009-07-11T02:16:00.000-07:00

I have the feeling that we may be getting into rather unproductive territory here, so i'd like to make the following proposal: we each ask and give short answers to a series of five questions designed to act as a kind of 'summing up' of our particular viewpoint.
I'll go first.

#1) Do you believe we are headed for an ecological collapse?

#2) What is the correct form for human social structures?

#3) Can you describe the role of politics/government in the next 10-20 years?

#4) What is the best method of attaining reliable information?

#5) What specific changes are needed, and how many will make them?

If you want, i can answer the same questions, or if you have alternates i'd be happy to tackle those.

A RESPONSE TO PASCAL

2009-07-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Optimism, like trust, has to be earned. It is not given, either philosophically or socially, that this is the position we should automatically take. The strains of this kind of ‘New Romanticism’ you are postulating will crash headlong into the hard realities before too long, in which case the ephemera of ideas will blow away like a mist, leaving only the observable certainties to be dealt with.
All this equivocation is, frankly, dangerous, in that it gives a false sense of our own capabilities. We are not nearly as clever as we think we are, and to pretend otherwise only confuses the situation.
Optimism is not simply the opposite of cynicism, it is a negation of reality. Hope is intangible, and generally useless- an empty void onto which we project our aspirations and desires.
A genuine knowing, one capable of producing change, attaches no conditions to itself, does not deign to define or label itself in any particular way. This is why IT reamins always untouchable, out of sight, incapable of being coerced into defending some particular position relative to our considerations.
In other words, neither up nor down.

You write, “Growth does not behave like a "cancer." A cancer is a regressive local establishment of patterning control which sequesters the body's resources in order to replicate itself in a manner that does not proceed toward the general Good.”
But this is exactly what our current models of economic growth demonstrate, which is why the problems that confront us exist in the first place. Of course growth is not an absolute, i never suggested as much, but to deny the obvious empirical patterns betrays a gross lack of familiarity with the situation at hand. Economic growth, as is practiced in all western countries, is based on maximizing profits through the externalization of the true social and environmental costs. It is therefore a model that is inherently anti-growth in the sense you propose.

“Conversely, social growth is the measure of our capacity to reorganize ourselves fluidly in the direction of spontaneously patterned coherence.”
This spontaneously patterned coherence is in every situation aborted by the machinery of our current structures. This is precisely what i have been arguing all along! We are actively being prevented from reaching our potential.
Organic growth and all of the positive attributes comensurate with it are being threatened by this industrial cancer.

"All life is a continuous reorganization of elements through consumption and redistribution controlled by the interplay of the communal structures. More life and better life consists of an increase of the potency of this capacity -- primarily at the social level. Improvements of quality depend upon improvements in the ability to handle quantity.”
And yet this is the very process which is in danger of falling apart. Coherence can only be maintained up to a certain threshold before instabilities set in which overwhelm the balance of positive forces. In a system where nothing any longer functions on a basic level, nascent social development structures are effectively destroyed. The process you speak of can only flourish in a stable evironment- the very thing which is now in question.
The earth is not a linear system. There are feedback loops in effect whose thresholds cannot be accurately determined, yet the overall trends, that is to say their directionality, are no longer open to debate. This has nothing to do with mere climate models or theoretical speculation, this is based on the observable data, and their conclusions are clear: our entire planetary system is entering a period of catastrophich decline, generated by human indistrial activity.

“The Right Wing correctly points out that we cannot be sure, that the mere fact of MASS CONSENSUS is not proof. Yet the Right Wing does not yet realize that the proposed changes are necessary anyway. To hell with climate change!”
Except that we ARE sure, for the reasons given above. Those who are aware must follow the imperatives of that awareness, and plan for a different kind of future. But let us not delude ourselves, or be mistaken as to what will almost certainly happen, which is the mass die-off of at least half the global population, if not more. At our present course, socially, politically, economically, industrially, this is the guaranteed outcome. A simple case of effect following cause.

Overall we are not at odds, you and i apporach the same ‘thing’ from two different positions- yours from an already realized future, mine from the all-too uncertain present. You see what MUST happen, and embody it, i see what IS happening and prepare for it.
Ultimately it is not a matter of who is right or wrong, but instead a matter of achieving the force necessary to join these two potentialities together.

THE MYTH OF DARK AGES

2009-07-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Planetary crisis is the only message we can hear. Our dumb animal nature responds to the popular warning cry -- taking up the call and passing it on. Stressing to our neighbors how "urgent" this matter really is...

Is it urgent? Yes -- but not for the popular reasons. It is critical for the formation of tomorrow's world that we human beings assume our appointed place as mass-scale ecological custodians. This is part of the eco-ethical, neo-Imperial planetary ethos which is everywhere being manufactured. This is the demand placed upon our hearts and mind AS IF the Biosphere herself were infiltrating culture & calling us to our world-historical Task.

But is this global warming? And are we the cause? And what can we do to reverse its effects? Or should we call it "climate change" since it could reverse itself unexpectedly and bring on the ice? Are our computer climate models correct? We simply don't know. Are we inputting the right variables? Again -- we have only our current guesses. While it is true that the "folk" do not take seriously many important factors, it is also true that the scientific "folk" equally ignore all those elements which they have not trained themselves to take seriously. The pulsating crystalline heart of the Earth? The interface between the magnetosphere and solar plasma fields? The relationship between bio-electricities and atmospheric chemicals? Who knows! Yet the "people" of science do not feel obligated to study the problem with all their options on the table. Aren't these the same pinheads who swallowed the Big Bang ideology without complaint?

It is important what they are saying? Or is it far more significant that they have achieved their greatest creative consensus ever? This is without a doubt the most potent scientific "WE" that planet Earth has ever seen?

The Right Wing correctly points out that we cannot sure, that the mere fact of MASS CONSENSUS is not proof. Yet the Right Wing does not yet realize that the proposed changes are necessary anyway. To hell with climate change!

I don't want to breath car exhaust in my cities.
I don't want smoggy sunsets, or to eat mutant toxic fruit or have children born with missing limbs.
I DO WANT the biosphere to function at full power with optimal regenerative coherence.

Why do I want this? She, herself, in me, wants this.

As we have webbed ourselves together electronically this imploring cry has become louder, clearer -- stronger. This is an historical fact of greater certainty than our climate models.

Those who are not yet adult enough to deal with the real situation, fraught with uncertainties, are not exempted from their world-historical duty. If they will not follow the carrot then they must race against the stick -- and so the lethargic multitudes come slowly to this idea that there is a SURVIVAL EMERGENCY. After all, they lack the energy to be motivated by anything else.

And: fine.

The closed heart, sealed in its enclosure of "human individuality," MUST be cracked open, must learn that "care for Earth" is the centerpiece of the New Faith, MUST be converted to the aesthetic-ethic of the Biosphere. Such is the demand of eco-ethical neo-Imperial Planetary Humanity which now comes upon at the hands of all parties on all sides of every social debate.

The Right Wing nuts are correct -- but their evaluations are backwards. It is a vast international conspiracy using dubious science -- but we MUST take new and dramatic action with the global biospheric situation as our reference point.

AGAINST: GROWTH DOES NOT EQUAL PROGRESS

2009-07-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here's why growth is equivalent to progress --

The meaning of socio-economic growth is not an increase in mass since, quite obviously, the mass of available material on Earth is relatively fixed. Development can only mean reorganization of existing elements. Progress implies an improvement in our capacity to reorganize the available components. What can such an improvement mean? An increase in the speed, diversity, fluidity, mutuality, reliability & intelligence of our control systems. This is precisely what the general indicator of "economic growth" symbolizes.

Growth does not behave like a "cancer." A cancer is a regressive local establishment of patterning control which sequesters the body's resources in order to replicate itself in a manner that does not proceed toward the general Good. Conversely, social growth is the measure of our capacity to reorganize ourselves fluidly in the direction of spontaneously patterned coherence.

Nations with greater "growth" have historically been those in which slavery was abolished, women gained legal inclusion, famine & overt tyranny were abolished, diseases are combated, ecology becomes a significant concern and the cultural development of citizens arises as a potent demand. Alternatively, archaic regimes which are concerned with the "sustainability" of their way of life are generally tyrannical, repressive, regressive & lethargic.

The philosopher Karl Marx was well aware that his futuristic Socialist regime was not the contemporary adversary of growth markets but the inevitable outcome of their fulfillment. Of course this fulfillment is identical to the revelation and transcendence of the internal contradictions inherent in the system but it is still also an extension of the system. Only where "unchecked growth" reins have we see a proliferation of citizens who grow sensitive to the failure of unregulated markets, the toxic effects of greed, the need to expand our flow of socio-symbolic power beyond even the boundaries marked by our previous successes.

All life is a continuous reorganization of elements through consumption and redistribution controlled by the interplay of the communal structures. More life and better life consists of an increase of the potency of this capacity -- primarily at the social level. Improvements of quality depend upon improvements in the ability to handle quantity.

The very concept of an abundance economy signifies an increase of symbolic "mass" in which the old inequalities are abolished. Tomorrow even the slaves must live as kings -- and the kings must extend their desires to the point at which an even greater abundance emerges past the threshold of instability.

Sustainability is a foreign concept in all non-growth societies. It does not represent an alternative to growth but rather an outcome -- an operation of growth to the point that abundance becomes widely distributed. If this sounds like "top-down" trickle economics that is only because people fail to acknowledge that all effects, even the most "grassroots" take effect under the guise of top-down modifications.

THE TRUE IDEOLOGY IS MUCH MORE INSIDIOUS

2009-07-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

The true mental zeitgeist of our age is an epidemic of cynicism. Today the average citizen is joined with the ideological theorist and the regressive elements in government, joined in a single great supposition: "Governance fails. Business-as-usual is toxic. Leadership is suspect. High hopes are thwarted by the need for approval from the irrational masses. Grand vision is mere propaganda."

It reminds me of the old joke about American Republicans: They believe that Government doesn't work and when they get into office... they prove it.

The worst regimes behave precisely as if they believed what the cynics and radicals proclaim -- the system does not and cannot function. It should not function! This viewpoint is a demand. This pervasive Operating System is complicit in the Great Crime. It normalizes the attitude which itself imprisons the change potential within our social mechanisms.

A leader stands before a great crisis, shrugs his shoulders, saying "What can I do? The people will not let me do anything! They system will not let me do anything!" This is the complaint of the progressive and of the cynic. This is the claim with which the fascist seizes control, the excuse offered by the monolithic state. It is the obscene chuckle shared by the regressive members of parliament. They all believe it.

It is the 'bad self esteem' of society. Though it thinks itself pragmatic, diagnostic, progressive, it accepts and reinforces the idea that the entire body of social functions cannot succeed. Is this not equivalent to a doctor examining a patient and saying, "Your brain "leader" says you want to be healed but I just don't see it happening. It's business as usual throughout the rest of your body -- so the only thing I can recommend is a radical dis-engagement with the structure of your body, setting your cells free to reform into cooperative networks... if they can."

And then the body oozes onto the floor...

GROWTH DOES NOT EQUAL PROGRESS

2009-07-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

There was a news story today which perfectly captures the mental zeitgeist that i spoke about earlier, about the all-pervasive political/economic inertia that has infected the modern world.
The story dealt with the (unsurprising) refusal of countries at the G8 meeting to make ANY concrete commitments to drastically reduce carbon emissions.
‘"I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So let me be clear: Those days are over." Said Obama.
But by the end of the day... leaders of the most developed nations again declined to commit themselves to any specific actions now or in the immediate future to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming -- actions that would require increasing energy prices, raising taxes or imposing other unpopular economic measures on their people.’
Instead they made vague pronouncements about voluntary targets of 50% less carbon dioxide by 2050, far too little and far too late, even with sufficient political will, which was sorely lacking.
This is the epitome of short-sighted political self-interest; ‘leaders’ proving themselves unwilling to undertake any actions which might make them unpopular in the eyes of their ignorant constituents. How profoundly sad it is that we let these individuals of such narrow vision dominate the decision making process.
We have become psychologically locked in a perception that the most important economic measure is growth, and yet the kind of growth pursued by industrialized countries is fundamentally no different than the runaway cellular growth of a malignancy which eventually destroys its host. This is what human beings have become on this planet- a cancer, spreading unchecked.Real progress needs to be measured by a different set of values, ones less concerned with overall GDP and more with basic issues of sustainability and maturity. Of course, this would severely impact the business-as-usual mantra of free-market fanatics and globalization zealots, so nothing gets done, and every single living thing on this earth will have to bear the price of this incredible stupidity.

