Inspiration & Empowerment

Willem IV- An Essay On The NEW Upadarian Approach To Building Freedom

Building freedom in our era of top-down centralization of corporate and governmental power requires a new approach that transcends the 20th century industrialized society. We must resort to unilateral efforts that build freedom individually and locally but within a globally-distributed community of freedom-builders who share ideas and resources.

Through our new platform, called “Upadaria” and pronounced “you-pah-daria”, we want to create a global gathering of people who desire to build freedom, which results in a free and pluralistic society with universal opulence and absolute equality and equity under law. To build such freedom, we have to look for unilateral approaches which do not depend on reforming existing institutions and the existing ruling class.

To facilitate this virtual-to-local and, at the same time, global freedom-building movement, we are creating a new web 3.0 cryptonation platform called “The Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria.” Upadaria is a name that defines our core ideals and vision for a globally-distributed free and pluralistic, and totally freewill participatory based, “commonwealth of freedom.”

(“Upadaria” means “the people rule through God’s approved wisdom”, it stands for our core ideals <Unity in diversity, Popular sovereignty, Democratic equality, and Rule of law>, is the name of our new intentional spiritual nationality whose God is the Lord, and is the name of a new civilization founded on God’s standards of righteousness and justice.)

It may be that the vast majority of people, and/or the ruling class, in your country and your culture will continue to reject the things that lead to a free and prosperous society. This obstinacy may continue for decades or it may only end when that culture itself and all its institutions collapse in the future.

The present approach is to build freedom through reformation of existing institutions and changing the very makeup, qualifications, and decision-making structures of the ruling class. This mostly involves politicking, corporate activism, civic activism, and culture-changing efforts via corporate and political controls or influence.

There is no argument these things cannot or should not be pursued, inasmuch as lies within our means. But there is a strong argument that these things cannot and should not be our primary focus. This especially applies beyond the very local level. Only at the very local level can a small cohesive body of people influence and direct most local structures, like business, culture, and government.

A new blueprint for building freedom can be powered and supported through global connections and collaboration on a freewill participatory basis, hence our platform. But its greatest manifestation and impact, we propose, comes from a more face-to-face approach.

In sharing our overall plan for building freedom, even our specific approach to organizing principles and official designations, we are hoping to give enough concrete information from which you can glean your own ideas.

Our overall global plan includes a networking of area-wide “distributed privately developed free cities” we call “Shires.” Bear with us as we delve a bit into details whose minutiae may be less useful than their use as a concrete illustration of broader principles, which are useful.

We begin sort of in the middle, but with the first larger-scale effort that we think our overall movement will be mostly known for. Moreover, we suspect this type of structure will be the way most people in the future access and experience our vision.

What we think will be our main contribution to scaled-up efforts to pursue freedom is the concept of a Upadarian Shire community. Our concept of the Upo Shire is a distributed privately developed free city within a given area administerer by a chapter organization of a Upadarian Branch Society. It serves a broader clientele than just Society members or Christians.

(Note that other terms apply to special Shires, like urban Shires called Bergs or special home chapter organizations called Shiredoms or Regal Shiredoms, but all are still Shires. Just remember, a Shire for us is a distributed privately developed city capable of meeting the basic material needs of its participants. A Upo Shire is a Shire operated by a chapter organization of a Upadarian Branch Society.)

The distributed privately developed city itself, adminstered by a chapter organization connected to a Branch Society of our intentional NGO, owns lands distributed all over a given area as well as common facilities and hubs both to support their “citizens” and to conduct their mission to help people in need.

We plan a Upo Shire community called “Riqueday City, USA”, to be adminstered by an (also planned) area chapter organization for the Upadarian Society of America (a Branch Society of our NGO) which we will establish in the future.

This will be the genesis community for the whole concept Upo Shire communities and Shires in general. A s stated already, we do not use the term “Distributed Upo City” for a Shire, that is just a reference to its technical definition:  a Upo Shire is a distributed Upo City adminstered by a chapter organization.

The general public who become subscribers join a virtual-to-local city and/or lease residential or commercial property from the “city.” Hence the term “city” will normally be used for the public-facing elements. “Riqueday City, USA” is a distributed Upo City adminstered by a chapter organization, a Shire.The official chapter designation for this important home chapter organization is “The Regal Shiredom of Riqueday.” This is just a specific form of a Shire.

While Shires will be the norm, we also plan larger contiguous developments as hubs for our global effort, these are called Upo Cities as well, albeit both in title and in definition. In other words, a distributed Upo City is called a Shire, but a contiguous Upo City is also called a Upo City.

