That was excellent VO and thought-provoking. I do believe that the latest generations (Z and others) offer up a great deal of hope, while it is also vitally important that we, as the adults in the room, discourage prolonged gadgetry as it is so devastating to the soul. God Bless you brother down there in the South. Stay strong. Stay maskless. BB.
Keep in mind the technical term for that rabbit hole we are swirling into, is a feedback loop.
It is the essence of everything from mass gravitationally swirling into galaxies and the black holes at the center, to compounding interest, to drug addiction.
When they design electrical systems, they have to install circuit breakers to make sure they don't melt the wiring.
The Ancients devised debt jubilees as circuit breakers to compounding interest, 3000 years ago.
The Western world has been surfing this wave for 400 hundred years. The problem is the positive feedback has turned negative and now it's just those of us in the West being sucked into this one.
Here is my effort to dissect it in detail, if you want the long form;
Wish I had something more meaningful to contribute other than the observation that the Mattel football game came out in 1977. I was an “early adopter”….
Excellent. Very perceptive article, tying together the deep themes. That said ...
"I fully expect Apple to come up with an *implant version* of the tech."
This seems to me well on its way with the ramping-up of (voluntary) *universal* flu shots (v0.9), (forced) *universal* COVID shots (v1.x), and now (v2.x) neverending series of (one way or another) *universal* COVID/etc shots, as well as the complementary nanobots etc. All dutifully announced, justified, and promoted by the MSM.
"Peace be upon you in Christ"
My take on this, and really, in all humility (and I'm happy to discuss, because to me it certainly clashes with the depth of your essay): It is, after several decades, well... *screamingly* obvious to me that the Abrahamic God, far from being our salvation, is the Mother of All Psy-Ops. It is the longest and most successful of all time, harnessing the evolution-developed religious impulse that exist in greater or lesser strength in most humans, to control all humans (in a lot of good ways, e.g. preventing much murder, mayhem, etc.), but send us in deep denial of our own (cognitive or any other) limitations. I dunno, maybe one has to have an 'extreme lesser' form of the 'impulse' to see this? Lucas' "Video Jesus" from 1971 gives me a chuckle. Do you really think you're better, and qualitatively so, than the sucker for *that* representation of God? Please, what am I missing here?
So even if God existed, there's still us problematic humans: We recognize humans are necessarily imperfect and limited, so then it is then impossible for any one of us humans to truly know anything *for certain* but our consciousness. That "anything" includes God (assuming he existed), no matter what "communication" he sent us. Another way to put it: For humans, it's *all* belief -- science, spirituality, and everything else. (Just in case you think I'm unwitting believer in scientism.)
I realize the illusion of God is damn powerful, sending many of the faithful into (apparently?) complete denial of the preceding, and then walking away from this debate with an internal, rationalizing dismissal. But "knowing" something perfectly, or even sufficiently, requires being one with it, and no human is the god that is required to do that. And there's all these cases of great, *believing* thinkers throughout history having their doubting episodes, and you gotta say, C'mon now...
Will you, reader, talk here about these things? We are certainly in something greater than a political upheaval -- it's an epistemological crisis.
Contrastingly, the more I see, study, and experience, the more Christ is the only thing that makes sense. The universal psy-op has been the deceiver, since the garden; taking his form as the gods of old in the time of the Ubaid culture in early Sumer, to the modern forms of science worship. I'm working on a series of articles exploring the roots of monotheism, which will highight where and how I think 'religion' went off the rails. It's a painfully twisted history, and in my mind showcases exactly the deception of satan all along, but also the perfection of God's plan in the gospel reaching the ends of the Earth.
Thank you. This is all well and good to study the history and its consequences on society, but unfortunately does not address the import of my argument: The age-old question, how does one "prove" the existence of God (given the limitations of humans)? At least, prove it well enough so that a non-believer is convinced to change his/her mind. In other words, how is this alleged knowledge made *transferable*?
