Um two things to begin with, one thing I never mentioned is they gave
me a test in sixth grade and discovered I was reading and writing at
a post graduate college level – which means I tend to come off like
John Stewart Mill – I apologize and assure the reader I've spent
decades trying to cultivate accessibility.
Secondly and more to the point. The idea or thesis here is to
consider the creation of a virtual state, a state within a state,
since the old notion of moving to somewhere where the bad guys are
not in power is no longer feasible. It's not a total new idea at all
but the beauty of it is it takes advantage of the comparative
weakness of the central state to operate a system that will do the
things the state is no longer interested in. Another way to look at
it is an attempt to establish the freedoms and powers available to
the transnational corporation in the interest in serving a human
population which, as in the case of the corporation, will not and
need not necessarily be identified with a physical locale.
I've compared it to the Jews in exile in that most gods of the early
days were identified with sacred places but the innovation, albeit
forced, of the Jews was to take the covenant with them. So too we
shall in the future in stead of residing in a physical state, have
the option of having the state reside in us.
Again this option, of shopping for
nationality, is already available to the elites and what we want to
do is expand that availability to the technological/artistic elites.
And before you start thinking this is
utopian fantasy – something I am willing to concede it sounds like
– other then the desirability of a system of governance that allows
for the individuals freedom there is also increasing evidence that
the old forms of government are obsolete. I mean at one time monarchy
was the best way to run things – It centralized authority in the
right measure – but as society grew more complex it became a
boondoggle much in the way the techno-state has. It remains
interesting how both capitalism and communism suffered from the same
excess of hierarchical social composition.
Finally, taking a bit of advice from
the founders of America, it is not enough that a system works when
good people are involved. It must be so constituted that it does not
allow bad people to get in power. This is the most difficult aspect
of the task but it is essential. By bad I don't mean morally bad –
I mean self interested.
The bad guys are in power globally and
I won't argue as to whether or not this is good or bad – I am only
working from known circumstances. I don't think they think of them
selves as bad guys it more like an environmental crisis we face then
a social one. And one practical difficulty is we have to go off the
radar screen and yet remain in the bricks and mortar nations. It's
been a puzzlement – but a little voice tells me that the human race
is endlessly resourceful and essentially the hack goes like this.
I call it the cyclops function, not because of the one eye, but
because it is the technology that is enslaving us that will provide
the route out of the prison. The stock market, like an f-14, operates
far beyond the physical capabilities of a human being. Thousands of
calculations a second make decisions as to buy or sell. In the same
way neural networks in insurance companies decide whether your life
is worth saving or nor. This is increasingly creating what I like to
think of as zones of privacy for machines. The term in current usage
in the financial markets is Dark Liquidity. Forbes magazine
thinks it's swell which ought tell us something.
The saying is there's no bad thing that
doesn't begin as a good thing and dark liquidity has obvious
troubling aspects, but a currency trader would tell you those
problems exist already. Indeed much of the current situation in
the European and American markets has to do with people moving money
in ways that the central governments wish they would not.
The purpose of life, we have decided , is the creation of ever more
efficient machines and the machines, which have for intents and
purposes already reached consciousness have decided that their role
as the techno Gods requires privacy. Other wise they are pestered by
humans, who are no smarter then children to them. Especially if large
scale decisions about what we call genocide are required the humans
will constantly ask “why?” and this is not efficient. It does not
maximize productivity which we have agreed is most important.
It is my hope however that we may be able to exploit the
vuilnerabilities in the dark zones of the computer world. Here's the
beauty of it. As we know since Reagan, and before the purpose of the
creation of laws is to facilitate criminal activity. Savings and
loan, the mid east wars, the bank bailouts – all were planned long
ahead of time to create disaster capitalism scenarios – and thus as
soon as the money filters into congress to instigate new laws those
laws will be created with the intention of persons doing work
arounds. Like all so called laws.
There's even a classic ending. When the
system is asked who escaped the net is will replay “No Man.” The
point is please don't steal. The weeds of crime bear bitter fruit.
But to establish a new society we can certainly hope it will be able
to provide the physical and mental needs of it's inhabitants better
then the technostate.
Ben Franklin commented many times that
Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth in his day yet
the americans were better fed, better educated, healthier and happier
- because they lived in a better envrionment.
