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.
A video I just found very nicely and clearly explains the philosophy of Liberty that I now fully believe in.
As american F16s circle above my city in this otherwise peaceful night, I am filled with curiosity. I wonder about a man so important to have 3500 secret agents, 600 security officers, 200 armed guards, 2 F16s, one helicopter, an army of Croatian police, AVAX plane, a war boat docked at stand by on the Adriatic, a nearby NATO base on stand by and more.. protecting him. George Bush is a man accused of many things, from countless deaths and chaos in Iraq to pushing the world into this invisible yet potentially devastating and perpetual “war on terror”.
But I wonder.. about a man who hugs a “bunny” while people mourn the deaths of their soldiers in Iraq..
Bush is just one small link in a chain that is the US, and most other societies. He just happens to be in the public eye the most. He just happens to talk the most and therefore happens to be the one blamed and scapegoated the most. It is the system, however, that let the evils that happened happen - and YOU are a part of the system.
This interview is most illuminating. Listening to Bush speak makes me think that he actually believes what he is saying and what he is doing. How deeply does he believe it I don’t know. Even if he merely thinks that way because he or his coleagues brainwashed him into it does not necessarily change the fact that he believes it. And he believes he is doing good, no matter how incredibly illogical that view may sound to the rest of us. It would not be the first time to see someone do absolute horrors while actually believing they are for some good - to better the world.
It therefore becomes useless and in fact irresponsible to go around shouting and screaming how evil Bush is and how he is “garbage”, a “dick” or whatever else I keep hearing, when you consider the fact that he is a product of the system, nothing more and nothing else. Mind you, I am not saying that he is not still largely responsible for many of those evils. I am saying that the problem is much more fundamental than Bush (or any particular president or politician himself). And I am saying that the problem has much more to do with consentual citizens of the state than people think.
It is the easiest thing to do, point a finger, shout and scapegoat someone. It takes more wisdom to look deeper, into the more fundamental reasoning. It is indeed rare for people to actually look back at themselves and ask themselves what they might have done to let things be the way they are in their country and the world at large.
Masses of people continue to believe totally incredible things, like that aggression is necessary to protect from aggression, that your nation is better than other nations, that we are being taxed by the state for the common good regardless of having no control over the money we pay for that “good”, that ignorance is strenght because “politics is boring and you’d just rather spend your life having as much fun as possible”, that slavery is freedom because they protect you from threats, that war is peace as long as they’re showing you enough images of a plane crashing into a skyscraper…
Tell me.. who is the evil one here? Some of us could blame ourselves as much as we could blame Bush. For our stupidity, ignorance, closed mindedness, idiocy and apathy. Interestingly some of those terms fit very well to Bush as well, because, after all, he is fundamentally no different than you.
I was bashing on Croatia entering NATO and EU in my last post, without asking the people for opinion and I was saying that democracy is a sham. It indeed is, but it is not only the people in the government that we can blame for such a state of things, we can blame everyone whose belief, consent and support led us to such a state. This is our world. It is not a world built only by the presidents, dictators and big corporations - it is the world built by all of the people living in it. The power that is being concentrated is only the consequence of people being incapable to believe in power of their own, in true freedom and individuality of their own and in the responsibility which that carries.
That said, NATO, EU, ongoing power grabs between super powers - it can hardly be stopped so easily. In fact, considering the context of the world we’ve built, it is even to an extent understandable why does a military alliance like NATO exist, why are countries such as Croatia so eager to join EU. It only takes looking at the global picture of the world as it is to understand the reasons. And if you don’t like it, what are you gonna do about it? Shout angrily on the streets with immature parolas like “Fuck Bush”? It might make you temporarily feel better, but it will not move you an inch towards the solution.
The solution is something more fundamental, but we have to accept that what took us or our predecessors centuries to build cannot and should not be teared down over night. Not only would that be disastrous, but it would lead us into an even worse situation for which, again, we could blame ourselves, not just the power hungry politicians seizing their opportunities. We have to learn to be wise adapters and world changers at the same time, balancing between the two. You build your freedom and success in the world little by little through a careful balancing act between using the system and defying the system while spreading the truly world changing ideas whenever possible and sufficiently safe.
We have to start the process and be firm in pursuing its continuation. We have to make changing the world a part of our lifestyle. And we have to know our direction in order for that pursuit to have any meaning (which immediately writes off the angry mobs of “anti-globalists”).