The Authoritarians

2009-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

The research work of University of Manitoba's Bob Altemeyer on the nature and structure of Right-Wing Authoritarian personalities is available in an a non-technical, breezily written online PDF book, and is essential viewing/reading for anyone interested in the kinds of extreme personalities that are the dominant voices and actors in the impediment of social progress globally, and what we can do about them.
After all, we cannot fight against an enemy we know nothing about, and as G.I. Joe said, "Knowing is half the battle!".
This work confirms much of what one half consciously suspects when, god forbid, one tries to have a rational discussion with a political or religious 'true believer', but it is all based on rigorous research and so is immune from charges of mere opinionationism.
There is an objectively measurable difference between progressives and retarders, and we must ourselves be clear on this distinction and use it to affect positive change.

THE END OF CIVILIZATION AND THE NEW DARK AGES

2009-07-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

Change is slow, particularly the kind of change that is needed if we are to avert global catastrophe. Everywhere inertia reigns- ‘debate’ rages on in the media while the foundations of our prosperous, safe, and healthy way of life begin to crumble away.
We are addicted to our own ignorance and the promise of a quick fix technology that will swoop in to save the day.
By the best estimates from a variety of reality-based sources we have between ten and fifteen years to turn things around. This means a cessation of our entire industrialized economy and infrastructure in favour of low-impact sustainable alternatives. It is not enough to switch to compact flourescent bulbs and recylcle bottles and newsprint- the deadly fiction of unrestrained growth must be purged from our minds and our actions.
The problem is, people are stupid. I don’t say this to imply that they lack intelligence, although a great many of them do, but merely to point out the fact that almost no one is capable of seeing and understanding the incredibly complex sets of interrelationships between actions, organisms, and environment on this planet. This is what i mean by stupidity; we lack the very cognitive capacitites to grasp the whole picture. We constantly see ourselves and our actions in a vacuum, our self-reflective consciousness forming an insultated bubble separating us from the rest of nature.
But human beings are, biologically speaking, no different than rabbits or bacteria. We all operate according to the same fundamental, inviolable rules, despite the political and economic fairytales we tell each other.
And any species which multiplies unrestrained, consumes all its available resources, and pollutes its environment goes extinct. There is no other outcome.
Of course, our technology provides us with a window of opportunity, where we can seemingly pursue our dreams of growth while mitigating the negative consequences. However, this is an illusion, at least in a strict sense. The terrifying reality is that there is no concievable way six billion human beings can live on this planet at anywhere near the level of quality we take for granted.
And so the urgent call for change, real change, goes out. But it is not answered, at least not on anywhere near the level needed to fend off mass collapse. Politicians and pundits argue on endlessly, or throw out legislative sops- foolish and useless compromises meant to give the appearance of proactive action while in reality serving as a cover for the continuation of suicidal business intrests.
We are constantly pacified, told that if we make a few painless lifestyle changes we can do our part for the earth and avoid destruction, but it is all a lie.
There is nothing any one individual can do to prevent catastrophic climate change, indeed, there are many who feel we may already have crossed the threshold of irreversible damage.
All we can do now is to collect together as many likeminded individuals and implement rational strategies for the creation of new societies in those areas of the globe which will be the least physically affected.
Human beings do not respond well to crises. Cut off from support and denied basic resources we turn savage, reverting to a state that expresses the worst aspects of our tribal instincts. This thin veneer of civilization we have built up for ourselves, founded as it is upon ‘cheap and abundant’ energy and a stable environment, peels away as quickly and easily as a sticker on a piece of fruit. To see the most likely future of the american continent one need only look to the most pathological and desperate failed states of africa, and glimpse what is in store for us unless the strictest measures are taken immediately.
Only one thing is certain beyond any doubt: radical change will come. Whether this becomes an opportunity for a new world of justice, abundance, and intelligence, or spells the end of civilization and the start of a new dark ages remains to be seen.
Personally, my feeling is that the weight of rabid nationalism, pannicky apocalyptical fervor, and selfishly ignorant reactionism will overwhelm the capacities of more balanced individuals to deal with these global threats.We must put into motion plans to preserve both the literal and metaphorical seeds of civilization- preparing for the unthinkable, but doing everything we can to stop it.

NEW & COMPLICATED PROSPERITY

2009-07-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

>Anyone who has ever toiled in a garden has sooner or later learned that if a weed is not uprooted it will simply grow back again.

Who will decide the weeds from the flowers? Can we ourselves be trusted? The first requirement is for testable tools of evaluation -- better gardeners & better gardening schemes are needed.

>Why does this happen? Is it a lack of intelligence? No, not really.

By "society" we mean a power that is either (1) variably responsible, or (2) utterly irresponsible. To improve or to replace our inherited schemes of social organizations requires that we exceed them in the accuracy of our knowledge of the world's habits and the potency of our ability to compile this information. "Intelligence" is the precondition for "capacity."

>Conversely, a truly free society has little interest in trying to maintain the disequalities that are foundational to the breakdown of order and are the main generators of violence. A free society organizes itself to maximize prosperity for everyone, not just a few at the ‘top’.

Kurt Vonnegut writes in CAT'S CRADLE that the great mistake of America's Founding Fathers was their failure to provide a legal limit upon incomes. The general power of wealth fails as long as its pressure is always drained into deep, narrow wells.

Most likely a flexible "target" level of wealth is desirable, incentivized by our regulatory frameworks. If animal bodies get too hot, or too cold, in any of their parts, they quickly sicken and perish. This wisdom is the heart cybernetic self-regulation but it is everywhere opposed by the oligarchs and their simple-hearted popular supporters.

>The solution then, as i have been advocating throughout these posts, is the restructuring of society along deliberate, radically free, values-based lines.

First we must have agreements upon the categories for the new values. We need to decide the groups, their inter-relations, and then -- how to test them.

>... no sane populace should feel under any obligation to continue to support or validate such an utterly corrupt system.

If we could find an utterly corrupt system this would be the correct course of action. However we find only relatively corrupt systems -- which we must simultaneously oppose in their inefficiency and support in their struggles against less efficient systems. The Perfect and the Not-as-bad will live together or die apart.

FREE! FREE! FREE!

2009-07-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a fantastic book available in audio format that i would encourage everyone to listen to! It goes in depth into a lot of the peripherally expressed issues on this blog regarding the nature of information and its impact in shaping the future, based on the premise that as information as a resource becomes more abundant its becomes freer and freer, both in terms of cost and capabilities.
Well worth checking out.

PROSPERITY FOR ALL EQUALS FREEDOM FOR ALL

2009-07-05T07:07:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has ever toiled in a garden has sooner or later learned that if a weed is not uprooted it will simply grow back again to cause further trouble. We live in such a half-blind society that takes an approach to its problems like an ignorant gardener- pruning away unwanted leaves while the roots of the ills that beseige us grow ever stronger and more entrenched.
Why does this happen? Is it a lack of intelligence? No, not really. The clearest answer to this dilemma can be found when we ourselves take pains to examine the actual causes of our social concerns, such as crime, poverty, familial breakdown, etc.
When we do so, we see that the very structure of our society, with its vested intrests and powerfull controlling minority, is the ultimate causal factor.
Why do we have crime in our society? It is because of the way our society is built.
Why is there poverty in our society? Because our society is based on exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.
So clearly, any society that is the cause of its own problems is ill-equipped to provide their solutions.
Conversely, a truly free society has little interest in trying to maintain the disequalities that are foundational to the breakdown of order and are the main generators of violence. A free society organizes itself to maximize prosperity for everyone, not just a few at the ‘top’. Freedom is autophilic- self-loving, and seizes every opportunity to grow and expand its reach. The only way to counter it is through direct opposition, that is, through the establishment of social structures that work constantly to impede it. Thusly we have an educational system that actively resists free inquiry, a legal system that favours wealth and discourages the search for truth, a political system of narrow, static options that claims to represent the wishes of tens of millions of individuals, and an economic system that pursues profit at the expense of life itself.
The solution then, as i have been advocating throughout these posts, is the restructuring of society along deliberate, radically free, vlaues-based lines.
The rational person, seeing that something no longer functions, discards it, rather than expending inordinate amounts of energy and resources propping up the failure. A prime example of this short-sighted self-destructive method is to be found in the response to the economic meltdown (itself the result of a pathological financial system). Instead of taking the opportunity to educate the public and work together to find equitable solutions to help the true victims (complitic though they may have been), ie. consumers, the government instead dumped nearly a trillion dollars into the very institutions whose practices led to the crisis in the first place. This is not intelligence at work- it is fraud, on a massive scale, and no sane populace should feel under any obligation to continue to support or validate such an utterly corrupt system.

A MEDITATION UPON FREE SOCIETY

2009-07-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

The natural impulse toward Nationhood is always steering toward a learned definition of "the nation." Today's task is to impress upon hearts the only one viable nation -- the whole human life-world. Supplementary to this task is an encouragement for those temporary fantasies of post-nationalism which describe the hinterland between yesterday's regional-ethinic nations and the Grand Planetary Politics of tomorrow.

Dangerous to nations, as to bodies, is the rogue growth of contracted power-knots whose historical regime is called "oligarchical rule." Often the institution of the divine monarch has been the liberating counter-balance to these knots, weilding the symbolic force of The People against the irresponsible acquistiveness of the private dominators. The liberating use of the Emperor is too often occluded by that undeveloped sentimentality of the masses which ignorantly accords an special status to whomever occupies an elevated platform.

Yet monarchy is a primitive mechanism whose ability to constrain social collapse fails in the case of personal corruption or a traumatized populace. So Constitutional Monarchy, and then the Democracy, were developed to inhibit the regression of the social field. These are eminently praiseworthy but our Democracy suffers still the idiocy of "parliamentary team-sports," "one man, one vote," and several other self-crippling mechanisms which inhibit its efficacy. Our duty today is to drive this movement foward, taking advantage of health, education & relative safety as a stage from which to launch new social networking patterns that MUST operate with greater intelligence, vigor and effectiveness than the systems we have inherited.

Truly, people are not ready to govern themselves -- lacking the will, knowledge and capacity to pursue their own satisfaction -- but this goal must hover above all those who advance new teams & new hierarchies which will feed upon the disunity which once appeared as the enemy of governance, and whose authentic social navigators will discern maps in what was anciently deemed to be a loose chaos of competing cultural activities. We must produce that One Nation that is the best factory for growing Free & Potent Persons, and creating networks that do not renounce governance but... exceed it.