There is a phrase I have found myself
taking recourse in over the years. It is “When the revolution
comes.” As in “Today the rich man places his boot heel on the
neck of the poor man, the good looking but heartless cad leaves the
farmers wife pregnant with a child to be raised by a honest, but not
very smart man,” but tomorrow things will be different, the rivers
will run fresh and pure, strangers will stop strangers to shake their
hands – when the revolution comes.
The use of the phrase is an
admonishment. It contradicts one of the supreme poetic truths which
is carpe diem, or more succinctly –“thou shalt die”.
This truth, like many a truth, can be
amusing as well. The hunter sends the hounds after the stag. The
stag, who believes in the God of the Red Deer, tells itself. “I
shall have faith in the lord for my God shall not abandon me to
perish.” AS the hounds grow closer and the bullets whiz by it’s
head however it begins to think, “Well maybe I will die, but I hope
today won’t be the day.”
I mention these things to put my
writings, especially the recent ones, into some sort of context. They
tell you in the articles about how to make money on the web that the
thing to do is write articles about how to do things. These can then
be surrounded with banners and other interstitials and hopefully from
the thousands of hits you get, a decent amount of money can be
earned.
As Mark Twain said, “My writing is
like water. Everybody drinks water.” But my writing, on the other
hand, has a natural audience that on a good day is minuscule. I can
prove it too. I daresay that word for word, my writing has had less
impact then that of anyone else on the web. I feel like one of those
terrible, self published poets who write thousands of lines over
decades and still improve not a whit!
Not that it depresses me. Someday I’ll
live in a big house, drive a fancy car and play with my children in
the yard – when the truth of my words is recognized – when the
revolution comes.
Actually I say these odd things today
because they illustrate an important psychological point. When the
greater events of history conspire they effect large numbers of
people, obviously, but people don’t see it that way – they see
themselves as being responsible for their situation. That can be a
not good thing. There is such a thing as taking too much
responsibility.
As it happens right about now many
white males are wondering what the f*ck happened? Why is their
special place in the cosmos no longer so special? Part of it is they
were never so special in the first place, perhaps. The thing is,
unlike right wing talk show hosts, I don’t care. I’m not
interested in finding out who to blame. Sure maybe there are hidden
enemies, and if we can eliminate them things will improve – but
somehow that seems a bogus explanation. Too convenient. Too paranoid.
If you’re just tuning in then I don’t
know how much sense this will make, but good luck. Briefly, we’re
looking at the next hundred years or so as if it were an
environmental change not necessarily in the sense of the physical
environment, (although that’s happening as well) but more so in the
evolutionary environment, and by golly kids, we have got to adapt. We
are like rats in a maze and we have got to find a way out quickly,
because many of the slower rats will be burned to a crisp.
We’ve covered a lot of ground
thusfar. I don’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable not using
legalese or an academic style because those are ornaments that are
not needed and just get in the way.
We’ve gone over the basics a hundred
times at least and well keep doing it because we have no choice. We
either figure this out or we die. Inherited money tends to last a
long time. Where I lived in Locust Valley on the north shore of long
island many of the multimillionaires were the descendents of
families, like Chase and Morgan, who had made their fortunes during
and right after the civil war. Since then they had simple lived on
dividends and they are many times wealthier then you, most likely.
The idea that capitalism rewards people
who are smart or who work hard is not exactly nonsense, but there are
caveats. It is a two edged sword. Part of the process involves making
money for oneself and the rest involves making sure others do not
make money. This may seem controversial – but whether you believe
it or not makes little difference to me .
It’s been said, and borne out to some
extent by evidence, that behind every great fortune is a great crime
– actually it’s not that simple- but we need not quibble.
Essentially I think if we were to bol things down to the essential
truth the word we are looking for is conspiracy. The few however
week, conspire to over power single units. That’s why God invented
Golf courses.
Some call it cheating. That is liable
to provoke a hostile reaction from others. All I ask is that you
don’t close your mind to thinking like the wolf because if you do
you will become vulnerable to the wolf.
Ulysses was trapped in a cave with a one eyed giant. The giant each
day rolled a stone across the doorway to assure none of his captives
could escape. Since Ulysses could not move the stone himself he had
to rely on the Cyclops to do so.
