Memeverse

I want to start this brief post with a proclamation:

Fear is the key.

Fear of government.
Fear of other people.
Fear of differences.
Fear of unknown.

Fear of freedom.

Lack of fear IS freedom.

Without fear I am free. Without fear I can be different. I can disobey. I can do things that are illegal. I can do anything. Without fear nothing can stop me from being who I want to be. Without fear I am not compelled to conform. I am free in the fullest sense possible.

Fear is what supposed authorities use to control everyone else. Fear is what people use to control each other. If you can make another person be afraid, you can easily subjugate them, in the name of their own protection, protection from that which they fear. It can be anything. It doesn’t matter so long as they are convinced enough that it is a threat to be afraid. At the top of the order of the first decade of the 21st century seems to be terrorism. And then terrorists themselves come to your protection, using your fear to strip you of your rights, your dignity, your privacy, your humanity.

V for Vendetta is an excellent movie, in that those who are open minded enough, curious and inquisitive enough, will find this truth within it, the truth about fear. Mr. “V” in the movie is a violent person. He is “V for Vendetta”. He is a person that has been monstrously treated by those who believe in violence and he became violence because of that, but only against those who he perceived as the violators. I hold no illusion that what he did was mere self defence. It is not. I believe what he did in the movie were crimes. But at the same time this murderer they forged into being knows the truth.

Those who exercise more than sloppy thinking will be able to discern a person from the idea.

I for one propose another kind of V. It is V for Voluntary, for everything that is great in human relations happens after a voluntary agreement, not after a threat of force. Let all human action be voluntary, some time in the far future.

Meanwhile, this non-violent (r)evolution can start with me and you and the few people who want to learn how to cast away consumption of fear that they’ve been taught to consume and embark on a new kind of journey through life, where we control our each and every step, our each and every decision, based not on fear but on what we as human beings really want to accomplish in our lives. No gunman can take your freedom away when you have no fear, as lack of fear IS freedom.

V for Voluntary. Let’s turn that color of blood into the color of the sun, and the warmth that comes from voluntary relations as opposed to those with cold red blooded coercionism.

Let the evolution continue.

Notes:

• Alan Moore on Anarchy
• Voluntaryist Planet

I have a feeling that the young generations of today and rebellion go hand in hand. Some would say that it is in the nature of teen age to rebel, but judging from what I hear from my own parents, a story which may be confirmed by many other parents, is that even if they did want to rebel, the voice of obedience was often much stronger. Their own parents must’ve been much more intimidating.

Today, in the age in which rebellions thumping sounds are what we call mainstream music, from hip hop to trance and techno, it looks like the young generation is winning. Only a couple of decades ago this kind of music was frowned upon as mind washing, overly seductive and drug use inducing and people have and probably still are literally forbidding their kinds to listen to it, let alone go to one of those huge parties

Yet the number of these parties and the number of attendants seems to be growing! The once considered “hard” electronic music is becoming mainstream. This music very often invokes feelings of self power and thereby rebellion to anyone who says you can’t do what you really want.

There is only one problem. People who love this kind of music, and despite criticism from their elderly go to these parties, often go only to get themselves “wasted” or to “have a good time” or even to find a (sex) partner…

It could be more, however, if the mentality of rebellion is brought a step further. I could say that the rebels have the music, but still lack the determination and a target. The electronic music culture seems a little like the anti-globalist movement, but with a twist. They both love to make lots of noise wherever they go. They both come in great numbers and they both have a sense of rebellion in them. It’s just that anti-globalists, when they come to one of their “parties”, that is, protests, shout and scream and wave signs and flags and even sometimes do material damage in their agitation towards the perceived enemy, the target, the powers that be, like the G8 group or the Bilderbergs.

Their problem? What the hell is their solution? They have the target alright, but they seldom offer anything they fight FOR. Like, who would they replace the G8, the Bilderbergs and the worlds corrupt governments with??

The electronic music culture of rebellion is similar. They’ve got that kick (pun not intended), but it’s not channeled towards anything but “wasting” themselves. Many on those sensational trance parties talk about “energy”, “love” and “connectedness”, but where do they channel these things? Maybe this energy could be channeled towards a particular shared goal? Maybe the electronic music culture of rebellion needs to define a target and a goal of its own. We feel rebellious, but who are we rebelling against and what are we FOR?

Bottom line is, I’m essentially advocating a merger between what is essentially entertainment and activism. Both have enormous power within them. Entertainment, like electronic music in this instance, can get people incredibly energized, fired up and excited. Activism needs exactly these elements to fuel its campaign for a particular cause. Merging the two is an explosion waiting to be detonated.