I'm convinced that nothing of import is transferred. What believers have in common is not knowledge, but biologically-based propensities to believe.
So, if the knowledge is not transferable -- that is, if the non-believer remains unconvinced after the explanation -- then how can God justify punishing the non-believer? And if God cannot justify it (in words), then what was the point of his rationalizing *any* of his actions in the Bible? Just give believers the rules, dump the other thousand pages, and leave the non-believers alone. Or, at least kill the non-believers' souls when they die. That seems a lot more humane than, say, torturing them for eternity (in Hell) for mere lack of understanding.
Sounds like you are describing faith, i.e. the propensity to believe. I would argue it is not a biological bent, but a spiritual one. A person's heart has to be prepared for the knowledge to be received, so I agree it is not just a simple transfer of me passing it on. Earnestly seeking Him is the key, not checking boxes or following rules. God doesn't need to justify himself to us, or rationalize anything. The choice is ours to worship Him and accept the gift of salvation through Christ, or not. To the extent of non-believers being left alone, wouldn't it be unfair of us believers not to share what we earnestly believe is the life-saving truth? If I see a drowning person, I'm going to throw them a life preserver.
"A person's heart has to be prepared for the knowledge to be received"
Fair enough. But that's simply not an argument for God's existence.
"God doesn't need to justify himself to us, or rationalize anything."
Maybe not. Well, to be clearer, I don't think that claim makes any sense to an atheist. In any case, Godmongers (such as yourself) *do* need to rationalize him -- to us. After all, we don't hear/see/feel him -- we hear/see/feel only *you* doing the work of evangelizing.
"[W]ouldn't it be unfair of us believers not to share what we earnestly believe is the life-saving truth?"
Yes, but we non-believers don't need your *beliefs* about what is true, we need your *proofs*. Otherwise, how do you expect us to be convinced from a state of skepticism?
"Earnestly seeking Him is the key"
But, again, ... *why*? Why would I be motivated to do that? You're putting the cart before the horse...
(a) If one is not desperate (and I'm currently not), and has heard for decades ceaseless promotions of invisible beings that make no sense, there is no incentive for the (natural) atheist to "seek".
(b) If one *is* desperate (atheist or not), and in turn become motivated to seek, then one's senses (of any kind, including beyond the five basic ones) are thereby distorted from ideal perception. In this case, "hearing" a god (Abrahamic, Hindu, or any of the other innumerable other invisible beings defined by humans) cannot be distinguished from a hallucination. Not that any perception can be so distinguished, but being a state of desperation certainly makes it worse, don't you agree? Please trust me, I certainly have had my share of desperation, and wishing for God's existence. But never have I found that desperation *justifying* God's existence.
What I'm interested in here is not in "finding" a God (as if the necessity of this search is a no-brainer), but in understanding better *why* the religious -- in particular the very intelligent ones, such as you -- think as they do. So maybe it's simply inexplicable in language (essentially, logic), and no constructive conversation is then possible. Which I think fits nicely into my hypothesis that the feeling of religious faith is biological.
To me, the existence of God is self evident, all around us, as in someone would have to be blind not to see it. I realize that may not satisfy you.
Where an atheist may see evolution, I see intelligent design. Where an atheist may see fairy tales, I see a history book. The Bible is loaded with references whether scientific, historic, prophetic, spiritual, which continually square with what we see in the world. But of course one would have to read it with an actual spirit of earnest curiosity to grasp those things, they are not going to be evident to the hard-hearted person who has no interest in knowing or understanding God. That is how the Bible describes blindness, and I don't mean it as an offense.
Just a few brief examples of things that bolster my own beliefs, maybe it is different for other Christians: the description in Psalm 139 of God's knitting us together in our mother's womb sounds very much like DNA and cell division, which David somehow wrote around 1000 BC; numerous very specific prophetic references to details about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ many hundreds of years before the event; the correlation of sites like Gobekli Tepe and Gobekli Karahan to location of Noah's Ark; numerous prophetic descriptions of exact events like the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 600 BC and the Roman destruction in 70 AD; correlation of accounts like Gilgamesh with the Genesis account, two descriptions of some of the same events.
