Memeverse

Someone might think that I think too much and do too little and might even be right about that. Then again I shouldn’t care too much about what “someone” thinks, albeit how much will I care depends on who that someone is and how much value does he or she represents in my life (or how much does he or she mean to me). But I’m over-thinking it again perhaps.

It is true though that I have a sort of a compulsion to get clean on certain topics before I proceed with some others. The ultimate of this, one which I easily gravitate towards, is to get clean on everything - everything that anyhow relates to my life - to just think it all through, decide on a conclusion and then draw my moves from there.

This thinking things through, especially if lack of concentration creeps in, can take a while. I feel, however, that when I blog about one of those topics it accelerates the process. Writing seems to boost thinking and publishing the final result for whomever is reading, even if it’s nobody, somehow seems to give me a psychological seal of completeness, making it easier to move on with something new. It’s like making a commitment saying this is what I think now and that’s done, it’s out.. and now I can begin exploring further.

When I say “everything” here I mean everything that should ever be relevant to me and my life. Everything includes the reality outside of me and the reality of me. The outside reality includes everything that I ever encountered in my life, everything that I am encountering right now and everything that I will encounter in the future. Reality of me includes everything that I was, everything that I am and everything that I want to be, with an emphasis on what I am because this is where the “game” starts. This is the perspective from which I am looking.

What I learned so far about reality of everything:

1. Everything in reality, including myself, is in fact more than anything a process. As time passes there is a process going on that keeps moleculs together which in turn form materials and everything else, including us.

2. These processes are always actions and reactions. It doesn’t take long to conclude that my life is a process as well and that every act I undertake will have an inescapable reaction, a consequence.

3. Everything is consisted of fundamentals, including the fundamentals themselves (fundamentals of fundamentals). Subatomic particles make up an atom which make up moleculs which make up materials which make up objects etc. The way this works is by the rule of universal commonalities (yes I just made that term up). If something is common to everything then it is considered a fundamental. If every physical thing is consisted of atoms and moleculs then they are fundamental to all physical things. If a certain idea is common to all concepts and philosophies observed then those philosophies have that as their fundamental idea. And so on.

4. I own myself and am the dictator of my life. I get to decide on every single next move that I can possibly make consciously. I control my actions totally.

5. The more conscious I am about the reality of me and reality outside of me the more control I will have over my life. The more I truly know myself and the reality outside of myself the better equipped I am to make the right judgments of consequences I expect of certain actions, before I undertake them.

6. As perfect as life can get is when you arrange all your actions in exactly such way that will bring exactly the consequences you desire, and when you have a high (near to 100%) rate of correct predictions of consequences. You don’t need to be psychic for this, just very very aware of the processes that are going on around everything that relates to every act you are making. If you have all the facts you just have to connect the dots to see what should a particular action lead you to.

7. Emotions are a signal making me know whether I am on the right track or not, unless misinterpreted (which is another skill to master). Basically, emotions can tell me if I really love what I’m currently doing and if I really like the consequences that I earned by my actions. I have to have these signals in order to be able to truly guide my life in the direction I want to - towards being more wealthy, more positively influential and more happy.

Now… it’s easier said than done.

Knowing self is a pretty advanced skill. I’m not sure what’s harder, getting to know oneself or getting to know the reality of everything around oneself.

At least the journey doesn’t ever have to stop. I should make it into a habit to research, read and then explore more regularly.

Cheers

The reason is quite simple really. The more capable you are to think independently and cognitively the less susceptible you will be to being controlled. If you can’t think for yourself then anyone can fool you and anyone can make you believe anything at any time. I can only feel sorry for you at that point, but no, this time I will not blame propaganda or the person who is trying to convince you of something.

I will blame you.

Propaganda is, quite simply, a tool. It can be used to convey any message or idea, whether I think it’s good or bad. The only thing that differentiates it from an educational film is that aside from your reasoning capabilities it also appeals to your emotions which can in many cases actually be a good thing. Involving emotion into the matter is what makes people passionate and energized about something. It is also a way to get people who usually don’t care about a particular thing to start caring.

Propaganda is therefore like technology. You can’t blame it, you can’t ever blame a “thing” anyway. You can only blame a human being, the producer of a propaganda movie if you believe that the idea he is conveying is the wrong one or the viewer of propaganda for being too willing to accept what is being conveyed without thinking independently about it and researching the facts.

