Organize Not Occupy

 

We just had the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and everyone involved in the original movement says the same thing... It failed because the Left is impossible to organize. They complain if there is no leader, but complain they want a "leaderless" movement if there is one. They complain they don't have money to do things, but complain that money is what will corrupt them. They complain if there is no fun aspect to a movement and they complain if it doesn't seem serious enough.

Look, the Left must realize you can't organize a mass movement around anarchy; it might work for a small group of people but not for a nation, especially a large nation with the diversity of the United States. Since the Left hates hierarchies, they have only one option, they must create a solid Methodology for how things get done -based on principle- and then get behind it. That is, decide: how decisions get made, how to acquire the resources, who carries them out, and accountability for getting things done. If they can't do that, they will continue to watch a powerful minority have all the power.

The Right thrives on tribalism and hierarchy, they will readily take orders and execute them without question. They will out-organize the Left 100 of 100 times if the Left does not create this methodology.

If you are a Lefty and want to know why you have the more popular ideas but never get into power, this is why. Power doesn't care if your ideas are better, or if you are correct on the facts. Like Nature, it is indifferent to death, suffering, or justice. There is no Karma, only the justice and human flourishing we can bring into reality with our own detemination and effort.

Addendum: Many on the Left are pinning their hopes on the Midterms, but even if Trumpism implodes and the Democrats take a bunch of seats, this will not create systemic change. When you don't organize a real alternative, any collapse in the current power structure will just create a vacuum that is quickly filled by the next dysfunctional regime.

Imperialism As A Service

Many of us are familiar with the danger of the Military Industrial Complex (a dangerous crossing of boundaries between Government and Industry; for supplementary information check out the books “War is a Racket” and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”), but we are entering a new age where End Stage Capitalism and Governments are merging. We see two major manifestations of this: the Plutocrat Mafioso, and State Sponsored Capitalism. The former embodied by Donald Trump where commodification has moved beyond the private sphere and into the National sphere, and all our public goods/services/policies are all for sale. The latter is embodied by China, where they’ve put the full power of state resources and sovereign currency behind corporations, to the point they can impose the “Amazon Model”...that is “operate at a loss until all competition is out of business,” but also with the benefit of infinite R&D and capital.

We used to carve out a sacred space in our institutions for our principles and public good, but now all of that has been sold out to global Capitalism. Our laws/militaries/institutions are all now just tools to generate more perceived “economic power.” We have forgotten the essential and practical purposes of our governments and institutions: to reach for our greatest collective aspirations and better angels of our nature, to make all of our lives better, to ensure stability and sustainability, and to progress our civilization/knowledge/technology. Instead, we have created a system that views everything as zero-sum and the goal of which is to own and control everything.

At this very moment the Trump Administration is toying with the idea of the military becoming its own economic entity and directly extracting the economic productivity of other countries' (Venezuela) natural resources. We've always had the "banana republic" model, but this seems to be an escalation in government involvement. Then, of course, there is the expansionist war the US is fighting for Israel. The entire US leadership have been purchased and are dutifully carrying out whatever agenda the lobbyists have paid for. Meanwhile, China’s entire being has become the world’s corporate assembly line, shoving out mass produced junk with no consideration for pollution or overextraction; all to feed this insatiable, infinite-growth/infinite consumption paradigm, all to perpetuate this unsustainable, unequal, zero-sum, childish game of an economic system. It's become common for people in Asia to burn circuit boards to extract the tiny bits of precious metals, releasing massive amounts of pollution into the air, soil, and water. Landfills and plastic islands encircle the planet. People still think these systems are successes, rather than monstrosities.

Now, short-term economic interest is not only endangering us economically and environmentally, it's become a direct military threat; Capitalism is a cancerous religion. We must have the courage to try new things. Reason and evidence must be at the forefront of policy, and the long-term well-being of people must prevail over greed and conventionalism.

You Don't Have To Give Capitalism "Credit"

 

I see this new generation of "Progressives" struggling with the idea of rejecting Capitalism. They all have to say "oh I'm a Capitalist, I just want Medicare for All" or whatever approved slogan they have to say. My response is “yeah... fuck that.” Capitalism isn't a coherent ideology, it is an "economic system" that doesn’t “economize”, and tries to steal the valor of Science and Scholasticism, as well as the shortcut of oil-based work, as its own accomplishments. (Note: If you don't understand my oil comment, it is the classic calculation that one gallon of gasoline provides roughly the mechanical-work equivalent of 100 hours of human labor. Despite our need to move away from fossil fuels, we cannot deny how quickly and how far this resource -not Capitalism- has slingshotted our industries and technological progress in recent history.)

