I've been pretty silent on the blog front for quite some time now. This fact is largely due to the 'Australian experience.' My lifestyle has changed significantly from when I was at home studying in Austin, TX. Here in Perth, Western Australia, I spend very little time on my own. I have been socializing quite a lot, and this experience in a college residence is like being a freshman again. However, I've met many interesting people from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and elsewhere. I've spent too much time partying (ie binge drinking, bars/clubs), but I've also been reading voraciously, playing guitar daily, occasionally meditating, traveling, and checking out Perth. Since I'm procrastinating from studying for exams, I'll be briefer than I should be, but hear me out anyway.


SECTION I - CHANGING THE WORLD

Here is a mashup of various ideas/websites that are worthwhile to explore for most of the zaadzsters out there.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of 'open source', and firmly believe that if our society is to evolve and transcend our general brutishness and narcissism, it will be in the form of an open source revolution. Most of you will have heard of many or all of these links, so feel free to add to these ideas or disagree with them.

Education - MIT and Internet Archive
     Ideas: Education decreases poverty, raises awareness about health, pregnancy, potential, etc. open source education as fuel for innovation from bottom up and top down networks.

Sharing of knowledge - Creative Commons, Google Earth (data mashups and more), Wikipedia.org, maybe even Google.com
     Ideas: same as above, but also rethinking concepts of patents, shared scientific research, multi-platform technologies

Social networking/communication platforms - facebook.com, myspace.com (will become outdated), zaadz.com!, Google's new OpenSocial, ~digg.com, reddit.com, del.icio.us~, etc
       (could be more categories, simplifying for time)
     Ideas: real-time info. feeds, wisdom of the crowds, personal interests/expression aggregates,


Economics/monetary distribution - Kiva.org, Grameen Bank, virtual money (SecondLife, QQ coin), principle of sufficiency combined with Freecycle, Goodwill, Craigslist.org, etc.
     Ideas: redistribution of wealth based on sufficiency and exchange of value (NOT capital), one on one trading and sharing - getting rid of inefficient middle men, social business, triple bottom line economics, buddhist economics  (from E.F. Schumacher, not Buddhists...)

These sections will always overlap, and this layout is an extremely minimal, unsynthesized version of the concepts floating in my head. I have many more categories with links and ideas to go with them but this seems like enough to digest for now. I don't have the time to put them all together and see what vision arises just yet. No worries though, because I will after I graduate college and really figure out how to change the world.

SECTION II - PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGING THE WORLD

The universe is composed of probability structures. Science is pattern recognition of these structures. Art is a reflection of these structures. Our thoughts, the brain, behavior, culture, society: all probability structures. This realization may not seem profound at first, but it helps explain the universe quite well I think.


[EDIT: I don't think I explained this very well, but the universe is composed of probability structures because our perception of the universe is probablistic. Evolution therefore is a development of perceptive structures (the probability of you seeing the universe as Buddha did is very low, but by generating certain improbable states of mind, you can theoretically perceive the universe in ways that approach his perspective).]



There are no categories or polarities, only spectra (which are probability structures). Life demands the process of categorizing and 'ontologizing' human experience, but this process inherently simplifies and distorts reality. Consciousness is the bridge between the multi-dimensionality of an event in space-time and the singular perception of individual experience (through the process of abstraction).

What does this mean?

All processes/events/ are moving to increased complexity. This means that, for any individual space-time occurence, the number of perspectives, dimensions, and tools to observe such an occurence is increasing (because of time-binding and the evolution of consciousness . Increased complexity implies increased order and increased chaos, meaning that events are also increasingly difficult to categorize dispite the increased number of perspectives.

So the dilemma is clear: we live in a world of exponentially accelerating information, conduits/mediums for info. dissemination, environmental change, socio-political change, etc., while the possible interpretations of all these changes are also exponentially accelerating. How do we sift and sort through all of this bombardment?

Consciousness alone encompasses all of these issues. The future of humankind depends upon our ability to embrace more perspectives while differentiating between legitimate perspectives and illegitimate ones (of course there's a spectrum of legitimacy for all space-time events). Meaning, unless we can figure out the best solutions (on an individual-behavior 'day to day 'level, as well as on a collective-social/cultural/political 'in the far future' level), which are qualitatively best, meaning a reflection of the evolution of consciousness, then the individual psychology and the collective society of humankind will break down into chaos, brutishness, and neoteny.

So, the websites/ideas/organizations/technolgoies for an open source revolution are reflections of what my consciousness deems to be valuable, legitimate, and of generally important nature concerning changing the world. Hence, I am posting them.

More ideas: self-sustainable, hi-tech, democratic, shared-value-communities (SVC).[feedback systems - bio/neurofeedback, web 2.0, psychometrics, categorization/extrapolation of past web history, economic transactions], integral physiology, open source basic human necessities provision (how long will that take?), war and current violence and poverty as a reflection of the majority of peoples' psycho-physiological chronic stress (although almost completely unnoticed due to most being dysfunctional).

As always, comments, questions, criticisms, interesting information, are all welcomed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have written here before of the rise of American neo-fascism under the  guise of neo-conservative anti-terrorism, and now I must state, clearly and completely, that the American government has become a neo-fascist regime. I say neo-fascist because the old fascist regimes were not democratic, and it still seems like we live in a democracy. Martial law has yet to be declared, (almost) no one has shot at us or thrown us in jail. Yet, as Noam Chomsky and many others continue to write and discuss, mass media has now (generally speaking) become a wing of this neo-fascist agenda by romanticizing war and violence (the Iraq War is still illegal), trivializing (or blatantly ignoring) the failures and undemocratic policies of government, consumerizing the public into obedient slaves of celebritization, and utterly disavowing its role as a primary medium for denizen dialectic in discovering peaceful, intelligent community living.

One of the reasons why I have changed my stance from its rise to its arrival comes in the form of a billl passed through the House only weeks ago entitled, The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. If this bill somehow fails in the Senate, after being passed 404 - 6 in the House, then I may retract my statement. However, considering how quietly this bill is passing (almost no media coverage whatsoever), that seems unlikely. Now this bill is only symbolic of all the other ways America is presently manifesting as a neo-fascist state, but Democracy Now coverage had some important things to say:

JESSICA LEE(journalist for Indypendent, NY): "Thank you for having me. When I first heard about this [the bill], I immediately did a Google news search and was alarmed to find that no media was talking about it whatsoever. So I looked into the bill and are two things that immediately jumped out of me. The first was that there is a broad use of definitions and the second is, who would they study? What does this mean? I would first like to point out the two definitions that many people I interviewed had problems with. And if you wouldnt mind me just reading them. The first is “violent radicalization”. This term means “the process of adapting or promoting an extremist belief system [who would the neo-conservative extremists define as being extreme? perhaps those against their ideology?] for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious, or social change”. Many people I interviewed were very concerned about this. The second definition, which is “homegrown terrorism”, talks about the planned use, threatened use, of force or violence by a group to intimidate or coerce the government of the United States. When you think about these definitions, what does that mean? When you look at the activism going on today, is there planned use of force or coercion going on? When you look at what is going on in Olympia, with individuals sitting down and blocking war shipments. When you look at Code Pink going into Congress and disrupting activities. Could this be included in this definition?"

This commentary is only a snippet of the entire DN! news article, so if you're interested, read it all.


Next up, Naomi Klein recently wrote a book called the Shock Doctrine, and I'm sure many of you zaadzsters are already aware of this book. In it, she lays out 10 ways that a totalitarian government acts, generally in times of shock, to control the masses. She contends that America shows all ten signs...Another fairly similar list was composed by Lawrence Britt on 14 traits of fascism. I have already listed them on my blog, or click on the article if you'd like. From my analysis, America shows at least 10 of the 14 traits, arguably more if not all. Make your own decisions, but I beseech you to make them after research and contemplation.