Besides, there is no such thing as an universally wrong or an universally right idea. There is only what is real and what is not. If you have an idea which makes you act in a particular way, reality will always kick in with the consequences of your action. If you dislike the consequences then you might judge your idea as a wrong one. If the consequences are good then you might be on the right track. And the only one who can decide if the consequences are good or bad is you, with consideration to what your desires and goals actually are.

The problem with people in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China is not so much propaganda as much as the willingness of people to accept its message almost without questioning. It is ignorance and intellectual laziness. If Hitler’s propaganda was to convey the ideas of individualism, individual sovereignty, freedom, rights to life, liberty and property and people blindly accepted it, I would be willing to bet that they would all be better off because such propaganda would have the same exact message I am trying to convey with many of my posts: think for yourself.

And that would be an example of propaganda which, EVEN when accepted blindly, actually created what can by most people probably considered a good outcome, because everyone is an individual, alive and to a point selfish - and everyone wants to be free of force.

Ideally, of course, they would accept such propaganda only after they have thoroughly questioned it which is excellent because then those who do accept and adopt the idea will do so not only on basis of an emotional appeal, but on the basis of reason, making their enlightenment all the more profound.

In other words, the ideal way to tackle your exposure to propaganda is with the prioritize reason over passion mentality. This doesn’t mean that the emotional appeal shouldn’t entice you to explore the idea further. I mean, if it works for you then go for it! It just means that the emotional trigger should be secondary. It got you intrigued, it got you excited.. to stop at that and turn yourself into an immediate true believer now would be a mistake though. You still need to think it through, do some research to see if the trigger of reason would switch to green for the newly discovered idea too.

Propaganda is especially useful for small grassroots movements who are having trouble convincing people to even give them a chance, to at least try and hear them out. So if making an emotional appeal can get people to listen who can blame them for trying it? They aren’t forcing you to believe anything after all and they aren’t the ones who can brainwash your mind if you don’t let it. You can proclaim them as “evil” if you end up disliking the idea they conveyed (though in my opinion that’d be a foolish proclamation as I don’t believe anyone is inherently evil) or you can praise them for “opening your eyes”, but in both cases it is you who is responsible for what you end up believing in and the consequences of actions you undertake in pursuit of such beliefs, and nobody else!

It is interesting how both The Borg and The Dominion, two of the greatest evil adversaries in Star Trek are portrayed to desire one thing above all else: order. The Borg assimilate everything they find valuable to their collective, valuable according to their own view of order. Everything then becomes a part of a bigger whole and without a shred of individualism. Just as it was once said in Hitler’s Germany; Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. The same can be literally said for The Borg and The Borg queen. Perfection that Borg so adamantly pursues is in fact the most extreme form of totalitarianism possible.

The Dominion, on the other hand, was founded by a race of shapeshifters who were once exploring the galaxy and finding many “solids” (non shapeshifting beings) to be quite fearful and thereby violent to them (or so they believe). Shapeshifters then begun perceiving all “solids” as a threat and that became a part of their own order of things. Instead of being the hunted now they are the hunters. Instead of being controlled now they are in control. The Dominion is portrayed to be a powerful force in the gamma quadrant, of course, with a job of establishing order upon chaos.

Now while these are fictions, they do come from the creative minds of certain human individuals and they do therefore reflect particular characteristics of the reality as we know it, a reality in which we ourselves have repeatedly established governments in order to do exactly the same thing that these fictive organizations were portrayed to exist for: establish order upon chaos.

The concept of government exists as part of an ideology that can be summed up as a “Religion of Order”. This “religion” consists of these three core beliefs:

1. A certain limited set of beliefs constitutes and defines “order”. Everything else is the opposite; chaos.

This is essentially a perpetual self administered delusion, that things we currently believe to be true are the only things that really are true absolutely, that things we currently believe are right are the only things that could ever be right, that things that do not conform to our current set of beliefs belong to the realm of chaos.

This is a result of a fundamentally closed minded, self defeating and self limiting idea which lives, like a virus, in the minds of the masses on this planet.

2. All that does not conform to this order (defined by the above set of beliefs) is wrong or evil.

This merely follows from the limited view of reality above. In addition to branding things that don’t conform as “chaos” we introduce a strong moral judgment of the non-conforming as absolutely and uncompromisingly wrong, evil, thereby worth fighting against by any means necessary.

