these are posts i never finished.
i just left them in my drafts folder.
i got to let them go cause i ain’t gonna finish them.
here, you take em.
i’ve got one more about mayan origins, but i still might fix that one.
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Solving the World
Peter Joseph, thank you so much for your presentation on Capitalism and Social Pathology. I have absorbed the information and that of Zeitgeist: Addendum and spread these memes as best I could (twitter, FB, website, verbal), not because I am a devotee of any one ideology (as all real world solutions are emergent), but because I personally deemed the information productive, the intent genuine, and the scope of awareness global.
I have been inspired by your works and fearless honesty, but in deference to you and Jacque Fresco, I have been mulling over the solving of the world independently and come to slightly different conclusions. I would like to offer some ideas that may compliment your vision and remove any accusations of a “scientific dictatorship.” Please forgive the way I process information. As I am not adept at retaining hard facts, I use a more metaphorical approach to problem solving and extrapolate scenarios outward like a running simulation. Forgive me also and bear with me if some of this seems a repetition of some of your own work as we all drink from the same fountain.
Centralization Creates a Weak Structure
Regarding cities of the future, it seems to me that having a centralized computer system invites weakness by putting too many “eggs” in one basket. We all know the egg/basket metaphor and the wonderful thing about metaphorical eggs is that they reference a law of energetic exchange that can be applied to any number of systems, ideological or physical. When we do this, we find that any centralized system or aggregation of power invites corruption no matter how pure the initial intent is. Centralized data invites tampering, restricting, seizing control, taking advantage. Centralized communication invites censorship. Centralized power creates a strategic fulcrum, but who’s weakness is that it can be exploited and misused by coercion or take-over. A centralized resource distribution center (the guv’mint) introduces a weakness in that its members become dependent on it. An added side-effect of which is that, by abdicating responsibility, the members of that system lose opportunities to become responsible (like when you rise to an occasion you didn’t feel qualified to do at first), or the chance to learn when a national-level irresponsible decision teaches an unpleasant lesson. We have created nations of zoo animals in the genus Homo (humans) who’s cages are ideological rather than physical. We suffer a deficit of awareness about self-discipline, personal responsibility, the practicality of empathy, and global management because we have so little control over the mechanisms that regulate our own lives. When seen over time, natural systems seem adaptable and self-regulating and human systems seem so short-sighted and frail because they are all built around a centralized hierarchical structure and ever threatening to “collapse” under the weight of their own manufactured complexity.
If I just receive my power from “somewhere else” then I have reduced my own total awareness with detrimental consequences for the whole. By abdicating my personal responsibility I shrink my awareness to just my own consumption and fail to incorporate a strategy that includes the whole because I am no longer aware of it and my role in it. (As you know, our system has done this purposefully to encourage wasteful consumption and dependence.)
Metaphorical References: Centralization Creates a Weak Structure
- A child who’s mother does everything for him and makes all his decisions, never giving him any personal responsibility. How can he recover from mistakes and have the courage to forge his own destiny when he hasn’t ever been asked to be responsible for anything? Apply this same lesson to any centralized form of government or resource management you can imagine.
- A zoo animal who has spent so long out of the wild that they are unable to hunt anymore and would die of starvation if returned.
- A you animal that has forgotten how to cook or make his own power, shelter, or clothing.
- If there are only two men in a system and one man abdicates his power to another, there will come a point when the “leader” will abuse that relationship knowingly or unknowingly no matter his generosity or humility. The coordination efforts of leadership seems essential to a system, but when any one person wields more control or is compensated unequally, it feels like oppression to those below his/her position. Is there a way we can all retain our personal control and self respect and yet share in a constant social pressure of self-regulation?
- I am dependent on the power company for electricity. If they have a failure, I and all of my neighbors will lose power. If the power company becomes corrupt and raises rates, I and all of my neighbors will be beholden to them and their demands. If my system is honorable, but an aggressive power distribution system wants to expand into the customer base I am a part of, it will find a way to attack the system I am dependent on. If the systems are all removed altogether, I will have forgotten how to generate power myself and will be at a loss. The potentiality of these weaknesses and the instability of my world will cause me an inner stress though I may not always be aware of it.
- I have a pot hole behind my office that I would like fixed. If I call the appropriate government office I will contribute to their overall burden as there are many pot holes that need fixing in the city. I may get ignored, rejected, or my claim may get prioritized at the very bottom of a large stack of complaints and this will cause them and I frustration. My priority is local whilst their priority is citywide and biased towards the most affluent contributors to their system. I realize that if educated on the process of hole fixing, and provided the materials, I and my neighbors could fix the pot hole ourselves and save the government the time and effort. However, there is no process in place for that. Instead, if I attempt to fix the pot hole myself, then the system will use law enforcement resources to apprehend and prosecute me, doubling their expenditures, whilst leaving the problem unresolved. (And we know this to be true of economic distribution and political “solutions”, not just pot holes.)
Trending away from Centralization:
- We scan and bag our own groceries now. Are there other ways we could distribute effort? Is there a way I could pour my own coffee at a restaurant now, rather than be a burden on the server’s time and my own? Is there a way that my personal resources won’t be wasted, I can remove myself as a burden to other systems, my local priorities are upheld, and yet the same standards of safety are upheld that we expect in a centralized system?
- Hollywood used to be very exclusive and hierarchical with centralized power and fame. Now, many people from all backgrounds and economic strata have become contributors to entertainment through the internet. Many are only paid in global attention. Would this be an adequate compensation for artists if the rest of their needs were met? If no one paid for art would we still make art? Would we still want to share it?