I will, in fact, probably be working on this sort of thing. My last post was incredibly vague and impulsive, but it does have something to do with what I am talking about here.

The culture of rebellion will be powered up. Ingredients are there. We just need to mix them up.

You wont know what hit you. Yet you shall stay there amazed at how much power you thought you didn’t have.

Stay tuned.

This is the basic tenet behind modern Libervis.com, a site which is dedicated to gathering people to explore technology and the powers that it gives us, particularly with regards to ways in which this power can be used in favor or to detriment of individual freedoms.

The official announcement of the new and most dramatic revision of the site has been made, designed to encourage people to come in and explore. Please see the and also help spread the word about the site by digging the story.

Thank you!

This was a pretty interesting weekend for me. It all started, interestingly, with an ad that I clicked on when browsing space.com. The ad was for 2012comet.com and I was curious.

So after a number of videos watched and some texts read, a couple of blog entries and a little discussion we’re having beneath one of them on the topic of ancient texts, Planet X and extraordinary 2012 events I am taking the following out of it:

1. The more ancient the more suspicious

That’s basically what I explained in my last post. The more ancient a text the more context of it we seem to be missing and therefore the more likely we are to be wrong about any interpretation of it and conclusion that we draw from it. For me, this gets to the point where I begin to lose interest in such texts and ancient history in whole and better focus on modern times, the present and near future and what we know here and now instead. Life is too short and today we’re learning so much more about our world, with or without ancient texts, that there’s just too much to explore yet somehow always too little time.

My interest remains largely in technology and futurism (extrapolating technological progress into the future and where it may or should lead us), as well as in terms of social organization, voluntaryism, helping each other evolve our thinking to a point at which we wont feel the need for coercive governments to lead and restrain us.

2. If we are exploring ancient times, it makes more sense to look at all available text equally rather than over emphasizing one source over another. But don’t hope for much certainty.

Yes, I’m targetting christians and their bible here. If we are to explore ancient past, it makes more sense to me to look at and explore objectively all of the available material rather than focusing on only one piece as the most authoritarian source (as holy, infallible etc.). Sure we can judge one source as more credible than the other, but doing so just because we interpret the source itself telling us it is more credible is foolish, yet bible thumpers believe bible as the most authoritarian source based solely on the fact that bible itself says it is.

I am now a little more open minded towards the idea of there being a history much different than what we are taught to believe, but it’s going to be very hard to determine anything with compelling amount of certainty. There are too many missing pieces and we may never know the whole picture, until perhaps, we develop a time machine and actually become able to go back and just see for ourselves.

3. I’m more open to exploring the UFO phenomena.

While most of the supposed UFO sightings may be imagination, self delusion or a scam, there still remains a number of cases, from what I’ve seen, where there truly is no alternative explanation so far than to say that something indeed extraordinary has happened, something that really is out of this world. This is enough for me to at the least be open towards further exploring this phenomena rather than outright rabidly dismissing it as lunacy. So far, when it comes to the UFO controversy we seem to have two extreme sides. One is absolutely convinced we are being visited by aliens and the other is absolutely convinced that no such thing is happening or that the UFOlogists are all nuts. Frankly, both approaches are rather annoying. It’s like both sides get stuck in their own story without being able to concede even a little.

Skeptics are especially interesting when it comes to this topic, as they are the ones usually claiming to have a scientific high ground and to be more rational, yet all they can do is be perpetual debunkers. I mean, instead of actually going about exploring the phenomena like real scientists would do, all they seem to be interested in doing is debunking to high heaven. Looks like they’re open to questioning everything but themselves, therefore obviously failing to question everything.

4. Governments are in the way.

How much less conspiracy theories would there be if there was no this mythical belief in government. Most people still seem to view governments as if they were somehow detached from everyone else and bigger than the sum of its parts, as if it was really an IT, some creature that has special almost god like powers. Perhaps one of the most ridiculous suggestions depicting this incredible belief is that governments may have access to some super technologies which nobody else has and knows about, as if the government is so efficient that it could, in parallel to the markets of people usually creating most of our technology, create technologies that go far beyond known capabilities.

I guess it’s no surprise why people think this way and hold these myths. The idea of government is essentially the idea that a certain group of people are right to use violence to control the rest, and unsurprisingly this group of people often does take advantage of that belief. And so whenever they do violently prevent others from doing what they otherwise would, talking about what they otherwise would or seeing what they otherwise would, time is ripe for conspiracy theories to arise, based on questions like “What are they hiding from us?”, “Why can’t we do this?” and “What is their agenda?”.