I know the avowed atheist will have a different take on all these, because we have different world views. My point in mentioning them is to say it is not like Christians have no grounds or basis, i.e. 'proofs' for what we believe. We have plenty, just not ones that you can accept. I find that people will believe all kinds of whacky theories about man's nature, or the climate, or historic fan-fictions, or Atlantis, etc. But if something is in the Bible, well then it must be a lie. That is a world-view at work within the heart, one that says "I cannot accept there is a God." So when many people demand 'proofs' they actually already know they will reject any proofs offered. I don't know if that is how you think, specifically, but many do.
I will try to think like an atheist for a moment, and ask myself a question: would I really believe there was only myself and this 3D space, and nothing more for eternity? No. You seem well informed enough to realize there are many scientific theories, working proofs, shamanistic practices, and transcendental states people have experienced that indicate the universe has a multi-dimensional aspect. Even our conscious self has a quantum component, and a quantum energy release when we die. What else are spirits, ghosts, demons, etc. if not manifestations from another dimension? Assuming such a space exists outside our own, with beings who can enter and exit our space, then there is obviously more to life than just what we can see and feel with our senses, in this one dimension.
So hypothetically, my atheist self, upon realizing the above would be pretty keen to find out how to 'ascend' or at least visit those other places. Because if this is all there is, then death would seem pretty scary to me. Of course many religions claim to hold insights to these things, so as an avowed disbeliever in fantasy religions, I might look to science instead. And in fact that is what we see happening all over, the elites of this world trying to find their own way to navigate the next phase of existence, or to extend their lifespans, or whatever.
Here again, the Bible paints a very similar picture, describing a heavenly realm and varioius entities who visit here, even what we might call dimensional craft. It describes other-worldy beings with half-human offspring. More than that, it describes a spiritual war taking place, which is what we Christians see every time we watch the news. All of the depravity of the deep state, the elites, or the Borg as I like to call them, are self evident. I write about them all the time on this substack. I bet we even agree on most of these things, just maybe not the nature of what is behind them. Evil exists. And where there is evil there must be Good.
I honestly have a hard time reconciling that Atheists don't believe anything. Surely they have not only self-awareness, but a sense of consiousness, a sense that they are uniquely different than the animals. To the extent that many would claim to be logic or science-based in all of their conclusions, I would say that that in itself is a belief system, a "scientism" kind of religion. "We only believe what we can sense with our senses", but then that would leave them needing to get creative to fill in all the missing blanks. Again, i'm not trying to describe you per-se, but just extrapolate what I perceive. It is a fun exercise, but I have a hard time putting myself in an atheist's shoes.
It doesn't sound like you need or want 'proof', or God to believe in, but in case you ever change your mind the essential message in the Bible is very simple. No one 'earns' their way to heaven. There is no magic prayer, or holy water, or other silly tradition. Christians tell others about Christ because we are joyful of our own salvation, which we have by simply believing and acknowledging that Christ died for our sins. A perfect sacrifice, made once and for all, atoning for every sin you will ever make. We naturally wish to share that good news with others. When the Jews rejected Christ, despite the prophecies predicting his coming, they rejected God. The gift of Christ's death and resurrection, which we call Grace, was then made available to the rest of the human race. Whatever good works we may do are not to justify ourselves or earn anything, but rather are a result of the spiritual influx and a changed life. So I am glad the Jews rejected him, truthfully, otherwise the message of Christ would not have been spread all around the world by the early Christian church, and I may not know if it today.
Peace be upon you in Christ, Anti-Hip! You may enjoy the upcoming Monotheism series, but it is taking forever to research.
If one wants to be optimistic, it could be that the censorship-industrial complex may wind up killing the internet if people start to unplug, as this article recommends.
