Fukushima 2013

Reading through a handful of articles all stating the same thing, I finally decided to go with this one, seeing how well sourced it is concerning statements. This article takes the rather pessimistic viewpoint that a nuclear crisis on the scale of the Cuban missile crisis is imminent.

- Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

- Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

If this is true, then the article, written in late september, says that the official statement is that about 60 days remain before this Unit 4 will ignite and start a fuel fire. Such a fuel fire would apparently damn our atmosphere, which in turn ruins the air, the oceans and the positive effects of the sun, effectively choking the planet to death. And just to drill it in, in case you have previously been categorising this issue in your mind as a Japanese issue:

- Chernobyl’s first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima’s in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.

If radiation from Chernobyl in eastern Europe can reach California in ten days, then compare that with the current issue where we face an amount 15,000 times greater. It should be clear to you, that this is a global issue, and should therefore concern you. This is why it is damaging that the offical story is indeed that it is just a japanese issue.

To broaden this discussion I will point out that this is a very dangerous way of categorising issues, and at the same time it is quite resemblant of how issues are indeed categorised. Issues like these are clearly of global concern, and should therefore not be a national problem to solve. When an issue concerns more than just one nation, the nation becomes a hinderance in finding a solution. National pride and economics are the causes of this, and they pull in opposing directions. Some market theories unquestionably labels issues like this as a positive force in the market in that it provides investment incentive to a large degree. Funneling public funding into private institutions working to compete for a solution to the issue. But the mere time frame alone should clarify how crippling this is to a creative and functional solution. There is a very good reason why it has come down to this narrow time frame now, with a crisis that started in 2011. That is the level of thinking associated with the solution is thoroughly handicapped by the framework enforced on the debate.

The fault lies in presupposing that every issue that ever enters our reality is a democratic one. Sometimes precision is needed, which assumes an undermining of all bureaucracy in order to minimize collateral damage.

A day in the life

Trapped. Queued. Shopping... Looking at a plastic basket full of imported groceries, I find myself contemplating how fast I could escape this situation should I want to. I wonder if the sun is shining outside, and in about five minutes time, when I have paid for my temporary solutions, I will find out if it does.

But then I sat up. I was in bed. Nightmares always make me rather groggy when I wake up, so it takes a short while before I distinguish this moment from the last in the string of conscious experiences. The sun was indeed shining outside, and I feel it now warming my hair ever so gently as I bend down again resting on the elbows. I know what comes next, but the delicate grace of the consuming familiarity has to be overpowered, before I can get up and do what must be done.

Going to the bathroom for a quick leak, and I will have my breakfast afterwards. Some progressively charming people would refer to it as “a cheap golden spa with the doctor”. Reviewing the numbers popping up on the mirror as I wash my hands, I find that my recent diet has been a bit too sugar-heavy, so instead of just leaving, I tab the recommended meal touch pad.

Jumping into a pair of nano-fabric shorts and a t-shirt I feel the short chill, before I venture into the garden outside. The sun shine really is lovely today. Like a never ending and never beginning kiss on the cheek from the love of your life. But after dwelling on such a rather poetic notion for a short while, my stomach lets out a brief growl shoving me back on track. So I sign in with a finger print on the pad next to the hydroponics, and upon recognising that I asked for a recommended meal, lights beneath the artificial soil quickly appear, highlighting the necessary fruits and vegetables for my breakfast. I sheathe my hands into the gardening gloves on the desk and take to gather the components.

I must say I do not care much for the compliments I get from my kitchen, just because I went with the suggested meal to balance my vitamin intake, but I guess some concessions have to be made, if it helps other people be motivated towards a better a diet. I could just tell my kitchen to stop giving me those messages, but I like to be reminded of my own attitude. And of course there is the added bonus that fewer and fewer people have to see doctors now. I reckon medicine will easily transition into a focus on preventative treatment and health maintenance in my life time given where we are now.

Leaving the house I greet the neighbour coming home. She has apparently already been out and about on one of the new city roamers. These vehicles never seize to amaze me. Plated with a photovoltaic shell, just like almost every road is now, they run entirely on sun light, but the interesting part is that this has completely vamped society, and I think this is why people get up so early in the morning now, even though there is no labour left to do. These bikes never stay stationary for longer periods of time, and yet they have a fascinating break down rate of close to zero.

So when she gets out, I jump in and articulate my destination to the receiver. When I get to the university, I quickly traverse the stairs in anticipation of the study group I have been preparing for all week. “Applied Teraforming” has become my new hobby, and I hope to one day become sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject to teach it myself. Although most classes are now taught by the students themselves on a rotation basis, it is suggested that one takes a number of classes on a specific subject, prior to leaving the student roster and entering the the student-teacher roster.

Regarding “Applied Teraforming” I tend to day dream about a production team of developers and programmers working with me to realise my dream of a computer game, that tasks players with cultivating the best possible environment on a given planet, drawing raw data and calculating impacts made by player decisions from the global database. In turn this could become applied teraforming, if the record setting players' designs would be submitted back into the database for engineers and ecologists to review as possible schemes for real space exploration. But that is just my personal goal, and if it is to be, then I am sure I will eventually find the people I need for such a team to start working.