A Upo City is a privately devleoped, locally autonomous, and free city that caters to a diverse population within a charter provided by a host country and whose governance and administration are organized around the ideals and etc of the Upadarian civilization and our spiritual nation. Additionally, and also importantly, its citizens are more like customers and it is administered by an area chapter organization and by Peers of a Upadarian Branch Society or a Upadarian Missionary Tribe (there are 17) who live there.

These general concepts also apply to Shires, though, unless some or all of their lands have a designation like a tribal homeland or reservation, they are not in any way autonomous.

In general terms, we also define contiguous Upo Cities as “Refuge and Freedom Support Hubs”, or just “Hubs”, because they are a refuge of freedom and provision in a world riven by conflict and where freedom itself is the constant target. They will often act as regional to territorial support hubs for whole Branch Societies, major chapter organizations, or Missionary Tribes in their work.

Some may have strategic importance for some aspect of the global NGO mission, like Novazzia City, a planned Upo City, called a Regal City because it will host major support services for the global mission of the NGO. In this case, it will host international services and resources related to security and safety and for training people in the Upadarian governmental system.

Note: another Novazzia, called Novazzia City, USA, is the planned genesis community and home chapter organization for a territorial chapter organization of the Upadarian Society of America. This planned Shire will be responsible for establishing the first overseas development from which the international Upo City, Novazzia City, will grow.

Riqueday City, USA is meant to be a Shire within the greater Twin Tiers. It will be physically manifested in the form of various Hubs, contigious larger-scale developments called Upo Communities, clustered housing developments (Estates, Castles, or Villas) and common/support facilities (Embassies, Missions, Castles, Common Houses, and Chapter Houses). It will also be the provisional world HQ for our planned NGO and for the platform. It will also have its own area-wide virtual network within the Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria.

Other Shires (as distributed cities) are planned for the lower Delmarva Peninsula, northern California, West Africa, and other locations around the world. Riqueday City, USA will also sponsor the eventual development of other Upo Cities, such as The Crown Principality of Upadaria, the official chapter designation for this Upo City, the planned international HQ for the NGO, and Riqueday Regency, a chapter organization within the EU.

Just remember that Shires are our version of distributed privately developed free cities adminstered by a chapter organization of a Upadarian Branch Society but that serve a broad cross-section of people as subscribers to its service, what we call eCitizens.

The Shire concept can be adapted by any group of people and if a number of Shire-type communities coexist within a given area there is room for a coalition or compact for mutual support in the cause of freedom.

These Shires, as both distributed cities that serve a broad audience of client-citizens and as chapter organizations with a Upadarian Branch Society, will mostly consist of local to very local trust communities organized around a modern version of the ancient extended multi-family household community.

This leads to our proposed primary innovation, the intentional modern adaptation of the ancient multi-family extended households, called “oikos” in the Greek of the 1st century world.

How can we conceive of these oikos-like local communities?

Think of a modernized “tribal village” of around 120 adults that is distributed throughout a small town and that gathers and clusters around common facilities (Common House, Chapter House, Mission, Villa, etc.) for activities and events. Imagine an entire area-wide network of such “villages” with larger hubs and facilities, distributed among many towns or cities within its service area.

As these new frameworks become alternative, unilateral structures, a drive to actually transform your local neighborhood or community into a sanctuary for freedom can be successfully conducted.

Imagine a small city of 50,000 people where over half of the voters sign a Freedom Sanctuary Pledge and are engaged in some form of gathering together or in clustered housing developments like unto these modernized forms of the ancient multi-family extended household. Such a city may pass a Freedom Sanctuary Ordinance that commits the city government to basic human rights and liberty based on the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights.

Note that we do not only want this for local governments in the USA, we want this wherever in the world we can do it.

Practical things like alternative energy, sustainable agriculture, mutual assurance funds, cooperatives, mircofacturing, 3d printing, and the like will be needed. But the greatest change will be a personal lifestyle change that comforms to the most successful sacred patterns and standards in a thoroughly future-looking manner. Without such a lifestyle change (ideally within a new sociocultural structure of globally scalable organic cohesiveness) these practical things will benefit only a few people and only for a limited time.

This begins as people choose to adopt a new lifestyle and governance philosophy, a new civilizational paradigm, and even a new spiritual nationality, which is the practical glue that creates non-hierarchical organic cohesiveness. Those who go as far as to adopt the new spiritual nationality can use this new-found organic cohesiveness to quickly gather and, starting as individuals and families, autonomously use a common blueprint to create their own very local to regional alternative structures.

Our blueprints and frameworks are directed toward a specific vision for a specific new spiritual nation and the distributed global emergence of a new civilization all centered on the person, works, and truths found in Yeshua. We also introduce a new lifestyle and governance discipline, or philosophy, that anyone can apply the broader, more general principles and ideas to their own efforts to build freedom through unilateral action by organically cohesive free association of people.