Indeed! I've been pondering for about 10 years how free and open communication can be grabbed back from the elites, and it is not easy. The limiting factor seems to be partly technology, and partly borders. Any alt internet that could be devised would still reside on someone's real estate, and therefor be controllable. The two ways around this would seem to be 1) A piggyback comms system that traversed the wire-ways of the world with encrypted signals. So, use their own neworks against them. 2) A network of personal cube-sats in space that can communicate with each other as nodes, and with you as a stakeholder. Of course these would be difficult, expensive, vulnerable, and maybe impossible to keep from orbital decay at the low altitudes needed for quick comms response.
But you know, if it all just went away, that wouldn't be the worst thing either. :)
Yeah, I like the "if it all went away" option. The internet is nice, but not essential to our existence. Of course I'm old and grew up in the days of rotary phones when computers only existed in universities and big government facilities. Other than going back to analog maybe there isn't a way to have tech and avoid the surveillance state. Maybe enough of us will opt out and go analog again, and that will cost corporations enough money they'll start using the lack of censorship and monitoring as the selling point to bring uis back in.
The fly in the ointment (for them) is things falling apart. Particularly infrastructure. Most of the Western nations are the same. Some are actively destroying themselves. I strongly suspect we will not slowly decline and become serfs because the modern Lords, corporations and others, seem quite inept.
I do agree about the smartphones and plugging in. I am despondent when I go out and see increasing numbers using their glowing rectangles walking along the street. Everyone in cafes stares at them. Worst of all are parents with young kids, the mother lost in Facebook while the toddler stares at her. Small things amuse small minds.
That was excellent VO and thought-provoking. I do believe that the latest generations (Z and others) offer up a great deal of hope, while it is also vitally important that we, as the adults in the room, discourage prolonged gadgetry as it is so devastating to the soul. God Bless you brother down there in the South. Stay strong. Stay maskless. BB.
I think it got picked up by Zero Hedge, that's a first!
Keep in mind the technical term for that rabbit hole we are swirling into, is a feedback loop.
It is the essence of everything from mass gravitationally swirling into galaxies and the black holes at the center, to compounding interest, to drug addiction.
When they design electrical systems, they have to install circuit breakers to make sure they don't melt the wiring.
The Ancients devised debt jubilees as circuit breakers to compounding interest, 3000 years ago.
The Western world has been surfing this wave for 400 hundred years. The problem is the positive feedback has turned negative and now it's just those of us in the West being sucked into this one.
Here is my effort to dissect it in detail, if you want the long form;
https://johnmerryman.substack.com/p/why-culture-is-not-reality
C'mon... Just keep using a "smart"phone 24/7 connected to Guulag[Google]/Appe/Amazon and BE HAPPY!
"Given the emerging state of Serfdom"... emerging?! It's been like this (what I label modern slavery) since at least 1790.
"Our" CURRENT CIVILIZATION https://postimg.cc/t7by4c9n
Lucky for the OWNERS we - herds of modern moron slaves across the Planet - aren't willing to do ANYTHING to CHANGE it.
We just love to complain about stuff.
Wish I had something more meaningful to contribute other than the observation that the Mattel football game came out in 1977. I was an “early adopter”….
I still remember the bleep sound like it was yesterday. The game got quicker to play once you wore down the little clicks under the keys!
Excellent. Very perceptive article, tying together the deep themes. That said ...
"I fully expect Apple to come up with an *implant version* of the tech."
This seems to me well on its way with the ramping-up of (voluntary) *universal* flu shots (v0.9), (forced) *universal* COVID shots (v1.x), and now (v2.x) neverending series of (one way or another) *universal* COVID/etc shots, as well as the complementary nanobots etc. All dutifully announced, justified, and promoted by the MSM.