Later this week I did sign up for another study group called “Beyond exchange”, but I am actually considering not going. The people are very nice, but I do sometimes feel that I spent a bit too much time on that subject before Liberation, so I am not sure I would learn much from a thorough analysis into the socialisation process concerned with human interaction and that stuff. It just always seemed like a given to me that it would obviously work out in the end, even if we did not have anything left to threaten each other with.

However, I do see the merit in the course, because we certainly did not evolve past the exchange based culture as soon as we technically could have. And if I do go, it will be to explore how the transition seems to be going based on recent findings. Most of the previous advocates of exchange came around after strife and famine were ended, but some still cling to the idea that humans are categorically egoistical, and the only reason we are currently functional in a cooperative society is because it benefits ourselves the most. I guess they could be right. But then again, the results speak for themselves. All the psychiatrists either chose another education or shipped off to the Americas to work with transitional conflicts over there, simply because the need here fell like never before a few years after Liberation.

What amuses me greatly is when I get back home and do my exercises before dinner. I was always one of those lazy kids who were never properly motivated by the physical socio-dynamics, but now that I can track my progress on a bar that slowly builds towards the next level, I find myself working out almost every day. It is purely recreational though, but I do not see why that would be a bad thing. The results are that my ulcerative colitis is kept in check, and my body has never been healthier. To think I was pretty much addicted to junk food and computer games before Liberation. Now I feel in shape, and not because I have to impress anyone but myself.

So for dinner tonight I believe I will treat myself to a soy burger with a quinoa bun and a relish of kale and pees. Afterwards I try to stay motivated towards a short session of meditation. After training for a while I can tell it helps me stay curious and open minded, but when there is no bar tracking how well I do it just gets a bit too intangible sometimes.

So have a nice evening friends. I will see you in class for “Steady-state patterning”.

Horizontal Social Governance

Inspired by the following RSA presentation I have begun a new train of thought this morning. But before I introduce what could become a lengthy introduction I will let you get acquainted with the material yourself.

What I gather from this talk is that Jeremy Rifkin believes that a 3^rd industrial revolution could be on its way. Obviously this is interesting by itself, with all the perspectives on peak oil and what not, but what I find to be even more intriguing is that this perspective that power and management thus far has been vertical – top-down. And as is introduced the internet has more than proved that people are ready for a more horizontally oriented approach. Powerful search engines have made the lack of available information a thing of the past, and this could be interpreted as a sign that people are adjusting to having more influence.

As opposed to Mr. Rifken I see a wealth of possible conflicts with this emerging social paradigm of equality. A horizontally governed direct democracy, as it would be, would feature less individually oriented authority. This would make politics obsolete in a relatively short period of time, and that would be perfectly fine, if it was not for the fact that the powers that be will know this in advance of the majority, and they will try, as they have with the Occupy movement and similar groups, to turn public orientation towards an illusion that they and they alone embody democracy. Because if they do it would become obvious how counterproductive it is to diminish the institutions concerned with politics and law making.

The proof of the above claim? Look at how the media handles the rising discontent with governing institutions. They are attempting to shadow the reality of how big a portion of the globe is currently interested in making changes. While all of them do not share a unified goal for whatever change they seek, they agree on the fact that something must be done. Humans are now on a collision course with reality, as we begin to understand that razing forest after forest to compete in this global game of monopoly is unrealistic.

In closing it should be noted that the reason that we are simultaneously aware of this abyss and still moving towards it, is exactly the vertical governing installation of representative democracy. This makes for a dissonance between what we know and how fast we can make changes accordingly because every discovery in science and later in public understanding has to go through the process of persuading political figures and market shaping forces before it can be integrated properly.

Because we are a top-down species at this point, we are limited from responding optimally to emerging social problems.

Service

Depending on what culture you are from you may have experienced what I am about to describe. In my country it is very much the case in the service sector of the market that younger and younger people are employed as front line personel. In short, people of the new school.

Aside from the obvious financial benefit this has brought to the employers, since younger, inexperienced people are cheaper, it may be worth pointing out another very important point about this situation.

In the past when the service sector was a relatively fresh industry, following the downsizing of the work force in aggriculture caused by the technology available around the start of the 20^th century, there was a period where it had include a certain flexibility to market itself. The kind of flexibility you would probably only experience presently if you get in contact with someone with a higher grade of responsibility than the service level. The shop keeper or to a lesser extent the manager. Most managers would not apply though. They are put in place to uphold the rules put down by their own employer and their job is based mostly on making sure the staff beneath them bends no rules and applies no flexibility.

Not because the industry tries to work against flexibility, but because the total stream lining of the service sector has allowed for a much more rigid rule set. If you do not like the rules in place at a restaurant or a store, you are pretty much out of luck. Because you can be certain that a quite similar set of rules are in place in whatever other place you may visit.