- If a corporation realized that everybody was essential so everybody got paid the same, would someone still want to do the CEO’s job? Why not? Are you sure?
Obscurity Creates a Weak Structure
blahblah
Distributed Solutions
I could create a distributed network of people, like a neural network, who each contribute to power generation through their own means, let’s say solar panels or wind. If my own solar panels fail I still have the rest of the network to support me until I can fix the problem. The system can instantly adapt, distribute responsibility, localize and simplify decision making, and reroute around problem areas just as our own neurons do; and yet the network can retain an incredible overall complexity and unified motive. (See Cellular Automata and Steven Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science, offered free online.)
As far as metaphors go, the internet has provided us with the precursor to such a distributed system.
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what if – capitalism
what if, just as for a child, falling over is a prerequisite to walking; what if attempting capitalism and failing (when it inevitably begins to consume itself and slide towards a fascist/mono-poled corporatocracy) is a prerequisite to solving the emergent needs/labor/resources equation of the human condition? what if you just can’t really solve the problem intellectually/naturally because the proximity of inherent motive and the weaknesses exposed through will always generate a member that will exploit the weakness of until each individual member is able to absorb and ingest and indoctrinate the knowledge that a personal or societal movement towards greed and selfishness is in every layer of societal resolution (from the individual to the whole) counter-productive in the long run even if it results in a better standard of living. why is it not productive when selfishness/unconsciousness/limiting one’s perspective/empathy can generate so much wealth for the individual? because there is an equally influential, non-physical (emotional/vibrational/spiritual?) level of energetic (economic) exchange that occurs behind every physical one. Any physical economic trade is an incomplete blueprint without considering the hidden emotional costs. For those inconveniently burdened with empathy and compassion, vaulting one’s self/race/neighborhood/state/people/country above anyone
FaceBook Ramblings
David Walton:
Humans have not yet valued wisdom or principle and have instead allowed practices and laws and ideas to be constrained and confined and condemned to the darkness and dysfunction of governments, universities, religions, unions and schools who perpetuate the ignorance, arrogance, darkness and desperation laced with academic, pathological, ideological and theological spider webs of confustion and delusion.
Brooke Colquhoun:
I was thinking about the same thing recently. Herald the days of philosopher kings when he in LEAST service to himself would rise to lead.
As I don’t want to bias myself to one idea I try thinking from all sides. It occurs to me that a teacher (government) with a group of very well behaved students can give them all sorts of freedoms, let them make the occasional joke, let them have a good time whilst learning, and she herself can be free to leave the classroom and run an errand and return without fear of anything going wrong. But a group of poorly behaved students needs to be constantly monitored; many rules are put in place. The teacher is not calm or free and neither are the students. A meek teacher may have to force herself to be more authoritarian just to keep the wayward students under control. And yet an unjustly authoritarian teacher over a group of more responsible students might find a lot of resistance and some official complaints.
And yet all of these duties and keeping this balance is too much for any one teacher burdened with more and more students or any particular set of rulesets or solutions that doesn’t fit the mold of that exact situation. And the pot-holes are too much for any one city to keep repaired and yet we have scores of people complaining about them who would otherwise could be trained to walk out and fix them. We have so many people that need help, so many jobs that need doing, and yet unemployment is considered a burden on society, a blight, rather than a huge well of untapped human resources! The checkout procedure was too much for growing grocery stores… till we made self-checkout lanes. But they had to trust the consumer first, or be so overwhelmed they had no other choice.
Can we distribute other tasks and responsibilities? Have people teaching each other via the internet? Training each other step by step instead of relying on experts? Can we arbitrate our own disputes? Can a teacher be more of a facilitator? Can our “leaders” be not an authority, but more of a coordinator function? We row, “stroke, stroke, stroke!” to the beat, not because we are ordered to, but because we are responsible parties who want to get the job done that benefits us all. We are the children that were never given any responsibility so we never learned how to hold it properly.
I make the coffee for my fiancée every morning and I find that despite my giving nature I consistently give myself the larger cup of coffee. I can forgive myself this tiny crime, but were I given a larger fulcrum of power would I not nudge myself towards corruption and barely even know it was happening like many of the politicians we decry?
We need to stop creating fulcrums of power, where any one man has direct control over another. That invites corruption and attracts negative forces that seek places of power. Even the most humble of us cannot be trusted in a seat of power. Only the combined power of us all can be the ultimate set of checks and balances and that combined power will EVOLVE instantaneously, unlike laws. The rulesets we’ve created for ourselves are far too complicated and do not continue to apply as we move through time. We call people stupid who can’t understand our ridiculously complicated legal and financial systems, but isn’t it stupid to make them incomprehensible in the first place? (Not if you’re trying to hide corruption it isn’t.) We need more of a compass heading that we can agree on what is moral and what is accepted and what kind of a future do we want to head towards. We need to find justice again. We need to eliminate internal dishonesty about who we are as people, remove illusions, and tear down the obscurity that lets danger build up in the shadows. (i.e. Money creates obscurity.) We need to cast off our anonymity and take responsibility for ourselves and who we are. We need to cast off notions of privacy and expose ourselves to the light of everyone else’s judgement, knowing that we will behave better just as a god-fearing man feels that watchful eye, but we need to demand the same of our prying institutions. If corporations want to consider themselves people then we need to consider ourselves corporations, with the same right to choose where we want and do not want to invest our time and efforts. We fear governments and global corporate entities because THEY are not US. When they are US, who would fear them? Who would fear the horrors of “mob rule” when your mob is highly educated, emotionally intelligent, and aware of issues of justice and fairness? Not me.
The American Dream
Oh, and you must watch this:
But don’t be discouraged, because this:
