We are Fucking things up
Sorry for any one with sensitive ears but its true. I have watched all of the Occupy X protests recently and all of the embarrassingly greedy and selfish acts of the Banks involved in the huge financial muck up. I was actually working for one at the time when everything was kicking off and they were just as bad as any of the others. I agree with the people that are protesting at the Occupy events but I think that doing this kind of protesting is like a baby crying for its dummy/pacifier it makes great TV but its not going to change the world (no offence intended to people involved in occupy movements I just think there is a better long term approach). Violent revolution doesn't work either look at Russia they had a monarchy and got a Communist despot, France had a monarchy got an Emperor etc...
The easiest way I find to describe the situation we are in at the moment is to think of society as a fractal of a single human family. Think of it like this: Dad is the military, Mum is the ruler and you are the public. When you are a baby you are in a Monarchy/Dictatorship you will do as you are told and if you don't like it that's tough but as long as mum and dad are nice its comfortable no worries. When you are a kid you are in a Communist/Socialist government you now have a bit of freedom but you have to tell mum where you are going and every one is keeping an eye on you. When you are a teenager you are in a Democracy you can do what you want within limits and you have to be home by 11 or your grounded for life and everyone is still watching you. At the moment we are teenagers or at least a majority of the countries in the world if not a majority of world population. China I'm looking at you.
Time to Leave the House
What is the next step for society are we going to stay at home forever or are we going to leave home. What would than mean? well it will mean real independence but it will also mean responsibility in fact if you don't take the responsibility you don't get the independence. But when you leave the house you still have a government with laws and taxes? yes that would be right mother nature she's harsh but fair she has laws and she will make you pay if don't follow her rules. That is why the only things in life that certain are death and taxes because they are the same thing. But in reality the "apparatus" of governance police, hospitals and military organisations don't need to disappear we are only talking about a change in who is governing not in how but that may also change in future. So how will this happen? I'm not sure where or how exactly but something similar to the stackexchange and wikipedia although the stackexchange site has almost all of the tools you would need for the project (I'm thinking community wiki's here) and it is a newer site. Which brings up another point about institutionalisation (massive word) even bigger problem one thing that should always be happening in politics is a continual upgrading and questioning of the process similar to the feature adding and bug killing of the software world they same thing should be happening with the world of politics and at a similar rate. I mean come on in the UK we still have a house of lords...which isn't elected?? One of the reasons we are having so many problems at the moment is that there is no process for reform (proper actual reform) of political institutions because they were set-up without one and it is impossible to add one, as all the members of the institution have no benefit in doing so. Why rock the boat when all of the money and power are already on board?
So what needs to happen now? I'm not sure of the steps but I know they need to be small. Some of the technical challenges I know of are scaling up the site to deal with millions of users making a cranking up the security level and real name accounts. The other small problem is getting as many people connected as possible but with the advent of low power low cost ARM processor based systems will make that task a lot easier. Let's put it this way its not going to cost 19 trillion dollars (link to billion dollar o'gram).
Are you mad? Only if these guys are mad too
and you can see the page they were talking about here (watch this space)!!!!
Got your attention now?
In my opinion its something that needs to happen sooner rather than later the level of madness and dislocation with the rest of society in a lot of the governments around the world is reaching epic proportions. With most governments seeming to be against the people they are supposed to be working for raising taxes to pay Bank share holders reducing freedoms left right and centre and then cracking down in the harshest and rudest manner when normal people decide to say they disagree. One of the problems at the moment and the reason why the governments can get away with the laws they are making at the moment is apathy. Most people are being distracted by all the new technology like bright lights on a Christmas tree what people tend to forget is that if you don't have that drab boring tree under the lights and tinsel it would just be a big pile of lights and tinsel on the floor. So technology is great but we haven’t even scratched the surface we can do much more and much faster all you need to do is open it increase the freedom and you increase the number of people that can be involved which is what we need if we are going to solve some of the problems we have in the world at the moment.
If there is one thing I could say is take responsibility for your freedom otherwise some one else will and that has worked so well in our history so far hmmmm?
And what will happen if we all take responsibility for our own freedom?
OK so I have well and truly "Nailed my colours to the Mast" have a good new year people and we will see how things have progressed by this time next year. These things tend to move pretty fast in my experience.
