The Bloody Fist of Feudalism: Religious Tyranny

Well, I believe it's high-time for me to say this:  I am absolutely fed-up, sick-green-to-the-gills with religious extremists.  The particular religion is irrelevant.  Every religion has them, and they are veritable birds-of-a-feather as far as their attitudes towards others go -- that is to say that they despise anyone who doesn't believe precisely the same thing that the believe.   The problem is not that they hate everyone who isn't in their clique, though, the problem they're dangerously deluded and disturbed individuals.  This statement is a FACT (as opposed to a belief), evidenced by numerous historical instances of religious fanatics of all stripes torturing, burning and mutilating other humans they didn't like, all in the name of their religion.  There really is no argument here.  Millions of innocent lives have been ruined, destroyed or stamped out all-together by some other human claiming the "authority" of their beliefs.

Okay, first things first:  Beliefs ARE NOT synonymous with Facts.  Not even close.  Not even in the same ballpark. Not even apples and oranges.  The difference is far more pronounced.   The construct of "Beliefs" is something of a random catch all for any thought in anyone's head that happens to stick around. Seriously:  it is possible to 'believe' anything.   Such is not the case for a 'fact'.  A fact is something that must be proven using tangible (at least insofar as the proof goes) evidence.   A fact is something that is altered in the light of new information.  A belief is not subject to change in this regard.

So, to this end, religious beliefs are NOT facts, and should not be given the same precedence. It's just that simple.

As we descend deeper into the new Dark Age of Neo-feudalism, the tendency towards delusional religious fervor appears to be flying high.  Religious extremism was a hallmark of the Dark Ages, of course. The Demonic Perspective was the Law of the Land, and if you violated it, you wound up shackled in a dungeon, at best, or more likely burned at the stake.

Such are the joys of religious extremism.

Thousands were tortured and killed during the Reformation, and all that was about (aside from Henry the 8th's sexual appetites) was allowing anyone other than the vetted priestly-class at the time to read the bible.

Many thousands more were tortured and killed during the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and on and on.

Seriously, I mean, C'mon:  How many times do we have to go through these periods were we as a society -- further, as a species -- allow such deluded individuals to rise through the ranks to power in our modern society?  How is it even tolerated for a moment that a public official is allowed to site their religious beliefs as a reason they are unable to carry out the duties of their very public office?

The Bottom Line is that the Freedom of Religion is only possible when there is a separation of Church and State -- or, rather, a separation of Belief and Fact.  That's the reason our founding father's wrote such a division in to our constitution.  Religious beliefs are personal and private, and not meant for public consumption in any way, shape or form, primarily because the public-at-large isn't really amiable to the idea of having something else's gibberish shoved down there throat as the Immutable Rule of Law.   So to my point:  if you are so addled by religious miasma that you can't even function in society, then you really need to drop out of society.

We have been on this Wheel of Pain for more than 10,000 years, and it's time we got off.   Way past time, in fact.  And the most tragic part of it is this: it's insanely easy to get off this Wheel.  Simple:  when someone starts talking rot, you stop taking them seriously.  You don't need to be mean or rude or condescending (even though they might be), you only need to realize that they're a human struggling with this daily dream we call reality.   Empathy and/or sympathy is a wonderfully mammalian response.  But to give these people who are so very given over to religious extremism power over the masses is bad.  Very bad.  Super duper bad.  As evidence I cite the very colorful and maudlin  crew of extremists who have emerged over the debate on "gay" marriage, and in fact have gone so far as to declare that their beliefs are more important than anything else.

Who you choose to spend your life with, just like how you choose to live your life, is nobody's business but your own. Period.   I remain completely and utterly un-offended by any social construct that seeks to increase the quality of life for humanity.   Quality of Life is the very foundation of "being fruitful and multiplying."

And at the End of the Day, Quality of Life is really what it's all about.  Yours, mine, theirs, ours, it's all the same.  The Truth is that we are all tragically flawed creatures.  Again, that's a fact, and it's been a fact for a long, long time.  Treating others with contempt because they see the world differently than you doesn't make you a better person.  It makes you a schmuck.

Picking the Low Hanging Fruits of the pWnership Society, or Enron was a Proof of Concept

As the last of the air drained from the dot com bubble, the Boys Behind the Scenes were hard at work trying to figure out what vertical market would make the best new inflatable Big Thing.  They came up with a doozy.  After many hours spent pouring over this market or that, they hit on real whopper: They would inflate the housing market. 

Now, to anyone with a modicum of understanding of the principles of economic fundamentals, this would seem far to the east of any rational mode of thought.  The inflation of a core commodity is, without question, one of the most asinine things you can do to a consumer-driven society, and despite being a refined product, housing IS a commodity.  Shelter is requisite for any society, just like food, water, air, and in the case of  modern day society, oil.  And if the Boys Behind the Scenes know anything, it's economic fundamentals.  Hence the "No one could have foreseen this" ploy is off the table.  They knew the theory quite well, so all that remained outstanding was the manner of implementation.  Gaming a core commodity is tricky, because you have to have a solid plausible denial in place in case the masses get wise to the con.  So they needed a proof-of-concept.  For this, they chose California, and the energy market therein. They would engineer a scenario where a series of refineries would shut down for "maintenance" in such a way that energy would become wildly inflated in that particular market.

Stick with me on this, because in these early experiments we see the trappings of the Neo-Feudal Age in which we live now.

The problem was the middle-class.  Despite years of wage stagnation and shipping jobs overseas, the middle class was still far too affluent.  Years of hard work and moderately sensible money management had created a large swath of people who, while not well off, were at least comfortable.  To put it another way, there was far too much money distributed amongst too many people to implement such an age.  That money, those resources, needed to be consolidated.  And most of that money was snugly squared away in home equity and retirement savings.  Thus, the first phase was to unseat that equity and get it back into play.

The plan to do this was encapsulated and presented to the masses in the form of the so-called Ownership Society.

The Ownership Society was rolled out in 2002, not long after the proof-of-concept, Enron, had proven beyond a doubt that commodities could be inflated by gaming the system without the need for open speculation.  Open speculation would come later, once desperation has set in.  First, however, that home equity and those retirement accounts needed to be put into play. The plan to do this was two-fold.  First, loosen the requirements for getting a mortgage.  Second, flood the market with "cheap money."   For the first step, the types of home loans one could obtain were expanded.  So called, Option-ARM loans, Interest Only, Negative Amortization loans were rolled out in force. Then the banks flooded the system with cash. Suddenly, people's homes turned into large ATMs.  Working for a living was deprecated, and everyone was buying a house on what amounted to credit card terms.  All you needed to do was sell your house, buy a bigger one, hold on to it for a year or so and in that time slap in a faux marble counter top and Roman bath, then sell it, and presto: Profit!  From this giddiness, a new type of house was born: the McMansion. Entire communities of McMansions sprang up nation wide.  The price of gas (and food) started rising stealthily  but no one cared.  They were to busy being chauffeured around by real estate agents looking for their next ATM.  With no proof of ability to pay, and armed with only your signature, you could walk into a loan office and they'd hand you half-a-million dollars or more, very few questions asked. Pastry and coffee were gratis.

Within just a few years, millions of homeowners had sold their cherished heirloom tinder box and traded it for a McMansion, while others had tapped their retirement savings to do the same, or to invest. They were deep in debt, but they were told it was the 'good kind' of debt.

Of course, there is no such thing as 'good' debt.  Debt is debt.  It is money you're obligated to pay back. Period. If you can't pay it back, your credit rating goes south, and you wind up living in a van down by the river, but I digress.

And while loan agents were writing mortgages at the speed of clicking the 'Fast Cash' button on the ATM, on the backside, these mortgages were being bundled and sold off to the highest bidder as stable, solid investments.   These AAA rated junk bonds were being scooped up at an alarming rate by individuals, business, cities, states and countries. That the money was flowing quickly from the budget was irrelevant, because it was all 'good' debt.

Despite being craven, the plan was very well orchestrated, indeed. It was attacking the middle class on a variety of levels, and the middle class wasn't aware of it in the least.  The Middle Class had been completely sold on the Ownership Society, and was in the process of fixing up their McMansions so they could flip it, go deeper into 'good' debt, and buy another, larger McMansion in the newest gated community being built just down the road.  Homes worth 80 to 150K were being sold for 2 or 3 times that much, for no other reason than that they were homes, and the equity was now liquid.

Then, in the summer of 2007, something happend.  An investment company called Bear Stearns collapsed.  Why?  Because someone somewhere along the way (or more likely, on purpose) had realized that a $100,000 house being marketed for half-a-million was silly.  And as it turns out, many investment companies had socked vast sums of capital into these highly rated "safe and stable" investment vehicles.

These 'vehicles', as it turns out, were neither safe, nor stable, and were, in fact, careening at top speed towards the approaching cliff.

The jig, as it were, was up.  The Fat Lady had sung, the bill had come due and it was time to pay the fiddler.  The only problem was that there wasn't a dime to be had to settle up that bill, because it was leveraged to the hilt in mortgages, bundled or otherwise.

So now the consolidation of capital could commence, unencumbered by home equity or personal savings.  A new phenomena emerged: the 'underwater' homeowner.  And pretty much anyone who had bought a house during this period of willful abandon fit into that category.  The ARM loans, armed with a balloon clause in the fine print, came due, and the whole house of cards came tumbling down, catching everything from investment firms to entire cities in its wake. Shortly thereafter, the stock market, also wildly inflated, crashed. Small and medium-sized banks began to fail, the party was over, and the mopping up could begin. The federal government threw money at a few of the big banks, Citi, Goldman Sachs and the like, and the individual home owner was left holding the bag.

Which brings us to where we are today, awash up to our ears in the 'good' kind of debt.

Today, 'most' homeowners are underwater on their mortgages.  Today, companies like Blackstone are buying up houses on the cheap.  Today, the average worker is beholden to The Man, with little to no hope of a comfy retirement.

And thus the Neo-Feudal Age was born.

The City Inside the Walls, or closing the gates on innovation.

A disturbing trend is bolting through the technological world at teraflop speed.  Two technological giants are working feverishly to marginalize both independent third-party development and the very concept of Open Source, not to mention the Open Source Community.  The trend is the development of closed systems (think iPhone, iPad and Windows Surface), which will only run applications from vendors who have paid Apple or Microsoft up front, and further forced to forego as much as 30% of their application price to these company's "app stores."  This is disturbing for a number of reasons.

First, it limits the users choice in applications, from the Operating System all the way down line.  It decimates the idea of freeware, and discourages developers from writing for these platforms because of the inherent costs, bureaucratic hoops and overall inconvenience. Since the advent of the Personal Computer, you have had a choice in what hardware you wanted to run, what OS, what applications, and so on.  The move to close these devices stifles these choices enormously.

Secondly, it is an aggressive attempt to destroy the Open Source Community.  Open Source is one of the primary reasons that PCs have evolved to where they are today, one of the reasons that they have become ubiquitous in the modern world.  Open Source encourages innovation from all comers, it's transparent, and available to entry level technologists at no cost whatsoever, beyond the cost of their hardware.   When I began programming, it was the Open Source Community that allowed me to learn the skills required to advance in the technological world.  I was living as a 'starving artist' at the time, and had the desire but lacked the financial resources to return to college.  The only way I was going to learn these skills was to teach myself.  I scrapped together the money for a book on HTML, borrowed a friends computer, and set out to teaching myself how to make web pages.  From there I went to Javascript, and then to PHP, to XML, to Java and so on.  Over the years I've been able to master several languages, and not once have I had to pay MS or Apple anything more than the cost of a machine with an OEM Operating System.  It's the Open Source Community that allowed the internet to thrive, allowed the dot com boom to happen, and shape the technological landscape we live in today.