This may or may not bother you. If it does not I would venture the guess that it is because you have not thought it through. Surely you would rise to some level of discontent if you realised that you had been manipulated into the acceptance of this.

The most modern and ”hip” places introduced this concept into our culture and since then we have come to accept it on a daily basis. We are now at the point where we consider good service the abnormal and remember it for days when some employee somewhere gave us a personal experience. But why is this? Should it not be preferable for society to accept only bad service as the abnormal?

The reason for this rigid business model that we are all supporting with our purchases out of the lack of proper alternatives, is of course that it works. It works to cut back on the extent of service, because the extent of service mostly implies the extent of lowering expected pay for whatever service was given. Deductions and good will are concepts swept under the carpet and the consumer remains ever oblivious.

And this is just the beginning. Now that the industry has us accepting a very poor standard of service, they can easily make the transfer to automated kiosks everywhere. In the grocery store, in the café, in the restaurants and in the malls. For what is more rigid than a machine? And companies know this. They exploit it. They are very much interested in automating the process of purchasing everywhere.

Ownership

What is ownership? In its most basic term it seems to imply the occupation of something by someone. This someone has since the original term was used been expanded to also include organisations and institutions such as corporations and even countries or groups of countries.

What it legally means, however, is simply that this something you have legally bought or acquired is now reserved for you by the enforcing institutions of your community. Is this just a silly overanalytic way to say that the something is yours?

No.

There is a vast difference between the idea of ownership and the actual phenomenon of ownership. You see in the idea of ownership it is possible to say that something is yours. But in the actual world nothing is really yours. It can all be taken away, if not by other people then by external elements operating outside the rule of ownership, such as your dog deciding to eat it or a tsunami washing it all away.

So what you are left with is simply this illusion backed up by real world enforcement that in the event that your something is taken away from you and still desirable for you, then you may call upon these enforcers to bring it back to you or at the very least punish the ones that took it and in some cases recieve a monetary settlement in exchange for your something. It is an illusion that only works because we are all hooked into the same feed of rules, norms and acceptable behaviour.

Just like money it only works as long as everyone operates under the same principles. As soon as someone breaks the norm and becomes a thief, then you need to bend the guiding principles of reality to incorporate enforcing parties, such as the police, to shield you from this asocial behaviour.

And just like money it is only required for society to work properly as long as everyone operates under the same principles. As soon as someone breaks the norm and becomes able to grow their own food and gather their own water from natural sources, they start breaking the need to compromise themselves as individuals to function in this game of monetary exchange.

This clash of topics will most likely raise the issue of what happens to ownership when nothing is bought or sold anymore. When money is no more.

It obviously ceases to exist as the illusion it has survived as for so long. Surely it is a requirement for society to function though?

When you think about it, it should be a perfectly viable model for adults to share rather than own. After all we are not the primates we evolved from, nor are we the child we grew up from. If you connect the reality of sharing rather than owning with the reality that our current means of production could produce an abundance of high quality items for everyone, so long as there is no need for a profit to be generated anywhere, then you will see that this idea of ownership really only serves the salesman. The buyer is left with purchasing illusions.

So this is where the closing question arises. How much do we believe in the modern social sciences proving to us that we are extremely adaptive to the rules of whatever context we apply ourselves to?

Integrity

About a month ago I came up with the idea that I wanted to show my girlfriend a clip from a movie that I would like to discuss with her. In spirit of Black March I completely forgot about it until last night, where I dug up the clip on YouTube. The clip is from the majorly provocative feature called Brüno.

Even if you have watched the movie, you may not remember it as I did. I actually saw the movie in the cinema with my brothers and my cousin. It was quite a movie that we were in no way prepared for, but I suppose that was the idea. What stuck with me, aside from one other very disturbing display of the male body, was this clip of how extremely devoid of integrity the people interviewed seem to be.

I cannot guarantee that they are not actors and this is not a setup, but what I can guarantee is that it would then be very inspired by actual events taking place on an every day basis in the entertainment industry. If you have seen The Greatest Movie Ever Sold you would most likely agree.

But without further ado I bring to you the modern parents with stars in their eyes.

I hope I did not cause any heart problems when the answer ”yes” was given to the question ”can your child handle lit phosphorous?”.

Kony 2012

I thought I would make a post about Kony 2012, considering that it is all over the internet anyway. First I should point out that I have not seen the movie. The reason for this is that I feel no need to watch a documentary about child abuse. I have read a bit on the subject, however, and I thought I would provide you readers with some extra perspectives on this documentary. Mainly because when we are done discussing how important it is to assist children in need, we should consider what ruthless powers might exploit such good will. If that was the last thing on your mind, then you are indeed setting yourself up for quite a lot of surprises as we approach the end of fossil fuels.

According to this article Uganda recently proclaimed itself as en route to becoming an oil producer, with commercial production having begun in 2009. If this does not make any bells ring, we should just leave the subject there. If it does, however, then we should explore what kind of message the movie is attempting to send.