By definition, you only have Capital if you have enough wealth to create more wealth. Capitalists are the Wealthy. Why would you premise your entire economic system on the perpetuation of concentrated wealth... rather than sustainability, societal health, technological progress, ephemeralization (doing more with less), and conservation? From first principles upward it seems absurd to me. We could get into "supply and demand," "private property," "incorporation," "free markets," but honestly Capitalism fails in all of those too... and I don't want this to become a three volume omnibus. Why does THIS system have to be The End of History? They say it's the only one that works... okay, but what if it was less corrupt, focused more on sustainability, or stopped perpetuating inequality... to the extent we can call it "working," would it work any less if we did those things? Whenever anyone tries to make it run just a little bit more humanely, they call it Communism, and reject any progress. Why? We all know why, it's not a logical problem, it's a "I have all the power, and I don't want to give it up" problem.

Then there is the propaganda. They love to perpetuate the narratives of "might makes right" and "survival of the fittest" because they define success as what they have, then proclaim to be superior. Couple that with a system that commoditizes everything, and all the materials, land, ideas, labor (people)... become something they can purchase. They want you to operate alone, constantly feeding you "the hero's tale" and the idea of "rugged individualism" to make you forget that we are all interdependent. To distract you from the obvious truth that sharing ideas and lifting each other up is the only way to flourish. It's not convenient for them if you believe in "standing on the shoulders of giants", open sourcing ideas and processes, and democratizing our economy and governments; they'd rather you "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and get to work for them, get back to the fields, get back in the kitchen, get back to the mines.

I don't know if there is some transitional period or whatever, but I hope sooner rather than later we can collectively just say Capitalism is ridiculous, and not have to fidget and pretend it makes sense.

Serendipity Will Not Save Us

We have little hope that Trump will do anything to solve Climate Destabilization, but in the back of my mind I was hoping that this severe disruption to oil (a la the Iran War), might push nations to move towards sustainable energy sources... sadly, this is far from the reality.

Blowing up oil facilities and tankers just releases a lot of that carbon directly into the environment (pollution + emissions), and the fuel used to launch warships/rockets/etc just adds on top of it all. Meanwhile, China instantly reduced its oil imports by 50% (which is 5% of the world's oil usage) and on the surface that looked amazing...only to find it replaced it with COAL burning.

People...we are out of time for climate action, we are already beyond some thresholds for severe repercussions, and every month we do not act we draw closer to existential ruin. We are still fighting oil and imperial wars when we should be weaning ourselves from all fossil fuels and facilitating world cooperation.

I semi-joke all the time that we're just dumb apes, but can we at least go out with a modicum of dignity, and not from needless stupidity? Can we at least live long enough to create sentient robots to carry on doing science and exploring the Universe once we've desolated our only habitable planet? Or are all of you okay with just flinging feces at one another and having our last accomplishment be the first quadrillionaire.

The Empire Has Fallen

I think Trump has successfully defeated America:

• He has culturally poisoned generations of minds
• drained all our scientists and academics of research positions and funding, causing "brain drain,"
• destroyed the dollar as both the World Reserve Currency and the Petro-Dollar,
• humiliated our military in multiple entanglements,
• despite defunding every useful program, he has still managed to make the government insolvent,
• de-legitimized the Rule of Law and our Institutions,
• sabotaged the relationships with our closest allies,
• shook down the world with tariffs and elevated mafioso politics,
• created supply chain disruptions everywhere,
• exploded the price of everything.

Weep or rejoice, the Empire has fallen. What America becomes (post-empire) is something yet to be written. The rise of STRUCTURALISM must occur! We can't rely on personalities, religions, or these half-baked, social-darwinist economic delusions (i.e. Capitalism) to be the basis of society. We need to base policy on science, the greater-good, sustainability, reduction of suffering, and approach all of this holistically. We need a system that makes good use of evolutionary processes and not constant revolutionary reactions or pendulum swings. We need a system that accounts for the Human Condition, and assumes that it will be challenged by despots, corruption, and zealots... it must be resilient; incentivizing good actors and enabling good outcomes, while mitigating bad outcomes and punishing bad actors. The STRUCTURE of the system -itself- must lead to flourishing.