That landscape, that openness, is now under threat from the same companies that rose to power because of that openness, and now that they have this power, their obvious goal is to lock out anyone who is unwilling or unable to pay them top dollar for the privilege of running the applications they wrote themselves, or further, applications they want to run by choice.   These companies that started with slogans like "Think Different" and "Where do you want to go today" are now, in effect, saying "Think like we tell you to think" and "You'll go where we damn well tell you to go."

The irony is breathtaking.  It's a classic bait and switch move, made quasi-legal only by the size of the company.  Right now, it's illegal to 'Jailbreak' a smartphone.  Got that?  Illegal. Tablets aren't on the list yet, but they're looking at them, which means it's only a matter of time. And in reality it's not even limited to Apple and Microsoft.  Intel is in on it from the chip side, Dell on the distribution side, and there are even gaming companies taking the "who cares what you think" approach to their products. 

Think about that for a moment.

A company builds up a customer base, the customer's lives become fully-integrated into the company's  products -- that the consumer doesn't own in many cases, then that company closes the gate on the customer and forces them to buy constant upgrades -- and only from said company and their "preferred vendors."  And further, if you don't like it, there are no refunds.

What. The. Hell?

I remember very clearly the first commercial Apple released nationwide:  A black and white Orwellian dystopia, stark and bleak and dismal. Enter an individual in full color, who slings a mace at the old man on the screen doling out the propaganda.  The screen shatters.  "Think Different."

Now that all these people have thought differently, or decided where they wanted to go,  now that they've invested thousands of dollars and countless hours on one OS or another, the gates are being closed so that choice is no longer an option.

Though, all is not lost.  The Open Source Community is still very much alive, and there are still open systems out there.  Linux remains free and open, and Android, despite being peddled by yet another Behemoth, remains open as well, at least for now.  If, however, people don't express themselves and move away from the aforementioned closed systems and migrate towards the open configurations, the gates will be locked,  the barricades raised, and users will be at the mercy of the companies who sold them the hardware, once again at the mercy of Planned Obsolescence.

It's time to think differently about where you want to go today.

The Perennial Paradox of Progress, or seeding the Grapes of Wrath

I stopped reading contemporary literature about 20 years ago.  Truth be told, the only so-called 'contemporary' writers I liked were Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Hunter S. Thompson, and some of the 'Beat Generation' writers like Charles Bukowski and Richard Brautigan.  Beyond those, most of the writers I admire grew up in the early years of the 20th century or prior, among them Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.  Once I had read everything the aforementioned had written, I looked around for new material, but couldn't really get through anything 'modern'. So I started at the beginning and re-read the works that I could enjoy.

Lately, I've been re-re-re-reading The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck.  While his prose is a bit more flowery than Hemingway's, Stenbeck knew how to turn a good sentence and was an extra-ordinary story teller. As I've been working my way through this powerful epic, I started seeing parallels to what is happening today.  The inventions have changed, but the core events we see unfolding mirror the gut-wrenching narrative of Grapes.

Economies are cyclical beasts by nature.  They rise and fall, being lifted by, or succumbing to, various so-called 'market forces'.  These forces are driven by the emerging technologies.  The 1920's and 30's, saw the maturation of mechanization and industrialization.  Those who were skilled enough to master the machines -- to design, build and maintain them -- weathered this watershed moment and were able to make a decent living, or in some cases, a fortune.  Those unable to make the shift to the emerging technology were discarded, often with extreme prejudice.  As the industrial revolution blossomed, it forced out the agrarian farmers and local craftsman by the thousands.  Those who were unable or unwilling to accept the new paradigm found themselves out of both life and livelihood. Labeled as outcasts, they were forced to the fringe of society, jostled from place to place, brutalized, traumatized and stigmatized until they vanished from the landscape.  This massive culling of the herd, as it were, was instigated by the wealthy, engineered by the politicians, orchestrated by the banks, and implemented by those self-centered individuals of low moral character who were willing to follow marching orders for a price -- mercenaries, in a name.  The end result was the demise of the family farm, and the rise of industrial agriculture and the assembly line.

So the Industrial Age reached it's zenith shortly after World War II, and then began to whither slowly, giving way to the Technological Age.  Now those who had mastered machinery were obsolete.  Once again, a culling was required. Over the next two decades, slowly and systematically, city by city, factories were shutdown, liquidated, disassembled and moved overseas, and those who unable to adapt were once again shown the door to the fringes of society, ostracized, stigmatized, traumatized and brutalized until they, too, vanished from the landscape.

The Technological Age peaked a decade later, then plunged, giving way to the Information Age, which brings us to where we are today: the next culling of the herd.

These cyclic and purely economics-based culling instances are, of course, blatant violations of the Social Contract. The Social Contract is something ubiquitous in modern civilization, but the roots go back many thousands of years.  Any individual born into a nation-state becomes an instant signatory to this contract, like it or not.  I don't write this to advocate for the Social Contract.  While it contains many inherent advantages for the individual, it contains far more advantages for the State.  The Social Contract basically posits that an individual voluntarily gives up certain freedoms in trade for protection by the State.  The issues that arise from this agreement are self-evident, so I won't go into them in greater detail here.  Suffice to say that the one thing the State agrees to do in this contract is protect the individual from the malfeasance of the everyday life, both natural and social.

 Thus in the matter of this cyclical culling at the behest of the wealthy, the state is clearly in violation of this already specious contract.  This is important because this contract is, for all practical intents and purposes, involuntary, at least insofar as the individual goes.