"Peace be upon you in Christ"
My take on this, and really, in all humility (and I'm happy to discuss, because to me it certainly clashes with the depth of your essay): It is, after several decades, well... *screamingly* obvious to me that the Abrahamic God, far from being our salvation, is the Mother of All Psy-Ops. It is the longest and most successful of all time, harnessing the evolution-developed religious impulse that exist in greater or lesser strength in most humans, to control all humans (in a lot of good ways, e.g. preventing much murder, mayhem, etc.), but send us in deep denial of our own (cognitive or any other) limitations. I dunno, maybe one has to have an 'extreme lesser' form of the 'impulse' to see this? Lucas' "Video Jesus" from 1971 gives me a chuckle. Do you really think you're better, and qualitatively so, than the sucker for *that* representation of God? Please, what am I missing here?
So even if God existed, there's still us problematic humans: We recognize humans are necessarily imperfect and limited, so then it is then impossible for any one of us humans to truly know anything *for certain* but our consciousness. That "anything" includes God (assuming he existed), no matter what "communication" he sent us. Another way to put it: For humans, it's *all* belief -- science, spirituality, and everything else. (Just in case you think I'm unwitting believer in scientism.)
I realize the illusion of God is damn powerful, sending many of the faithful into (apparently?) complete denial of the preceding, and then walking away from this debate with an internal, rationalizing dismissal. But "knowing" something perfectly, or even sufficiently, requires being one with it, and no human is the god that is required to do that. And there's all these cases of great, *believing* thinkers throughout history having their doubting episodes, and you gotta say, C'mon now...
Will you, reader, talk here about these things? We are certainly in something greater than a political upheaval -- it's an epistemological crisis.
Contrastingly, the more I see, study, and experience, the more Christ is the only thing that makes sense. The universal psy-op has been the deceiver, since the garden; taking his form as the gods of old in the time of the Ubaid culture in early Sumer, to the modern forms of science worship. I'm working on a series of articles exploring the roots of monotheism, which will highight where and how I think 'religion' went off the rails. It's a painfully twisted history, and in my mind showcases exactly the deception of satan all along, but also the perfection of God's plan in the gospel reaching the ends of the Earth.
Thank you. This is all well and good to study the history and its consequences on society, but unfortunately does not address the import of my argument: The age-old question, how does one "prove" the existence of God (given the limitations of humans)? At least, prove it well enough so that a non-believer is convinced to change his/her mind. In other words, how is this alleged knowledge made *transferable*?
I'm convinced that nothing of import is transferred. What believers have in common is not knowledge, but biologically-based propensities to believe.
So, if the knowledge is not transferable -- that is, if the non-believer remains unconvinced after the explanation -- then how can God justify punishing the non-believer? And if God cannot justify it (in words), then what was the point of his rationalizing *any* of his actions in the Bible? Just give believers the rules, dump the other thousand pages, and leave the non-believers alone. Or, at least kill the non-believers' souls when they die. That seems a lot more humane than, say, torturing them for eternity (in Hell) for mere lack of understanding.
Sounds like you are describing faith, i.e. the propensity to believe. I would argue it is not a biological bent, but a spiritual one. A person's heart has to be prepared for the knowledge to be received, so I agree it is not just a simple transfer of me passing it on. Earnestly seeking Him is the key, not checking boxes or following rules. God doesn't need to justify himself to us, or rationalize anything. The choice is ours to worship Him and accept the gift of salvation through Christ, or not. To the extent of non-believers being left alone, wouldn't it be unfair of us believers not to share what we earnestly believe is the life-saving truth? If I see a drowning person, I'm going to throw them a life preserver.
"A person's heart has to be prepared for the knowledge to be received"
Fair enough. But that's simply not an argument for God's existence.
"God doesn't need to justify himself to us, or rationalize anything."
Maybe not. Well, to be clearer, I don't think that claim makes any sense to an atheist. In any case, Godmongers (such as yourself) *do* need to rationalize him -- to us. After all, we don't hear/see/feel him -- we hear/see/feel only *you* doing the work of evangelizing.
"[W]ouldn't it be unfair of us believers not to share what we earnestly believe is the life-saving truth?"
Yes, but we non-believers don't need your *beliefs* about what is true, we need your *proofs*. Otherwise, how do you expect us to be convinced from a state of skepticism?