"Make me do it!"

 

There is a fabled conversation with FDR that goes something like this:
Activists:    “Mr. President, you must do this for the working people.”

Roosevelt:  “I agree. I think you’re right. I want to do it.” (Pause)

                    “But you’ll have to make me do it.”

Now, this is cute story and all, and intends to make the point that the public needs to be involved in civic action... but, well to be blunt, it's a BS excuse for politicians to NOT do their job.

The voters did their job, they voted you in, they raised money, they knocked on doors and had conversations with their neighbors... once you're in office it's YOUR f-ing job to get the stuff written up and passed. It's YOUR job to handle impeachments or keep other branches of government in check. It's YOUR job to convince or create pressure on your "colleagues" to vote your way. It's your job to stop the abuse of power and the abuse to the people.

People are checking out of the political system because no matter who they get in office, things just get worse and they don't want to hear that there "was no mandate from the people" or whatever nonsense is coming out of politicians' mouths. Show us that you've exhausted all your tools before coming back to the people. Sometimes people do need to take to the streets, but I don't think these politicians have wielded the power we've given them to do what we've asked them to do.

Say Everything But The Obvious About Venezuela

Just want to point out a few things that are intolerable about the "war" on Venezuela:

1) Obviously the act itself is a grab for oil and resources, to benefit the President and his rich friends. (This does not benefit the US or Americans.)

2) Senators and House members that say how outraged they are... YOU are the people in the Constitution who are in charge of removing a rogue President! Don't be outraged, do your F-ing job!

3) Elected Officials AND Media pundits whose only criticism is that "they aren't implementing this well," or "we haven't received assurances he will stop at Venezuela." Hmm, how about the fact that Trump is invading a SOVEREIGN country and saying he is going to steal THEIR resources! I'm not sure it's the minutia you should be focused on.

All The World's A Stage

I recently listened to a 99% PI interview with Democratic Representative Sharice Davids
It just highlighted bigs flaw in our politics and politicians.

First, they are giddy about procedure and nonchalantly admit it's impossible to get anything done.

"We vote on a procedural matter to even be able to vote on the floor for a bill, so we're like voting on whether not we're gonna vote...The goal isn't always to actually get a piece of legislation done in that term, even though that probably is the ultimate goal...you can often tell when something is meant for 'messaging' and when something is meant to be a piece of substantive legislation."

From the Parliamentarian, to PAYGO, to "bipartisanship," our politicians are obsessed with making things hard, even when they shouldn't be. They are not guided by REASON, they are guided by ritual.

Second, we create these arbitrary term lengths and limits without any rules around WHAT they are going to do during that time.

"I can say that for, from the legislative perspective, I do think about now, I mean, I'm in my fourth term now, so I do think about if there's something that, if there are changes that we're trying to make that might be, um, more substantive...like major infrastructure projects are usually, those are on like a 10 year timeframe, you know? And so there's something really disjointed and ineffective about having people making decisions on two year timeframes for projects that take 10 years to, to come to fruition."

It would make more sense to send them to Congress with a SPECIFIC agenda and their job is to get certain things done, not just occupy a seat for a set number of years. Now yes, we have to make sure they have enough time to get it done, and we don't want them there indefinitely, but our current system is not responsive enough.

Third, our Representatives are saying to our face that "change is impossible"...now I am not certain how much of that is channeling their inner lobbyist, or lack of will, or if they really have locked themselves into worthlessness through procedure, but the message is clear: WE MUST CHANGE THE PROCESS.

"But, you know, you've got the federal government with their policies, you've got the state level government, and in some cases you have local stuff. Um, and that's just on the environmental piece of permitting reform. Then there's, there's all the different touch points of, uh, of getting a project done. And because of that, I mean, it's complex, you know, and if you think you're gonna introduce a piece of legislation, get it through a committee, which like something with permitting reform would touch on like multiple committees, the energy and commerce committee, transportation and infrastructure, probably some other one like, uh, USDA might be impacted. So there's all these different committees that come in to play. And then you have the whole house floor, so 435 members. 

So if you think in two years, you're going to be able to get like, like for the first time, introduce a piece of legislation, get it through the committees, get it through the floor, just in the house, get it, like have the Senate, take it up, go through their process with committees and getting it to the floor and then go to conference and get all of that done in two years. It's just like that, that's just not going to happen."