There is a scene from the movie Braveheart that provides an ideal allegory for this paradox.  It takes place shortly after William Wallace is captured, and brought before the court, accused of treason against the king of England.

Wallace: "I've sworn allegiance to no king."

Inquisitor: "It matters not.  He is your king."

In this brief exchange we see the crux of the Social Contract.  You enter into it by being born.  There is nothing that you sign, nothing you consent to, nothing to which you extend your proxy.  The extent to which you are required to submit to this contract depends simply on the nation in which your born.  Conversely, it is up to the nation-state to determine just what you receive in return.  It's a very typically tilted playing field that favors the state over the individual.

Planned Obsolescence is a term most commonly associated with industrial design, a term coined during the industrial revolution.  But since the advent of this 'revolution', the focus for planned obsolescence has applied not only to products, but to individuals as well.  This is apparent in all areas of the work force, both blue collar and professional.  Once you hit a certain age, you're out. Period. If you haven't made enough money to retire, you'll find yourself out of your field, out of your career, and find yourself bagging groceries at the local supermarket.

And herein lies my premise, buried deep at the end of this blog:  There is no Social Contract.  There is only Planned Obsolescence.

As technological advances become more rapid (they operate on the law of halves), so goes your shelf life as a valuable member of the work force. Be prepared to be obsolete, because the Grapes of Wrath grow much faster today than they did just a few years ago, and much slower than they'll be growing tomorrow.

An Angry Ghost in the Machine

The System is broken. It's FUBAR in a big, big way. As I write this, I'm wondering which of several government agency thugs will be showing up to give me a hard time. And what is it that I've done, exactly, to merit this unwanted attention? I've refused to reinforce the status quo of the System. I've refused to connect myself to the grid so that I can offer my availability to make money for the power companies. I've refused the directive to pay a well-connected group of people money for nothing. I've refused to go wildly deep in debt (a.k.a. get a mortgage), and spend the rest of my life giving my earnings to self-centered distant bankers. The System is furious with me for having committed these atrocities. The System was alerted to my presence by my neighbors, who are wildly deep in debt, who are effectively squatters, living a life they can ill afford. The System protects them. The System has no problem with them. The System is tickled pink with them.

The System, however, is mad-as-hell at me. It cannot abide my insubordination. It cannot tolerate my insistence that there are more efficient, more sustainable, more robust, more reliable ways of creating a habitat in which to live a simple life.

To argue that the System is not broken is an untenable position. To claim that the System "is for the best" or that it is merely "protecting" me is ludicrous. The System cares only that it continues to exist. Its primary concern is that it not be questioned, and that it be fed by all souls willing and unwilling. The System runs all the way from the United Nations, to the Federal government, and all the way down to the local housing association. These are all elements of the System, and their Primary Directive is to ensure its survival.

I was speaking with an attorney yesterday. He was acting as a mouthpiece for the System, one of many. He told me to just "do what was right." My reply was that the avenue he was describing was not right. The System supports the idea of a Neo-Feudal Age. It is, in fact, giddy at the prospect. A Neo-Feudal Age empowers a handful of True Believers with the ability to make the Rest of Us miserable. It creates mile-high walls and codifies the status quo. The System reigns supreme in the Neo-Feudal Age, unconcerned with innovation, nauseated by new technology -- or old technology refashioned.

The System, in following its prime directive -- maintaining it's survival -- will ultimately destroy us all. This is not an exaggeration. The System has destroyed civilizations throughout history. It has murdered millions. It has caused the extinction of countless species. It has visited brutality, cruelty, torture and misfortune on anything and everything threatening its survival. Every dominant species, every civilization has fallen prey to this singular vision.

The System protects the grifters. It rushes to defend the liars, cheats and swindlers, and chastises the honest. It despises those who speak truth to power. It loathes the trail-blazers and visionaries. It has no tolerance for anyone who questions this blatant hypocrisy.

In the end, the System will collapse under its own weight, and all that will be left is the worst of the worst. Ironically, it's moving toward this ultimate destination that we call "progress."

There's a common stream-of-thought that says humanity will eventually evolve out of this destructive pattern. 50,000 years later, however, nothing has changed. We sow the seeds of our demise daily, and the Angry Ghost in the Machine laughs like hell.

There is No Spoon, or, Spoonlessness.

Like so many other techies, I was a huge fan of 'The Matrix' when it came out. It was sad to see the series degenerate so rapidly with each sequel, as the Wachowski Brothers apparently turned to Hallmark Greeting Cards for script writing, but I digress. The original, the slightly gritty, slightly sterile, bleeding-edge-hip original was a classic.

And a quote from that movie "There is No Spoon" has become a meme in our vernacular akin to a pop Doctrine of Maya (Life is but a dream). The really cool thing about this meme, though, is that it's true. There really is no spoon. There is simply a collection of atoms with very tight orbital patterns, aligned to a common frequency, and thus bound together in mutual affinity. If you added up the amount of space in between the nucleus and the electrons, there would actually be more empty space than matter.

Thus, if a solid object is mostly empty space, imagine just how ethereal a human-manufactured concept might be. An example of a concept like that would be Civilization. Another example would be Religion. And still a third example would be Politics. These aforementioned constructs only exist insofar as we allow them to. Outside the realm of semantics, they're just so much thin air. That is, you can't point to some quantifiable object and say: "There. That is religion." It is an idea -- a construct -- and is therefore unquantifiable in an objective, ontological sense.

I elaborate on this in order to provide a framework for the construct of Spoonlessness.

Spoonlessness is the idea that we are in control of the ideas or constructs we create, rather than vice-versa. It is the Master Key of Idea. Spoonlessness is a state of understanding wherein you can see the virtual 'atoms' at the core of the construct, and retain lucid control of the way they manifest. Spoonlessness states that a construct may be 'tweaked' in order to improve performance, or as a result of the emergence of other newly-discovered ideas or constructs.