3. Force is justified against all such evil

What else to expect from such a limited yet absolutist view? If force and violence is what it takes to purity everything that belongs to “chaos” so be it. If you don’t conform to “the order” you must be punished. This is why followers of The Religion of Order tend to eventually one way or another persecute everyone who lives in defiance or non-conformity to the order they designated as such.

I could say that all governments are guilty of being a part of this religion, but governments are nothing but just people who assumed the roles that this religion naturally provisions for; essentially the role of preaching the order (law), teaching conformity (public education and propaganda) and doing enforcement (force, violence). Governments would be meaningless without the people who give them their support and they give them their support exactly because they too believe in this religion of order - they actually agree that order, conformity and force are necessary and good and are usually utterly ignorant of the flaw inherent in this philosophy.

The flaw is that it is ultimately self defeating. It deprives from the natural tendencies and potential of the most basic unit of every human “order”: the human individual. This is how it crumbles. Sooner or later you find that believing in this religion only got you shafted, unless you were lucky, devious or foolishly hotheaded enough to actually be a successful power grubbing politician or managed to combine your ingenuity with political protectionism to build a corporate empire. But we know those people are in a minority, or else why would we speak of a divide between rich and poor, right?

So why do the rest of us, the majority who repeatedly gets shafted by this religion, still believe in it? Why do we still follow it? Why do we feed its power? I can only think of two basic reasons: ignorance or fear.

The first is probably most prevalent. As long as you conform, for instance not break any laws no matter how stupid some of them seemed, you don’t have anything to be afraid of, or at least that’s what you believe. But that’s where the story ends. You live your life within those confines and think of no better way. Your ignorance is bliss, until the almost inevitable consequences of such mind imprisoning mentality hit you - and they almost always do.

The second is fear. Even if you are a bit more inquisitive and less ignorant and find that there is a lot things wrong about “the system”, the order of things, you fear the very ideas that could set your mind free as “dangerous ideas”. You fear that if you refuse to conform one way or another you will end up punished in some way by the ignorant followers of the order.

The trouble is, we’re so deep into this problem that it indeed is hard to blame an individual for feeling either of the above two ways. This religion of order is like a pan religion whose ideas managed to pull through many other religions as well as among the supposedly non-religious people. Order, Conformism and Force. Many christians believe it. Many muslims believe it. Many atheists believe it. Too many believe it for too long. The idea has one way or another been perpetuated throughout centuries.

Yet, if we get stuck in this perpetual ignorance or fear, waiting for “better times” we will only see history repeat itself, because that is what happens when we have this single core set of beliefs governing billions of people on Earth for such an indefinite amount of time. Times change and technology changes yet the fundamental belief remains, the belief that is the very cause of “history repeating itself”. As various “orders” collide we have power struggles, wars, fascism, economic collapses etc. It will never be truly any different if we never finally wake up to the reality of what is behind all this:

The Religion of Order

It created more chaos than “chaos” itself could. When are you gonna wake up to that reality?

Stefan Molyneux has so nicely expressed what is at heart of the upcoming site, DoublePlusHuman.com. Be big, be human. Here is a video with his encouraging speech.

Here is a download link, thanks to KeepVid.com.

Enjoy.

I am getting to the bottom of why anarcho-capitalism can work. Let’s start by defining “nature”, “laws of nature” and “human nature”.

Nature is everything in the universe which is not by human (non-artificial, existence of which is independent and completely agnostic to humans and their conditions and affairs).

Laws of nature are all processes and properties which are beyond human control and which no human can escape.

Human nature are therefore all processes and properties applicable to humans which are beyond their control and escape.

Since anarcho-capitalism is essentially a proposed system of human interaction (a “social system”) the last definition, “human nature”, is most relevant here. Some of the fundamental properties and processes which fit the above definition are the following:

1. Humans are living, self-aware beings capable of thinking, choosing and acting. Since this is their nature they are entitled to self-ownership, liberty and property as the product of their actions.

2. A human being, in any given moment, always acts in pursuit of to him or her maximum value.

3. A human being sees destruction of his or her value as immoral or “wrong” and construction of the same as moral or “right”.

4. What one human sees as a value can differ from what another human sees.

So in summary, all humans live, think, choose and act in pursuit of what is most valuable to them at any given moment while considering the destruction of the same as morally wrong, but what is most valuable differs from person to person.