Lastly, I want to touch on our System on the whole. When our leaders and citizens are reasonable, it seems to work, but when our leaders are corrupt and our public ignorant, it immediately crumbles. A sane/working system should accelerate change when people are reasonable and it should slow things to a crawl when dishonest/corrupt/authoritarian entities try to undermine it (It should also -structurally- incentivize citizens to become engaged/knowledgeable and punish corruption). Our problems are only getting more severe, more complicated, and more widespread; and our System is not up to the challenge.

We need a public square untainted by algorithms and money interests. A new PUBLIC institution of journalism that informs and fosters debate. Media can't be left solely to "the market," its effects on the minds of our children and the broader public are now clear.

Sidenote: We don't even have the "Public Service Announcements" on "saturday morning cartoons" of yesteryear (if you're young, lookup the "more you know" and "knowing is half the battle" messaging, I'm sure it's on the Internet somewhere). What we have now are -effectively-YouTubers and Instagram models raising our children; MADNESS.

All this to say, the Congress shouldn't be a place for posturing, partisanship, signalling, and debate; it should be a place where problems are solved, policy is made, and stuff gets DONE.

Those Who Live in Diamond Houses Should Throw Stones

According to a new study published in Nature, sequestering carbon by injection into the ground has 1/10 (10 times less) of the capacity we thought it did.

This is important because the corporations and oligarchs, who stand to lose money if we actually pursue Climate Action, have convinced many people that we don't have to stop producing CO2 or change our lifestyles/behaviors because scientists can just innovate it away through sequestration. This has always been a claim that requires a healthy dose of skepticism, but we are now seeing it for what it always was, misdirection.

#1: We must stop emitting carbon! There is no magic wand, and continuing to deny that we must sacrifice some comfort and completely redesign society, will not save us.

#2: It doesn't mean we should stop trying to find ways to sequester carbon or that the practice itself is dubious. We need to find other ways to capture and store this carbon. Let's be creative in our problem solving. (I propose we all build diamond houses.😜)

#3: This is a reminder that Capitalism (or whatever you wish to call this current system) has created a society in which people will cling to power and wealth even until the planet is uninhabitable... they will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to maintain the status quo. This commodification of everything, this "infinite growth" delusion, this religion of the "free market," this corruption of democracy, this parasite that feeds on our bodies and dreams, this sadistic and shallow philosophy that people are just labor and the Earths's resources are just capital... this is not an economic system, this is a collective mental illness.

Climate Destabilization should be the Worlds greatest priority. We can't keep escaping reality, not from the Climate, not from our Institutions, not from our "belief systems," not from our nature as humans. We must embrace reality; only then can we change our fate.

Our Own Stories

I was watching a tv series called "The Sandman" about a familial pantheon of godlike figures, and in one scene one of the "gods" is giving a eulogy for her brother and she says:

"To me, he was arrogant, and judgemental and impossible... and he was all of those things... but then, so am I... so are all of you."

Now in this series, that was probably a particularly true statement for the "people" present in the scene, but it struck me as quite true as a general condition of mankind. We tend to believe we are the hero or tragedy of the universe... the main character of life. Whether we ourselves are "judgmental and impossible," we definitely have little trouble finding those things in others. Everyone else "just doesn't understand."

If you're the 1 person who has perfect judgment, the perfect amount of patience and assertiveness, and always takes the appropriate action in all situations, then forgive me, disregard this, and carry on. For everyone else, a healthy dose of introspection now and again is probably warranted.

I don't know if this is a healthy habit but I find it humbling to make a habit of just calling myself (and humanity) a "dumb monkey." When you find yourself being totally dramatic or unreasonable, you are a dumb monkey doing dumb monkey shit. It doesn't mean we should completely give in to our dumb monkeyness... but it means you are just a human, you feel what you feel, you are compelled to have human reactions and behaviors. You are attracted to other dumb monkeys for dumb monkey reasons... you want to eat/drink/smoke/inject things that are bad for you, you get embarrassed, jealous, arrogant... dumb monkey shit.

Instead, we should create a society that enshrines the wisdom we have accumulated into our goals and laws, but also account for the fact that we are fragile and fallible dumb monkeys at times... intractably so.

On top of all of this, we live in a sensationalist society, completely designed for inhuman creatures... evangelizing the "hero's tale" into every piece of media. We preach "might makes right" in every superhero and action movie. We burden our children with the impossible "standards" of Instagram models, and YouTube stuntmen. Ambition is one thing but we often strive to become impossibly weird and inhuman creatures.