The Consequences of Freedom

2009-07-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

What are the consequences of a society oriented towards radical freedom? What becomes of the artificially forged ‘unions’ known as nations?
If we recognize that the nation’s push for unity is a natural outgrowth of what can be termed the homogenization of control, then when this restraint is removed a new form of organization emerges- one given readily to a multitude of loosely interrelating groups. That these groups will be in creative conflict with each other is a given, but it is this very conflict which is necessary for the growth and development of society as a totality.
Unity, in the artificial sense, is a breeding ground for stagnation, and as mentioned above, merely the pretext for a supra-controlling structure to be put in place. This structure has generally been known as the government, and the etymology of the words that it uses to describe itself give us clues as to its nature. The term government originates from the latin gubernare, meaning to steer a ship. Those who govern then, see the people, whether explicitly or implicitly, as needing to be directed and guided by an authority, lest they drift blindly into the rocks and are sunk. Similarily, on examining words such as leader, and politics, we see patterns of meaning which reinforce a very real disequality between those in charge and their ‘charges’. Afterall, to lead is to show the way, which presupposes special knowledge not available to those being led. How they come into posession of this knowledge is never directly revealed, but we can see it as a watered down version of the legitimacy that monarchs claimed for themselves: divine decree. The leader is imbued with this quality of otherworldlyness, claiming an inherent authority which is nonetheless dressed in secular vestements. Politics pertains to the citizenry, who are understood to owe an alegiance to the state in exchange for its protections, and so on and so forth.
It is a language of heirarchy, nothing more. A free society, when considered in the light of what genuine freedom entails, proceeds from a point of disunity, and yet this disunity is not equivalent to disorder, or chaos.
A radically free society has no need of unity because it does not involve itself in the business of controlling peoples’ lives. How then is it to function, or go about the task of defending itself against assault?
If we construct for ourselves a system of democracy, in its original formulation as direct citizen decision-making, then we must also accept the consequences of its premise of equality. That being, if all are equal, and none should ever come to hold dominion over others, then we must all bear the responsibility for fulfilling and maintaining this delicate balance of power. We must each of us become the enforcers of our collective security, each of us must become the peace officers commited to holding order and creating the socio-political space where freedom can flourish. We must all become the living embodiment of the law and its application in our dealings with one another.When there are no ‘authorities’ then there remains only the authority of life as lived by those who are aware of themselves.

THE GERM OF VIOLENCE

2009-07-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

Social Engineering.

Exhibit A:

Fresh from fighting TB and AIDS in Africa, Gary Slutkin returned to his hometown of Chicago to discover epidemic levels of violence. Why not combat this social ill with the tools and tactics usually deployed against viral evils?

With strong confirming studies from several universities and now the U.S. Dept. of Justice the CEASEFIRE (video) program is poised to move from a few Chicago suburbs to a much grander scale. Or at least we hope so -- both for its immediately benevolent effects and its illustrative power as an example of progressive social engineering enabled by hybridized genres of research.

The formal presentation of destructive social behavior provides numerous strong correlations to the problems of disease control -- similar graphs of transmission, similiar public response and the same kind of philosophical resistance which plagued our attempts to deal with... well, the plague.

In Defense of Social Engineering

2009-07-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

In a previous post i stressed the need for us to uncover and apply the ‘rules’ for a functional society- rules based not upon tradition or emotion, but grounded in high-quality and correct information.
As an example i mentioned the field of engineering, based as it is upon mathematically rigorous physical laws, as a good model to follow.
Now obviously there is no direct equivalent between the unambiguousness of a discipline like classical physics, which leaves little room for personal opinion, and the much ‘messier’ realm of the social sciences- however, recent research in fields such as biopsychology and cognitive physiology are providing us with new understandings of the complex behaviours and actions of human beings. It is not unresonable to suppose that within the next few years we will achieve a broad consensus regarding what people need to best function in any given environment.
Perhaps it is time we reappropriated a term which has fallen into deserved repute: social engineering.
Traditionally social engineering conjures up images of the state trying to control or influence what people think and how they act, which historically leads to very undesirable outcomes, but we must also remember that the legitimate purpose of a government should be to implement broadly accepted standards for the benefit of the whole society.
How those standards are arrived at is the very ne plus ultra of areas like law, education, and economics.
For instance, the purpose of the standardized western education is to prepare students for their future roles as productive members of society. It is a model built on 19th century notions of conformity and segregated learning. Every subject is concieved of as separate from the others, built on an accepted foundational corpus that must be mastered through rote memorization and problem exercises. It is a very fragmented, rigid approach to knowledge, which while fine for an heavily industrialized society is wholly inadequate for the realities of contemporary existence.
We now know that all things are interrelated, and that the boundaries between one discipline and the next are largely fictional. We also know now that not everyone learns in the same way, and that various styles of knowledge acquicision are needed. Similarily, the greatest contributions to any field are the direct result of pragmatic problem solving- experimentation, exploration, trial and error- rather than the strict application of static facts and theories.
In short, we need a dynamic revolution in basic education if we are to confront the issues facing our future. The point is that there is a correct way of educating the members of a society, one based on proper research and non-ideologically driven information.
This then is the true and proper meaning of social engineering: discerning the most effective and efficient strategies for achieving our goals, and then implementing them. Of course, we must forst have a clear understanding of what those goals are, so we must engage each other in a dialogue about what we value, and find our agreements therein. In our education example then, it might be argued that the ultimate goal we should be pursuing is not the creation simply of a class of 'workers', but the creation of fully functional adults who are emotionally mature, capable of thinking clearly, and able to search for, collect, and efficiently process new information streams.
It may well be that social engineering will turn into one of the most important tasks of the next twenty years.

On somewhat of a tangent, here is an interesting video from MIT on the subject of engineering for the ecological age. Enjoy!

CULTUROPATHIC REIGNS

2009-06-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

Culturopathy is a sickness of the Right -- & of that Right which even calls itself the Left. Who are these? Racists-once-removed who denounce America or Empire with the same snide tone that once, and still, accuses the Jews. Soft sadists who empower facist regimes with their demand for non-judgement and non-interference. Intellectual sentimentalists who reject their "gut" as if it were the same monster of powers which the simple conservative imagines it to be...

Right-winged culturopathy is hysterial & psychotic -- given to theatrical accusation and periodic public murder. Their politics has the form of the poorly trained small-town guard dog who knows its place only when it barks widly at intrusive foes and friends alike. Beliefs, loudly held, are tools with which to denounce. Wonderment is voiced without curiousity. Meaningless and shallow discrepancies are constantly "uncovered" in the speech of those with complex and extra-local instincts.

Left-winged culturopathy is neurotic, emotionally shallow, given to an empty mixture of pessimism and humanistic idealism. Typically it rejects human beings in favour of History & Society and it weilds self-destruction in its affirmation of toothless ideals... whose actual reign would be an open invitation to all of culture's enemies both human and non-human. Here is a vapidity masquerading as openness, a sorrow becoming weakness rather than depth, a life-thwarting cynicism which always says that "they, The Powers" work inevitably against "us, the sane & sensitive" -- a paranoia against the Gut rather than from the Gut.

HOW TO CHANGE

2009-06-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

When we look, i mean really look, at our world, we quickly see that very little of it actually works at anything near an optimal level. The vast majority of the solutions we have devised to make our lives better have been burdened with unintended consequences that decades after their inception threaten to undo any of the supposed gains we claimed.
Too often tradition is our guide, even as the concrete realities that undergirded those traditions have shifted, usually in radical ways.
Those who agitate for a return to the old ways embody most clearly this tension towards the notion of progress, but we must tread a fine line here between what is useful from the past and what is an impediment.
Progressives all too readily fall into the trap of dismissing aspects of our shared cultural heritage simply because they percieve them to have been superceeded by new and technologically superior methods. Afterall, no one listens to music on a grammaphone, or tunes in to the radio as their primary source of news and entertainment. And yet, in our rush to become modern we have recoiled with embarrasment from many of the concepts that we will have to revive if we are to successfully navigate the coming global storms.
We need to take stock of our past, and examine it thoroughly, sifting it for ideas and techniques that above all demonstrate their functionality. If we use our newly created values map, it will help us in determining what is useful and what is merely an artifact of a less enlightened time.
In some areas, such as agriculture, we will need a return to a more traditional structure, one that does not rely on massively energy-intensive monocultures, but instead incorporates smaller, local, organic and permaculture based solutions.
At the other end of the spectrum, we can and must take advantage of technical innovations in the field of manufacturing, by applying digital fabrication-on-demand methods to the creation of the physical objects we need.
In the most fundamental instance however, we have recourse neither to advanced technology nor tradition to guide our way. This of course is the series of questions directly at the heart of the human experience- what is the purpose and meaning of our lives? The choices presented us so far have been found severely wanting: either the denial of the self beneath blind obedience to religious dogma, or the dead-end selfish persuit of material pleasure and comfort at the expense of all else.
Both of these narratives are pathological, both of them extremely non-functional, and invariably stand as the root of all our current problems and struggles.
But the changes that will need to happen cannot be imposed from outside, by the state, for this is the road which leads to tyranny, paved as always with good intentions and broken bodies.
Quite frankly, human beings must evolve. The real revolution takes place within the awareness of each of us, as we learn how to be more. If this sounds trite it is only because we have become so corrupted within ourselves that anything presented to us as genuine seems like a cruel joke.
We have become debased, the currency of our humanness devalued to the point where the making of a profit can justify the sacrifice of millions of lives and the literal destruction of the natural world.
We are told constantly to consume more, buy more, do more, spend more, eat more, indulge more, travel more, relax more, watch tv more.
I say no.
Consume less, buy less, do less, spend less, eat less, indulge less, travel less, relax less, watch tv less, but...
BE MORE.
We are now at a point where for the first time in history we can consciously decide what the future will be like. This is our power- we need to use it wisely.

THE SOCIAL ENGINE ROOM

2009-06-28T05:54:00.000-07:00

Social engineering is an ugly phrase -- heavy, non-dancing, useless by its lack of poetry and invisible become of its omnipresence. We are all constant social engineers for society is nothing but a massive swaying of All by each, informed by understanding (such as it is) and empowered by technology (such as it is).

We are doing it, so let us do it well.

Let us have the courage for Truths along with the stomach for contingency, the living ethics which can against deploy creative Truths, legislative Truths whose origins are in the harmonics of natural complexity, the commonality of the human and the terrestrial templates, and who are brought to life again and again, over aeons, by the acuteness of the philosopher and the effectiveness of the social conversation. The effectiveness of its protocols...

The Breaking Point

2009-06-27T08:32:00.001-07:00

The coming global civil war is coming between those who want a truly progressive society based on sustainable values of freedom and respect, and those who want to rule through fear, deception, greed, and power.
There are no such things as unbiased facts, disinterested politics, or neutral applications of the law. Human beings are not capable of functioning as discreet abstract systems, impartially acting according to some noble-sounding set of principles. This is a peculiar psychological holdover from the enlightenment era which neither reflects nor embodies the concrete psychological and biosocial realities of our being. There is no ethics apart from actions, no justice apart from circumstances, and no proper decisions can be made in the absence of information. There is a direct correlation between the amount of information available and the quality of decisions based upon it.
Every one of our social systems and institutions are careening towards non-functionality, and need to be reprogrammed. We are burdened by the legacy of structures predicated on poor quality information. We must bring to our broader social structures the same rigour that we have established in the realm of engineering. We need to discern the rules for a healthy civilization and apply them relentlessly.

Education
Law
Business
Government
Transportation
Communication
Economics

We need new models for all of them, new experimental programs for an open-source society.

Violate copyright
Refuse to work
Live as a scrounger
Become a tinkerer/maker
Collect, process, and distribute information
Build the network.