One thing that we learn from nature as we understand it so far is that it always pursues the path of least resistance. To a particular human, what is most valuable is usually most motivating. Therefore pursuit of this value is also going to be the “easiest” thing to do, the most cost-effective thing to do. It may not seem so at first because most of us tend to have a limited perception of “value”. We therefore say that sometimes pursuing a moral path is harder and will encounter more resistance.

However, if one is set “against the odds” yet still proceeds this just means that proceeding is more valuable to him or her than giving up or conversely that not proceeding would encounter more mental resistance than proceeding. External obstacles are already taken into the value equation of this individual and deemed less resisting than the mental resistance he would encounter should he proceed otherwise or more worth than the mental reward he would feel should he proceed otherwise.

One of the most relevant principles involved with anarcho-capitalism is non-coercion. What is coercion? It is the process by which individual A attempts to affect the value judgment of individual B by the threat of force, in order to induce an action (s)he desires an individual B to take. “Force” here is defined as destruction of something individual B finds valuable, from his life to his property.

Coercion will fail if individual B finds mental reward of resisting the aggressor to be higher than the mental reward of giving in to the aggressor. Coercion, unsurprisingly, usually succeeds since avoiding harm or termination to life is usually found more mentally rewarding than getting killed or harmed. However, this is a choice between value destruction and value destruction, two wrongs - two evils of which individual B has to choose one which he deems lesser. If coercion fails anything of value to individual B that was threatened by the aggressor, from life to property, may be destroyed. If coercion succeeds, it is still individual B’s freedom which was destroyed.

And by nature of existing every individual values his freedom, to the extent to which he is aware of being entitled to it.

Anarcho-capitalism is fundamentally about establishing a laissez faire free market of individual humans. This market is self-regulating because it depends on the value pursuits of each individual in it. And since everyone has different values, but everyone seeks to maximize them, trade of values usually occurs. It is devoid of coercion because coercion means destruction of liberty, which is of value to every individual. When one individual in a free market exercises coercion (s)he is acting against the freedom value of an individual and therefore against the fundamental value of the market to which this individual belongs to, BUT also against the freedom of his/her own. This is because at that point the harmed individual, or its family, will be entitled to seek the aggressor and force him to pay the reparations. This is the only case in which force is not deemed destructive, because it merely restores the value destruction of an individual to which the force was initiated.

What this means is that coercion in a free market has a value price which involves not only the reparations that the aggressor is potentially going to be forced to pay, but the loss of freedom as well, something valuable to every individual. Since all humans act in pursuit of maximum value, coercion will be employed only when this is the method by which an individual believes he will achieve maximum value (which can be of both moral and physical kind). Given the abundance of other methods available in a market of individuals who trade in pursuit of value, this option is very likely to be unpopular, deemed too expensive, too much of a hassle, too risky or simply too immoral.

In addition, considering that anarcho-capitalists wont succeed in building such a free market without convincing enough people to believe that coercion is immoral (because this is the only way they can stop believing in the justifiability of government) it follows that if a laissez faire free market is established it will be consisted of people who largely find non-coercion to be immoral and furthermore risky, expensive and unpopular. Compared with the fact that coercion in a current government-led society is a norm rather than an act unlikely to happen, free market is degrees of magnitude more desirable to anyone who cares about pursuing the maximum of his values - hence every human.

Free Market is the path of least resistance *because* it is a path with least coercion.

And the only way it could not be the path of least resistance is if people were not acting in pursuit of maximum value - which is impossible - because acting this way is human nature - inescapable.

In summary, there is a connection between human nature and the moral of non-coercion in that by the virtue of being what they are humans are more likely to find the path of non-coercion to be the path of least resistance than any other method of pursuing the maximum of value.

This may seem to be a merely philosophical and theoretical statement, but it relies on certain fundamental testable axioms which if proven true prove the statement above. Those axioms are the presented definition of nature, natural laws, the three descriptions of processes and properties inherent in human nature and the link between coercion and destruction of value.

There is so much stuff to read, both pro and against my current worldview and there is so much to evaluate based on this worldview from my business activities to my advocacy. In addition, there are all these still not entirely honed out and contextualized concepts and ideas floating around, such as those presented here for example.