We need to stop designing systems for non-humans, we must appreciate it when we excel beyond normal expectations, but also accept our limitations. We must also admit that we are not in continuous homeostasis, we are always in varying degrees of compromise, energetically, physically and mentally. No system will create good outcomes and reduce suffering as long as we rely on ambition instead of data, designed for inhumans.

"Practical Atheist"

Today the new Pope said that he worries that Catholics are not attending church and that they should avoid becoming "practical atheists"...

What an insult to Atheists. Atheists are atheists because they don't believe in a god, your god, any god. They aren't lazy catholics/christians, they've thought about REALITY and come to the conclusion that sky wizards are an unlikely component of it.

What the world should be worried about is NOT becoming a "practical atheist", but a "true believer" in nonsense. The ones committing genocides/assisting genocides/warring against other countries because of religion... the ones who teach their children to "learn by authority" and not through evidence and reason.

Whether this pope is better or worse than the last pope, honestly I don't give a crap. Religions are a relic from a time when we didn't understand the world and we created stories to make ourselves feel more secure, but it needs to go away now and we need to build communities around more solid beliefs and traditions that are healthy for humanity.

Head In Sand

I feel like I'm in an Uber and the driver is talking to me instead of paying attention to the road... and I'm like "you almost hit like 3 cars, maybe we can hold off on the conversation"... and he's like "don't worry man, just relax."

This is how society is going right now, the environment is degrading rapidly (especially emissions for stupid stuff like cryptocurrency mining and training AI models -not to replace tedious work- but to replace creative work), the billionaires are literally running the government now, the Mainstream Media has acquiesced to power, social media is now just outrage porn, religious/racist/nationalist nonsense is -once again- inflaming wars around the world... and all the while people are saying either "you are too concerned" or you are not concerned enough about this other culture-war fringe problem. It's easy enough to say "oh, it's just me, I'm not being 'joyful' enough" or something... but should I be? Should we all just throw our hands up and say "it's too big and too hard to stare REAL problems in the eye, I should just distract and/or insulate myself from reality"...?

We live in the Internet Age, access to information is abundant, you cannot UNSEE the problems that the world faces. How long do we plan to try to cope our way past the problems rather than fix them? How long are we going to allow the selfish to distract and divide us? When are we allowed to say Capitalism is a disaster, Religion is wrong, our social norms are trash, and our Institutions are not accomplishing the goals that they were designed for?

At some point we just need to admit, we DESERVE to feel anxious, we should be anxious... but only for the REAL problems... and NO, just because every idiot on the Internet says some culture-war nonsense is a "real" problem, doesn't mean that objective reality doesn't exist. We have to tackle ROOT causes of things, STRUCTURAL things. That is Sustainability, weeding out corruption in governance, creating informed and media-literate citizens, and creating mechanisms that empower/reward society-improving behavior instead of self-interested behavior.

Do "Karens" exist... absolutely; does it mean that you are one if you are concerned... no, it is sane to be concerned with the state of things right now. Don't let the powerful win with their tools of fear, uncertainty, and doubt... they want the Status Quo; they want society to be paralyzed to inaction and ineffective in governance. They want you to tear each other to pieces with purity tests, fringe disagreements, trying to recruit the unrecruitable, and tribalism. Don't fall for it. Pick sensible collaborators, have simple, clear goals, and don't let people water them down. I know it's hard when people are easy to manipulate and hard to reason with... but it's always a minority that leads the way for everyone else, the question is: will we let the selfish lead, or will we ensure the wise lead?

Choose - Reality or Horse Race

If you are reading this, you are probably old enough to have "seen" the end of the Great Barrier Reef. No really, think about it... as long as I can remember we called it "One of the 7 Natural Wonders Of The World"... and we've killed it. How many millenia did it take to grow that biome of life, beauty, and harmony... we kill it in an instant and barely even mention our Genocide.

THIS DECADE was supposed to be the "line in the sand" for critical Climate Action... we are just about half way through and we've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. One candidate for US President is saying "Drill baby drill"... and the other pledges NOT to ban fracking... one of the most ridiculous practices to ever come out of a feeble human brain.