On confronting facism

2009-06-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

Facism invariably arises as a response to percieved social and economic crises, cynically manipulated by demagogues for their own personal power. Clearly then the best antidote to this kind of thought and action is to begin to eliminate the fertile soil upon which it flourishes. That is to say, we must begin to truly open things up, provide opportunities for the disenfranchised to
improve their lives and circumstances without resorting to scapegoating or demonizing other human beings.
Most of all, we must all constantly work at providing the counterpoint to these outrageous lies and accusations, revealing them to be the baseless bigotry that they are by always appealing to solidly based facts and reason, rather than emotion and opinion.
The silent majority must undertake the burden of its responsibility to guide society in a new, constructive direction. We can longer afford to be complacent, sitting back on the sidelines, watching everything fall apart in the name of some kind of missplaced tolerance or laissez-faire approach to freedom. It does no good to remain silent or apathetic when so much is at stake, when the language of the opposition grows ever more incidiary, and words begin to give way to actions.
What is desperately needed is an integrated strategy, based on common values (as previously outlined), that breaks down both the psychological and actual borders between the various moderate groups of individuals.
The social structure must be defended against the creep of extreme right-wing ideology, that growing spectre of facism that casts its poisonous shadow over the free lands of the earth.
There is no reward in remaining complacent- not when so much is at stake. We should not lull ourselves into believing that this cannot happen in this day and age, after all, one need only look at the headlines to discern the deeper currents of discontent and rage that are simmering just unde the surface, threatening to boil over. And as the economic climate grows ever more precarious these tendencies will only increase, becoming more overt, more tloerated and accepted as legitimate. Add to this the burden of a literal changing climate, and you have a recipie for a distaster of unprecedented enormity.We, the hitherto silent majority, must arm ourselves, not with guns and weapons, but with information, tactics, and strategy, if we are ever to have any hope of deterring this rising tide.

The reign of the culturopaths

2009-06-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Culturopathy is that distinctly anti-intellectual strand of right-wing political expression which is currently dominating most forms of popular media. The truth is, thinking is hard, and critical thinking, beyond the stale idiocy of reactionism, is harder still.
The culturopath is one who elevates a cultural standard while denying or opposing its foundational principles- namely, rationalism and free inquiry. They hold up always a golden ideal, rooted in the past, usually mythic, of a time when all was right, and decry how far we have fallen from that state. It should be no surprise to find that most culturopaths are decidedly of a literal religious bent in their nature, readily identifying with the genesis narrative of a great fall of humankind.
The culturopath thinks with their gut, using emotion as the arbiter of truthfulness. Everything is reduced to opinion whilst being cloaked in a pretext of fact. Naturally, the defense of such vaporous ‘facts’ comes not in the form of well reasoned argumentation, but through a shouting competition- he who yells the loudest is the most correct.
That these bigoted, anti-intellectual voices have come to dominate much of the cultural discourse reveals a great deal about the sorry state we are in.
This is culturopathy- the state when a culture becomes diseased and begins to rot. The real creators of cultural content are under a growing assault by this reactionary contingent, who themselves contribute nothing of substance- only more and more pathological rantings and lashing out.

TWO FORMS OF POPULAR SUPPRESSION

2009-06-23T11:21:00.001-07:00

A government that suppresses public uprisings without regard to their harmlessness or righteousness is justly condemned -- but it may at least, cynically, be described as hysterically rational. These regimes themselves are often an outcome of past mass-movements and so are understandably wary of any unexpected popular signs from among the people.

In the attempt to prevent curious citizens from accessing "obscene" sexually suggestive online materials there is no such proven history of danger to the regime. Nor is this form of content control likely to succeed as the basis of a future mechanism of popular control. We are witness here, in all likelihood, to an even more dangerous sign -- hysterical irrationality.

LIBERAL & CONSERVATIVE TASKS

2009-06-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

The true conservative task -- to protect and advocate for our ancient imperialistic, regional & animalistic instincts.

The liberal task -- to produce, by activism and critique, many new instincts of superior comprehensiveness, accuracy & moral sensitivity.

Options for engagement on ABORTION DEBATE

2009-06-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

...

HUMAN LIFE is not equal to HUMAN BEING.

Recently Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee debated this question. Stewart is assumed to represent a socialist-progressive (Left) position and Huckabee presents a religiously conservative (Right) attitude.

Stewart concludes that both sides "dig in" at certain points in the argument -- the Right unwilling to budge on the value of every human life & the Left pledged to the sovereignty of women over their own bodies and the necessity of freedom from government when making difficult health and well-being decisions.

A very modern phrasing of an old rivalry of political instincts.

Historically, we expect that individual sovereignty as a conservative issue -- while extending human rights to all beings involves liberal sympathies. We know that the Right prefers simplicity to consistency and happily rejects many authentic conservative attitudes (ecology, free choice on use of intoxicants).

So what is left for the Left?

We must not (apparently I have been absorbed into them) concede to the Right wing argument that "a human life IS simply a human life."

Social cooperation to prevent unwanted and unsafe pregnancies is, of course, common to both sides, but the progressive attitude must be to make better and finer distinctions. The superstitious fantasy is that a person becomes itself suddenly, absolutely, all-at-once. Yet the experience of pregnancy demonstrates stages of coming-to-presence which continue as phases of childhood outside the mother's body.

Children are for some time only partial agents who are only progressively entitled to full human citizenship. This is a legal precendent for asserting degrees of humanization.

An embryo, child or adult is always in a variable degree of human being. For safety we relinquish full human status from enemy military personnel and extreme violent criminals. The very reason that we can even debate "pulling the plug" on an extended vegetative coma victim is that we detect some ambiguity about his or her status as a human being.

However there is virtually no ambiguity about "human life." Either is has human DNA and lives -- or it doesn't. The attempt to center the debate around this apparent simplicity is another example of the classic Right wing phobia about ambiguity, its refusal to participate in the negotiated decision making process & its superstitious enslavement to the whim of biology (which it often calls "God").

Without minimizing the difficult involved terminating even a partial human being, we need to carry this debate to:

HUMAN LIFE is not equal to HUMAN BEING.

Differences in the depth of sentience, the complexity of functions, and the degree of presence in the world are constant factors in our real life estimation of how we behave with each other. In fact, disturbingly, many people may observe more "humanity" in an adult dolphin than a human fetus. We mustn't let our own sympathies or even the nation-spirit's impulse to produces as many of its own as possible prevent us from thinking our way through to a comprehensive model of variable sentience and life-value that is applicable to both humans and animals and, perhaps, yet-to-emerge AI.

This is a troubling argument but unless we assert that the value of a human being is a variable quantity distinct from human life, we will continue to lose ground against anti-abortion rights activists. They must not be allowed the false "common sense" security of their "life = life" assertion. Wherever possible its inner conflict must be exposed and contrasted to the liberal "simplicity of real experience."

Options for engaging the WAR ON SHARING

2009-06-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

It is obvious that a healthy culture must legally encourage creative individuals. Likewise the role of government must occasionally include intervention in the private sector when failure to act will result in catastrophic social effects. Neither of these concerns apply directly to the debate over "sharing". It is unethical, immoral and illegitimate to craft Laws for the purpose of protecting the sales of a particular industry.

The corporations who thrive on packaging, promoting and arranging commercial sponsorship are not essential to the function of a free society. Their fate rests solely upon the decision of consumers to purchase their products or not. Despite the long history of criminal practices in the motion picture and record industries they deserve our sympathy as stake-holders in the current cultural situation -- but this sympathy cannot be legally extended into the form of special protectionist rights.

Copyright Law does not require a "fundamental rethinking" for the digital age. This school of Copyright Revisionists have long existed with a single aim -- to promote their profits at the expense of public interests. Legitimate laws protecting creators and inventors from the resale of their materials by other parties during their lifetime are fine but this is not an open invitation to a feudalism of intellectual property claims.

It is quite obviously within the rights of all human beings to :

(a) not support an industry through the non-purchasing of their merchandise.

(b) to freely share purchased materials, included information patterns, with whomever they choose provided they do not offer it for "resale without considerable modification."

(c) to freely create sharing systems, in the manner of public libraries, which provide a free alternative for access to information and entertainment.

Options for Challenging Unethical Internet Laws

1. Make the moral and legal case in favor of sharing with people who are not online.
2. Vote for your local chapter of the Pirate Party or their affiliates.
3. Disregard unjust laws and encourage others to increase their reliance on file-sharing.
4. Take advantage of emerging software systems that protect anonymity and elude regulations.
5. Have no fear of outrageous criminal prosecution -- this is the free gift of a podium on which to call out the immoral actions of the government in response to the doctored data and ridiculously self-serving claims of old media promoters.
6. Refer to the pro-sharing population as the mainstream and constantly assert your position as the present, intrinsically-held feeling of the majority.
7. Acknowledge the valid points of the opposition argument before denouncing them.
8. Struggle only succeeds when it is informed by reality. Take time to "let go" of your need to be released from the limitations of the current situations. Attempts to evade the current web of relationships limit our ability to steer into future benevolent arrangements.
9. Print and distribute your opinions on this subject, or those found in congenial resources such as the declaration of principles at http://docs.piratpartiet.se/Principles%203.2.pdf
10. Hold or attend private and public gatherings designed to symbolically demonstrate support and to discuss options for benevolently steering society in the appropriate direction.

Q & A on TERRESTRIAL NATIONALISM, pt. III

2009-06-19T08:22:00.001-07:00

Q. Won't people naturally gravitate to old and local nationalistic sympathies?

A. This is a great danger but it describes already the world we are living in -- rather than a possible danger of tomorrow. What we realize is that older nationalities are largely the result of education and cultural experiences -- a fluid a shifting process that is constantly building and dissolving national boundaries. The danger posed by local nationalities IS and WILL BE massively dangerously and virtually un-policable unless it is countermanded by an equally strong set of commonly shared images, ideas, experiences and communications.

Q. Aren't there more pressing problems that establishing a Terran Nationalism?

A. No. Our pressing concerns are biospheric mismanagement, toxic and irresponsible diet, nationalistic militarism between and within countries, global economic mismanagement, human rights horrors, violent disagreements about the custodianship of bioregions and cultural traditions, mass displacement, slum cities, collateral damage from mass-scale habits of industry, the threat of 'redneckery' and fantacism in all nations, etc. All the most pressing problems must postulate solutions at the level of global social organization, holistic ecology and specifically human ethical dilemmas. The vision and motivation with which to solve our most urgent difficulties all depend upon the intensity of widespread feeling for the total 'terrestrial' frame.

Q. But don't people hate each other?

A. The natural and learned patterns of antagonism between disparate and similar human beings must be subsumed in the image of the global commons. Those you cannot stand are still tolerable as long as they are working on the same 'project' as you. The worth of participatory membership is extended and exerts a cooling effect on the normal dislike which arises between strong stylistic and capability discrepancies.

Q. How important is this?

A. In order that we do not perpetually face a destructive divide between those with progressive global/human sympathies and those with nationalistic emotional sympathies we MUST do everything in our power to produce an epidemic of planetary nationalistic sympathy which will align both all levels of political and intellectual complexity in human individuals.

Q. Doesn't this kind of viewpoint come from personal efforts at self-cultivation?

A. No. Individuals who get high inner refinment are lucky enough to have been born with the circumstances that helped them undertake the necessary self-efforts. Cultural and ecological support is necessary to produce even the most autonomous morally elevated individual. It is the duty of higher levels of insight to produce the conditions in which more people will gravitate to such insight.

Personal growth and political action can both promote a vision of the dynamic social well-being of the entire world. And, frankly, the mass-scale dangers are so enormous that we cannot wait for the general population to grow individually into an enlightened disposition. We now need to supplement this an active persuading of their nationalistic instincts.

Q & A on TERRAN NATIONALISM, pt. II

2009-06-19T08:20:00.001-07:00

Q. Aren't the ideas of human and planetary just more mental limits?

A. They are important mental tools. We have urgent planetary problems in all domains of society. We need to live up to our duties on the broadest useful political stage where the most massive effects occur.

Q. What about non-human and extra-planetary situations?

The articulated concern for "all sentient creatures" is so far only a human event. It is by amplifying our humanity and our shared culture that we will increase our power to understand and care for the greatest range of creatures, both on this planet and wherever the sphere of cosmic humanity might expand into relationship. The cosmic embrace of tomorrow depends upon our work today to produce and stabilize the global human environment.

Q. Are humans a common nationality?

A. We share a basic electronic language into which all our natural languages are translated. Additionally we have the historical default language of new English. Also we have a common territory in the Earth and a shared history of globally significant events.

Q. What events are globally significant?

Distant events from general human history like our "witnessing" the total annihilation of the Neanderthal species, the discovery of fire and symbol language, the invention of the city, etc.