"Earnestly seeking Him is the key"
But, again, ... *why*? Why would I be motivated to do that? You're putting the cart before the horse...
(a) If one is not desperate (and I'm currently not), and has heard for decades ceaseless promotions of invisible beings that make no sense, there is no incentive for the (natural) atheist to "seek".
(b) If one *is* desperate (atheist or not), and in turn become motivated to seek, then one's senses (of any kind, including beyond the five basic ones) are thereby distorted from ideal perception. In this case, "hearing" a god (Abrahamic, Hindu, or any of the other innumerable other invisible beings defined by humans) cannot be distinguished from a hallucination. Not that any perception can be so distinguished, but being a state of desperation certainly makes it worse, don't you agree? Please trust me, I certainly have had my share of desperation, and wishing for God's existence. But never have I found that desperation *justifying* God's existence.
What I'm interested in here is not in "finding" a God (as if the necessity of this search is a no-brainer), but in understanding better *why* the religious -- in particular the very intelligent ones, such as you -- think as they do. So maybe it's simply inexplicable in language (essentially, logic), and no constructive conversation is then possible. Which I think fits nicely into my hypothesis that the feeling of religious faith is biological.
To me, the existence of God is self evident, all around us, as in someone would have to be blind not to see it. I realize that may not satisfy you.
Where an atheist may see evolution, I see intelligent design. Where an atheist may see fairy tales, I see a history book. The Bible is loaded with references whether scientific, historic, prophetic, spiritual, which continually square with what we see in the world. But of course one would have to read it with an actual spirit of earnest curiosity to grasp those things, they are not going to be evident to the hard-hearted person who has no interest in knowing or understanding God. That is how the Bible describes blindness, and I don't mean it as an offense.
Just a few brief examples of things that bolster my own beliefs, maybe it is different for other Christians: the description in Psalm 139 of God's knitting us together in our mother's womb sounds very much like DNA and cell division, which David somehow wrote around 1000 BC; numerous very specific prophetic references to details about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ many hundreds of years before the event; the correlation of sites like Gobekli Tepe and Gobekli Karahan to location of Noah's Ark; numerous prophetic descriptions of exact events like the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 600 BC and the Roman destruction in 70 AD; correlation of accounts like Gilgamesh with the Genesis account, two descriptions of some of the same events.
I know the avowed atheist will have a different take on all these, because we have different world views. My point in mentioning them is to say it is not like Christians have no grounds or basis, i.e. 'proofs' for what we believe. We have plenty, just not ones that you can accept. I find that people will believe all kinds of whacky theories about man's nature, or the climate, or historic fan-fictions, or Atlantis, etc. But if something is in the Bible, well then it must be a lie. That is a world-view at work within the heart, one that says "I cannot accept there is a God." So when many people demand 'proofs' they actually already know they will reject any proofs offered. I don't know if that is how you think, specifically, but many do.
I will try to think like an atheist for a moment, and ask myself a question: would I really believe there was only myself and this 3D space, and nothing more for eternity? No. You seem well informed enough to realize there are many scientific theories, working proofs, shamanistic practices, and transcendental states people have experienced that indicate the universe has a multi-dimensional aspect. Even our conscious self has a quantum component, and a quantum energy release when we die. What else are spirits, ghosts, demons, etc. if not manifestations from another dimension? Assuming such a space exists outside our own, with beings who can enter and exit our space, then there is obviously more to life than just what we can see and feel with our senses, in this one dimension.
So hypothetically, my atheist self, upon realizing the above would be pretty keen to find out how to 'ascend' or at least visit those other places. Because if this is all there is, then death would seem pretty scary to me. Of course many religions claim to hold insights to these things, so as an avowed disbeliever in fantasy religions, I might look to science instead. And in fact that is what we see happening all over, the elites of this world trying to find their own way to navigate the next phase of existence, or to extend their lifespans, or whatever.