So I’m compelled to evaluate the foundational process by which I should be addressing these issues, the process of thinking, from which all else follows. I think that for a being that is alive, self-aware, intelligent and capable of thinking and deciding everything in the universe starts with “him” or “her” or “me” - an individual. Only through your own eyes can you begin to see, or through your own ears to hear. Only through your own senses can you start sensing the reality around you and only through your own thinking can you process this information. There is no other computer more important than your own mind. We must think for ourselves. I must think for myself. And if conclusions I reach disagree with the beliefs of the majority, that should be of no consequence to my discovery. A scientist with a new discovery will not deny his discovery simply because he is the only one in the world who made it.

So how do we discover? First, you sense, receiving the information from the reality around you. It may come in the form of light, sound, smell, taste and skin sensations. This includes everything, from what we simply feel to what we read (articulated expressions of reality which are fed into our mind). So what is next, once all this raw information comes into our mind what happens? I’d rather say what *should* happen.

So this is the three step process of thinking:

1. Processing new information: Raw information received, mixed with our personality, quickly starts constituting ideas and concepts. Arranging these ideas and concepts into a contextual pattern of some sort results in a paradigm. How do we do this in the most beneficial way?

The rule NO 1: Adopt as truth only those ideas and concepts which are devoid of logical fallacies and contradictions even after you thoroughly tested them by a scientific process.

2. Acting, adapting your circumstances to new ideas and concepts: Those ideas and concepts which you adopted, even perhaps a whole new paradigm, may demand that you rearrange your life to fit. How do we do this?

Rule NO2: Realistically evaluate your real life circumstances and develop a process by which you will adapt them to your new ideas, concepts or paradigm. You’ll likely fail if you just try to force the new way of living upon the old one. There must be a process of adaptation.

3. Consistently and habitually questioning ourselves: There is always a chance that the ideas and concepts we adopted, no matter with how much scrutiny have we initially tested them, contain some logical inconsistencies and contradictions. It may simply happen that we discover something new that challenges the old conceptions. This is why questioning even our current truths is important and should be developed into a habit. How we do that?

Rule NO3: Ask the question “why” all the time in order to maintain a consistently high level of self-awareness. For all significant activities that you undertake ask yourself why are you doing them. Ask yourself why do you believe what you believe? Keep your mind “on its toes”. This way you can hope to avoid the “wrong ideas that always seem right and are never questioned” and therefore allow yourself to evolve efficiently.

I think that successfully adopting this process of thinking can tremendously help increase your chances of success, gaining wealth and influencing positive world change. I did not yet entirely adopted this process but I am trying. It is still something that I was able to formulate only so recently and therefore I still have lots of practicing to do.

But I think that once I do adopt this process, I will feel like nothing can stand in my way, because when you think in a way that increases awareness every problem encountered may already call solutions forming within your mind, as if it was automatic. When you always ask “why” you make all of the circumstances of your life a part of consciousness rather than subconsciousness therefore having so many more “tools” to work with once you encounter a problem that needs fixing.

Nothing can stop a free mind that thinks. Nothing.

My mind + internet + pursuit of freedom + pursuit of personal wealth and happiness = me.

Being so tied to internet, with my work life, my social life, my pursuits I could feel limited. However, on the other hand the internet as the network of all human knowledge is also the network of all ideas and a perfect medium of idea exchange and propagation. I am a node and I am a sucker for ideas. And ideas are powerful. How much of that power will I be able to personally extract depends on how efficient my processing skills are - thinking.

Thinking is being. Thinking is what creates new opportunities for wealth, material, intellectual and spiritual. As beings that think we are an embodiment of ideas. The sooner an individual realizes this the sooner will its potential to grow more powerful.

The more I realize how important it is to think of myself as an individual the more capable I become at critically observing that which I am, by some default, supposed to belong or adhere to. I think therefore I am. I am therefore I am free. Nothing and nobody can take that away. Freedom comes from a free mind, not from the external reality. If you are a slave, yet your mind is free, you are free. If you are free yet your mind is not, you are a slave. And sooner or later, reality as it relates to your freedom will reflect the state of your mind.

Therefore my destiny is becoming clearer and clearer. It is to free my mind and then help others free theirs. This will be a process of creating value by helping others be capable of creating value so that they too can help others create more value - until this world as a whole is free.

It is not enough to have an open mind. A Free Mind is the real objective. Free as in freedom.

A video I just found very nicely and clearly explains the philosophy of Liberty that I now fully believe in.