Spoonlessness has only one law: There is no Spoon.

What this means, ultimately, is that we control the game, at least as far as our own ideas are concerned. And this is important and timely, because at the moment we're letting constructs on auto-pilot make our day-to-day lives miserable, and that's putting it mildly. Day-by-day we sink a bit deeper into the quagmire, and yet, highly-paid 'pundits' and infotainment bobble-heads continue to proclaim each decline as 'unexpected'.

Unexpected, only if you're not paying attention, for whatever reason that may be.

The Truth, however, is plain, transparent and simple: We are allowing outdated and corrupt constructs to run our day-to-day lives right into the ground. These institutions, initially noble, now decrepit, have become ubiquitous and infinitely intertwined with The Things that Matter, and I think it's high time we separate what does and does not matter.

What matters, for practical intents and purposes, is the individuals that make up the construct we call the Society of Man. All cultural pragmatism aside, humans need what all mammals need: A place to live, food to eat, and some type of extended family.

Why should these basic necessities be so difficult to achieve? It seems like such a simple task to reshape the spoon, as it were, and thus to create an open society where people are allowed to live out there lives, to eat, sleep and be merry, without fear of persecution from arcane, corrupt or just plain malicious constructs.

And the reality is this: It IS just that simple. Just remember: There is no spoon.

All we have to do in order to make things better is to decide we want to make things better.

Such is the way Spoonlessness rolls.

Seeking Sustainability: Part One

Humans have amazing powers of conception, and, collectively speaking, no vision. There are individuals throughout history that have shown to be visionary, but as a group our vision is poor, at best.

Perhaps our collective consciousness needs glasses. If we had glasses, perhaps we could see that the modern civilization we've built is based on a finite resources and is therefore unsustainable.

Since that probably won't happen, building a sustainable model will be left up to individuals to design. With that in mind, let's get started, shall we?

1. Food
   

   The first thing -- one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure -- is food production. Modern society has become so far removed from it's food source that we have almost no idea how to produce our own food, were that to be required. We need to remodel our infrastructure -- and our diet -- so that we're producing food regionally, and more importantly, locally. From fruits and vegetables, to meat, eggs and dairy, to grains and legumes, the lot of it needs to be grown close to home, rather than on another continent. The benefits here are multi-fold. Food grown regionally will be more fresh, and you'll likely know the people who grew it. You'll know what went into it, and accountability would return to food production.
   
   You can start that move right at home simply by starting a garden and getting come chickens. If you don't have a place at home, see if there's a community garden close, or better yet, organize one. Re-taking control of our food supply is Step One.
   

2. Energy - Electricity and Fossil Fuels
   

   Energy consumption is the 800lb Gorilla no one wants to talk about. That would be because the core of modern industrial civilization is built around the concept of limitless, cheap energy. This was a horrible idea completely lacking in vision. The laws of Thermodynamics posit quite clearly that there is no such thing as a closed system. That is: You have to put energy (fuel) into a system, and that system, no matter how efficient, will lose energy in the form of entropy. This applies to suns, stars and planets, but applies equally to industrialized society. Hence, building a system around the idea of limitless, cheap, easily-refinable energy is a flawed premise of the highest order. It's also the by-product of allowing people who own the fuel source to create the infrastructure it powers. The carbon footprint of the average home in the US is enormous when compared to the rest of the world. Worse yet are commercial and industrial consumption rates. To date, we consume vast amounts of power gleefully, willingly, wantonly and much to our own detriment. As energy prices increase, so does the stress on those living within the infrastructure. A model built on the idea of infinite resources existing within a system of limited resources will invariably exhaust the resources in the system. This is a simple Law of Physics, or, more precisely, thermodynamics.
   
   We need to rethink everything in this regard. For example: While the 'grid' -- the patchwork of cables, towers, wires, inverters, capacitors and transformers that runs all over everywhere -- makes a nice idea on paper (and generates a very nice revenue stream for privately-owned utilities) it doesn't make sense on a practical level. Like food, we've become far removed from our own energy production. It has become abstracted to a socket on the wall or a light switch, for most. When you're in charge of your own energy, suddenly you become very aware of any given item that consumes it, what it consumes, and what the most efficient way to provide the energy required for that task would be. When I moved off the grid 8 months ago, the first thing I realized is that I was going to have to re-tool my energy usage patterns.
   
   I think by far the biggest culprit would be the compressors used by refrigerators and air conditioners, etc. Any time you attempt to change the equilibrium of a system (remove heat from it or add heat to it) you're talking about a significant about off wattage and amperage. There are other ways to cool things down without compressors. They are, perhaps, not as neat and tidy, but they take considerably less energy. If energy is a sparce commodity, then neat and tidy take a back seat. Two ways you can keep things cool:
   

   1. Hydro-cooling:
      

      Water. Using a mister, or just allowing a high pressure jet to spray into the air will create a cool area during hot days. All you need for this is a well and a pump, which uses minimal to no electricity, depending on your pump.
      

   2. Geo-thermal
      

      Using earth to maintain a consistent temperature year round, rather than trying to constantly heat or cool an inefficient structure is far more economical and requires no energy input at all.
      

   The problem with these solutions, again, is that they're not as neat and tidy as modern US cultural norms demand.
   

Ultimately, then, a sustainability shift is going to require a change in cultural norms first and foremost. Re-thinking how and where our food is grown, and how and where our energy comes from (and what it's used for) are two good places to begin.

Begin.

Why the term "Neofeudal"

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

"And I believe these are the days,
Of Lasers in the jungle,
Lasers in the jungle somewhere,
Staccato signals of constant information,
A loose affiliation of millionaires,
And billionaires..."

-- Paul Simon, from 'The Boy in the Bubble'

I've never been one to follow fads. Over the years, the various 'scares' that sent a few people running for the desert never even phased me. I knew there were problems with our leadership, but they were somewhat remote and overtly political.