If you believe the following interview to be anything remotely related to the state of these affairs, then perhaps there is more to this motivational documentary than meets the eye. I would argue against being a conspiracy theorist, but I'll just let the words military intervention linger here.

Next up is this personal point brought up by a young woman claiming to be from Uganda herself with relatively regular visits. While she obviuosly has not studied this matter intently, I do think it might be interesting to note that if she is speaking the truth, then Kony is indeed not the subject of daily discussions in the homes of Uganda.

UPDATE: I also stumbled across this article which certainly lays into this documentary in a very rough way. I thought I should provide it in case you like the more theory-based approaches.

Greece and I

It is with a blackened concience that I write today. I know I have been slacking when it comes to the blog lately, and I really do not wish for this to be a futile attempt at reaching people. The truth is not that I have been buried in work at the university, it is simply that I spend my spare time on games and movies. This is no excuse. I started this project the way some ambitious people start exercising - to expand my possibilities. Not physically but mentally.

So with that out of the way, what should we discuss today? Well how about the recent this article from yesterday? It captures the sense of depravity and desperation that was expressed in Athens lately. An echo of so many past expressions of desperation in that city. The craddle of democracy is under attack by austerity measures brought on by a debt crisis exceeding any other historically.

Is there a way out for Greece? Perhaps, but it lies deeper than what is expressed in any major media outlet. A reworking of the European culture is needed. Perhaps Greece once again gets to carry the torch that leads our continent onwards. We shall see.

Iran

Currently government officials from major power holders have been meeting in Israel to debate the future of the situation in the Middle East. Not the Afghan-Iraq war, but the recent public announcement by Israel stating that they are considering removing their status of neutrality and attacking Iran. This would be absolutely devastating for any chance of recovery in the Middle East.

Unfortunately I have not read and understood nearly enough to fully comment on this, but I can appreciate the need to relate in some way, so I will direct you towards more resourceful commentary.

A brief overview is given by Peter Joseph after his recent trip to Israel here.

The full lecture he mentions having given can be reviewed here.

Black March

Coming up is the event called Black March. With support from major players in the open source community like Mozilla, Black March will constitute a strike against the mainstream media in the US. The foundation for this action is to temporarily boy cut the big guns in the entertainment industry, so they will notice a month-long loss in revenue and reconsider how easily swayed their subjects are to their rule. SOPA, PIPA and to a larger extent ACTA have all proven that these players need to be kept in check or they will do away with liberties we have become accustomed to.

Instead of side tracking into another debate on piracy (read this post instead) I will go on with this Black March concept.

To join the Black March you simply need to stay away from the cinema and away from mainstream media channels on your television. Depending on the support for this idea, the goal is to create a black hole in their quarterly margins where they get lower support, lower earnings and a lower amount of costumer data to work with. All of this sounds great to me, and it should sound great to you too if you are concerned with your freedom of expression and opposed to be viewed solely as a consumer.

Check out the official site for Black March here for more information and a direct plan.

Now. I brought this up not only to try and get my readers interested in also supporting this activism, but also to highlight a very important side-effect such activism would have.

Consider how much mainstream media you consume in a month. Most of us visit the cinema regularly, some purchase movies instead of renting them and the vast majority spend most of their evenings in front of a television being spoon-fed what the media produces. Disney, Fox and ABC are right there in your home with you every day, and they are dying to tell you what's new. What's hot, what's not, what should you wear, how should you talk, how should you think and what should you laugh at. It is all orchestrated quite perfectly and my proof of this is how absolutely docile normal people are when it comes to taking actual action and a stand against what is clearly wrong.

Feudalism

Before feudalism society was built and made by slaves. Now instead of a history lesson on that shift, I'll just move ahead to the point. Feudalism is economic slavery. Your survival was contigent upon what you were able to yield from your land. Does that sound at all familiar?

What you need to do to make economic slavery, which can in some cases be much more devious than physical slavery, seem appealing is to sell it off as an idea of liberation. Physically you are shackled no longer so go and prosper!

The age old residue of this is something that has shaped into an understanding of some ideal of independance. An ideal that is unrealistic for a species that is socially dependant almost from the moment of conception. Still it is considered to provide motivation for live improvement for people to understand themselves as responsible and self-providing.


The issues of this make themselves abundantly known in societies such as western culture where this independance ideal has gone way too far. There is no humility anywhere anymore. As soon as you reach voting age in your country you are legally considered old enough to be a part of the group in society aiming to be self-sufficient. And through the century old process that has made this ideal emerge and take hold we have completely lost sight of the fact that this has no natural basis.


Anthropologists would point out that tribal cultures show no signs of this striving towards self-sufficiency. They understand the interdependance of their culture and work to further the tribe as a whole rather than themselves as individuals. For each of them to try and accrue more riches than their neighbours would be sociocidal (the act of a person which adversely impacts upon a society or culture to a negative degree).