The reason why I am posting this blog is because I don't feel people are aware of how quickly and maliciously the top levels of government are subverting the constitution and previous governmental policies in order to establish some neofascist plutocracy or corpocracy if you will. The issues of poverty, war, domestic and other forms of violence, trade injustice, racism, educational reform, sustainable environmental reform, societal reform, and others are not being covered by the mass media or sufficiently researched by our government. Why is this? Instead it is naive nationalism, FOX News superficial chicanery, militant ethnocentrism, and consumer whoredom. Most Americans don't care about the latter subjects, and the ones that do, care because they're scared or they don't have better teachers.

How is the world transforming into a spiritual paradise, I ask all my well-intentioned New Age/theSecret/2012 friends? As Alan Kazlev has just brilliantly written, we are all 'evolutionary allies.' But, the gap between the rich and poor (in the US) has never been so great; the levels of poverty are increasing as consumerism increases; terrorism is increasing; and America is now a neo-fascist state. All these things destroy and limit our spirituality, I feel. I accept your right to believe that on a certain date or at a certain time some 'other' being/beings will help us, and that is certainly possible, but in order to reverse America (and the world's) descent, all we need is old fashioned hard work and coming together to use our intelligence and good will. I do not know how this will be done, but I have faith in humanity that it will be done...meaning that our spiritual being will transcend our physical and intellectual/emotional being.

In conclusion, I hope that the 'evolutionary allies' of humankind can get together, in whatever media, and bolster this ongoing nonviolent revolution against the existing socio-political world order that turns people into products. If you feel like you don't know what to do, then just start learning about these pressing issues. After you learn a little more, you'll start to see the different ways you can make positive changes (i.e. by joining groups/discussions against the suppression of the human spirit).

Resources:

'Examining the Homegrown Terror Prevention Act'
'In the USA, We are all Suspects Now'
Naomi Klein 'America Is Succumbing to Fascism'

'Nonviolent Civil Disobedience' / Activism.net
'Common Dreams'
'Project for Excellence in Journalism'
'Changing Minds'


If anyone has some resources that you'd like to share concerning these broad issues, please don't be shy.

It seems fitting to quote Wilhelm Reich again, this time abrreviated:

"Man’s right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word freedom should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”

Indeed, freedom is dangerously close to an empty political slogan.

Good luck. Much love and peace.

[Cottesloe Beach, Perth, Western Australia]

This is a song I wrote last year spontaneously, but I edited it slightly to make it more of a poem. I hope you enjoy...


7 6 06 Garden of Love

I know He’s been hiding
By the walls
You know- where I…
By the walls no one dares to find
They’re too hard to climb

We are stored away
In the nightmares of our soul
For the graveyards we have
Are nuclear waste and even more!
How we dare to try to fight the ways of life
How we dare to say that we are not part of the lie!
Planet earth, planet earth

The holes, the holes will be found
Time is aggression and the pressure builds mounds
For every eye to see
(The horrors, the horrors!)
That we’ve claimed on silent soils
It hides in unforgiving souls-
The men who hold the pens


Walking in the garden, the Garden of Eden
Look at all the sights in the trees and life and people fighting?
What a scene, what a scene
This is not what I’d expect in a garden of love

This skin is to be shed on someone’s floor
So I hope it will be at a peaceful door
There’s so much that needs to change
There’s so much, unfortunately that stays the same
For these lies are ours, we’ve claimed


When we see beyond ourselves
We will see what’s behind the wall
I am behind the wall

(I am not)
I wanted to tell you
We’re not on different sides
We will not remain
And the bridges will flly
Into what we have made

As I make my steps into the world
Something is not the same
Someone is dancing behind the scene
And I think I know
Who it is!
Come down from your castle wall
Come down
From the halls of heaven you’ve been in
For I am here to tell the greatest story in the world -
The sound and sight of letting go!
The tears are streaming down my face!
I’m crying as I’m saved

As tears fall, layers fall
Everyone knows who’s doing it all
For we have changed
And for a moment we are real
Ohhh, I’ll never be the same


It is something holy to let someone grow
And it is something sacred and necessary to give them space to grow