I thought of this story in terms of the virtual state. What we want
to do is , as much as possible, establish a quasi-state that will
transcend current and future nation state borders in the same way
that the currency lords and the transnationals are able to do so at
present. They can in effect shop around for the nation that has the
most friendly environment and we want to do the same. We don’t want
to fight their wars, we don’t want to pay their taxes and we don’t
want to assume responsibility for their corruption. We want the same
deal that the rich people have at present.
The overt problem is that nation states
are appalled at this idea. It’s possible that in the battle between
nation states and transnationals the nation states will win, but we
don’t know. We speak of zones of privacy, as if personal privacy
were of paramount importance, but actually what is far more important
is the privacy of currency transactions. This is how you avoid taxes
and take over governments.
We’ve spoke of the technological lag
time between when a process goes online and when the law catches up
and formalizes it. It is usually a few years, but is nevertheless
inevitable. The reason that the technological elite have out run the
legal system is that advances in methodology continue to out run the
advances in the legal comprehension of the same.
This may not always be because there
will always be a certain portion of the population that don’t want
their fair share – they want more then their fair share and they
will continue to push the envelope in order to do so.
When we started out in theis
investigation we made the analogy of the mosquito and the battleship
– the systems of finance being the battleship and the individual
the mosquite. It seemed hopeless but then consider two things one is
a mosquito is not always a mosquito and secondly, unlike in the song,
“As Time Goes By” a kiss is not just a kiss. A great deal matters
as to who is doing the kissing.
For instance a dollar in the hand of a
poor man is worth a dollar, but in the hands of a rich man it can
often be leveraged ten or twenty times it’s original value. In the
same way a woman looking for a mate might consider the kiss of the
tall dark good looking stranger far more valuable then that of the
boy next door.
Furthermore, importantly, we may bemoan
the injustice of our society, but someone obviously likes it. Someone
made it that way and someone is very interested in keeping it that
way. This means that as future financial initiative come to play they
too must be created with what hackers call “backdoors” – which
is to say, loopholes, means by which the few who understand the
mechanisms can exploit them to advantage. Recall as well that
advantage does not have to be overwhelming If you can establish a
system that gives you ten percent more then your competitors, every
year , then in a short while you will have driven them out of
business,
The device in the current instance is
called Dark Liquidity. The coextensive rationale for it is that
computers operate so much faster then humans that the old process of
recognizing prices and buying and selling on the stock market floor
is obsolete. There is an old saying that no great evil does not begin
as a great good.
Dark Liquidity is also amusing in
another way. As the human race loses it’s unique place in the
cosmos and is increasingly replaced by robotic and corporate entities
we can see how such entities are not only the equal of the so called
human masters, but in fact they are far superior in strength,
longevity and speed. The amusing this is that even in such a human
desire as fame there are not corporate entities, like Col Sanders for
instance, that are far better known then mere humans.
As I stated it’s important to realize
that the deification of the corporation has two sides. On the one
hand we must worship it and accord it the sacred status our ancestors
ascribed to groves and waterfalls and on the other hand those
entities not of corporate creation, such as humans, must be
exterminated.
The privacy which our forefathers felt
could be given to the US Mail cannot be granted to Email – not
because the threats are different but simply because it is so easy to
read email without being caught. Likewise we gladly afford to
corporations the privacy of electronic trading and currency exchange
that we would never give to so called citizens.
However if citizens can appear to the
technostate as corporations then they they may be given some of the
same protections we give to our robotic superiors. The pharaoh is the
brother of the sun – but we may claim kinship perhaps with a
planet.
That may give us a fighting chance –
at least until the revolution comes.
A few after thoughts that may or may
not prove pertinent.
One of the astonishing characteristics
of messianic leaders and founders of religions is how immensely
practical they were in their lifetimes and how subsequently the
followers lose no time in creating a supernatural panoply of heavens,
angels, saints and the like. But then we ought not be thast surprised
because a common characteristic of successful movements is they tell
us not only what to think, but how to live.