In truth, governments are just groups of people for whom everyone believes are special and have the right to use violence against the rest of the people in the name of protecting order and security. Government is therefore a myth for there is no such thing as “special people” just because someone calls them with a different prefix nor is there such a thing as more order and security with more violence.

The existence of governments, or the idea that creates them, inflates conspiracy theories, leave everyone in a state of mutual confusion and plant totally unnecessary traps and obstacles to uninhibited exploration of the truth.

Cheers

The farther away in time an event is supposed to happen, both in the past and in the future, the harder it is to prove and therefore establish certainty that it has or will happen. Conversely, the closer a supposed event is in time the easier it is to establish its certainty. A similar thing might be said for distance in space, not just time. If something is happening here and now the certainty and amount of proof of it happening is maximum.

This should make every theory about what happened in ancient past as well as any prediction into far future highly suspicious by default. It follows that every prediction of events to happen in immediate, close future that are based on theories of what happened in ancient distant past to be largely suspicious as well.

That said, one way people attempt to get around this fact and therefore convince people to believe these theories with much less suspicion than may be in order is to relate a supposed event from distant past with events in modern times since modern times are much closer in time and therefore much easier to prove and much easier to believe. Here are some examples:

1. PROPHECIES BEING FULFILLED:

Sometimes the supposition is that in ancient times people were in close contact with god or gods who informed certain people of what will happen in the future. These people are called prophets. Often they prophecise great dooms, but also great times for, usually, believers.

The way this extraordinary supposition is being tied into the more believable realm of modern times is by looking for similarities in events of modern times (close past and present) with events described in these prophecies, trying to prove these prophecies as such and make people believe in them and therefore that events that were prophecised that did not yet happen will happen.

2. CYCLES: REPEATING HISTORY:

Sometimes the supposition is that something happened in the past which happens periodically through time and that people who lived in the past experienced and wrote about it describing it in various ways, sometimes giving hints to that this event may be cyclical. The way this is tied into modern times is by, obviously, looking for evidence of the exact same thing happening today. This is largely what Planet X theories are all about. The trouble here is that there still remains a high amount of suspicion that what they claim happened in past really did happen as their interpretation of supposed ancient texts may be off or the texts didn’t describe real events in the first place.

3. SCIENTIFIC PREDICTIONS:

It may be explicitely claimed that predictions made weren’t actually prophecies (given by the divine), but actual scientific conclusions by those who lived in ancient times. This too possibly involves Planet X flyby as it may be claimed that ancient humans knew enough about math and astronomy to predict another flyby of a given object in space thousands years in advance, based on mathematical calculations and astronomical observations.

Again, proof is sought in modern times by looking for signs that these events are really coming to pass.

This is how these theories can easily become convincing to some people. If you have insufficient knowledge of what actually IS happening today you’re likely to have even less understanding of what happened in the past prior, let alone ancient past. Essentially you are close to able to buy just about any story someone comes up with. This is why it is crucial to understand the world around you, question everything, look with your own eyes and sense with your own senses, seek proof of credibility of your sources if you ever come to temptation of believing them and keep in mind that the farther in time their suppositions go the less likely they are to be true.

Ultimately it may not even matter as much where particular claims come from as much as the claims themselves. Someone may say something will happen based on bible and another based on some mayan texts. Whatever. Look at the claims and try to determine what has to happen before what they claim can happen too? What would be the signs?

That said, claims that god is coming to Earth for the second time are much much harder to correlate with present times than claims of some asteroid or planet coming near our planet. The latter we can actually fit into some sort of a scientific framework and look for it based on that whereas the former by itself implies total exclusion of all known scientific frameworks. So what if you don’t see anything in the sky or if there is no evidence of anything that couldn’t be explained as a planet, asteroid etc.? God can just appear all of a sudden out of literally nowhere. You can’t exactly go against that claim. You can either take it on faith or reject it. They can tell you of the signs too, but the question is whether the signs they are pointing to really have anything to do with the claim they are making, in the real world as we know it and within the scientific framework. If not then we can’t accept their “signs” as a premise for anything.