Recent mass history such as World Wars, the attempt of global organizational bodies (UN, G20, IMF, Greenpeace, InterPol, Nuclear Treaties), the fall of the Berlin Wall, the World Court, 9/11, 6-4, etc.

Also personalities which have provoked strong international media response such as Princess Diana of Britain, US President Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, Hadron Collider, Gandhi, Stalin, etc.

Recent humanizing technologies: a/c current, internet, international space stations, human genome project, etc.

Q. Why does global human nationalism require a patriotic emotion?

A. Smart, well-meaning people often don't do what is necessary to prevent the effects of corrupt social systems and to create more effective and benevolent systems. The patriotic feeling is the fuel which builds a potent nationality and drives those who understand to take real ethical action.

Q. Won't people naturally gravitate to old and local nationalistic sympathies?

Q. Aren't there more pressing problems that establishing a Terran Nationalism?

Q. But don't people hate each other?

Q. How important is this?

Q. Isn't the development to a "world-centered, humanistic" outlook a function of individual self-cultivation and evolutionary refinement rather than indiscriminate political concerns?

A. No. The natural 'upwards' migration of individual sensibilities, evidenced by many individuals and small groups in the past, does not occur on its own. Rather it is always supported and enabled by the cultural situation in which it emerges in terms of resource surplus, education, moral encouragement, protection from attack, artistic richness, science, etc. Those who have fluked into such a benevolent circumstance are obliged to return the favour by doing everything in their capacity to create such situations for others -- especially by promoting the emotional and symbolic frame out of which to maxime this events. The necessities of the world and the potential for mass effects mean that 'elevated concerns' cannot afford to be the privilege of the most internally sophisticated. There must be an alliance between all levels of sophistication in the human species and a willingness to accept that pro-human stupidity, while not ceasing to be stupid, is superior to sub-human stupidity and reinforces the demand of a higher vision.

Q & A on PLANETARY PATRIOTISM, pt I

2009-06-19T08:19:00.001-07:00

Q. What is a nationality?

A. A shared cultivated identity with common speech, history, war, finance & art.

Q. What is patriotism?

A. Natural instinct of loyalty to your land and its families of creatures.

Q. What, thefore, is nationalism?

A. Emotional empowerment of nationality by patriotism.

Q. What is Planetary Nationalism?

A. Political feeling of emotional loyalty to planet Earth, all human beings, and the productive balance of the whole biosphere.

Q. Is there such a thing as Planetary Nationalism?

A. For several centuries people have been having motivated political reactions to the entire "frame" of the World. The impulse of large commercial corporations to move forward through globalization is one example. Another is the wildfire growth of environmentalist causes. Ever time we look in horror and disgust at unethical behaviour perpetrated by agents of one human sub-group against another -- violated their common humanity -- we are being called to a level of planetary political concern.

Q. What are the causes of Planetary Nationalism?

A. One critical contribution comes from electronic technology which presents all of us in a simultaneous world theater and impresses us with a common interest in geo-historical events that affect us all. Conventional electricity is also harnessed in most of the impressive transport vehicles which allow the shipping of people and supplies quickly to distant locations.

Q. Haven't there been humanism & globalism for a long time?

A. Yes and no. Periodically some people have expressed a broader intellect and wider circle of compassion but prior to the last few centuries the "whole world" was mostly a guess for the majority of human beings.

Q. Isn't nationalism a source of trouble?

A. We only can see this trouble because we compare it a senior principle of international human civilization and existential worth. The saintly individuals of history, real or legendary, demonstrate a forceful push-back against sufferings needless inflicted upon human sub-groups.

A REVOLUTION IN VALUES, PART III

2009-06-19T03:14:00.000-07:00

If i were so inclined as to write a quasi-manifesto on the subject of the new global values, here is how it would look, in bullet-point form:

Freedom (to act without repression)
Agreement (as the basis of equality between free individuals)
Respect (the willingness to treat another as equal)
Sustainable (ceasing exploitation of people and the earth)
Cooperative (an end to the mindless competition for profit)
Open (free sharing of ideas & tech for the benefit of all)
Lawful (the living embodiment of values instead of rules)

These are just a start, but are sufficiently ‘deep’ to accomodate most needs, and could be expanded as necessary. However, there is a good argument to be made for keeping things simple. All social, political, and business systems of the future will be based on these values, but it is up to us right now to begin building institutions according to these principles.

A REVOLUTION IN VALUES, PART II

2009-06-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between the christian who quietly professes his faith through charity and works and unconditional love, and the raging fundamentalist who would quote scripture to spitefully condemn those who do not share his views? Which of them is the true christian? Does it even matter?
What is the difference between the muslim who lives his life peacefully in service to allah, respecting all those around him, and the al queda suicide bomber, filled with rage against the infidel? Which of them represents the true teaching of islam? Does it even matter?
The difference between them has nothing to do with belief- beliefs are irrelevant. Everything comes down to values.
It is here in the arena of values that the true battles are fought. And it is here that the new global culture will emerge and harden itself like an insect emerging from its metamorphosis, steadying its wings in anticipation of flight.
For the one thing that will link us all together will be the values we hold in common, arrived at through agreement rather than passed down as the pronouncements of some ideologue. We may hold the greatest diversity of conflicting beliefs, but with a singular vision we will act in unison to achieve our goals.
So just what are these values then that we should all embrace?
Well, for starters, freedom.
And not the watered-down kind of freedom that we are plagued with in our so-called democracies- the ‘freedom’ to consume mindlessly the thousands of different products put out by the six corporations that control everything, the ‘freedom’ to be perpetually in debt just so we can have some place to keep all our stuff.
No, the freedom i speak of is much more intricate than that: won through the hard labour of the self, unwilling to be casually traded in exchange for frivolous entertainments.
This is the kind of freedom that anchors one to the true world, and terrifies the corrupt and decietful, because it cannot be bought or sold like a trinket the self-styled ‘powerful’ bestow upon the unworthy masses as a token of their superior benevolence.
This freedom is the birthright of all human beings who are aware enough to claim it as their own, and act upon it.From this all else will follow.

A REVOLUTION IN VALUES, PART I

2009-06-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

What is value?

If we as a global culture are to define ourselves according to a new set of values, should we not at least take a few moments to consider what value actually is?
So, what is value, and how do we create, and relate to, it?
Value is that quality of the self, projected outward, that embeds itself in ideas and objects in order to generate a certain feeling of recognition or connection in us. It is the process of locating ourselves in the tangible materia of the world.
Value is the indefinable residue that remains behind when all other qualities are stripped away from something. It is supremely personal because it is in some real sense already-existing-as ‘us’.
To create value in a thing is to bring more of ourselves into it, through an act of awareness, a kind of devotional ‘noticing’.
Those objects which lack value- the mass-produced detritus of pop culture- do so not because they lack craftsmanship, but because they lack attention. To a child a stuffed bear becomes something treasured precicely because he ‘sees’ it intensely, pouring himself into its form as though its were a pure recepticle for the potency of his emotional being. And when after many years the aesthetics fail and the fabric becomes thin and worn, such an innocent and naive object retains its value. For the adult the process is hardly any different, only differentiated by a matter of degree. The great power we hold is the ability to abstract ourselves into intellectual and political philosophies, wholly divorced from the constant forms of youth. But it is here too that we create value, in the idea of each other as worthy of attention, as deserving to be ‘seen’. This then becomes the basis of empathy and compassion, those strong threads by which we bind ourselves to the world and each other and find the ability to remake society according to that ‘vision’.

A QUICK NOTE ON ‘THE BIG FOUR’ INTERNET BOOGEYMEN

2009-06-19T02:28:00.001-07:00

In my last post i mentioned that the recent attempts at internet censorship have as their justification the stated goal of combating terrorism, piracy, child pornography, or hate speech. I would like to make it perfectly clear that while i and all decent people everywhere rightly abhorr such things, i don’t believe that restricting the medium of their expression is either practicle or desirable.
Only a fool thinks that viewing a website makes someone into a terrorist, or that erradicating naked pictures of children will eliminate child sexual abuse.
These are merely online expressions of real-world actions and attitudes, and that is where they must be dealt with.
Censoring or otherwise shutting down these expressions serves only to drive them deeper underground, where they fester and eventually emerge in more virulent forms.
Of course, despite their protestrations to the contrary, governments know this just as well as i do, which is why no one should for a moment believe that all this is anything other than an absurdly transparent sham, a devious ploy to exercise further control over the lives of free human beings.

THE INTERNET WAR HAS BEGUN

2009-06-19T02:23:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time before legislators’ oppressive tendencies finally caught up with the freedom-enhancing technology of the web.
Perhaps we should be grateful to have had over a decade of truly free internet access- warts and all (alas, such IS the price of true freedom!). Unfortunately, it is only now that this medium is coming into its own, becoming the powerful tool it was always intuited to be, capable of forming the basis of a genuinely participatory decentralized global democratic movement, empowering individuals the globe over to take back their lives and their world from the dominion of corrupt social systems and political regimes.
But now all of that is under threat. The news stroies are showing up more and more frequently. Supposedly ‘democratic’ nations such as germany, australia, canada, and britain, all are in the process of trying to pass (or already have passed) legislation that blocks certain undesirable websites, censors access, restricts what users can or cannot do online, criminalizes the open sharing of information, or makes it legal for the government to monitor your private email or other communications, all in the name of security.
Those on the side of these measures typically trot out the same tired arguments that have been heard and disproven countless times before. Usually they posture with one or all of the Big Four internet boogeymen: Terrorism, Piracy, Child Porn, and Hate Speech (throw Hackers in there for good measure too).
The problem is that methods used to block these vile threats are indiscriminate, easily capable of dampening ANY views or websites the censoring body deems innapropriate.
It’s just another layer of control, an attempt by the government to insert itself into the only genuinely free medium the world has ever known.
Freedom is not a halfway thing, a partial accomodation with repression and tyranny. Freedom is free- unrestrained, but bearing a greater share of responsibility in order to balance that openess. Ultimately, the governments of the world want to act as our parents, making decisions on our behalf as to what we are entitled to see and do with our lives. And for the most part we are more than willing to go along with this, playing the role of children, desperate to be led and told what to do- for our own good, of course.
But this dispicable manoeuvre is bound to fail. It’s simply too late to put the geenie back in the bottle. We have gotten a taste of the possibilities, and are loathe to let them go without a fight. It won’t be long before this technology becomes fully democratized and uncontrollable. ISPs, subject to rules and regulations, threats and intimidation, will be things of the past, vanished in the face of direct user to user networking. Like a chain reaction in a nuclear explosion, the internet will become uncontainable, spreading without limit.

TIANANMEN SQUARES, DADDY-O (pt. 2)

2009-06-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

lola hiroshima writes:

"[...] any group willing to use armed force has demonstrated itself to be based on an illegitimate kind of power and is not deserving of respect or consideration. Force is coercion, and coercion implies a lack of agreement. And where there is no agreement there is no equality... Any society which professes to be based on equality and nevertheless uses force has betrayed its foundational principles."

Violence is bad.

Anybody'll tell ya that.

And it does make the Other into an inferior or a mere "it" upon whom to discharge force.

But still... sometimes...

I reject the idea that human equality is either the true or even the claimed foundation of civilized societies. It is only an easy one to talk about. The true virtues upon whose shoulders we stand are much more slippery and elusive. General equality before the Law is a hallmark of democratic states but this represents only one partial way in which we try construct the best social system. And which kind is best? Those which functionally deliver the maxim freedom, safety, happiness, meaningful, health, fairness, creativity, love, and intentional self-cultivation (or 'development').

The entrenched force of simplistically corrupted social systems is enormous and it demands different actions from us at different times in intelligent response. When the effect of not acting violence will be a greater violence, then it is entirely justified -- even demanded morally. The rest of the time, however, we must exercise other options.