As James Gleich tells us the growth of
religious movements common patterns all follow usual Chaotic
functions. In other words they begin with a small group of highly
motivated individuals and ex[and to larger “rings” of individuals
which in turn are less motivated the further they are from the
center. This can be described mathematically, but what is more
difficult to predict and describe we may refer to as “wobble”,
which is the variation from the original theme not in intensity but
in direction. These paradigms can also be used in relation to
business but religion is historically far more pervasive.
Returning to the theme of practicality
as well, considering the scope and depth of the psychological and
sociological factors involved it is difficult not to accord the
founders of messianic religions, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha with the
accolades of the highest intelligence and rationality. To put this in
blunt terms - they understood what people think about. All these
leaders also spent the greater portion of their time as founders in
the company of groups of men – men of such skill as would not
tolerate their being led by madmen – no matter how divinely
inspired.
As we say in the music business don’t
worry about impressing the audience in the theatre – impress the
people in the recording studio first – or you’ll never make it to
the larger stage.
In Chaos theory the central formula, so
to speak, is sometime called the self organizing principle – which
can be compared to the religious idea of the unmoved mover, it’s a
mathematical pattern or template that shapes all subsequent actions
within the system. Asking where they will appear is a little like
asking where the first bubble will appear in a pot of about to boil
water. Given set conditions it must appear but exactly where is
contingent upon variables as of yet too complex for us to correlate.
And there are certain conditions common
to the appearance of all major religions in the past four thousand
years. Even Taoism, which is as unobtrusive a set of laws as one can
imagine can be seen to have followed a period where rationality was
subverted to magic and what we may call the hand maiden of magic,
namely self interest. Pre taoistic China was animistic and sooth
sayers, fortune tellers and alchemists abounded.
For the purposes of discussion I have
at times place religions upon continuum’s. On one side, the
beginnings, are the tales, the parables, the creation myths and on
the other side, the more sophisticated religions work by means of
alleged revealed truths, histories and laws. Pre-taoist China, like
the middle east prior to the coming of the last prophet, had a
cultural history that was basically a hodge podge of tales of genies,
magical creatures and anthropomorphically embodied spirits – all of
which could be said to haunt individuals but none pertaining to
society as a whole. The law bringers changed all that and the reason
they were able to do so is they reached confirmation in the minds of
individuals. The social institutions, of course, did not like it.
They recognized, quite correctly , that the coming of morality, even,
or especially if it only applied to the individual, must needs be the
end of their power.
This is why the Romans were so
adamantly opposed to Christianity. Rome was famous for religious
tolerance – as long as one paid their taxes and made appropriate
sacrifices they were free to go about the ways, but once a group
appeared that denied Rome the lip service of a superior justice the
battle had to be joined. What had happened is a vacuum appeared.
Protesters may cry “No justice no peace”. I think there will
always be justice and power, of a sorts, it’s is when they become
disconnected that problems arise. They spin out of control and become
tools for individual advancement. They don’t disappear, indeed
there may appear a surfeit of them, but they become corrupted.
I have never felt for certain that the
corruption of our era merits comparison with these other times. It
may, but observation from within a system is always difficult.
Frank Herbert, the Science Fiction
author, impresses many, myself included, by the prescient way he
seemed to predict the middle eastern wars of the Bush family. In a
series of novels about the planet “Dune” he plays with our
anticipations. The subject is a messianic Creator God. In the first
book we admire and empathize with Paul Atriedes (Muad Dib) in the way
of classical hero worship. As the story goes on though the creature,
the force, that was Muad Dib does increasingly inhuman things as it
becomes one with the giant worms that inhabit the Dune planet.
It is, to give one of numerous
examples. Like looking at the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple
Computers. At first he appears the courageous one, the hero, he who
stands before the world, but in time he becomes the world and we
realize that all along he’s been the same person and the need that
he felt to achieve stemmed from a fear of inadequacy. And we wonder
if it is worth it.
The point of all this being that all
other things irregardless the conditions would appear right for some
sort of movement posing as a moral force. As to the desirability of
this or not – one can't say.
I’m going
to conclude this essay, with a not entirely relevant confession. I
have a thing for Asian girls.