This is, again, where Planet X is different. Indeed, they are pointing to increased activity in the sun and disasters on Earth as signs, but they also point out to the scientifically plausible connection between these signs and the actual claim, that the Planet X is coming for a flyby of Earth. This is something that you actually can go and explore for yourself. It doesn’t matter where they’ve gotten this idea. It matters whether the Planet X truly exists, if yes where it is moving, what kind of an object it actually is and what are the trends in natural behaviors on Earth, sun and other solar system objects. IF all these signs do point to the correctness of the Planet X claim then fine. Then you can go ahead and ask yourself what is it that you can do about it. Otherwise, just wait and see. It is possible that in exploring Planet X we may as well discover that while it does exist that it wont flyby any time soon or that it will, but wont cause as much damage as it is claimed it will. Maybe it will just be a spectacular show.

I am finding out about some very intriguing theories. They seem to circulate among people exploring or believing in the existence of the so called “Planet X” for which some believe is in a 3600 years long eliptical orbit around sun and which is actually coming to fly by Earth around year 2012. Now, whenever I hear that year I am immediately thrown into a skeptic mode. It reminds me of the whole Year 2000 craze and all of the doomsayers whose predictions somehow never seem to come to pass. Besides, how can anyone be so absolutely sure about whatever supposedly correct  prediction to actually pin it down so precisely into a single year?

That said, I’ll get to the point. I am still pretty new to the whole Planet X talk, but some of the things I found out tonight are still intriguing. For instance the idea that historical events described in the bible describe events which were at the same time viewed by other civilizations which did not include the authors of the bible, but their own observers and their own authors who described those same events from their own perspective. Furthermore, many of the supposedly magical and supernatural events are by them being described from a much more secular viewpoint, not always attributing them to a single christian god, but to.. technology and extra-terrestial phenomena.

These texts include those written by ancient egyptians, celts, sumerians etc. Somehow taking into account a much wider array of historical accounts without giving supremacy to any single one of them (like christians do with the bible) rings like a more rational way of exploring our ancient past.

That said, what some people end up concluding from these texts is quite fantastic and I do remain a skeptic by default, mind you. They are theorizing, for example, that Moses used alien technology to part the red sea or that according to sumerians, humans may have been genetically engineered by another advanced civilization.

Here is the thing now. While I find it hard to just believe in those incredible conclusions they seem much LESS incredible than the conclusion that god created everything, including us. I personally do not believe in that, but I do not necessarily leave out the possibility either (which is what makes me an agnostic or a weak atheist). I don’t even fully believe in the theory of evolution, especially the part about how it all begun (the big bang stuff). It’s about as incredible as saying god did it. Instead my point of view was always that we simply don’t know, or I simply don’t know how it happened, how we came to be and what is out there, so why go and jump to conclusions and then call them definite, whether your conclusion is the evolution or creationism?

So from that perspective, I am essentially putting myself in a position of an explorer who says “OK now, let’s see what is out there, are there any alternative explanations?”. And this is why I find these theories mentioned above so curious, especially considering they are so much closer to the secular and scientifically minded approach than most religious theories tend to be.

So I’ll probably continue gradually exploring them. I could rant on about what I think about the whole doomsday scenario some of these people are propagating, but maybe I’ll save it for another entry. Let’s just say that I am not prepared to accept it lightly, but AM at least curious enough to watch out for the news of that mysterious big planet beyond Pluto and whether it’s really coming our way.

That much wont hurt. I do have a liking to astronomy and space exploration anyway.

Cheers

By some estimates, up to 15 000 americans have just been marching for freedom in Washington DC, USA and most of the day I have been watching for the updates, listening to the Revolution Broadcast, talking with other people on their chat and even made a supportive phone call all the way to US.

Yet I live in Croatia. So why am I so, shall we say “obsessed”, about the freedom issue in USA instead of the local issues. Why have I always been fairly international about my efforts instead of putting more focus on the local situation?

Part of the reason is that I am an internet critter, and my job is essentially 100% internet based, and internet is by definition international. I could’ve chosen to focus on the Croatia based sites, but I didn’t want to limit myself. I didn’t find a good enough reason not to go all the way, make sites in english and target an international audience.

And this choice is all the more fitting in the context of where I stand today, as an Earth inhabitant and a voluntaryist. The way I see it, freedom is a worldwide issue. It is not like it matters more whether people are free in one particular locality or another especially in a world that is a global village, so interconnected that an one can influence another even if they were on opposite hemispheres of Earth.

People sometimes say that when there is a particular cause we share it helps to put aside our differences and focus on what is our common goal, and nationalities, imaginary borders within which we are living may very well be among such differences. If you share the same exact idea it does not matter whether you live in USA or in Europe or wherever else. And if pursuit of that idea will make you actually go as far to change your location then so be it.