The world sucks? Well, maybe it is partly because you suck too. How about that? Now what are you gonna do about it? Shout at someone or change yourself?
I believe that to change the world we first have to change ourselves. Humanity is nothing but a consistence of human individuals. If it sucks, it just means too many of us suck and need to become better.
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.
There is something wrong in the world and there always has been something wrong in the world. However, we likely wouldn’t know about that should there have been no people to blow the whistles, to speak against the current state of things (that being “the system”, “the establishment” or whatever). We would come to accept the current state of things as normal and all the negative effects on our life as mere “facts of life” as supported by “common knowledge” and “common sense”.
So called “conspiracy theory” movements are gaining strength. The Free Software and Free Culture movement are providing a shelter from digital restrictions on individual freedoms. The anti-war movement organized the biggest anti-war protest in history in 2003, not so long ago. The internet is doing wonders in rising support for an otherwise completely unlikely president candidate in USA: Ron Paul (albeit whether this would get him elected is highly doubtful).
All of these are symptoms of corruptness of our world. It is the immune system of our societies fighting back at the cancer that is developing in them. You do not have to agree with Alex Jones or David Icke on everything. You might even consider them frauds trying to earn their fortunes on people’s hunger for some sort of a change. However, if everything was fine and if people really didn’t have anything to rally against, they wouldn’t have the success that they had.
Furthermore, despite sometimes dubious story arks presented by these people, many of the things they say do reflect the truth as I see it and some of the reactions they awake in people are indeed ones that should awake. I once recently read a comment about libertarians from someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with them. He said, and I paraphrase, that a good thing about libertarians is that they serve as a detector of bad government behaviour since they put government at so much scrutiny. My point is that even when you disagree with the general context surrounding a particular political faction or a campaign, there may be some things about it which are worth picking out and recognizing as good effects.
This is why I advocate inquisitive exploration and open minded analysis of everything, as long as you are capable and well trained (by yourself) to resist classical propaganda appeals. This way you can separate the stuff that makes sense to you from the stuff that, as some aptly say, alarms your “bullshit detector” (which too must be well trained).
However, open minded exploration must be combined with another incredibly important thing: self-determination. You must respect yourself, believe in yourself and be confident. You must discover who you are and what you want to be in order to know the context of your interests and your exploratory journey. Here is the thing. No book, no newspaper, no TV station, no internet podcast, no holly book, no government and no leader deserves an absolute trust. The only one you must trust is yourself.
To borrow a saying from the movie idiocracy: “Either lead, follow or get out of the way”. I think there is quite a bit of wisdom to those words. What I would urge everyone to try to choose among these three options is “lead”. Seriously, I want everyone to be leaders!
You might ask how is this possible? Someone must be a follower, right? Well, there is nothing about this piece of wisdom which denies the possibility of combining either of these three options. What I advocate is a certain way of prioritizing where “lead” comes first, “follow” comes second and “get out of the way” comes third. For example, when exploring someone’s presentation of “truth” you must think like a leader, the leader of yourself and determine whether it is a good idea to lead yourself to the following of this new “truth”. Just the same, when you are considering “getting out of the way”, this is the mind set which should be employed. Following something or someone as well as getting out of the way (possibly submitting to a sort of ignorance) are options that should be picked with much more deliberation than they usually are.
You must be a leader.
Imagine a nation of such leaders, self-determined, confident, curious and open minded. Who is going to pull one over their eyes? How can they be manipulated? They can’t. This is why I believe this mentality of leadership, when adopted by ideally everyone in our society might be one of the fundamental pillars of positive world change.
That said, going back to the real world as we see it today, here is an interesting observation. Why are “conspiracy theorists” like Alex Jones and David Icke so full of propaganda material appealing to ones emotional triggers? Could it be because the majority of our society has become so numb to intellectual rationalism that there is no other way to reach them other than propagandist emotional appeals? If this is so (and I would be willing to bet it is), then it is certainly a sad state of things. These common people are essentially like remote controlled drones - you only need to press the right switches for them to move.
It is hard to tell who is guilty of turning them into this. Is it the system (media propagated culture of consumerism, culture of desire etc.) they help fuel or is it themselves for letting it happen in the first place? It may really be both, since it is hard to see things ever being much better in the past. If anything people have been even more ignorant and conforming. However, one thing that seems to be different and most scary about the present culture of conformism and ignorance is that they believe they are free and that everything is just fine.