Then the World Trade Center thing happened, and suddenly things got very weird and very uncomfortable very quickly. I watched with horror as the Corporate Police State began closing in on We, the People. I watched the airports come to resemble large, airy, poorly-decorated indoor concentration camps. I watched in horror as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were dismissed out-of-hand in the name of 'security'. Being raised to believe in the concept of "The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave," I was appalled at how easily people were willing to trade Freedom for Slavery and Bravery for Cowardice. I wondered long and hard about what happened to those ideals.

I think we got off on the wrong path at some point.

Then, in the Summer of 2007, I started doing something I'd never done before: I started stockpiling food. It was an unconscious act at first that later made it's way into my consciousness. Bear Sterns had just collapsed, there was a worldwide rice shortage, and talk of increasing the usage of corn (a food staple) for ethanol. Something inside clicked, and I started buying dried good (beans, rice, pasta) and canned vegetables and fruit. I created a pantry in my basement that became filled to the brim with such goods. Yet still I felt that I hadn't done enough.

When Bear Stearns collapsed, I pulled all my money out of the stock market and into so-called 'investment' property, which is really just Land in the Middle of Nowhere. I started buying tools. I had already set up a solar array, but now I increased it's capability. I started a garden. These were all things that I'd never bothered with before, and yet now they were consuming most of my extra cash and free time. When finally I bought chickens, I decided it was time to go to the next level: to move to the back country and start realizing my vision.

I had mixed feelings about the whole turn of events. On one hand, I was satisfying a deep-seated urge. On the other hand, I felt a bit foolish...at that point.

I don't feel this way any longer.

Which leads me to the title of the blog. Why. I believe we are on the cusp of entering a Neofeudal Age. I write that, and yet it's still difficult for me wrap my head around, given that just a decade ago we heralded the onset of the Age of Information. Ironically, that 'Age' had the staying power of the latest 'killer app' du jour, which is to say little to none. And with the speed of a dot.com IPO, the Age of Information was discarded in favor of Neofeudal Age.

The Feudal Age was a period prior to the Renaissance that lasted several centuries. During this period, Feudal Lords 'leased' pieces of their land local fiefs. The fifes were allowed to work the land, and in return they were given not-quite-enough to survive and were forced to turn over most of the harvest to the Feudal Lord.
Today, the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' has grown into a gaping chasm. There seems to be a movement to re-create the American Landscape according to the the laws of the Feudal Age. The American Middle Class, the society in which I was raised, is disintegrating. We're entering an era where Corporations (the new Feudal Lords) control everything, and what they don't control directly they control via lobbyists and corrupt politicians.

For my part, I'm just trying to get out of the way. I'm going about that by building an eco-friendly, self-sustaining human habitat. My goal is to require little to nothing from an overseas supply chain that I see as unsustainable.

So there it is, and here we are. Hang on. It's going to be a rough ride.

Further Reading:

• Wikipedia: Neofeudalism
• Christopher Hedges on Neo-Feudalism

The Tower of Babel... or is that Babble... the demise of the collective dialog

"In an insane society, the sane man must appear insane."

-- Commander Spock, from Star Trek


It has been coming on for quite some time now. By 'it' I mean the fracturing of our collective dialog.

What's a "collective dialog", you may ask? The collective dialog is a hyper-conversation, if you will, that provides meta-data context to our physical dialog. Physical dialog is like the conversation you had with someone the other day, or when you watch the news. One of the primary purposes of the collective dialog is to act as a benchmark in the exchange. An example of this is that two people look at a chair, and they can both agree that what they perceive has the Quality of being Chair-like. Aristotle called this the meson or middle term. That is, there are two extremes in any conversation (called: akron), with this meson, this "shared-term" (a chair is a chair) mediating the exchange.

Since the permutation of the news establishment from Information providers into Infotainment vaudevillians, I've watched in horror as the collective dialog was tainted and maligned by what is commonly known as "spin".

Spin has effectively eliminated the common ground from our conversation, and, in my opinion, is the core of our current dilemma. How can there be rational dialog if there is no "middle-term" to persist parity in the conversation? Simple answer: there can be no rational dialog in this case.

Why?

Well, we need look no further than the average press release from the administration, need look no further than *'s last speech, need look no further than FOX "news".

For example:

"We're at 'war' with 'terrorists'"

Now, for this sentence to have real meaning in a conversation, the two parties must both agree on what a 'war' is and what a 'terrorist' is in order for there to be an accurate exchange of information, in order to move the debate forward in a rational manner. If the two parties cannot agree on what constitutes a 'war', if one party introduces an alternative definition into the collective dialog it obscures the debate (the debate becomes the definition of the word) and worse, it can take centuries to work it's way out.

Centuries, if at all.

What has happened is that a group of people in positions of power have managed to fracture the meson. There is no longer consensus on what constitutes a 'war', nor what constitutes 'terrorists'. Further, core concepts like 'freedom', 'liberty', 'security', 'compassion' and on and on have been corrupted in a similar manner by this process. There exists now, for all intents and purposes, two or more mesons.

The Tower of Babel has been shattered, once again.

It is the plurality of these middle-terms that make conducting an intelligent conversation virtually impossible these days, and has led to the definition of a sub-group quaintly labeled "the reality-based community".

As opposed to the fantasy-based, of course.

The redefinition of these middle-terms has become known as 'Framing the Debate', and it is a dangerous and silly game, yet like chronic gamblers, we remain at the table and continue to play. The longer we play, the worse the situation becomes. That is, the more constructs that are re-defined or questioned by this group, the longer it will take to repair, if we're able to repair it at all.

We need to stop the childish indulgence of framing constructs to match the argument. It is causing irreparable harm to our collective dialog, and serves only to move our species closer to extinction.