I see USA as a former beacon of liberty that may be unparalleld in history and even today as it is for all intents and purposes a police state in the making, it seems to still have a most vibrant movement of liberty activists in the world, liberty which actually involves freedom from such things as taxes, coercive government programs, government’s regulation or even government itself.

There is a project in New Hampshire, USA, an alternative to which at this point in time exists nowhere else on Earth, a Free State Project. It’s goal is liberty in our lifetime, starting with minimizing government and then perhaps even more. As someone who cares about freedom I am increasingly convinced that this is the focal point, the center of the worldwide movement for freedom. If a free state is once again established in New Hampshire, and especially if a working voluntaryist society is established, it will serve as a powerful example to the rest of the world just as USA influenced the rest of the world being a perceived beacon of freedom.

So living in one place or another essentially matters not as much as the actual ideas. If people carrying a particular idea populate mostly a particular part of the world then it is not only natural, but even logical and prefferable to cooperate with those people and focus on those parts of the world.

This is in big part why I am seriously beginning to entertain the idea of working towards moving to New Hampshire and becoming a member of the Free State Project. It seems as if I could find my home there, stop feeling like an isolated netizen whose most activities are online because that’s where all of the really interesting people are, and actually start being there with them, working side by side towards the goals we share.

Borders don’t matter. Countries don’t matter. We are all humans, we are all undeniably Earth inhabitants and all want for freedom. That’s really all that matter at the core. Localities, borders etc. should never stand in way to our cooperation towards those shared goals.

Something is going to happen today, a mass of people who finally woke up from their apathy are going to march for their freedom in Washington DC, USA. As a country which used to be considered a beacon of freedom, it is today one of the examples of a police state, and the way people usually react to these gradual yet disastrous encroachments of their liberties is apathy, because they feel lost or disempowered. “What can I do anyway, right?”

Well, Ron Paul is no savior, but he has done something incredible nevertheless. He has been the only US president candidate which actually shows genuine care for the issue of freedom and presents a message that is truly different from what has become a norm in US lately. This helped show people that there may yet be a chance, if only a last chance, for them to actually slow down or stop the encroachments to their freedom.

A sign one guy in a video I am about to link says it best: “Ron Paul cured my apathy”.

Indeed, apathy, which leads to ignorance, settles in when there is a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, but if you are in USA today you can feel vibrant and alive and you can march with hope and energize your activist spirit. The masses of young people are waking up.

But I’ll stop rambling and show you what is it that brings me to tears.

This youtube video, about a Revolution March.

Please digg this video.

It starts with some powerful and motivating scenes of people being abused by their government and flashes back to WW2 germany. The comparison is more fitting than you may think if you just do some research.

It brings me to tears because I care about freedom. I don’t know how else to put it. It is baffling how have we let our governments invade our lives so much, yet we have seen it time and again on TV, on the internet, new freedom depriving laws, news of people being abused and arrested for the most benign of reasons, for crimes which contain no v of violence in it. This shit piles up until we become numb. Even I become numb, cynical and angry.

That video may be propaganda, but it has a way of being an emotional outlet, inducing the kind of reaction that convinces me, yes I do care. I care to the tears. I care so much I would want to go there and march with the rest, if I only could.

But I will be watching for the news from the freedom front tomorrow in Washington. And I will be hoping that they send a shockwave of voices saying: “We are not giving up, we are paying attention and we are going to take our freedoms back”. And then, there is more hope we can go even further, not just 90% of freedom with minimal government, but 100% of it in a true voluntaryist society.

But it all starts now, or every moment that you choose. Maybe you’ll want to choose July 12, the Revolution March.

And again, please Please spread this video to help motivate more people.

I’ve said it before, but let’s make if “official”.

I hereby declare my sovereignty from all governments, all nations and all laws. I am not a croatian. I am not european.

I am an inhabitant of the Planet Earth and this is its flag.

Mind you I can make my own flag if I want to. I can stand by multiple flags of my own making or my own choosing, but none of the national ones. None!

I wont even call myself a “citizen” because that might imply someone has to grant me “citizenship”. I live on Earth so I am an inhabitant, nothing more, nothing less. You could say that I live in Croatia and am therefore an inhabitant of croatia, but I’ll take that as meaning that you call this general area to be “croatia”, but borders don’t matter.

Do I have the right to make these kinds of proclamations? Well, do I own myself? Yes. If you believe otherwise, prove it!

Thank you.