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”.

Private economy

For a while now I have been drawn to writing another blog post. This time I sought to relate it to why my inspiration had been missing for quite a few months now. Through various issues I discovered that I was suffering from some symptoms of stress. My imagination was stiffled, making it hard to focus on doing what I had to do. Now my life is by no means stressful in comparison to normality, however, I because I have gone through so many different perspectives on how to earn my daily bread, I am beginning to tire. Fear of never finding a commercial passion, or actually just any type of passion, threatens my survival and this is stressful.

Whether good or bad I am extremely poor at subscribing to temporary solutions. If I know that a job or an education will not be relevant or interesting to me at a later point, I feel like quitting and that feeling can sometimes take hold of whatever chance it had of growing. Now I have no doubt that this is somehow related to classical psychological issues of fear causing people to quit. I could most likely read up on it and discover that I am quite similar to other people who have experienced this issue and have solved it somehow. Either on their own or therapeutically, but this is where a major complication arises.

Because I am a firm believer that this capitalistic monetarily based system is unsustainable I instantly discredit such psychological findings as they seem relevant only to the people interested in conforming to this system. I see this as one of many symptoms that the system is trying to do patch work on its short comings rather than self-examining to discover the unrecoverable situation and initiate a proper solution. Personally I have no interest in conforming, which is why it is so hard for me, as it seems to cost bits and pieces of my integrity every time I do. I find myself saying one thing and doing another.

This economic terrorism is so subtle that it seems ridiculous to even call it that. But that is what it is. Perhaps I will return to this issue at a later point. I should.

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.

A mix of things

In the post Core I briefly touched upon the idea of a resource based economy and let a slide show do the talk for me. This does no justice to how paramount this subject should be for this blog. The goal with this project is to detail various aspects of the progressive mindset required to make a resource based economy function, and more importantly healthy for the inhabitants.

Personally I find diet to be a subject of interest, and I would very much like to move into more discussions on how this new society might handle nutritional care. Social relations could also be a nice focus, as there are many things that would likely change in how people interact with each other in the future.

So what of all this change? Why is it needed? Well no matter who you are, you must have noticed something or some things that seem curious to you about how we go about things in the societies of today. I recently had a big laugh over this picture, because it really made my day to see that some one else had thought about the very zombie-like nature of my generation in some aspects of life.

This is a wonderfully comic example of how we are being homogenised as a species. You could draw many parallels from this, but I will not be the one to uphold "the good old days". I was born in 1987 so I was not a part of that period any way. But even so I still prefer looking ahead.

If the present is undesirable I prefer to attritute that to a sense of fate. The past has lead to the present, and so we might not have seen it coming, but the past did indeed produce the present, so there should be no glory to the past if the present is inglorious.

George Carlin does a piece on something similar, and you should be able to see the connection in this clip. He is talking about how we hone our focus towards the immediate center of the fire, instead of taking a step back and asking ourselves what created the mess in the first place. He takes a gigantic leap into the offensive position and starts slashing paradigms all over the place. For this alone George Carlin is sorely missed as a comedian and a social observer. He is quite pessimistic and he does uphold "the good old days" sometimes, but he makes up for that by giving the more ghastly, realistic world view a twist with a sinister smile.

Functional Sociology

Marketing 101 will teach you that relating to success can achieve success. So in my moment of weakness I have decided to let myself become rigorously inspired (steal) the name of my new favourite concept: Functional medicine.

Watch this following presentation by Dr. Mark Hyman and then continue with this post to witness my attempt at expanding on his perspective. It is a piece on health care looked at in a refreshing way, because it brings back the scientific method to a field that has long been like a library, as opposed to a vibrant, dynamic art of complimenting health systems through research which medicine should be.



I am no scientist. I hold no degrees and though I may be studying at a university right now, I will hardly have anything professional to say on neither the medicinal matter nor the sociological matter, as I am studying IT which is about as far from health as you can get in the sphere of knowledge. Or well it is not, but you get my point. However, this will not stop me from comparing this piece of science to my own theory of how societies work.

Because I believe that if Mark Hyman was working in the field of sociology rather than medicine, he would be suggesting that we start using a systems approach to how we govern our societies. He would point out that we are currently upholding thoughts and ideas on how to treat societal issues that are centuries old if not millennia.

Hyman says that diseases do not exist. Not in the sense that we understand diseases. They are not bad things that just happen and have to be treated. They are the responses of your own body attempting to deal with an imbalance. What does that mean? It means that diseases are currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout they produce.