Violence is an emergency response which is qualified both by the legitimacy with which it comprehends actual danger, distinct from the merely upsetting, and the degree to which it deploys with intelligence, comprehensive coordination & sublime sensitivity.

The fact is that almost all political violence has yet not earned the right to call itself "political." It is too often merely terrorism, vengeance or delinquency. Therefore we must become responsible political agents by ROUTING our intense reaction to the horrors of violence INTO our clear thinking on the subject of what action must be taken at any given moment.

Violence must be smarter than it has hitherto been, and that is most commonly the decision to "not act" but rather to learn, communicate and ignore unjust laws with a good conscience. A smart violence must sanely weighs its effects against the specific structures or people it attacks. It must know well and suffer the repercussions and backlash of its deeds. It must, must, must strive passionately to avoid inflicting injury and humiliation upon the innocent AND it must include, in the category "innocent," even those who have not perpetrated anything more than emotional and intellectual upset.

And it must actively work against the temptation to provide the temporary sadistic outbursts of otherwise "good and obedient folk."

The ethical imperative requires us to place the decisions of harm into the most understanding and sympathetic hands. Such hands will naturally resist this weight but they must be made to bear it.

When the decisions of destruction are not made by the best among us -- they will still be made & so the Best shall bear the guilt of deeds acclaimed by the Worst.

Our bodhisattvas and saints fail us when they turn over the most dangerous forms of resistance into the hands of those lacking intellectual and moral refine, lacking grace of character, lacking nuanced understanding or basic human sympathy, or slaved incomprehendingly to a diabolical and murderous interpretation of some ancient book.

Those with the greatest circle of compassion must become willing to be generals as well as prophets, disobeyers, renunciates & disseminators.validation principle which can be intersubjectively assessed relative to the options for action.

Violence or non-violence for what?

Obedience or disobedience for what?

The shared articulation of Core Virtues, upon which our ethical systems rest and towrads which our creative social action must orient itself, knowledge of core virtue, toward which ethics is trending, upon which social activities must be assessed, is our primary tool. In the urgent battle against corrupt systems everywhere we must share clarity upon the principles which validate, or do not validate, our efforts toward the Free and the Good world that may yet come to pass.

TIANANMEN SQUARES, DADDY-O (pt.1)

2009-06-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Chinese call it the 6-4 Incident.

In English we say, "Tiananmen Square Massacre."

It was an hysterical mass crackdown on the mourners keeping vigil for the dead communist reform-politician Hu Yaobang. The State-Machine in Beijing perpetrated violence and intimidation whose extent is still unknown to a world scarred by the imagery of unarmed civilians menaced by legions of armored tanks.

Yes, China has proven itself a weak government by its paranoia that any visible public movement (e.g. Fuln Gong, friends of the Dalai Lama, etc.) could spell its imminent sinking into the turbulent irrationality of the Un-Organized China. Not a very "harmonious" way of viewing the world.

It is also very significant to notice that the content of the June 4, 1989 incident was that of mourning.

Contemporary Right Wing forces around the world have shown themselves to be characteristically opposed to the healthy feeling of remorse. Consider the regressive American Republicans who denounce Obama as an "apologist" for the U.S.A. There was French president Nicolas Sarkozy who ran for office promising to avoid the "demagoguery of repentance." And Vladimir Putin in Russia who has consistently been concerning about the danger of "brooding over the past" and responding to "unjustified remorse inflicted upon a Great Nation to serve the purpose of Outside forces who wish to take advantage of its weakness."

Wow. Get those guys on the psychiatric couch, already. The late Russian dissident-novelist Alex Solzhenitszyn spoke in his last interview about the inability of a nation or a social system to advance in strength without adequate mourning and repentance. His own nation fairly recently slaughtered 6 million of its own citizens.

Grieving is a process.

"We should clearly understand that only the voluntary and conscientious acceptance by a people of its guilt can ensure the healing of a nation."

-Solzhenitsyn, The UK Independent News.

20 Years after Tiananmen Square

2009-06-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

The recent twenthieth anniversary of Tiananmen square serves to highlight the extreme difficulties that reform movements, whether political, economic, or social, face when confronted by the entrenched power of state and corporate opposition. Invariably these standoffs result in a massacre, as the ruling elites have few compunctions against using violence to maintain control. Throughout history those who have sought change through peaceful means have encountered the violent resistence of the status quo. Of course, one can always uncover a few seeming success stories amongst the carnage- the overthrow of british rule in india, the civil rights movement in america, the fall of the berlin wall- but these examples represent a conflux of unique social and historical circumstances and do not reflect the general pattern. The truth is that most reform movements end in failure, or else accomplish their aims either too slowly or too partially to ever be considered as truly successful.
Unfortunately, the problems now confronting us are of such grave magnitude that we cannot afford these compromises, and yet the options available to us are seemingly limited. Are we to respond to force with armed resistence, as the majority of 20th century revolutionary movements did? No, for any group willing to use armed force has demonstrated itself to be based on an illegitimate kind of power and is not deserving of respect or consideration. Force is coercion, and coercion implies a lack of agreement. And where there is no agreement there is no equality. This moral standard is just as valid when applied to us as it is to them.
The ability of one group to exercise power over another group, or of one individual to exercise power over another individual, represents the ultimate failure of human equality. Any society which professes to be based on equality and nevertheless uses force has betrayed its foundational principles.
So how is a movement to counter these effects?
DISOBEY.Stop following the rules- rules which you have had no part in crafting and which do not serve human intrests or values. We need to stop participating in our own enslavement, by becoming educated and revealing the system for what it really is- a corrupt tool used to supress human freedom.

THE GOBLIN COMMONS

2009-06-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

Public streets are host at dawn to the many cracked windows

& shattered public lamps of night.Goblins have been out and about. Their liberating acts of defilement are valid but tiny, tepid and insignificant.

Truly, it is a meager joy that leaves the world uglier in its wake.

The Insane People's Republic of North Korea (IPR of NK) announced publicly (June 2009) that its anticipated nuclear arsenal will only be used for legitimate national defense and, of course, a totally justified "merciless offensive" against whomever disturbs their "dignity and sovereignty even a bit."

They will massacre everyone if anyone dares to make them feel upset? This sounds almost like they are begging to be destroyed. It will certainly turn the major powers of the world even more strongly against them. Who does that? Probably, despite its better elements, a suicidal state crying out for help...

Systems which diagnose themselves as corrupt will initiate self-abnegation procedures. Consider: Nazi Imperial Germany. You couldn't find a more clear attempt by a people to nullify themselves. Sending all your best and brightest to die in futile, mismanaged wars that even the army opposes, rounding up whole segments of the population and slaughtering them, smearing history, chasing out good business and scientists, destroying cultural vitality everywhere and finally suicide in a bunker after killing your loved ones? These people we not amoral geniuses -- they were a disease attempting to eliminate itself.

In Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons," we are asked to observe the commons-destroying effect of self-interested, rational herdsmen trying to share resources. Yet the problem is not the rational individuals whose self interest, as every ancient Greek philosopher new, was only a incomplete ethical perspective which true rationality would produce. The real trouble is goblins.

Goblins: Biopathic, culturopathic, emotionally and vitally conflicted agents & communities, or quasi-conscious parts thereof.

Although Hardin's insightful subtitle for his essay is, "The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality" he focuses too greatly on the problem of ethical naivete on the part of quasi-rational men instead of the much greater threat posed by willfully, if often unconsciously, destructive individuals (or parts of individuals).

Why did our species not simply learn its lesson from the first wasted commons?

1. Ineffective means of recollecting and collectively interpreting data.

2. The ongoing effect of individuals and masses of individuals who do not realize their own nihilistic and self-destructive instincts.

The problem is not the decision between an unregulated commons and privatized ownership. Huge numbers of people exist who will point out what is obviously wrong with both options. Only a hybrid alternative has any credibility at all.

The Dalai Lama, an open Marxist, has long called for the eco-cultural autonomy of Tibet within the military-political and economic nationhood of China. Whether this can succeed or not we see in it at least an attempted hybrid solution worthy of our interest as we endeavour to define the commons upon which our future thought depends.

The threat, however, lies precisely in the same two factors which have doomed every other Utopian politics --

Poor intelligence exchanging practices

And goblins.

WELCOME TO UN-CORP

2009-06-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Washed up the Coasts of Capital

It is easy to demonize so-called "corporations." These public bodies are not solely defined by their structural primitivism & the history of their misuse since the time of Queen Elizabeth the First of England. Just like every other kind of human group, these chartered webs of intelligence-sharing can be characterized as more or less intelligent, more or less efficient & variably healthy in bodies, emotionalities and psyches of its participating members.

Consider the "incorporated" ant colony that I observed the other day in a wooded field. As I watched these little black-and-red critters moving bugs, grubs and crumbs, hither and yon among the grass blades & sticks, it began to astonish me how really haphazard was all their activity.

This was not the well-organized, efficient hive-mind army that I am always hearing people discuss. These beasts were chaotic. Wandering up and down along pheromone-trails, apparently at random, hoping to bump into something delicious and end up luckily back at the entrance to the colony. Tasty morsels were moved a few inches, dropped, forgotten, moved in another digression by another ant or two or three. All in all I would have supposed their were aesthetic landscapers, just slightly modifying the location of objects until it "feels right." Then wandering off.

As I pondered their goals I began to realize that my "them" was a problem. There is no law which says all the ants have to have a steady level of intelligence shared by all of them. Was their behaviour constant or varied? I watched longer and observed that periodically a few ants would join together, "quickening" their intelligence, working out a protocol and then intently moving the object back towards the hive. As long as this little tornado of a "field" stayed active they were moving on task. The rest of the time they were exploratory bunglers who -- as it well documented scientificially -- will sometimes follow each other in a vast circle until they die. Self-destructive stupidity with occasional arisings into trans-personal intelligence.

So to was history -- with many peaks of culture and few sustained or protected. So it is also with the Corporations. Unfortunately their constant shifting of managers and dominant coporate "pragmatic wisdom" has too often left the vulnerably weak in the face of toxic emotionality (subliminal nihilism, cynicism, sadism, etc), imbalanced skill sets (cogntive, ethical, etc.) and archaic habits of decision making (one person in charge, consensus, majority vote, etc.).

Both the re-tooling of existing corporate protocols and the potential establishment of alternative models of public corporation require an in-depth understanding of how to select people, how to train people, how to effectively interface them with each other and how to ensure vigorous and responsive action following intelligent decisions.

We need to produce and reinforce the 'smart ant' vortecies.

Finding Common Ground

2009-06-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

The tragedy of the commons holds that “multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen.”
There is a crucial difference however between the notion of the commons as a wide open free for all, and that of it as a managed, albeit communal resource. The problem is fundamentally one of human behaviour, rather than a deficiency in the idea of the commons as the shared heritage of any particular group.
And yet the advocates who propose greater private property rights as a solution to the tragedy of the commons always neglect to answer a basic question of access- just who should own that resource, and under what rights. In other words, how are we to avoid disparities in access from becoming tools of opression, as they clearly have throughout history?
Obviously, once privatized, a commons is no longer common.
If we accept the basic tenents of the problem (which some do not), is the only antidote really the restrictive effects of private ownership? Afterall, under what basis can someone claim a right of ownership that is not merely a financial stake? And does this stake serve any better to protect the resource, which should be the penultimate concern, or simply hasten its final exploitation?
Are we as a species really that incapable of acting in mutual self-interest? Surely we can come up with alternative arrangements that satisfy both the requirements of individual users, and the need to preserve the resource.
More importantly, we come face to face with the question of what exactly constitues the commons in the first place. What is its role in the future of human survival?
How far do we extend the reality of a commons: to the biosphere, outerspace, culture, genes?
It is in the formulation of these questions of limits that the battle between corporate intrests and human intrests are thrown most sharply into relief.The ongoing struggles for the creative commons, open technology, and the free flow of information will come to define the next decade, and will determine how much of the world and its content remains accessible to everyone.