Meanwhile, everyone is distracted, in a dopamine haze from their social media mind control, and the levers of power are nowhere near SERIOUS people. I can't explain how confounded, frustrated, and exhausted I am with this knowledge; and it feels like there are only a small handful of people who are sane enough to acknowledge the problem, let alone fight it.

I'll leave you with another pleading scientist, because that's all I can do now, shout into the algorithmically deprivileged void.

The Tipping Points of Climate Change

Corrupts Absolutely

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

- Upton Sinclair

The truth about money is, while it may have been "just a tool" in the past, not only does it fail to accurately represent "value"...but it has become a fundamentalist ideology.

All sides of the political spectrum are in this cult, some believing too little money is the problem, some believing too much money is the problem, and most believing that we should strive for a large "middle-class." The reality is, money has become a disastrous tool that measures nothing; it is so removed from environmental constraints, human need, and even sustaining itself systemically/stably, that it is completely broken. It corrupts you if you have too little, it corrupts you if you have too much, but it even corrupts you if you have this -supposed- "right amount"; it just continually corrupts.

Culturally, we must get away from seeing each other as economic units: customers, consumers, employees, servers, donors, soldiers, "content creators," bosses, professionals, "unskilled labor," or even the concession of "essential workers"... boxes within boxes of humanity destroying categories. Serving your fellow man is a great thing, but the bulk of your human worth shouldn't depend on your ability to generate profit for a corporation.

We must move towards a Resource-Based Economy, one where "value" has a relationship with sustainability, meeting needs, and solving problems. Where any abstractions, widgets, or liability limiting entities are there to serve the PEOPLE and planet, not the other way around.

Codification Of Wisdom

As we have seen with the Supreme Court striking down women's reproductive rights, we can't continue to leave laws to be endlessly interpret-able. When societies were less complex, having ambiguous and flexible laws that could be shoehorned to fit the time (like the U.S. Constitution) more or less worked. Now, with an ever more globally interconnected society (and with plenty of documented history about the intricacies of power, corruption, manipulation, and intentionality), we must begin a phase of civilization in which our laws are JUSTIFIED, not just proclaimed and "interpreted." We must agree that laws are there to do something VERY specific, and they must prove through reason, evidence, and in PRACTICE, that they achieve their stated purpose. We must make Government a tool of the people, not special interests. It must be mandated to, and empowered to, serve the good of the people... not corporations, not the rich and powerful, not a certain ethnicity, gender, or religion... but the greater good of all people.

But until we can do complete reform...

The Courts and the lobbyists behind them won't stop at changing social laws... the Corporatists have had their eye on one particular change for ages, that is destroying the "Commerce Clause." It is the foundation from which the Government derives its power to regulate private (i.e. Corporate) powers.

As it stands now, everything is on the chopping block... and the obvious solution, Constitutional change, has serious roadblocks... but however difficult, a few things that we definitely need to work on CODIFYING into law are:

    -Voting Rights, publicly funded, fair elections

    -Our ability to protect the Environment

    -Our ability to Regulate private powers when they have adverse effects on our institutions or large populations

    -Extreme punishment for Corruption

    -Universal Free Speech (not just government)

    -Explicit Freedom FROM religion (no favoritism, tax exemptions, or special privileges)

    -Publicly funded, but Independently operated Media, transparently audited for strong journalistic standards by third parties

Religion Is Not Benign

First, just to vent a little, I want to translate what a reasonable person (i.e. Atheist) hears when a religious person says something like: "I'm being serious, I believe Jesus is my lord and savior, and through faith I hope to be judged worthy of heaven"
WHAT WE HEAR:
"I'm being serious, if you spank enough naughty leprechauns, someday you will be able to ride the magical unicorn to OZ"

You may think I'm just being facetious, but in terms of how ridiculous it sounds to us... it's an accurate account of the "feel."

Okay, so on to why this matters... reality matters. If you believe that nothing in the physical world matters, only the "spiritual," maybe you don't care about Climate Action. If you believe that God will judge and sort people out in the end... creating fair and just societies don't matter. If you believe "faith" is the most important "lesson" to teach children... you don't teach them to think critically, with evidence and reason; worse, you teach them that learning "from authority" is the only way to learn. ("from authority" meaning from an authoritative text [like biblical scripture] or an authority figure [like a pastor or anchorman from your favorite mainstream news station])

Being someone who's run in secular circles at points in my life, I can tell you, even IF people can break out of their religion... the breaking out of the "learning from authority" part is MUCH harder and many tend to replace religion with other self-indulgent identities... like "q-anon believer" or "white nationalist" or "elite professional-managerial class-member" or any other number of identities that are popular and acceptable in the social sphere they exist in. Leaving a religion is hard, but thinking independently, and becoming your own person, is even harder.