From this perspective we can try and understand diseases in a new sense. Diseases are the general categories we deal with when we collectivise symptoms, a package of symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted physical reactions in a body and we label that a certain title, like cancer or pneumonia, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment. 
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can cure as many symptoms as you want, it will make no difference if you load your diet with the wrong food, get no exercise and maintain a stressful position at your job. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

A diagnosis will be damn hard to do if you cannot identify the problem, and you mainly do that by looking at symptoms. I do the same when I build web pages or software solutions. I try to recreate the issues brought up to me by a client on my own screen, so I can see the "leakage" and seal it. This is a symptom-oriented treatment and it works only in secluded, primitive systems. 
You could probably relate this to problem solving in your own life as well. Issues are easy to deal with on a per case basis so long as they are kept in a neat and orderly pile. As soon as they are no longer kept in that neat and orderly pile, you will start experiencing a growing sense of stress, whether or not you get the symptoms is irrelevant, because you can no longer manage the entire pile mentally. This is the reason you started using the systems approach that led you to conclude that the neat pile would be optimal in the first place. Even if this happened subconsciously, it did happen none the less.

Attempting to be bold I will now directly attack a major paradigm that is older than I care to try and guess at.

Crime does not exist. Not in the sense that we understand crime. It is not a bad thing that just happens and has to be dealt with. It is a response given by parts of the social community caused by an imbalance in the system. What does that mean? it means that crime is currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout it produces.

From this perspective we can try and understand crime in a new sense. Crime is the general category we deal with when we collectivise incidents of violence, whether material as physical violence or intangible as theft. It is a package of social symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted social reactions in a community and we label that a certain title, like murder or embezzlement, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment.
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can imprison as many people as you like, it will solve no problem if you load society with inequality, bridge no differences and maintain consumption patterns at the price of social capital. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

And crime is just one single element on a list of the issues society is attempting to handle in this fashion, with a less than optimal result yielded in almost every case, due to faulty measures believed to be correct. I could draw this same parallel with obesity, teenage birth rates, mental health, child well-being, social mobility, drug abuse etc.
I believe you understand my point by now though, so I see no reason to repeat myself further. If you want you could try doing it yourself and you will start to see an emerging pattern. 

This is the basis of a systems approach. It is the mechanisation of problem solving, the automation of re-indexing, and it frees up your time as a mental librarian and gives you more time to do abstract work on solving new and exciting issues instead.

Spirit of the Age

Life is busy at the moment. Family stuff is going on and I have exams coming up, so I had to skip writing yesterday and today will almost be a skip as well.

Just a reminder to everyone that independant film director Peter Joseph will be releasing his fourth documentary in late 2012 or early 2013. The title is "Zeitgeist: Beyond the Pale", and he says it will be an artistic expression on the spirit of the age (the latter being the direct translation of the german word Zeitgeist).

As a supporter of the movement associated with these films, I felt it was in my best interest to share with you the news of this very relevant upcoming movie. If you have not yet, you should treat yourself to a nice evening with the third film in the series. Even if you are not convinced about the concept of a resource based economy, you would most likely appreciate the amount of social research that is highlighted. Many of the experts I link to in my other posts are people I have learned about through the Zeitgeist Movement.

Give it a watch if you feel like it. Even if you disagree with every single piece of research within it, you should see it as a challenge and a way to understand yourself better.

Poetry

I could not possibly claim to be a poet for revolution if all I did was shover you with my ramblings in verbal form. So as a fun thing I thought I could do today, I'm going to introduce you to a singer and song writer I recently have taken quite a liking to. Granted you will experience him as quite on the toes in some areas, if you get into him, and you might also label him as more of a social revolutionary than an anarchistic revolutionary. These two terms do go hand in hand on a lot of subjects, and I would define myself in no way as a regular libertarian that simply seeks to reduce governmental control. I do believe that big business is a chokehold, and given less regulation, they would only choke us all faster. So if I had to pick sides, I suppose you could say that I am more of a red than a blue anarchist.

And because I have already taken up your time describing uninteresting terminology, I will without further ado introduce you to Mr. David Rovics with his song: ”I'm a better anarchist than you”, because irony is such a sweet dish when served in this fashion.

Revolution

What is a revolution?

I will leave you to look it up, if you feel the need for a cookie cutting dictionary interpretation and structural analysis of the word. In my mind the word simply means fundamental change. While a reform is diplomatic and compromising, a revolution should be neither.

What is a revolution good for?

Simply put, an infinite amount of achievements. A fundamental change, either from interior or exterior workings, often is brought about with the expectation of bringing about a more fruitful direction. Such is also true of a reform, but the result of a revolution is more often than not quite a lot more radical in its new direction than a reform would be. To be diplomatic certainly has its uses on a more social level, but if you look at nature you will notice that diplomacy is just about nowhere to be found. Not just globally, but universally, it is true that any element exposed to a force greater than its tolerance will yield. Ask any person you know that actually read their physics book.