I did a highly relevant post to this topic called Meritocracy in which Allain De Botton details how it has a very negative reaction in society that everyone is responsible for their own position, when there is a sense of total equality socially. It was much easier to deal with not being the king of your country in the times of old, but it is near devastating for teenagers to get dropped off a pop star program today, because it is made to feel achievable.


So what does this advanced stage of feudalism we live in really entail for us?

Economic Globalisation

Yesterdays piece on ACTA came with a comparison between the European Union and the United States. I would be unfit to furter that comparison and try to argue in political terms how alike these two unions are starting to become, but I do find it interesting to keep watching from the side lines and see what the next moves by these players will be.

Perhaps David Rovics can lighten the mood a bit with his satirical take on the similarities.



It should be clear to everyone that the east is rising to compete with the west globally, and soon the super power status will be shared, and in turn handed over. To whom is a good question. Many say China looking at their enormous growth rates. But these people often only look at numbers. Numbers that their government is responsible for, but that overlook gaping holes in their society. Some would argue that they are creating a bubble economy much greater than ours by building without respect for what their population can afford. By keeping the machines building homes and roads running you can create a sense of growth that looks good enough on paper.

That issue is again not dissimilar from what we experienced closer to home with our own bubble. What is interesting, however, is to look at how people percieve this economic breakdown. Some start swallowing apocalyptic stories, some throw their hands up before their eyes and again some try to argue for rewinding the system to a prior state.

To me it is obvious that none of those perceptions will bring us anywhere. There is only one way and that is forward. We can change direction, but the relatively docile part of history where Europe went almost without war during the past 60 years, is over. We chose to join the wave of globalism.

The hidden warfare of today is economic warfare. Nation states are trying their best to stay afloat, and when resourceful enough they also try and acrue more for themselves. They join alligiances and trade unions to benefit from the increasingly expanding amount of transactions going on in the world today, but they all do it to try and bring more riches home. A game that was much more physical and bound by the resources supplied by nature before we had paper money, gigantic oil tankers, air planes, derivate trades etc.

Just remember one thing. The situation is actually quite simple. No matter what these politicians and game players tell you, the situation really is simple. They do not see it, but the world of today is turning around one question: How to distribute the wealth nature has for us?

Most people still believe that money is the way to go. That politics is the way to go. That democracy is the way to go. But what do these institutions bring in a world where we are at a tipping point now where we can actually automate more sectors of society than what is applicable economically due to job losses? They seek to be the glue holding it all together on moral grounds. They argue and argue and argue away with symbolism and morale, but refuse to look at how far science has taken our potential.

This is fear. Fear of a tomorrow different from today. Because today is calculable, today is marketable and today is comprehendable. So by spreading this irrational fear to the public, they succeed in holding on to their power, because now everyone else is afraid of tomorrow as well. And if we are not, Hollywood can always be invested in to produce another horrifying post-apocalyptic vision of what the world would be like without government.

You might think that was a silly remark, but just try and talk to people about what is possible to automate in society and they will immidiately draw upon the illusion of knowledge they believe to have yielded from movies such as Terminator or i-Robot. This is standard psychology. They have to keep reminding the public that this process of moving into the future is dangerous, or they might just start wishing/voting/acting for it to happen.

ACTA

With the death of SOPA becoming a reality you might think it is over. The fight was won and democracy prevailed, expelling this evil dictatorial tool of opression. That is unfortunately not the case.

Behind the scenes the European Union has been cooking up something equally as toxic as SOPA. It is called ACTA and is thoroughly explained in this following introduction.



It would appear that it is quite important to keep repelling these waves of attempts to circumvent digital freedom. The issue here is more than just data protection, it has something quite abstract embedded within. The internet is irrespective of borders and it should be. These ridiculous attempts to seize control of the internet are nothing less than the objectification of a global freedom to communicate and share.

And as an object laws must be applied to regulate.

Economisation

According to the free dictionary the word economisation means: To practice economy, as by avoiding waste or reducing expenditures. Now I bet you would be scoffing at that if you know how anti-economic we are being in contemporary society.

Most of what is debated in constructive parts of society is economy. People spend hours, days, weeks, months and even years of their lives to try and grasp the concept of maximising output at minimal expenditure. But with all these collectively abundant thought processes going on, it is still a broadly held view that the first part of the idea is the most important one. To maximise output. The second part; to do so at minimal expenditure, must take a back seat if there is a conflict.
So the point of this short post was really just to point out an ironic but common misconception.

You may have heard of The Story of Stuff Project. It is indeed a nicely simplified introduction as to how anti-economic this global economy really is. If you have not yet seen any of their work, you should check out this brief walk-through of consumption.

Core

Today this blog will reach 300 unique page views, and I thought I would mark this by cutting to the chase with what I originally had planned for this blog. No use dragging you around any further if you would disagree completely with this post and never return.
As with so many other things in life I did feel like buttering my audience up first. To give a broader perspective on my perspectives, so it is not just a label I will be attaching to myself and then having that be my official tag. So you would know that there is so much more to these opinions than what I can express in this post.