Their Business should be our Business

2009-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

People are in general beginning to wake up to the fact that they have forfeited control over their lives to transnational corporations, however, few have any real ideas what to do about this situation. There seems to be several approaches taken, with varying levels of success- none of which can fundamentally solve the problem. Primarily there is the spreading of consumer awareness, educating the public about the consequences of their choices as buyers. After this comes a period of increasing ‘media literacy’, where individuals learn to see through corporate propaganda and the misuse of media in its effort to draw attention away from these critical issues. The next stage usually involves some form of direct action- boycotting, protesting, internet activism, etc.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much where things leave off, with a growing popular awareness but little impact. Percieving and defining the problem and its sources is significantly easier than constructing a satisfying alternative. Indeed, this is often the very taunt of the global capitalist- our system may be terrible, but what alternative do you propose? Activists must retreat into silence, or else repeat the litany of globalism’s excesses, as though this would be sufficient to produce lasting change.
For this project to continue forward, and create significant results, we must first of all come to grips with some uncomfortable truths, ones which we would often like to ignore. The major one of these is that both business and globalism are instrumental in bringing nations out of poverty and increasing the standard of living for much of the world. We do ourselves a disservice by pretending otherwise. Of course, none of this mitigates the grotesque excesses which are threatening the fabric of our social and natural ecology, but only serves to point out that there are structures and tools utilized by global capitalism which are extremely effective at producing results.
Any truly sustainable revolution will have to be comprised of both a shift in values, and a shift in technique, with the former driving the latter.
Trying to fight corporations is untenable because we lack the tools needed to do so. Legislation primarily serves the interests of corporations, so turning to the government is no help either. What we need is to create our own structures, our own anti-corporate corporations which can exert as much leverage as their counterparts but in a beneficial direction. We need to become the producers of the sustainable products and technologies we wish to consume. We need to approach business not as the enemy of freedom and democracy, but as its most effective expression. Natually, this will require a complete rethinking of what business means- what ist purpose is, how it operates, the nature and role of profit. All of these things are feasible, for one simple reason: there are more of us than them. Corporations, unlike governments, cannot survive without our consent. And while a government can coerce its people into obediance, no corporation yet has the power to force someone to buy its products. We can abstain. Obviously, they can and do engage in manipulative and decietful practices to get us to consume, and work hard to narrow the range of true options available to us in an effort to dominate our lives, but they will always remain critically dependent on our dollars. This is the lifeblood that must ceaselessly flow through their corporate bodies if they are to survive, and we have the choice regarding what to do with this money. A modestly sized network of ten million people, each contributing twenty dollars, can easily create a fund worth two-hundred million dollars. This capital can be used to fund sustainable businesses completely outside the sphere of traditional financial and corporate institutions. They would have the freedom to define their own terms, to compete against corporations through innovative, sustainable products driven by an appeal to the higher values of consumer-citizens.

Here is an interesting essay on the nature and history of corporate metabolism.

LOYAL MINISTERS APPEAR

2009-06-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

role for governance in massively decentralized futures

"When the great Tao is forgotten,

Kindness and morality arise.

When there is no peace within the family,

Filial piety and devotion arise.

When the country is confused and in chaos,

Loyal ministers appear."

New technologies effect our thinking in new ways. The appearance in the 20th century of distributed electronic networks has impressed us with new suppositions regarding the most effective and righteous methods of running a society. And in the process we have come to see the enormous role that decentralized networks have played through human history.

The view through this new lens is provocative but also tells a cautionary tale -- in which organic networks of individuals have contributed to the creation of surplus vital and cultural energies, only to have circumstance and corruption set us back into tension, depression & savagery. Too often we have seen toxic and small-minded social forces generate the oppression and dissolution of humanity's achievements.

Many good people have dwelled upon this historical problem, and many more still suffer today in diseased, calcified and starving cultural zones. It has become a very significant problem to envision a better tomorrow but our philosophies have revealed only the general contours and abstract necessities of what must come to pass for the good of all people. The specific steps that will bridge our contemporary world with its best possible outcomes are still obscured. We know that the production and exchange of cultural intelligence is critical in order to move forward but we still need to establish the specific steps involved in social transformation.

The example set by the Communist reformers of the early 20th century should impress us with the need for caution. The far-reaching insights of Karl Marx and his affiliates brought about cultural catastrophes when they attempted to embody the emergent patterns of the new socius. One of their greatest failings was the inability to distinguish between regressive & progressive networks of human relationships.

In order to promote any forms of social activism we need to be able to provide a framework for the ethical validation of benevolent activism, and for the sake of coherence we must derive this from the principles of distributed intelligence itself. The ethical validity of these modes of engagement must emerge from their integrity to a form of human cultural exchange which is intrinsically ethical -- and this must be demonstrated and announced in order that it might become a tool for the Heart.

We have too often seen the example of primitive culturopathic forces destablizing and capturing social networks while expropriating their functional aspects. Today's world is innundated with a plague of flexible, intelligence-sharing networks of politically activated individuals taking moralizing action to re-pattern society but who are nonetheless agents of evil & decay.

From the vile al Qaeda networks, to the perverse webs of individuals who promote the criminal slaughter of abortion doctors, to the anarchic destruction of excited mobs, we know that high-level decentralized intelligence systems are readily hijacked by shared simplicities of structure and common emotional and biological pathologies. A network IS only as good as its inputs and outputs but the same goes for its communication hardware (human architecture) and its replicable protocols for the exchange of data & verification of data.

This is where true politics continues to have a role -- not of proxy "rulers" who take the place of intelligence-compiling networks but as a the capable guardians whose constant effort is to enable positive group functioing and disable corrupt group functioning.

Individuals who function as hubs for the other nodes of a given net are the political entities -- philosophers, leaders, civil servants. Many social systems have failed due to the eerie fascination that the status and power of leadership exerts upon individuals who are not otherwise temperamentally inclined to the intellectual and moral tasks of a leader. Even when -- not too far off -- much of the direct organizing is done at mega speeds by socially facillitating softward there will continue to be a call for individuals who are moved to the task of duplicating the sytem within themselves and assisting in the orchestration of its behaviour.

Regulations must be created such that repression, restriction and rules are creatively minimized without the anti-cultural effects of political non-intervention which so dramatically decrease people's collective capacity to deal with arising circumstances. Those who take on the challenge of this dance between old and new world are the authentic political agents who are currently needed.

As the great historian Eric Hobsbawm points out, "Globalization" is a fact in commerce, science, art and virtually all domains with one glaring exception - politics. The nation-state model, the minimalized successor to the mass system of Colonial Imperialism already outdate and proving itself daily to be inadequate to the needs of human survival and thrival. Ethnic insurgencies of every kind are evidence of the broadly felt impulse to break down the nation-state. However there must be no return to a gangland world of supersitious and predatory tribalism. Instead we must modify the decentralization of power, technology and culture by laying the social safety nets to accomodate precisely these events. As the number of pixels per square centimeter increases, our eye is drawn more sharply to the images which cross the entire screen. To prevent culturopathy there must be efforts by individuals to produce the trans-group systems which will be the social glue between freely networked individuals in a global future.

This, then, is the political task that stands before us -- to observe the unwinding techno-psychic context of tomorrow, to understand and communicate it, to differentiate between its vital and nihilistic elements and to be its defenders and promoters within the world that currently dominates this Earth.

Strategies and Suppositions

2009-06-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

Pascal writes:

"Crucially, there must be "political individuals" to recognize this situation and accomplish a feasible transition to healthy networks of this kind. Perhaps the self-canceling social systems are themselves only unhealthy, unintelligent versions of these networks. What are the half-way steps? How do we prevent toxic networks and what protocols can be established and tested for the sensible production of these anti-mass political bodies?"

If we accept that the goal of politics is primarily involved with the organization of power, and that corruption occurs when this function is externalized into control over others’ actions, then right away an antidote suggests itself. This is twofold- first is the need for as much independence from the system as possible; second is the technological means for distributing intelligence. These two factor are intertwined, meaning that an impact on one will adversely affect the other.
So far, historically speaking, we have had a great deal of the former, but little of the latter, and now that trend has reversed itself, in that the prominence of so-called ‘social media’ applications makes it possible for a multitude to rapidly network and assert its power. Unfortunately, as long as we remain dependent on corporations to create these tools, both hardware and software, and governments to sanction their use, then the possibilities for true freedom will remain only half realized.
The ‘political individuals’ of the future are the informed ‘activists’ of today. I use this term in its broadest possible connotation, implying not merely those who hold signs, shouting in protest about this or that issue, but individuals actively engaged in the restructuring of society. This restructuring can take many forms, in fact, the less traditonally organized the better. To be an activist, implies, at heart, the ability and capacity to act. Anything which furthers this capacity is a step in the right direction.
Even seemingly simple things, such as writing a blog, cutting down consumption, growing food, searching the net, can all be considered forms of activism.

1) How do we prevent toxic networks?
The most critical thing is to have clear and concise information, and a strategy for utilizing it (finding, filtering, compiling, processing, and distributing it). It may sound cliche, but knowledge IS empowerment. A network is only as good as its imputs and outputs- the information flowing through it. The key is to achieve enforceable standards which are as deeply inclusive as possible without running the risk of becoming epistemologically meaningless. This can be done through a process of independent reinforcement. Information which is valuable (‘useable’) will propagate itself through multiple nodes in the network. Interfacing with it will tend to reinforce these connections, strengthening the network. Ultimately, the best defence against bad (read: corrupting) information, is freedom. An openess to critical and contrary viewpoints serves to filter the information we must deal with.
[note: i intend to write further regarding the best way to deal with the volumes of information we are confronted with daily, as this is a key problem that needs to be addressed for our development to continue.]

2) What protocols can be established and tested for the sensible production of these anti-mass political bodies?
If you are asking how we will know once this kind of network has established itself, then all i can say is that we will probably be able to judge by its effects in the world. Primarily, we will begin to see a breakdown of so-called ‘traditional’ social structures, for example, the decline of traditional media, and its replacement with digital alternatives.
Also, keep an eye out for an increase in repression, restriction, and rules- the three R’s of all failing social systems.
Other than that, if you are referring to a plan of action for implementation, well, that is jut something that will have to evolve organically through time.
As far as i have been able to determine, the single most critical step is the creation and distribution of information, basically what we are engaged in right now.

MEMBERSHIP IS KILLING US

2009-06-04T15:12:00.001-07:00

Fake Blood,

Real Louisiana Swamp Magick,

& the Perils of Tribalism

>> The sexy rural town of Bon Temps in HBO's True Blood soap opera is from Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries. Scientists in Japan create a synthetic blood which satisfies the physical hunger of the Vampires. Relieved, they come out of the closet to join the human population. A hot dark situation.

Vampires are potent social symbols. They represent drug use (addictive blood), gay rights(alternative sexuality), harsh racism (humans vs. mere humanoids) and they also carry us away into the elusive mysteries of deep biology -- longevity, healing, amplified senses, psychic powers and obscure evolutionary possibilities. Thus the undead blood-drinkers elicit and illicitly vast web of subliminal responses. It makes for engaging television -- but what about the moral message of the show?

Moral message: membership status is toxic.

Vampires don't need to kill humans but they keep doing it compulsively -- in obedience to their Old Laws which treat humans like cattle. The nation-like behaviour of the Vampires is constantly generating sadistic torment and brutal predation. Humans are no better. These good rural folk use their sense of historical nationalism to justify oppression, exclusion, torture and murder of vampires... and whomever associates with them. Membership > horror.

Obviously we need to participate deeply with each other. The old "us"-feeling should never be neglected. The point, rather, is that an authentic sense of intersubjective cultural membership is quite distinct from anything like tribal or national membership. Inbreeding exclusively with close family-members produces genetic weakness -- not purity & conservation of strengths. Religious and ethnic nationalism spill constantly over into genocides. Tribal hillbillies in every nation are a threat to the peace and security of the entire human civilization.