And this is because they failed to grow up into leaders of themselves and are still nannied by the corrupt system they live in and perpetuate. It’s time to make kids into adults and turn this movement of sub-humanism into intellectual super-humanism.
Disclaimer: Again, I have to say that sub-humanism and super-humanism do not refer to inherent state of human beings. We are all simply human. Instead, I refer to the aspirations which may be towards sub- or super-. This is not about eugenics and not about trans-humanism, nor do my views condone treating people as less or more human. Perhaps I will get tired of these disclaimers and come up with alternative terms. Feel free to make suggestions.
Disclaimer2: The fact that I realized and acknowledged these notions does not necessarily make me an end result of these “super-humanism” aspirations. I wouldn’t even claim to be a very good leader of myself. I have my problems and I am, after all, a mere human. However, I think it is the realization that matters as the first step towards making yourself more superb. I am on my journey. I hope you will or already had started yours. 
Cheers
I tend to be sensitive to stories which describe the few manipulating the many, from a nation to the world at large, for their own agenda. You may otherwise know them as “conspiracy theories”, but I tend to avoid contributing to the proliferation of that term because it is nowadays used merely as a means of discrediting whatever one has to say - truth or not, logical or not.
Ultimately I think I learned, by now, to be more vary of such theories and to be more critical initially, not just after further evaluation - so I don’t fall for it before I’ve actually given it a full analysis and thought. Or perhaps I just grew tired of it as I start believing more in my own personal power and the power of other individuals, to change the world - to spoil whatever plans whichever elite may have for it.
I am beginning to realize that what the masses should be most excited about is not so much the big New World Order scenarios or big political plots as much as their own personal self improvement and empowerment. It is interesting how many times I’ve seen a relation between theories of mass manipulation and simple personal disjointedness of a common western human today: disjointedness from their own very humanity. Since the majority of people apparently fail to find themselves they resort to playing one of the roles made for them by the society they are living in. This is conformism. They conform to the path set for them by the society because they do not know their own way!
I couldn’t hope to explain this as well as Brian Kim can, especially in his article titled “Why So Many People Are In Jobs They Hate”. Because they don’t yet even know what would be a job they love, let alone have the boldness to pursue it! Then they ultimately start to blame the system, the society, because indeed it is the paths society has made for them that they followed and became so unhappy. Intriguing question comes to my mind: Is it any wonder theories of conspiracies are so popular?
I would say that if there is a conspiracy going on, if we are being manipulated, the best way to oppose it might not be to go on the tedious process of ghost chasing, trying to find the truth in a pile of truths - all the movies and articles all claiming to know the truth about the world and its future. The best way to make sure that we are not being manipulated and led like sheep into the world of dystopia is to realize that there is more than a sheep within ourselves, to discover a human being in us and who exactly it is! Once we do we will be naturally able to rearrange our life as if we were born again, as if we were turned from one kind of being into another, much more powerful, one which can actually live to its full potential, one which can change the world, one which will not be manipulated, one which has its own path and will not conform.
Imagine if all people in the world found the real full blooded human in themselves! Oh I certainly believe whoever is plotting a conspiracy to make us slaves to their agenda will have their plans severely disturbed. When the majority of people are barely aware of who they are and hence naturally conformist, they are easy to manipulate. But when you have a nation, a world nation of people who are full blooded ambitious humans in touch with their self and on their fast tracks towards the goals they set out to achieve, many of which due to the ambitious evolutionary nature of a true human include changing the world at large good luck with manipulating them!
This is an incredible realization. There are so many various theories out there, so many wrongs in the world. And the knee jerk reaction to them tends to be emotional - anger, numbness, cynism, an undirected drive of an activist - and in most cases all of this is in vain. You can’t do much to change the reality of the world if you don’t yet know the reality of who you are. How can you use yourself to bring about change if you still didn’t learn who and what yourself is? It’s like trying to go into a car race without knowing how to use the gear changer, or like trying to fly a space ship without knowing how to turn the propulsion on. Sooner or later the space ship you are trying to fly will be caught by the gravity of something bigger - leading you down its own paths and you’ll barely even be aware of it until you hit an asteroid or something. 
So the prospects of the world are frustrating. Heck, your own life is frustrating! How about changing it all? There is a solution. It is you! You just didn’t find YOU yet. I suggest you take a look at what Brian Kim has to say (check his articles on the left sidebar). It’s really helping me so I figure it might help you too!
I’m on my way.
Cheers
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