What I am interested in is sociology. I believe that is the correct word to use when describing an interest in knowledge about society. I want to understand the building blocks of societies and all possible evolutions of them, and I think this stems from a sizable curiosity about the future. Obviously there is a personal element to all of this, which I may return to at a later point, but for now I want to keep this abstract to fully visualise for you an alternative perspective on society.

If I asked you what is the most fundamentally unchallenged element of society what would you say?

I would say: The monetary system. It is like a religion that has been scientifically accepted. Adam Smith's invisible hand guiding the world. Few people can even imagine what the world would be without it. Most would probably say that without money we would return to barter, goods and live stock trading, but that not imaginative in any way. It is not a step forward, it is not evolution. It would be a huge leap backwards technologically and culturally.

So the question becomes: Is there an alternative? And in spirit of my post from yesterday, you would have to also apply the secondary question with primary significance: What would make such an alternative preferable? An underlining of the "why". For this would not just be a game of innovation beyond cultural barriers, it would have to be a clear cut investigation into the possibility of the next large cultural paradigm shift.

At this point I had to decide in what direction I wanted to take this post. Did I want a wall of text describing my personal take on this, or could a slide show presentation make do? I decided that there are people much better suited than myself to describe such an awesome (the old meaning of the word) concept.

As a bonus Mr. Peter Joseph will in this TEDx presentation also be answering my secondary question with primary significance. Enjoy!

V For Revolution

Another great movie from the Wachowski brothers, also holding a great deal of social commentary beneath the initial layers of visually well made action, is the movie V For Vendetta. This movie is certainly one of my favorites, and it achieves such status with me because of how it propels an alternate perspective on these increasingly harsher measures being taken in the time of crisis. All in the name of seizing control of the issue before it gets out of hand.

While I can sympathise with the inherit logic in such a sentence that is it for the good of the people and the good of society, it simply fails to roll out in such a fashion in quite a few attempts. As we have discussed prior terrorism is not just some random idea brown people start thinking about out of nowhere. It takes a big spark to motivate such violence. Most of them have witnessed horrible things to get to where they needed to be to make such drastic moves.
To be clear I am not condoning any act of terrorism, but I will certainly be the one to argue for the understanding of the core nature of it. The media portrays it as close to being the number one issue for any contemporary society.


So to spread it out even thinner one could theorise that terrorism can be diluted and "fought" in this manner, by reducing the amount and size of the measures being taken to prevent it. Perhaps the resistance movements would have been less prevalent if the germans had been more civil in occupied territories during the war? Inhumanity can easily stir violence where otherwise there was no basis for it.


Something else to think about is also the fact that too many people are labelled terrorists when they are no such thing. The rebels in Iraq for instance might consist somewhat of organized terror cells still fighting for Al Qaeda or Saddams memory or whatever, but would you not even consider that some of them just fight the occupation because of the endless stream of unfortunate events the millitary has been involved in ever since the beginning of this pitiful war?


And with that I think I will let V talk to you all about the very possible future of our society, assuming no measures are taken to remove this inconsistent fear that makes us grip the hands of any who endows to save us. He is talking to you about you and it is relevant for you because you are the one who will bring yourself in this situation.

Economic Hitmen

Today I wish to familiarise my readers with the person John Perkins. Mr. Perkins has wide experience with the private sector in the states associated with facilitating international industrial expansion. What does this mean you ask? Well I will so gentle as to let a short animation tell the story for you.



For a full personal account on Mr. Perkins' personal experiences and knowlegde from the inside of this business check this interview.

So what have we here then? The initial response you are suppose to extract from this is obviously that this is how guerilla fighters and “terrorists” are made. That is the main point. And it makes reasonable sense. I do not know your personal standpoint on whether terrorism goes before empire expansion or whether you think it is the other way around, but those two elements certainly seem linked together.

What else can we extract? We can look at how a country is flooded with debt and cheap industrial pollution to make it another production chamber to keep our ever growing consumption rates rising. Turn that around again and you will note that most of the things on your desk you are sitting at right now were probably produced in some poor country that was exploited in this fashion. The IMF and the World Bank accepts this as collateral damage, and this should solidify the argument that they most certainly are western banks for the west – not the world.

This growth economy has to stop before the last tree is cut down and the last lake is polluted with oil waste.

Experiments

Today I learned of an experimental dietary treatment for a chronic disease I happen to suffer from, and among other things it made me consider just why exactly there are so few dietary treatments going on. Obviously everything is experimental at first. One can have a scientifically backed expectation towards the outcome, and in medical science one probably should, but it will be experimental none the less. So the wording is not my issue. What I take an issue with is that treatment such as this is natural. Now I for one am not the one to label tradition as something positive in and of itself, however, I do entertain the following philosophy.