Here again, the Bible paints a very similar picture, describing a heavenly realm and varioius entities who visit here, even what we might call dimensional craft. It describes other-worldy beings with half-human offspring. More than that, it describes a spiritual war taking place, which is what we Christians see every time we watch the news. All of the depravity of the deep state, the elites, or the Borg as I like to call them, are self evident. I write about them all the time on this substack. I bet we even agree on most of these things, just maybe not the nature of what is behind them. Evil exists. And where there is evil there must be Good.
I honestly have a hard time reconciling that Atheists don't believe anything. Surely they have not only self-awareness, but a sense of consiousness, a sense that they are uniquely different than the animals. To the extent that many would claim to be logic or science-based in all of their conclusions, I would say that that in itself is a belief system, a "scientism" kind of religion. "We only believe what we can sense with our senses", but then that would leave them needing to get creative to fill in all the missing blanks. Again, i'm not trying to describe you per-se, but just extrapolate what I perceive. It is a fun exercise, but I have a hard time putting myself in an atheist's shoes.
It doesn't sound like you need or want 'proof', or God to believe in, but in case you ever change your mind the essential message in the Bible is very simple. No one 'earns' their way to heaven. There is no magic prayer, or holy water, or other silly tradition. Christians tell others about Christ because we are joyful of our own salvation, which we have by simply believing and acknowledging that Christ died for our sins. A perfect sacrifice, made once and for all, atoning for every sin you will ever make. We naturally wish to share that good news with others. When the Jews rejected Christ, despite the prophecies predicting his coming, they rejected God. The gift of Christ's death and resurrection, which we call Grace, was then made available to the rest of the human race. Whatever good works we may do are not to justify ourselves or earn anything, but rather are a result of the spiritual influx and a changed life. So I am glad the Jews rejected him, truthfully, otherwise the message of Christ would not have been spread all around the world by the early Christian church, and I may not know if it today.
Peace be upon you in Christ, Anti-Hip! You may enjoy the upcoming Monotheism series, but it is taking forever to research.
If one wants to be optimistic, it could be that the censorship-industrial complex may wind up killing the internet if people start to unplug, as this article recommends.
One can only hope…🤔
Indeed! I've been pondering for about 10 years how free and open communication can be grabbed back from the elites, and it is not easy. The limiting factor seems to be partly technology, and partly borders. Any alt internet that could be devised would still reside on someone's real estate, and therefor be controllable. The two ways around this would seem to be 1) A piggyback comms system that traversed the wire-ways of the world with encrypted signals. So, use their own neworks against them. 2) A network of personal cube-sats in space that can communicate with each other as nodes, and with you as a stakeholder. Of course these would be difficult, expensive, vulnerable, and maybe impossible to keep from orbital decay at the low altitudes needed for quick comms response.
But you know, if it all just went away, that wouldn't be the worst thing either. :)
Yeah, I like the "if it all went away" option. The internet is nice, but not essential to our existence. Of course I'm old and grew up in the days of rotary phones when computers only existed in universities and big government facilities. Other than going back to analog maybe there isn't a way to have tech and avoid the surveillance state. Maybe enough of us will opt out and go analog again, and that will cost corporations enough money they'll start using the lack of censorship and monitoring as the selling point to bring uis back in.
Who knows? We'll have to see.
The fly in the ointment (for them) is things falling apart. Particularly infrastructure. Most of the Western nations are the same. Some are actively destroying themselves. I strongly suspect we will not slowly decline and become serfs because the modern Lords, corporations and others, seem quite inept.
I do agree about the smartphones and plugging in. I am despondent when I go out and see increasing numbers using their glowing rectangles walking along the street. Everyone in cafes stares at them. Worst of all are parents with young kids, the mother lost in Facebook while the toddler stares at her. Small things amuse small minds.
Hope you're right. And I love your homage to the best comic strip ever inked. I wonder what Bill Watterson thinks about the world today...
Watterson always struck me as very grounded. I doubt he would be fooled by any of the claptrap we are subjected to.