I feel a sufficient amount of conviction in the idea that a Laissez-Faire Free Market society can work without a government and only without a government intervention to openly state that I am now an anti-statist, with beliefs which probably fit the common definition of an “anarcho-capitalist”.

I actually feel that I’ve been slowly travelling towards this point of my life for quite a while, the recent months in which I dedicated quite a bit of time towards introspection, self-discovery, truly open minded debating and exploration being a sort of a catalyst that just accelerated my coming to this point. You can even see from my blog posts that I have been increasingly gravitating towards individualist humanist ideas of full individual liberty and responsibility and I have recently participated in a rather large and heated Libervis.com debate where I found myself defending libertarian / anarcho-capitalist ideas quite adamantly.

In other words I didn’t really need much by now to just tip me over into a full conviction. And a book I’ve just read (and simultaneously listened to, as the audio book is available), has provided much more than just a tip over. It blew my mind too. It is an incredible,detailed, logically sound description of a Laissez-Faire Free Market society and how it could really work and in fact work far better than any of the current government led societies. It literally has an answer to all of the major questions or objections I or most people would have against a society so radically different so as not to have or need a government.

The book is called “The Market for Liberty and that’s where you can download it in both PDF and audiobook format (torrent with high quality mp3s is high-speed). You can’t believe how much I recommend you read it.

One of the fundamental reasons for which I find it so convincing is the fact that the authors base their reasoning on what is essentially a logical scientific theory which a back up in reality can easily be accounted for. We simply have to observe ourselves as human beings and how we naturally interact. It takes no genius to conclude that self-interest has a great deal to do with it. The book, in my mind, successfully and completely dismantles the ideas such as altruism and even pacifism which ultimately result in contradicting and even immoral and self destructive behaviour. Yes, I am no longer a supporter of altruism and pacifism. I might sympathize with the intention of those who associate themselves with these ideologies, but the ideologies themselves I find fundamentally flawed.

The scientific “theory” is a Natural Law which is as objectively real as the law of gravity. You can believe with all your heart and mind that gravity does not exist and then throw yourself off of a skyscraper - regardless of your beliefs you will suffer the consequences of the fall.

Similarly, there is a Natural Law to human behaviour, which if not followed must lead to adverse consequences to the society and its economy. Here is a nice quote about that from the book:

“Natural law does apply to human relationships, and it is just as objective, universal, and inescapable in this area as in any other. The proof of this is that actions have consequences . . . in the area of human interaction as surely as in the area of human medicine. A man who swallows poison will become ill (even if he has complete confidence that the poison is nothing more than vitamin pills). A man who aggresses against others will be distrusted, avoided, and probably made to repay his victims (if some government doesn’t interfere). A
man who cheats his customers will be driven out of business by his more reputable competitors. The consequences of “breaking” natural law cannot be avoided. No matter how cleverly a man schemes, he will suffer if he insists on acting in a manner which contradicts the nature of human existence. The consequences may not be immediate, and they may not be readily apparent, but they are inescapable.

The free market is a product of the working of natural law in the area of human relationships, specifically economic relationships. Because man’s survival and well-being are not given to him, but must be achieved, men act to maximize their welfare (if they didn’t they couldn’t keep on living).. To maximize their welfare, they trade with other men, and when they trade, each man tries to get the best possible “deal.” Buyers bid against each other and push prices up. Sellers bid against each other and push prices down. At the point where the two forces meet, the market price is set, and everyone who wants to trade at that price can do so without creating surpluses or shortages. Thus, the law of supply and demand, and all other market laws, are really natural laws, directly derived from the nature and needs of that specific entity, man. The fact that market laws are natural laws explains why the free market works so well without any outside regulation. Natural law is always practical—it always “works.”"

Obviously, once a human recognizes that all actions have consequences it will be in his self interest to pursue activities which would result in maximum good for him or her, and in a society in which everyone is free to pursue anything (without the government to forbid certain kinds of pursuits or attempt to meddle in all of the other pursuits) coercion actually represents an undesirable means towards achieving maximum good for oneself. And it is therefore, as initiated by the market forces (powered by the law of supply and demand) enforcing the principle of non-coercion naturally.