The body appears to be a bio-mechanical machine hard wired to sort out internal problems. This is scientifically proven, so there is not a lot of philosophy contained in this. But then the general belief goes on to denote that the mind is what we have for external problem solving. What I would propose, however, is that the mind is very much involved in both. How we think and feel will change patterns in how our body works. You can tell by the countless studies in psychology that proves rises and drops in various types of body-functions based on the mood swings of the test subjects. Stress is the big subject now, and it is very related to our physical well-being. For instance placebo pills in some cases work to rid the patient of self-inflicted symptoms. The mind is a powerful tool.

So returning to the subject of diet again, I would venture the guess that the fuel for the body should be very much a factor in how well the inner machinery works to keep itself healthy. Most people already know this, so instead I will try to be a little more abstract.

As a society we hold a common responsibility to work to further the understanding of everyone of what their diet should and should not contain. It is quite possible to poison the body into a state of weakness exposing it to a wide variety of diseases, both the ones commonly known to be related to unhealthy life-styles like diabetes and the more complicated diseases. Now I am not attempting to preach that a healthy diet can keep you disease-free. But I could certainly preach that it would help. I will refrain from that at this point though.

About the responsibility, one could hope that society would realise it as a duty to keep its inhabitants as healthy as possible. This is why the free market model is counter-productive when it comes to collective health. In the book The Spirit Level the first basic graph introduced is one that shows how the GDP of nations only work proportionally with standards of living below a certain threshold. It bends off at a point where people start being able to take care of themselves, and this means that some of the poorest countries out of the richest ones (western ones, generally) are very equal to the much richer ones.. The point to make here is that the idea of rapid expansion and consumption only gets us to a certain point. This cannot be stressed enough, because it is the principle argument that the neo-capitalistic machinery we have installed to run our world for us, serves us no longer and today it is in fact an inhibitor to our true potential.

Do some research on your own. Next time you go grocery shopping check out how expensive it would be for you to buy only organic food highly based on fibres and less based on meats and dairy. You will note that it gets a lot cheaper for you if you buy unhealthy, non-organic products because this is what industry can produce cheaply. It is a lot cheaper to produce long-lasting (genetically modified, filled with additives) food products than it is to produce short-lasting (natural) food products that would benefit the consumer much more.
Considering the value of money today, you could say we are actually making it a rewarding game to try and spot the better deals and shake up a good price. The exact opposite of what people should be doing. And then we ask ourselves why sickness, depression and cancer rates all are off the chart now.

A doctor I spoke with today concerning this experimental diet actually told me that he had patients who had gone to Thailand on vacation, and while there they experienced almost complete remission in their symptoms. His thoughts on the matter were that the patients had been staying outside of general tourist areas and therefore been eating locally produced, natural meals loaded with vegetables and without a lot of meat. It should come as no surprise that this is much better for the body, but what should come as a surprise is that these conditions are regarded as unsuccessful in normal terms, because that rural area was probably highly impoverished and this is the reason for their inability to import fizzy drinks and mass-produced meat.

This is especially relevant to consider during this period of global economic unrest, because now is when we simply should not and cannot accept, for the sake of the future heirs to this planet, a continual lowering of quality in our food. It is unacceptable, and just like it was an economic bubble that burst, so too will the health bubble burst when we not only have the demographic issue of too few working people versus too many retired people against us, but also the issue of too many sick people versus too few healthy people.

As a future project I would like to blog for a week about a healthy, easy diet. Be sure to check back as February will most likely feature such adventures.

São Paolo

Yesterday I revisited the documentary by Morgan Spurlock called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Having already seen the movie, I had spoken to my girlfriend a couple of times about it, and she suggested we would see it together.

The movie itself is by no means a masterpiece. It deals with its message in a similar way as his previous movie Supersize Me, in that it slightly mocks the viewer with his obvious points all along. And even though I label myself an experienced observer especially when it comes to the central issue of the movie, product placement, I did notice a few extra items on my journey through his tale.

One particular issue did stick with me though. About half way through the movie Morgan introduces us to the legal ban in São Paolo on all outdoor advertisements. The returning reader will note that I have mentioned this before.

According to this article São Paolo is the 4th largest metropolis in the world and since 2007 when Mayor Kassab outlawed "visual pollution" the city has been free of billboards, posters and cab-commercials. This is very interesting to me, because it employs a fresh perspective on what pollution should cover as a term. Apparently pollution is not only toxic biproducts of other products. Pollution can then be understood in a broader sense as anything that is physically or mentally harmful towards any recipient. So if advertisement in São Paolo could be derived as harmful towards the recipients, take a look at this image of Times Square and tell me what your immediate impression is.

It might just be about time we ask ourselves just where we stand in the debate on heredity and environment. Do we believe the notion that we are from birth determined to make self-sufficient decisions or do we believe that the environment greatly influences our lives? While I am sure most readers already have a stand point in that debate, primatologist Robert Sopalski has some interesting insights on what comprises a human being.