Bottom line, I'm tired of people treating religion as neutral... the whole "oh there are good people and bad people in religion"... NO, religion IN AND OF ITSELF is harmful. They indoctrinate children, they often have lobbyists and authoritarian political agendas, they espouse nonsense, they insulate you from other ideas/communities, and they teach you how NOT to learn.

The Establishment Vision For The Future

I've recently been exposed to Establishment "perspectives" of the future, and knowing them allows us to understand what they do and why; this is especially useful for those of us who don't believe in their vision(s). First of all, their visions are not people focused... they don't care about dreams, about suffering, about equality... they are based on POWER. Now, there are two "camps" of their vision, we'll call them the "optimistic" and the "pessimistic" versions for simplicity.

The "optimistic" version goes something like this: the world mostly works well right now, but we're moving towards an entangled and completely globalized world with Corporate structure as its basis. Nations will become less and less relevant as they simply become too economically dependent on one another to war on one another, and eventually we'll all just fracture into regional units of consumption defined by our natural resources and human capital. Eventually, all human organization will boil down to their usefulness to the supply chain and our God, the "market." Of course all "externalities" such as pollution and climate change will magically be averted, or substantially mitigated, by "innovation."

Now, there are some things in there that are appealing... I, too, believe in a world that is "interconnected," but not in the dystopian and exploitative way they envision. I, too, believe we can end war, but I believe that it should be based on cooperation, progress, and preservation, more than just fear and desperation. I, too, believe that we will evolve into more elemental regional units of human organization, but based on carrying capacity of regions and sustainability, rather than resource extraction and quantity/quality of labor. I would also point out that "innovation" isn't something that our current system produces... it happens IN SPITE of our current system, largely due to the natural understanding that education, technical and ethical progress are important for everyone... and we try to fund/grow those things despite corporate forces trying to destroy/co-opt/privatize them.

The "pessimistic" version goes something like this: we are comfortable the way things are and aren't willing to change the system in the drastic ways needed to stop climate destabilization. Therefore, we will hoard money and resources, pull away as many "ladders" behind us, because there will only be a limited number of inhabitable places in a world of 4+ degrees Celsius increase. Instead of investing in sustainability, we will invest in, and recruit for, a strong military, in anticipation of water-wars, mass migration, and massive unrest that will come due to climate change. We will glorify the military, suggest that military service is preferable to higher education... in fact we will suggest that higher education is completely useless and that seeking knowledge for its own sake is a fools errand... finding "employment" and serving your tribe is the only acceptable use of time and effort.

The biggest problem with this vision is the complete disconnection from reality; the idea that we can just continue to retreat from the destruction of our planet and ecosystem, and never really address it. It also fails to understand the horrors of war and empire... or acknowledge that perhaps we shouldn't use a "hammer" to try to fix all our problems.

Just a couple of last points: I'd like to point out that these are "visions" for those that even have them. Many of the "elite" are largely just selfish and greedy sociopaths, looking for the easiest buck, with no real ideology or vision at all. The good thing is, the latter can largely be defeated with simple legislation/policy changes; banning private money from elections/governance and heavily penalizing bribery/corrupt activities will be enough to drive them to find profit through easier means. The difficult fight is against the truly ideological Corporatists... the ones willing to buy media empires and change the narratives for generations. We must have a sound vision of a healthy society, so we know where we want to go. We must also "know thine enemy" and the narratives they want to indoctrinate everyone with, so we can fight them effectively.

How The "Culture War" Can Exist

The Mainstream Media is unreliable, we get nuggets of facts without proper context, at BEST, and complete propaganda (usually corporate, but sometimes government) on the regular. The "alternative" is usually Social Media, which has a few truth tellers... but mainly a mix of corporate censorship/social manipulation, self-inflicted Echo Chambers, propaganda, and lots of ego. Take all of this together and we get a world where the public has no reliable source of facts... so what is left to inform our decisions, to prioritize actions on... feelings. When facts become too hard to access, the world becomes a "choose your own adventure" of beliefs, conspiracies, and heavily biased/manufactured priorities. Nothing and everything is real.

So what do we do?