This very notion undermines the criticism which somehow equates a society of fully free individuals to chaos (essentially, a lot more violence). Yet it is exactly the government, as a coercive monopoly, which has violence as an integral part of its way of “doing business”. As the book says, it “institutionalizes violence”. As such, the way government offers its services to people in what is consistent with the definition of a “protection racket”. They will protect us from poverty, for instance, by making us pay for welfare services under threat of theft of property (fines), incarceration or outright violence should we actively resist them.

Furthermore, by forbidding certain kinds of pursuits the government is actually creating “black markets” itself. And while you may already be aware of this, something that most people doublethink away, is that the very fact these pursuits are forbidden is what creates ecosystems of crime. This is because only people who are not afraid of government brute force are willing to enter markets which the government prohibits, because they themselves are not afraid to use brute force against the government as well. This gives way to organized crime or what we know as “Mafia”. So much for a government led society preventing the culture of violence that is usually associated with “chaos”.

And I no longer buy the argument that if the government doesn’t work this is just because there is corruption within it, but it would work if we got rid of that corruption. The thing is, government is fundamentally corrupt in itself, by its very nature as a coercive monopoly that concentrates power under the guise of protecting those which it coerces. It thrives on a moral contradiction.

Black market is just one of the actually more obvious ways in which the government harms the well being of individuals in a society, ALL individuals including the poor. The book describes ways which are much more subtle and much more easily escape the critics. Every single, even most seemingly insignificant regulation, can have tremendous consequences - all of which ultimately lead to MORE poverty and LESS economic growth.

The book even deals with such hard questions as how would a free market society deal with the few who would exercise aggression on other people and how would it defend itself from foreign attacks, and does this in a quite capable and convincing way. It further even poses that an effect that establishing a free market society in a particular part of the world would actually start the process which would lead to a world in which wars would not be fought. Because as people in the world see that government is an unnecessary evil whose impositions they don’t actually need to submit to, they will demand freedom, weakening their own governments while strengthening the economy of this single government-less free market country even further (by migrating there, investing there etc.).

And once all governments and their war machines collapse, who would be left to wage war? Aggression and trade are mutually incompatible. A Free Market is inherently anti-war, which can’t be said for governments the power of which is actually strengthened by the existence of an additional powerful enemy from which it needs to “protect” its citizens from (as we well see in the USA today.)

The prospects of establishing even just ONE Laissez-Faire Free Market society in the world are simply staggering. If it proves that it can work, and I am fully convinced that it would - because it respects the laws of nature governing human relations (without the need of artificial government) - it would mark an Earth shattering paradigm shift.

And I will be working towards establishing such a society. The book gives quite a sound and powerful method of doing it. It actually advocates against such methods as violent revolution, infiltration of government by other anarcho-capitalists, libertarians and alike or even total separation from the current government system (going off the grid or escaping into an unpopulated island). Instead it approaches a simple yet very powerful method: the spread of an idea.

And the idea that government is not actually a necessary evil, that taxes ARE actually theft and that paying taxes and other protection fees DOES NOT actually help the poor - are incredibly powerful ideas - might be the most powerful ideas you may ever convey to another person.

Therefore I would upgrade the statement of my purpose in life, my ultimate desire for the world from “a world where technology is used in a socially, ethically and ecologically responsible way” into “a world where governments no longer exist and technology is used and developed in a socially, ethically and ecologically responsible way”. I do feel now that the existence of a society without a government is a precursor to a society that is responsible in the way it manages technological use and development - because such a society is consisted of people who don’t just follow the leader and train dependence, but actually lead their own life and affairs and train personal responsibility.

And the only way we can hope for humanity to learn to use and develop technology responsibly is to make human individuals responsible and free themselves.

I would also note, as a result of this change in thinking, that I no longer assume as much distrust towards “Big Business” and corporations as I used to, and instead divert more of such distrust towards government itself. In fact, big business or small business or any business is doing exactly what we would expect them to do - follow their self interest (in which sense they’re actually most trustworthy). The fact that government has polluted the free market within which they operate and corrupted the balance it thrives on hence leading the business world in an awry direction is less of a fault of business and more of a fault of government meddling.

In their attempt to save the market from itself, they actually broke it, bluntly said. And I don’t take kindly to that, considering that I AM within that market and I SUFFER the consequences of their sleazy fingers in my affairs.

Nobody will stop this idea from spreading. I will dedicate DoublePlusHuman.com as a hopefully innovative and effective platform for spreading the idea of liberty, as it can fully be achieved.

“What is the meaning of life?”