What the movie, the city and the research seems to show is that human beings are very susceptible to marketing ploys. Indeed it is the only explanation why such an industry exists. The counter-argument always seems to be something about free will and anti-determinism, which makes perfect sense from a controversial stand point. But it should be quite obvious that Times Square would look a lot different if everyone were capable of making independant decisions in particular when it comes to patterns in consumption. It could be viewed as the greatest social experiement ever made ©.

And in its own way São Paolo is contributing to this debate by taking the stand point that a city with less visual clutter is a city with less clutter. Furthermore it is mentioned in an interview with a store clerk in the movie that they have noticed a rise in product quality in the stores, simply because referrals are now the primal force of marketing.
If that is not a hard hitting argument for less advertising I do not know what could be.

Motivation

So today I thought I would take some time to write a piece on motivation. A subject I have had to deal with in many various facets of my life. Because what is motivation? Motivation is the drive that makes you productive. It generates the energy and the want to do a certain thing. It is the fuel for your machinery and it is evidently needed throughout the globe to make this and all other races viable for survival. We quite simply rely on constant motivation in some form to keep us going.

Evolutionarily males are hard-wired to try and be accomplished so they would attract the better females and secure healthier offspring. Now I do not know what presumptions you enter into this debate with, but if it comes as a surprise for you that this has residual presence in the society of today, then I am afraid you may be in for more surprises as you progress through this post.

Since man has lived in scarcity for most of our time as a species, it is quite understandable that our brains have evolved into working in a way where we associate resource acquisition with success and thriving. It might be far fetched to say that most of us today look for economic success in a partner, and I assume it would seem derogatory to say that women especially would do this. So what am I saying?
I could be saying that women biologically were driven to look for these things in a partner, but underline the point that no one has to be a slave to any biological drive. We can starve ourselves to death if we put our minds to it, so certainly we are capable of not adhering to all tenants of our human drives.
So perhaps our biology is a bit too conservative and maybe even outdated? It would certainly seem this way, as people are trying to break out of these bonds and claim freedom from any societal influence on their preferences. People do not like being told what they look for, they want to establish that for themselves. At least in our culture.

What we are interested in is to maintain our own motivation. Especially in the consumer culture where we are constantly under attacks from fizzy drinks, junk food, noisy entertainment and informational overload. Our physical blood sugar and our attention levels are jumping up and down all day, and this tires out the brain and body and causes us to lose motivation towards generic drives. It makes people lazy and perhaps it explains why online dating is such a growing phenomenon today. Even the most basic need for physical interaction with the opposite sex has to be sated from the calm and comfortable position of your own chair.

But this is just a symptom. The real enemy is the lack of motivation. The massive increases in anxiety and depression in most if not all of the western countries over the past 50 years, could be explained by the fact that we are the first few generations that have no goals. There is nothing to fight for. Only to shop for. And only having things to shop for leaves the human body and mind in an unhealthy state where we begin to perform a sort of social apoptosis. Depression takes hold of a person when he or she feels useless and unmotivated. A psychiatrist would probably disagree with this and explain it chemically, but there is no denying that the younger generations today are the less motivated generations and they are also the more anxious ones. The correlation could be unrelated, but I doubt it. Multitasking at the level we ask people to do it today quite simply should not lead to anything good. We have not been underachieving as a species so far, so why do we need to go so much faster now? Have you ever tried hyper-motivating an animal? They go crazy and start running around in circles not knowing what to chase, do or act upon. This is more or less the constant state for a normal western person today. Everywhere marketers are trying to get to you, and your solace is broken by the fact that you own a television that will allow the continuing of the mind-invasion you offer to your insurgents. All in the name of getting the carousel to run a little bit faster to allow for a little more growth.

It would seem then that this culture did wish for a greater knowledge of and capacity for empathy this year. We require the managing institutions of this world, the media and the law makers, to start paying attention to the fact that we have to slow down or we drown in our gluttonous intake of rapid social expansion. You will note that it also becomes increasingly difficult to scout a system or construct, social or otherwise, for errors if you constantly add more and more parts and modules. So we never know if sub prime and interest free loans undermine our economical strengths, or if artificial sweeteners act as carcinogenics, or if it destroys a generation to have Kanye West as a role model, before it is too late and the damage has been done by this free flow of seemingly innovative additions to our partly determined, partly ever-adaptive life styles. And the industries do this with a double standard, defending to the best of their lawyers' capability their corporate rights to avoid telling the consumers which products are genetically modified and which are not. Because they do not want to scare the consumers from buying their products, before it is 100% scientific that consumers, formerly known as people, dig their own graves with them. And if you ask me you can disregard the last part of the prior sentence actually.

The intrinsic motivation for all of us beyond water, food and a roof, is that we want to be socially relevant, as we have discussed prior. When it comes to what we get the most out of it is certainly a widening of what is socially capable. If you look at this study showing which nation is the happiest in the world, you will notice that resource acquisition is far from relevant to such happiness.

Luckily we have pills for postponing the solution of this social decline a generation or two.