Admittedly, accomplishing this will be next to impossible thanks to folks at Big Media, Inc, who continue to foul the waters to this day.

We have to try, though, so allow me to start: There is no such thing as a 'war' on a concept like 'terror' or 'drugs'. Dismissing that popular colloquialism as an illogical fallacy would be a grand first step towards rebuilding the Tower of Babel now lying in ruins at our feet.

The Commons, and We, the People.

Every time you get a paycheck, you pay taxes. Every time you buy something, you pay taxes. Every time you make money selling something, you pay taxes. Why is it, then, that the Commons -- the result of all these taxes -- is funneled to military and security industries? Why is it that the lion's share of what we pay into the commons goes to corporations in general? This phenomena is diametrically opposed to very notion of a Public Commons.

Before I go on, I must offer this humble disclaimer: I am no fan of excessive taxation. I believe we could have a Cadillac Health, Human Services and Education system by simply re-aligning our priorities, rather than increasing what we pay in taxes. That's always been my position, and it remains thus today.

And the idea of the aforementioned system is really nothing more than the Commons, and the fulfillment of the Social Contract.

If you have a birth certificate, you've signed the Social Contract by proxy, so common-wisdom runs. The idea of the Social Contract is tribal at the core. In essence, the tribe acknowledges you as a member, and both parties agree to a well-defined set of constructs. The Social Contract says that your participation in society (everything from time spent sitting at a stop light to civil service) shall be compensated in return by society providing you with the tools you require to survive. A place to live, a job, food to eat, and health care when you need it, roads to drive on, and on and on. At the core of the Social Contract is this agreement: You agree to be a member of the society-at-large, and in return, society will assist you in fulfilling the lowest level of need: food and shelter and well-being. The rest is up to you. That's the deal, at least in theory.

In smaller communities, this is -- or was -- more often than not the norm. As our small communities have given way to large highly-concentrated urban environments, the notion of what the State needs to do to fulfill it's side of the bargain has narrowed, and continues to narrow. At the same time, the responsibilities of the individual have broadened in scope. Increased taxes, decreased civil liberties, decreased -- or decaying infrastructure, privatized utilities, privatized government service -- these are all prime examples of the change in the relationship.

I'm often accused of being a libertarian. And I have, at the same time, openly admitted to having libertarian tendencies. However -- and this is why libertarians call me a raging liberal -- I believe that a social safety net is part and parcel of the Social Contract, just like education, and health care, and roads. You pay into a common fund with the idea that if something ever happens, you would be able to draw from that fund. This is the central tenet behind the idea of paying taxes, in my opinion. Taxes should go towards making our lives better.

Incidentally, conducting 'wars' abroad does absolutely nothing to make our lives better. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I digress.

Here is the crux of the agreement: When things are bad, we ought to be able to turn to the Commons to help. That's not the case these days, however. If you're not a bank, if you don't manufacture armaments or contribute to the security apparatus, if you're not a well-connected beltway insider, you can rest assured that the people who you've put in charge of overseeing the Commons will tell you piss off. If they do offer assistance, it will be limited, at best, and will often come with expensive strings attached.

This attitude defies the very definition of the Commons, by my thinking, and therefore violates the Social Contract.

Wouldn't it be great if, when you really needed assistance, that you could turn in confidence to these people who you've entrusted with you taxes? Wouldn't it be great if you could know, dollar for dollar, where your payments to the Commons went, and that if you needed to withdraw some because of a hardship, or if you needed a hand up, that you could rely on the people who you've entrusted to perform that simple service?

We don't need a revolution. We don't need more 'wars', abstract or otherwise. We don't need further erosion of civil liberties in the name of safety. We don't need health 'insurance', student loans, or the creepy DHS. What we need is for the people who we elect to oversee the Commons to act in the best interests of We, the People. We need people to be held accountable for misuse and corruption. It's really just that simple. The Social Contract isn't complicated. It fulfills the basics, and in return you, now well-fed, healthy, free and educated, are able to pitch in and make things even better. And this cumulative feedback loop produces the Best of All Possible Worlds.

Really.

It's not a theory, it's a fact. If you consistently work at making things better, they WILL get better. If you ignore things, they decay. Again: just that simple.

The situation we're in, while dire, is not untenable. It simply requires that we manage the commons wisely, that we hold people accountable who don't, and that we work to make our lives better.

Here's to better times.

Cheers.

Three Core Necessities for Living Off the Grid

Living off the grid, three core necessities become quickly apparent (assuming you have a food source);

1) Shelter
2) Thermal Stability (Heating|Cooling)
3) Water

An optional number 4) would be electricity, but the aforementioned three must be fulfilled first, and not in that order, but sort of all at once. Those three are critical to carbon-based life form survival and fecundity.

The 4th is nice if you want to have the internet available. :)

I say this because after living off grid for the last three months, it's these things I find myself most concerned about. Electricity is available, in limited amounts, so I've been giving a great deal of thought to alternative methods of achieving these three core necessities using little to no electricity. So make note: if you ever find yourself living off grid, remember these two simple words:

Thermal Mass.

Thermal Mass seems to be something of a well-kept secret that no one wants to talk about beyond how to waterproof your basement. Perhaps because it's cheap, strong and efficient, eh? In any case, I've been putting the concept of thermal mass into practical application, and the results have been outstanding. Using a mere 40 watts,
I should be able to keep my water and chickens cool this summer, as well as the produce from the garden. I'm accomplishing this using -- you guessed it --thermal mass.

It was exciting to see a concept perform so well in practical application, so I wanted to share.