A revolution then would be superior as a solution to a crisis, if the optimal change in direction needed for the host element is radically different from the current one.

Why would I propose revolution on multiple levels of society?

Because I believe that a vast amount of elements within society, which I will most likely be covering in greater detail in later posts, has to change within the near future, for our species to retain a reasonable chance of cultural survival. In the event of a complete societal breakdown, for instance if the economic crisis worsens and sends the super powers to their knees and the ensuing panic within the western world tears the economic boundaries asunder, our cultures might not make it into the history books. And more importantly our health care systems, educational systems etc. all need to keep running, even through massive societal change for obvious reasons.

It should be clear now that my view on the future of this current culture is quite bleak. But honestly, why would you even spend more than the time it takes to load up a YouTube video of Rihanna on this blog, if you had a problem with a revolutionary approach to social evolution. Quite simply I am of the impression that this culture will be surpassed soon. Therefore I am only interested in making the transition to whatever comes next as smooth as possible.

The social immune system of the world is hard at work right now. Just like a cancer grows within the body without the host noticing it before it is too late, we have not yet reached global awareness of the fact that our current ways is no longer sustainable. If the goal is to achieve the highest standard of living possible for as many as possible, then this system is rapidly being outgrown by the rising demands for actual resolve.

Where do I propose the revolutions start off?

Jiddu Krishnamurti said that a radical revolution of the mind needs to occur, and I agree whole-heartedly. You need to take back what is yours, because I can promise that you have been robbed. Just as everyone else has. By advertising, by politicians, by your parents, by your peers, by your diet, by your habits, by your likes, by your dislikes. Every one of those elements and an almost endless list of others within your life has been acting and reacting to shape you as an integrated cogwheel in the machinery of society. Modern psychology claims that you are the product of your surroundings, and if it is true that you have any type of free will in that equation, then you are in turn able to interact with and change your surroundings to knowingly or unknowingly reconfigure your own programming and thereby change your behaviour. That is as much free will as you can get, assuming the discipline of scientific psychology to be a resourceful one, and for evolution to be anywhere close to truth, it is all you need.

I already have a future post planned that will comment in greater detail on how evolution and biology plays a big role in my view on humanity.

How do I plan on convincing 7 billion people?

Well, some are ahead and some are behind me in this train of thought. What I am aiming for personally right now is to be able to shut down the parts of my personality that keeps me addicted to unsustainable practices. Such as eating junk food and being socially self-centred. In essence I am trying to practise what I preach, and this is harder than first assumed. Believing that the world needed to change was unfortunately not enough to spin my life around and become a social beacon of hope.

Currently I do have an interesting task going on actually. I started at a university earlier this year, and I do find it difficult to muster the patience and concentration needed to do my work properly instead of just playing games and day dreaming about the new society.

At this point I do not know what my next post will be about, but I'm very excited to find out. Stay tuned.

Introduction

So this will be the first post on my not as first blog. While the other's never got properly off their feet, I do have hopes for this place.

What to expect from this project? A bit of everything really. Without being anywhere near an expert on blogs, I would venture the guess that most people start out with saying that their blog will just be for thoughts and ideas. Initially mine should be no different. But I often find myself catching on a writer's fire when I start jotting down ideas, so this might lead somewhere interesting.

So without further delay I'll just dive right into the thoughts of tonight.

Why this name for a blog? Well, after lunch, dinner and coffee for the 10.000^th time with the family it became apparent to me that this could be delayed no further. Am I simply rebelling against my biological roots and their attempt at forced inheritance? Perhaps. But then again I would expect most people around my fitting age of 24 to be about the same place in their life.

Poetry for Revolution was the product of about 15 minutes of rising frustration over all the good ideas for things I wanted to write down for you, but lost track of because I was stuck in the proces of chosing a name for my blog. The title perhaps reflects this even more so, as I simply picked my regular internet nick and put 's blog at the end of it. In my defense I would say that my imagination sure has been working today. Perhaps that is why it took an ill placed, but hopefully minor, vacation when I needed it for this simple task.

Okay I promise: No further rambling from now on. Poetry for Revolution is going to contain my views on local and global life. I will attempt to verbalise perspectives that seem wide to me, and I will be doing this to hone my communicative skills, as well as to get a more clear view of what my personal evolution looks like.

Perhaps this blog will be more for me than it will be for you, but we will see where it goes. My heart certainly is full of hope that this will serve as a proper outlet for my frustrations with the world that we inhabit. Trying to keep it constructive is certainly something I will be aiming for, but I shall guarantee no such thing.

My next post will detail the initial analysis of why I believe in a need for revolution on many different levels of societies.