No picture today. SteemImg stopped working for me. At least editor is now working ok... So, here we go:
No gods, no masters. No communism, no capitalism. No to authority, exploitation, suffering, poverty, No to false consolation provided by religions. No to lies, control, wars. No to martyrdom and no to ideas that blind people. No to divisive tactics and astroturfing.
How do we fix the world then? Is it even possible?
We know what is wrong. What is fundamentally wrong. The Matrix, which is the problem on more than one level. Matrix on material level is the grip of various worldly structures, authority, money, religion, law - institutions and corporations. Not that they are bad by themselves, they could be useful if they were not trying to be more important than humans. Like politicians, who pose as kings and saviors instead of servants of greater good they are supposed to be (no irony here). Matrix, Black Iron Prison, etc. Domination of structure over spirit.
Then Matrix on spiritual level... This needs some explanation. When I talk about spiritual, I don't mean fluffy new age mass-consumption mind trap (not that there aren't any exceptions, and some of new age could be useful, and in any case whatever makes people dig deeper is good). What I mean is more like natural laws. Gravity, electromagnetism, laws of physics - they are in place. Working. They rule the very fabric of our Universe. They don't need to be worshiped, obeyed, remembered - they are there, always, no exceptions, no vacations.
I have not yet finished digging into this subject, so for the time I'm going to say that there is more to the material world than just what you can see or touch. Whether you prefer Kybalion, Tree of Life, or Eastern mysticism, it seems quite clear that there is higher order of things in the Universe. Not so called "supernatural world", with ghosts and crystal balls and brooms, but logical, recognizable, visible to the trained eye, logical. It is weird and spooky to people whose right brain hemisphere got minced by education system, and it appears chaotic, unpredictable and random to people whose right hemisphere got minced by bad religion or mislead spiritual teachers. But if your brain is properly balanced and used to seeing that which IS and not seeing that which IS NOT - then everything is in order. Then we can be consciously happy. As we should be!
So, back to fixing the world: no economic, political or legal system that could be implemented on top of the already existing ones can help. There was that bad joke about a man who totaled his car on some very dark night, and took the resulting pile of scrap metal to the best mechanic in town, because after all it was his beloved car and he just wanted it to be fixed. A month later the mechanic says "I tried three times to fix it, and each time the result was a bus stop instead". Not sure if I translated it correctly, but my point is that some things by definition can't be fixed, or can't be fixed when by themselves are not broken, but they've been built on wrong assumptions. Political system can't be fixed. History shows that inevitably all political systems end up badly anyway. There appear, from time to time, genuine leaders who care not about themselves, but about society and environment. But they are rare and exceptions prove the rule. Free market? I wrote several posts on the subject, and it would be great to have the real free market, but.. I think that even if such a thing can be created, maybe, who knows, but certainly it won't stay free for long. As history shows.
Now, it's not that superior systems don't exist, they do, The Venus Project for example, but there are forces preventing them from succeeding. No conspiracy theories, it's just inertia of the system is such that any change require enormous resources and time, even if there was no active resistance from corporations and institutions. But there is resistance and there is inertia, and if TVP makes one step forward, society makes ten steps backward. And TVP plays according to general rules. They are not disruptive. Nowhere near disruptive.
Various other peaceful ideas are also great, but also not making any visible progress. The Behemoth of the Systems just steamrolls them as it crawls ahead. Generalizing, any idea trying to play along the rules is going to have extremely hard time getting through and be implemented on bigger scale than just a small group of people.
Then again, ideas that try to not play along the rules are also, in most cases, destined to go very, very wrong. Best case scenario for revolution is to overthrow existing system with another system, building pyramids of skulls while doing the replacement. Worst case scenario is provoking immune response from the System, and ending up powerless in jail. Or dead. Or subverted. In any case, useless.
And besides violence breeds violence, it is one of the natural laws as well. You can't stop wars with waging yet another war, it's not how it works. The last revolution must be bloodless, or it won't be the last.
So if good ideas that play along the rules don't work, and good ideas that play against the rules don't work, and becoming part of the system to destroy it from inside doesn't work, although there is one example that can be considered to some extend successful: the Long March through the Institutions. What else is there?
I've mentioned the long march. This was an example of hacking the System.
Hacking (and for some reason "Huck the System" also works for me) is the only viable way. Hacking as in stealth, subversive, disruptive and ingenious way of turning the system against itself. Straightforward ways do not work, as the System has more resources, more force, more of everything than us, it is willing to use everything against us, and is going to protect itself against threats it is able to (fore)see. And besides it is only too often forgotten that the ultimate purpose it to make the world a better place, and we can't make the world a better place but making it worse, even temporarily, even just for the bad guys, even for the greater good. End does not justify the means. Non-violence principle needs to be remembered at all times (self-defense principle as well of course). Or put it differently, if we want to get rid of IRS, it would be wrong to do it with dynamite (although I'm aware how enjoyable dynamite is when applied properly).
So, how can we...