I’ve come to find that this is actually quite a silly question because it is akin to asking what is the meaning of light. Well, duh, it shines! The meaning of life is life itself - just living. And there is nothing more profound to it than that. Of course, we can look deeper into the reasoning behind this.

Well, as science and technology continue to advance at a rapid pace we are increasingly becoming aware of ourselves as machines. We begin to doubt the existence of soul and free will when we consider that whatever we do and whatever we think is actually just part of the way our program runs - the software of our brain which we are getting closer and closer to recreating ourselves. How do we have free will or freedom of choice if our every “choice” is actually just another switch in our programming, executed based on the input provided to it by our sensors to the world around us and information we gathered through them in our past sensory experiences. Science removes mystery from things. That’s what it does. And once it removes the mystery from how our mind works, we begin to feel naked. Is it really that we’re just a sum of our parts?

Yup. Looks like we are.

And this is where we get back to our original issue. We are alive. We have life. Why do we say so? Because we feel it. We feel life in ourselves. We feel alive. So objectively speaking it may be that we are just sum of our parts and that we are just machines. It may even be that our feelings are just a result of a yet another subroutine in our brain software. But the fact that we are the ones who feel those subroutines running our brain is what matters to our life, because this is what makes us alive! And the importance of this living to us, alive beings, is all the more amplified by the existence of so many other alive beings which share the same predicament. We are not alone. We interact with each other, create societies, cultures and civilizations - all around the fact that we are all alive and want to be as alive as we can be.

Because the meaning of life is to live, for if we don’t live, we MIGHT as well be merely machines executing commands from our neocortex based on the sensory inputs from the surroundings.

What is the meaning of “meaning” anyway? I found that trying to answer this question is a real eye opener that makes things quite clear. Meaning is irrelevant outside of a living being. A rock on Mars means absolutely nothing objectively speaking. Mars itself means absolutely nothing objectively speaking. Pluto is neither a planet nor an asteroid, objectively speaking. It all “means” nothing when there is nobody for it to mean something to.

But if you come to Mars and pick up that meaningless rock, you would immediately assign meaning to it. It might be the first rock you picked up on Mars and therefore this fact is what would give this rock a meaning to you. You might put it in your room back on Earth in a special place and cherish it every day as it reminds you of your first visit to Mars. But.. it’s just a rock. Heck, it’s not even a “rock”. Calling it a “rock” or calling it anything is just something we do. Objectively speaking, that rock is just matter.. just a piece of the universe, just a bunch of moleculs in some sort of a structure.

So, speaking of meaning. Objectively speaking nothing makes sense. For something to make sense we first have to have a being with a brain that feels life within itself, to which that something would make some sense. A flower doesn’t smell until someone smells it. It merely emits something, which a living being could interpret as smell or might as well interpret as the weapon of mass destruction.

So, whatever we are objectively speaking, the fact that we feel alive is enough for us to be at peace with the fact that at the same time we are “just” a machine programmed to function in a particular way, by “god” or “natural selection” or something else. The fact that we feel alive IS the thing that adds meaning to everything, the thing which makes something make sense, the thing which makes us assign meaning to our lives, to our societies, to our past, present and future - the thing which makes us want to feel alive even more, and hence grow and grow and keep growing and evolving into beings that are even more self aware than we are right now.

So, what is the meaning of YOUR life? Well, if meaning of life in general is to live, and to live is to feel, and to feel means to feel the desire to feel good. The meaning of your life is therefore in the pursuit and achievement of the ultimate “feelgood”. This is not hedonism, mind you. Hedonism, or mere pursuit of quick pleasure is just one level of “feelgood”, not the deep and profound one which you will know once you feel it - which people usually describe as the sense of accomplishment. You will find a way to feel this way once you look into yourself, who you are right now: what are your interests, skills, desires and beliefs. Once you know who are you and who you want to be you will also know what is it that you need to accomplish to feel accomplished, to feel that ultimate “feelgood” - that you have fulfilled your meaning and left a legacy to others like you to build their meaning on.

This is a beautiful thing. If demystifying ourselves does not scare us into meaninglessness, but rather gives us even more power to mean something and something more - then there is no end to what we could become. For finding ourselves naked did not make us less of who we are - but more. We shine on our own, because we are alive and we radiate life to others around us. Sentient Life is the magic of the universe, now demystified. We are it. And it are us.