It all began at the age of five when I
first heard Ricky Nelson sing in “Traveling Man,”
“Pretty Polynesian baby over the sea
I remember the night when we walked in the sands of Waikiki And I
held you oh so tight”
Little did I know then, nor was I to
know my fate until S-C , in high School. She was a refugee from Red
China, as it was known then. Propriety prohibits further detail but
that was the beginning of my addiction. When I could not find an
Asian girl to feed my hunger I would make do with Italian girls, but
for the most part they were too independent for my taste (Translation
they wanted a guy with “a little something extra” – like a car,
or a bag of coke)
Apparently this attraction to asian
girls among anglo musicians is not unusual. In Julliard, the NYC
music school it is even named – “Asian Flu” – or even “Yellow
fever” (Personally I’ve never met a yellow person, nor a red one
either – but c’est la vie) Not to go one forever but there’s
some essential differences between asian girls and caucasions that
have really ruined me for the white chicks.
One is in Christian houses there’s
invariably a guy on a cross bleeding to death – and more often then
not the cross is located right over the beds. That’s sort of a drag
actually.
Also Asian girls dress in a wider color
range including yellows and pinks that would freak out their white
cousins. But let’s not get carried away. People is people. Asian
girls are according to the myth, submissive and humble and terminally
shy – but that is only true until you know them. In Japan for
instance the men went away for long periods of time and the women
cultivated a kind of ritualized femininity that could be compared to
that of officers wives in the British empire of the nineteenth
century.
Suffice to say the relation ship of
same sex interaction is quite different. It is difficult to speak of
some things because the terms have not been established but one can
suggest cultural norms. Africans have a very verbal society for
instance. While one here’s especially in the west , about the
virtues of independent thinking there’s also something to be said
for co-operative thinking. Asians work well in co-operative units
which seems to bode well for the future.
Both American and Japanese employers
however find it frustrating working in England because they seem to
have a different time schedule. Whether on the factory floor or in
customer interactions Americans expect the salespersons to Jump
where’s the Brits do not jump. I’ve covered this an similar
material before so lets more on the the psychological component
In the fifteen of so years I’ve
developed the Tamlinmediaco I have had to mask certain aspects of it
if only because I didn’t want to take any flak merely for lack of
adequate skill in description. It reminds me of the two reasons why
wars began one is because of misunderstanding and the other is
because two side understand each other quite well. The central Idea
in the present case is not my invention, nor do I take credit for it.
It has at times been called the Virtual State and can perhaps first
be dated to the notion of “zones of privacy” as described by the
Cypherpunks in Toad Hall in Berkley California in the 80;s.
The premise is that the world is going
through an evolutionary ellipsis. It is both collapsing in terms of
the quality of life it can provide for the masses and exponentially
increasing the technology available for the use of the elite classes.
When an ice age came along, a hundred thousand years ago it paid to
be quick on your feet and the same holds true today. One hopes to
avoid utopianism – among other things it attracts the wrong kind of
person. Likewise the “escape” to some other location – not
under the control of king or Czar is no longer possible – so the
societal “glue” is going to have to be of another order.
There are several tasks required of
those wishing to take this evolutionary step – one is they have to
recognize what is going on – like global warming was denied – so
too the social disintegration will be denied because among other
things it is not in anyone’s interest to promote the idea. In the
past five years I’ve come up with the idea of monad interaction
which basically says “If we have to tell you what to do then we
don’t want you.” We must never advertise, never run the risk of
growing beyond a natural system organizational size. At the same time
there are to be no exclusions due to race, religion, or physiology.
This last instance is especially
important because in the near future, if no already, the definition
of human will be expanded via genetic modification. There’s an
irony here that never struck me till recently. We may look at
ourselves as the intellectual elite – the smart one’s who will
somehow survive the collapsing social order- but look at Gen Mod
foods – no one wants to tell you that the watermelon or peaches
have fish DNA mixed in with them. Now they are seedless and stay
fresh far longer – but they also taste like cardboard and you need
a sharp knife to cut them.
It may well be that the first
generation of GM humans will not be smarter, intelligence in a
servant is a negative quality – they will be stronger, more immune
to common disease, happier and for all we know, capable of living on
a diet of green grass clippings and table scraps. That is the more
likely post human creature.
“Saving” them in a way mirrors the
dilemma the elites of today face. Obviously from their behavior they
are terrified of the future and are battening down the hatches –
something like nobility in an anteregnum regime. The question some
ask – why are they so against the interests of their own people? -
is self evident.