1) We need News/Media that is Publicly Funded and has no profit motive.

2) We need a new "Public Square", it can be digital but it must be free from Big Tech censorship/manipulation. We must create a space where robust discussions can take place with a focus on actual Problem Solving, not virtue signalling, not manufactured crises, not selling clicks.

3) As a Civilization, we must prioritize Scientific Consensus. We are always in a state of learning, but we must go on the BEST data/evidence, the HIGHEST state of understanding we have access to. We must all adopt a Bayesian Worldview, learning to live with uncertainty, but accepting that some things are more likely than others.

Evolutionary Law

We live in an age of Constitutional law. While it improved upon prior systems, we are now seeing the problems that arise from static and somewhat arbitrary proclamations. The contexts in which those laws were written are often completely different from modern concerns. Also, laws then and now are arbitrarily decided by powerful people with no requirement of true justification of why they need to be laws (although I will say the federalists and anti-federalist papers were a fairly robust discussion at the time of the creation of the Constitution, but it's rare at best). Couple all this with the fact that change is coming ever more swiftly as time passes, and we find ourselves in need of a modified/different system.

I suggest we layout the more static parts as our broad aspirations... health, freedom, safety, sustainability, reduction of suffering... or whatever we agree upon, and the rest of the laws must serve those ends, our Premises and Aspirations. As for the more everyday/practical laws, I think they need to 1) be justifiable to some level of standard we create (and perhaps sunset when no longer needed), 2) be adaptable to the variety of ways one could interact with the law, 3) be in alignment with science and evidence; that is they must be proven necessary, be context aware, and be in alignment with reality. Laws have always been interpreted, and to some degree will continue to be, but we need to ground as much of it as we can in reality, science, and public good. Laws might also need to be compounding; for instance if certain patterns of criminality are expressed, we adapt the sentencing accordingly. Let me be clear, I use the term "adaptable" in regards to the categorization and contextualization of the crime, the enforcement must be clearly pre-defined and unambiguous.

We cannot continue to let religions, corporations, and nefarious organizations use the law as simply a tool to give themselves undue advantage. Laws must be a part of a system; a discussed, debated, evidence-driven, and reasoned system... not arbitrary rules created by power-hungry authoritarians. It must become a science itself, evolving, improving our lives and itself with each iteration.

Under-Representation Cannonized

I was reading the Anti-Federalist Papers (a fascinating discussion, in document form, about the strengths and weaknesses of the Constitution), and in Section 23 Brutus 3 they make a number of good points. They note that a fixed number of representatives per state in the Senate is nonsense, especially since the powers of the Senate are so immense; also that the amount of representatives in the Assembly (i.e. House of Representatives) is sorely insufficient (even at that time, when population was MUCH lower) to represent a country as large and diverse as the United States. Furthermore, they mention that this dynamic makes the system likely to produce an elite aristocracy... who will in short order control the whole thing.
Note: They did not even know that later the U.S. would pass the Permanent Apportionment Act which locks the number of representatives at 435.

Think about that, the founders said there should be one representative for each 30,000 citizens (which was only half the representation the English at that time enjoyed)... we are now at over 767,000 citizens per house representative, and the Senate grows ever more powerful. We were warned all the way back BEFORE the Constitution was even made law, that UNDER-REPRESENTATION and CORRUPT ARISTOCRACY would likely be outcomes... nothing was done... in fact laws to WORSEN the problem were enacted.

We now exist in a state where under-representation is codified and worsens every year... and wealthy elites can easily buy the few "representatives" allowed to exist. This cannot be allowed to continue, we MUST AMEND THIS.

"They should be satisfied that those who represent them are men of integrity, who will pursue the good of the community with fidelity; and will not be turned aside from their duty by private interest, or corrupted by undue influence; and that they will have such a zeal for the good of those whom they represent, as to excite them to be diligent in their service; but it is impossible the people of the United States should have sufficient knowledge of their representatives, when the numbers are so few, to acquire any rational satisfaction on either of these points. The people of this state will have very little acquaintance with those who may be chosen to represent them; a great part of them will, probably, not know the characters of their own members, much less that of a majority of those who will compose the foederal assembly; they will consist of men, whose names they have never heard, and whose talents and regard for the public good, they are total strangers to; and they will have no persons so immediately of their choice so near them, of their neighbours and of their own rank in life, that they can feel themselves secure in trusting their interests in their hands." 

-Brutus IV