I guess I should explain myself.  Thermal Mass is the idea that a structure's mass determines its ability to maintain temperature inertia.   Here's the Wikipedia Link:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass

This is such a powerful concept only given lip service in current building techniques.  It's like weak gravity, or something.  A little goes a long way.  Just a few inches down into the soil, or just a few feet higher on the wall, and you've increased the mass of that wall considerably.  I have cool water for the garden, trees and chickens.  I (will) have a cool place to put veggies and grains for storage, and if these smaller test structures work out long term, I could see building a berm house in the same fashion. The amount of rain that we get here in Florida will be a good test. I'm in the process of building strategically-placed berms to hold the water away from the cellar, etc.  I'm sure it will be a learning experience. :)

The water storage culvert uses thermal mass to keep the water cold, even on a hot, sunny day.

The root cellar will have an 11 foot ceiling, and a 4-foot-thick roof. The temperature should vary very little.

Even incomplete, this day shelter for the chickens was nice and cool in the afternoon sun.

End of Days for 'Rosie the Riveter' a.k.a. the Middle Class

This isn't about Rosie the Riveter, albeit I use her iconic name in the title. I reference her because from Rosie emerged the Great American Middle Class. Rosie, of course, represented the multitudes of female factory workers hired to build armaments for World War II. Rosie also represents a classic piece of US propaganda, and illustrates how the US goes about shaping it's citizens to suit its needs at Any Given Moment.

When the war ended, the Rosies needed to be deescalated and disbanded so the returning males could take their positions at the factory. To do this, the government tweaked the propaganda, and created the concept of the Middle Class Housewife, and as such gave birth to the Middle Class itself.

But there's a catch. Why? Because there's always a catch.

Consider this: The Captains of Industry (A Bush among them, of course), worked with the government to create Rosie, and then later to disband her. To disband her, they created the Middle Class. Yet even way back then these Captains of Industry knew that the Middle Class was a temporary inconvenience for them, and that someday it, too, would be disbanded.

It hasn't happened overnight, of course. That would have been to obvious. They had to move slowly, stepping back the concessions they were forced to offer at the end of the war. It started in the 70's, about the time the soldiers who fought in that war would have been retiring. My grandfather was a pilot in that war. He retired a Lt. Colonel with a comfortable pension and free healthcare. This was in the 70's, and many of his generation were doing the same thing, retiring, many on full pensions with excellent healthcare.

But at the same time, something started happening in the 70's. Wages began to stagnate. Manufacturing began to pack up and move overseas. The foundations of the Middle Class began to lose integrity. Again, it was subtle, until Reagan. When Ronald Reagan was installed, the Monied Class took things up (uh, or down) a notch. Manufacturing's move overseas was now in high gear, so the Monied Class turned attention to eating away at the Professional Class that had emerged as a by-product of good Middle Class living. So they started whittling away there. It started with corporate culture. You no longer worked at a single corporation your entire life through to retirement. Rather, jobs became a commodity of sorts -- a marketplace, a sporting event, a 'Running Man Game Show. Remember 'Dress for Success'? The idea behind this nasty little meme was that you should hone your skills in the fashion of a Samurai, and that the Strongest, Most-Well-Dressed, Most-Vicious candidate wins. In essence, Kill Or Be Killed.

In the 80's, then, we see the professional corporate culture becoming less stable, being disbanded by the Monied Class. So-called 'Free-Trade' agreements were working wonders, and the Middle Class was now becoming insecure. Everything was going to plan, and then the Internet happened.

It had been around for quite some time, of course, but it started catching fire in 1994 and by the end of the 90's managed to float a large chunk of the Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers to the Top of the Barrel.

The Monied Class was not amused. They tolerated this briefly, to take a bit of profit, and then they had Greenspan drown it so that they could get back to business.

And that business was, of course, dismantling the Middle Class and the introduction of a Neo-Feudal Age.

You see, I believe the Monied Class has always resented having to share-the-wealth with the peasantry, with Rosie the Riveter. I think they've groused and grumbled about it in exclusive clubs nationwide, slumped down in high-backed oxblood calfskin chairs, nursing 150-year-old brandy, and chomping on a big Cuban cigar (yeah, Cuban, that's right). I think they've bitched about it and have been plotting its demise since its inception. Waiting for the 'Greatest Generation' to retire was just their way of saying 'Thanks'. As soon as they were out of the way, the doors were thrown wide open and the corporate predator was unleashed on the unsuspecting populace. Free to say what they want, sell what they want, charge what they want, these corporations began devouring the Middle Class under the guise of 'cheap' credit and low-low prices. The only problem was, the credit wasn't really cheap, and the prices were low because the merchandise was garbage. Nevertheless, it worked. They snared millions of people in their nets.

Then, finally, came the piece de resistance: the so-called "Ownership Society" (or pWnership society, as I call it). This was a herald call to anyone who had managed to avoid the previous pratfalls. The message was that you were going to be a millionaire, simply from buying and selling your house every couple years.

Of course, if anyone had read the details -- the Fine Print, as it were -- they would have seen the trap quite clearly. Most didn't, though, they took advantage of 'cheap' money and borrowed to the hilt. People making $60,000 a year were able to get loans for half-a-million dollars. Think of that, for a second, and it should give you pause.

Why on Earth would a mortgage company loan someone off the street a half-a-million with no money down?

We see the answer to that question everywhere on Main St. today. We see people buried so far under in debt that their only option is to declare bankruptcy. At the same time, we see corporations checking a) Credit, and b) current employment status.

There is a final Great Culling going on. What's left of the now tattered, once Great, Middle Class is being rounded up and turned into indentured servants. Wages are flat or declining, benefits even more so, working conditions deteriorating, rampant long-term unemployment is creating a force that drives this cycle downward. And everyone but a politician knows that once you're out-of-work, and out-of-a-house that you're in an extreme World of Hurt.

"It's a crime, to be broke in America." -- Michael Franti, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

And that brings us up to 2011, and the US is well on the way completely disbanding the Middle Class it created only a few short decades ago.

Fare thee well, Middle Class, fare thee well, Rosie, we hardly knew ye.