And backwards-thinking businesses always want you to REGISTER, JOIN UP, BECOME A MEMBER before they will actually allow you to participate in their piddly little website.

Why do corporations, religions, and educational institutions have such psychosis about "getting and increasing membership?" Is a clever result of their sublime pragmatism or are they just running old, retarded, minimally-adequate social instincts that were learned under the millennia of Agricultural Imperialism?

Look, we know that smarter group decisions are produced by the greatest formal variety of participants who can demonstrate a low but necessary skill set -- but we don't let coherent, ethical, informed Kenyans vote in the Canadian federal election. Why not? Instead of selecting voters based on demonstrated participatory-capacity, we use historical registery of members (i.e. names of people certified to live directly relative to the beuracratic adminstration of th e north half of North America, excluding Alaska). It is no surprise then that Canada -- like every other nation -- often gets very dumb results out of its social democracy-machine.

Like Kierkegaard, we must critique any Christendom that consists merely in those people who mark the box beside "Christian" on the official polling questionaire.

We humans have been using written symbols for a very long time and it may have helped us to go a little crazy. We over-value "on paper" proofs. We ignore the obvious foolishness of doctors whose ability is based on a small, framed piece of paper. It seems to us that we have no better system for validation! So we hire inadequate employees because we check their history of being registered as certified as a member of given community of practictioners... rather than actual capacity tests.

What would better validation tests look like? We need to figure this out. One intriguing example is the cyber-guardian for website access -- typing an obscured set of numbers & letters to prove you are human rather than machine. Although this difference may be quickly eroding, it is certainly an example of a real-time skill upon which participation-access is based... rather than rotely asking to see a symbol which marks you as a member of the historically valid group.

Now maybe they'll stop asking us to JOIN UP!

Blood-suckers.

Mass Politics and the Failure of Government Part 2

2009-06-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

What should be clear to even the most casual observer is that past a certain threshold the notion of government ceases to have any functional ability. It becomes corrupted, as power is systematized and institutionalized and directed further and further away from individuals.
The marriage between corporate bodies and governmental bodies is an unsurprising outgrowth of this process, since the corporations are structured in precisely the same way, and pursue the self-same goal of maximizing efficiency (in the pursuit of profit), regardless of the externalities involved, whether these be people (politics), or the environment (industry).
Since there is no functional mass democracy, simply voting for one political party or the other makes little difference. A great many individuals in western industrial countries seem to recognize this fact, and their noble decision to abstain from contributing to the farce is predictibly regarded as disinterested social apathy by the corporate media.
What then is the solution? Greater political involvement? More independent parties? Unfortunately, there is no political cure to the disease of mass society. The very concept, as an extension of industrialism, is fundamentally and irrevocably unsustainable on this planet.
What this means is quite simply the collapse of society as it is currently organized. However, this doesn’t spell the end of either some form of human society or culture, merely that they would exist in a radically different form.
What is needed is true democracy, mediated directly by the people, without the intrusion of secondary representatives or the burdens of ineffective legal, financial, or educational systems.

We are at a point now in our technical evolution where this kind of organization is possible, where the social unit can take the form of a decentralized network of self-motivated individuals, operating in accord with their mutually-held sets of values.
How is this networked collective different from a so-called representative government?
Representative government is heirarchial, with nested layers of effective power leading up to a central deciscion maker. It is classically pyramidal in structure, concentrating power at the topmost echelons. This assures that, while providing the claimed ‘legitimacy’ of the ruling elite, the masses themselves are thoroughly devested of any actual power over the direction of their lives in any but the most superficial ways.
Contrasting this, a networked collective has no center-point where power gathers in an unchecked manner. Power is distributed at all places along the network. Every point is the ‘center’, and influence and power propagates nonlinearly.

Interestingly, such networks are oriented towards best serving humanitarian ends, ie. responding quickly and efficiently to disasters while governments get ensnared in proceedural debates. A netwok can act instantly once it has formulated a goal, and correct itself as it progresses, without the need for authorization from ‘up high’. At the other end of the scale, a network quite naturally acts to defuse violence and confrontation, since all of its actions instantly propagate throughout the whole structure, self-interestedly encouraging peaceful resolutions. Additionally, since there is no central authority that can order members to attack a target- all decisions are made by morally culpable agents who cannot transfer their responsibilities onto a leader.

Mass Politics and the Failure of Government Part 1

2009-06-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

The industrialization of society was the deciding factor in the influx of populations into cities, which in turn necessitated a politics of the massive, a way of dealing with large groups as a cohesive unit. The multiplicity of political viewpoints was streamlined and concentrated into the two seemingly opposed ideologies of liberal and conservative. But an ideology, and its party affiliation, works constantly towards ever greater homogenization of individualism in order to maintain its identity and systemic efficiency.
It is, after all, structured to mobilize the body politic as a whole, and dissuade the fragmentation that comes from a genuinely open inquiry.
For no mass society can long tolerate a truly competative marketplace, whether intellectual or economic, as such competition would act like a solvent, threatening its frail bonds.
And so the concentrations of political and economic power are invested into ever more rigid definitions of the social system as being something fundamental to the functioning of the populace, something inevitable and inescapable, for which no alternative options could exist.
But a paradox emerges from this effect, as industrial societies become more politically and economically consolidated the promised returns of those foundational systems become less and less.
Why this occurs is simple; the tools used by societies to organize themselves are incapable of operating properly on mass scales. Their inevitable outcome is the reduction of the human being into the consumer- a consumer of goods and services, and a consumer of prepackaged political opinions.

The industrial populations of the twentieth century, as a consequence of this industrialism, were too massive to ever be governed in any truly democratic fashion. Indeed, the very notion of governance is counter to the tenants of democracy as a collection of individuals who will determine the rules by which their society should function. In truth, there has never been a socio-political ‘ism’ of the massive capable of effectively dealing with the multiple-millions in the modern nation-state.
Only individual-based networks embody the principles necessary for the functioning of large groups, but even here these groups will tend away from class, ethnic, or national identities, and will instead arrange themselves along mutually-shared lines of value.

Why should it be that the larger a society grows the more ineffective the social system it is predicated upon becomes- regardless of whether that system is socialism or capitalism?
It is because social economics is not grounded in the physical realities of limits, but instead, being an abstraction which nevertheless must deal with tangible realities, seeks to expand its capacities heedless of the consequences.
A system, by definition, is always lesser than the total potential of the populace it operates within, meaning that it must always seek out what is percieves to be the most efficient means to fulfill its core functions, which are to organize labour and distribute resources.
This is fine and appropriate when dealing with limited numbers, but as these go up certain feedback loops come into effects.
We can see an example of this clearly in the rapidly idustrializing areas of China, where the rural poor are forced into the cities as their lands are appropriated for development. There they must work at low-paying manufacturing jobs for long hours just to be able to buy the basic necessities that were previously gotten from their land. This influx of people expands the economy, requiring more land to be developed, and sets in motion a race to the bottom of wages and living conditions, all for the sake of maximizing growth efficiency.
The consequence of this pattern, whether here or in the developing world, is the failure of mass politics as the system becomes all-pervasive, a bureaucratic labyrinth designed only to increase the functionality of the system (it should be noted that efficiency in a system and its effectiveness in fulfilling human needs can indeed be directly opposed).

This is the great illusion which undergirds democracy and socialism alike, that in becoming ever more efficient at managing the lives of millions, it alienates those same individuals, stripping them of their inherent power. Its ultimate goal is the reduction of human potential, not as the result of sinister machinations, but simply as a natural outcome of an wholly inappropriate structure.

THE FUTURE: minimal

2009-06-01T03:17:00.000-07:00

The trends in miniaturization that have characterized the information revolution are seeing themselves extended into all other social and cultural realms. The future that is being constructed all around us will, without a doubt, be minimal.
What do we mean by the term minimal? Well, first of all, we can use it to characterize a social order and structure predicated on a set of values that are much more personalized, or individualized, than they currently are today. This is also to distinguish it from our present situation, which can accurately be termed maximal, or conglomeratory.
This is the trend by which all things- power, resources, finance, energy, governance, commerce- are clumped into ever larger disconcerned bureaucratic monoliths, driven by a limited set of antihuman and unsustainable goals.
The maximal pursues ownership at the exclusion of stewardship. It embodies concentration rather than decentralization, and it threatens both humanity and nature with its blind ambitions. Conversely, the minimal represents the only truly sustainable alternative open to humankind, and it is a set of principles or values by which any future society must organize itself if it wishes to survive.

Looking at the research of the last few decades we can see quite clearly that the era of the maximal is rushing headlong to its potentially catastrophic conclusion. On the most basic level, there are simply no more sources of ‘big’ energy left capable of sustaining our current levels of consumption, to say nothing of the accelerating energy demands of rapidly industrializing nations such as China and India.
And yet, there is no energy shortage once we flip our perspective and embrace the minimal. Indeed, then we see that we are awash in hundreds of different forms of simple, ‘small’ sources of energy and power, from photovoltaic inks to micro wind turbines to recapturing lost kinetic energy every time we take a step. Are these sources enough to sustain a decent standard of living for everyone? Absolutely! Are they sufficient to maintain an indulgeant, wasteful, overconsumptive economy? Not in a million years.
This is where a change is needed. We must stop and reexamine our genuine needs, and frame all our questions of energy into these new terms. How much of what we do is necessary, how much simply used to propel endlessly forward the disasterous fiction of the ‘economy’?
In the minimal future we will all be on a low-energy diet, utilizing a tiny fraction of what today for us seems normal. Doing this will emphatically not require us to abandon the genuine comforts of a modern life- it will simply mean designing our culture to operate on a much smaller scale.
What does this mean, practically speaking?
Well, for one thing, our technologies, those objects and systems that we use in day to day life, will have to become more democratic (open-source), both in terms of their use and their production.
Things will no longer be made in massive, energy-hungry indistrialized factories, but rather rapidly prototyped at their point of use- digitally manufactured through energy and materially minimal additive processes by individuals and small communities.
Likewise, social organization will become decentralized and localized as the burdens of nation-states become too heavy to bear.
The buildings we live and work in will become smaller, efficient, core-oriented modular systems, expanded only as need dictates, rather than built large and artificially filled.
Communication and computing devices will become both mobile and distributed- the days of clunky desktop computing boxes over.
It is not difficult to imagine that in a low-energy minimal world our devices will demonstrate contact-cumulative properties. That is, any two low-imput devices, when brought into proximity with each other, will automatically double their respective capacities. The more units brought together the greater the possibilities. This in itself would act as a great motivator for individuals to form affiliate networks in order to collectively perform taks and solve problems.

These are just some of the radical shifts that will be needed, and in fact are occuring right now.
Finally, some quick thoughts about infrastructure in the minimal future.
If we look at our heavily indistrialized maximal society today, we see that all of its outcomes are predicated on a strongly developed infrastructure of roads, ports, sewers, power grids, etc. All of these things, by their nature as maximal systems, have become survival liabilities as we rush headlong into a low-energy future. And yet, what alternatives are there that would allow us to maintain a globally connected world? When we examine the word infrastructure itself we see that its prefix comes from the latin infra, meaning under, or below. Infrastructure acts as the foundation of a rigid, inflexible culture. We should instead be looking at organizational solutions in terms of their intrastructure capabilities- meaning that which exists within, or between individuals or communities.
Wireless networks are to the present what roadless transportation lines will be to the furture. Light, high-speed rail service, even intercontinentally, would be a much better use of our remaining maximally driven expenditures than proping up antiquated roadways or polluting air freight.
As social organization becomes more decentralized and returns to its community oriented past, the collosal infrastructure of today will give way to an intrastructure based on the principles briefly outlined here.

One thing is certain, whether we like it or not, the future will be minimal. The only thing left to decide is how many of us will survive to enjoy it.