A long time ago I spoke of the Buddhist
concept of invisibility – how the Tibetans in particular created
the notion of non specialness – in other words a noble- or CEO is
used to being a god who is never contradicted and when in the real
world they cannot change their behavior and thus can be targeted
easily. Such people become isolated and lose touch with reality.
Think of dirt. The Jews have a word for
unclean – “treff”. Most religions divide the world in to people
like them who are clean in the eyes of god and the others, the
infidels, who are dirty. This fear, if you will, stems from
psychological causes and more to the point while we can maintain
fictions of cohabitation at a distance from those who are different
from us, once that person gets physically close, the conditioning
kicks in.
The forbidden terms of usage (eg
nigger, kike) flood our minds and most of us are pretty decent about
fighting them. The Japanese have the Gaijin, the Germans the
auslander, the Chinese call the Europeans the snakeheads. These
terms, and the attitudes connected with them, also can be correlated
with times when the native population is fairly well off. If the
natives needed the help of the foreigners we would expect them to
treat them with more dignity.
In conclusion then, I do not expect you
to take these ideas seriously enough to act on them when and until
you really understand that it is your life that is under threat of
extinction. Let reason prevail. To say what has already been said
many times the first challenge to you will be to develop effective
countermeasures to the forces seeking to convince you they love you
and can give you a magical solution to your problems. Resist all
brainwashing
Then you have to find yourself . If you
want to glorify it –it’s like a psychic warfare. In the same way
that people who have been conditioned all their lives to hate others
mask their hatred we have to learn to do without condemnation of the
technostate. The closer it gets the more difficult this becomes.
It a good guess to suggest that there
will come a time, a critical period when the media pick up on this
and then it will decide whether it’s valid or an evolutionary dead
end and we must work to see that it is bypassed. Information must be
created to the extent that “there is nothing there worth looking
into”. This is a corollary, if you like, of the greater law which
is in the information state knowledge is currency and the more
knowledge you can keep out of the hands of the techno-networks the
better off you’ll be.
It almost goes without saying that
fifty or sixty years down the line should things not improve, these
concepts will be the primary instruments, indeed the only
instruments, available to the public in the information warfare
scenarios.
( as a break from the greater picture,
as I write this, in 2012, the evidence is that the Republican party
is sabotaging any methods of economic recovery – knowing that it
will rebound to the negative on the opposition. I suppose more
hardship might change their minds but that is not what any sane
person would wish.)
& Finally In England and northern
Europe as a whole the pigs grow large. A boar is a huge animal of
several hundred pounds. When they would sit down for the main meal in
the middle ages it was called sitting down to meat
– since that was the primary foodstuff.
In the middle east on the other hand the animals grow small,
including pigs,and furthermore there was not a lot of wood for
bonfires and long roasting of animals. Since pigs carry diseases
which require thorough cooking to eliminate it was then quite
sensible to out law pigs.
Stories evolve. Classically custom becomes law. History often
provides the germ of myth. In every case it is important to bear in
mind that things happen for reasons. We may not know what they are,
we may not like them we may refuse to believe them. I’m not here to
preach. The thing is when we create laws or write histories or tell
stories we tell them the way we want. We give the causality that we
like the best. Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is “that which is
not true.”
This which is not true can be very convenient. Some would have yaou
believe that truth and lie live in eternal conflict upon the stage.
Don’t take it for granted. There are those who would rather win
then be right and feeling this way they discover that it is easier to
banish the voices of truth then to be right.
This is the cruel and bitter lesson of
our lifetime, but it need not be the only one.
If some of the people some of the time strive to see the real reason
why things happen it will be enough - It has to be
nb there's a lot of
redundancy in the above. Remember I am more or less here alone.
I used to call it the wasteland - it seems a little friendlier now -
also these, "trends" if you will are not all or
nothing events.
They are already happening and
will happen with or without you or I. Essentially we are speaking of
the broadening of the benefits of technology - something which
always happens - and in this case it is from the power
elite and the large corporations to the rest of us.
Aside from that, in the light of possible nightmare scenarios this
modality can be used to create a serviceable self sufficient
independent social unit capable of surviving in hostile
environments.
Tamlin
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