We are building virtual support structures now. We propose that we must begin at the level of a global-scale but virtual-to-local gathering of people who at least adopt a new lifstyle philosophy and then a new civilizational paradigm based on freedom as defined by God’s standards of righteousness and justice. The Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria is a new platform that will gather people, impart the vision, support them, and enable them to build connections for mutual profit and support. From virtual-to-local connections, local gatherings of people can autonomously use these blueprints in a manner suited to their immediate needs and resources until whole distributed cities that are part of this globally-distributed “Commonwealth” of free people are established here and there.

Our distributed free cities (Shires) will be adminstered by area chapter organizations within the Branch Societies of our international NGO. They will own real estate such as lands, common facilities, and hubs, along with clustered housing options. Through local chapter communities and coalitions with other civic groups, they will be able to influence local institutions and even county/provincial or municipal governments until actual Freedom Sanctuaries are declared.

This will not be successful everywhere. But the presence of free communities of people can be everywhere and, through an international NGO and other legal structures can be a new layer of protection and support from abuse. This NGO can emgage in international advocacy for universal human rights and universal liberty based on the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Right

We also envision larger hubs, possibly whole “Upo Cities”, like a modern version of cities of refuge, but based on legal structures like special economic zones and other larger-scale developments or private cities. If and when these emerge they would also be part of this global Commonwealth organized and administered through a recognized international NGO.

We are literally talking about a new civilization being unilaterally built all over the world. We are literally talking about people adopting a new form of spiritual nationality that individuals adopt on their own right along with their ancestry.

The lifestyle change envisioned within our vision, which you can adopt wholly or in its broader outlines in your own way, is vital. The lifestyle of the atomized life (without real mutuality at the familial and community scale and without a globally scalable organic cohesiveness) has rendered everyone prey to corporate and governmental influence and control through material dependency.

There are those whose culture is already supportive of some form of Shirehold, but it tends to lack scalability, is limited to blood kinship, and can be constrained by manipulation and control that tend to work against individual spiritual sovereignty. Many of these extended families and tribes lack organic cohesiveness in practical matters and/or retain some of the worse elements of ancient tribalism that the modern world has rightly discarded. Moreover, many are not under the voluntary lordship to Yeshua.

Building freedom demands a lifestyle change. It requires a return, in modern form, to proven ancient norms and structures which would make you materially independent of the present top-down systems of control. Without a restoration, again, in modern form, of the ancient multi-family extended household community and its networks which became a whole distributed city within areas, we will not build freedom that lasts.

What we call a “Shirehold” is the modernized version of this ancient extended multi-family household, a community of around 120 connected adults and their children. Your involvement in something like a Shirehold would render you vastly more free, secure, and prosperous than you are now or could ever be outside of such an arrangement.

In addition to a shared culture and way of life as well as a shared mission, the core element of a Shirehold is that every participant feels that the success and well-being of everyone else is equal in value to their own success and well-being. This feeling of belonging and acceptance and its practical impact is lost among many modern cultures. Without this nurturing enclosure that doesn’t smother the individual but, rather, awakens their potential, personal freedom can be easily manipulated or removed.

You are connected to and governed by many relationships and people. This cannot change. It is part of the human condition and experience. Moreover, strong mutual bonds between individuals and bodies of people are ordained and prescribed by God for human civilization. What we propose, and what constitutes our major breakthrough innovation, is that we unilaterally choose what relationships and mutual bonds we will partake in that conform with God’s scroll of destiny and purpose (what we call “wyrd”) for our own lives.

Our blueprint for a new civilization and a globally distributed Commonwealth of freedom is conveyed through a fictional future history written in 2147 AD, called “The Blue Book of Upadaria: A Secret History of The New Civilization.”

Herein lies the spiritual, sociocultural, socioeconomic, and philosophical DNA of a new spiritual nation as the vanguard people of a new civilization. It uses creativity and imagination, in the form of a fictional future history, but its core ideals, principles, practices, and mandates are useful in the here and now.

You can choose to adopt that new spiritual nationality, but you can also only engage at the level of the civilizational paradigm or by using the lifestyle and governance discipline (philosophy) conveyed.

Our Gideon’s Call is initially meant to gather the core of spiritual nation and freedom builders. At the same time, we are sure to find and connect with many more individuals who will find the philosophical foundations or the whole civilization paradigm useful and/or who choose to adopt this new nationality.

Whether or not you are called to participate in our particular effort and vision to build freedom, we hope to convey broader ideas and principles for unilaterally building freedom. You may not form or participate in a Upadarian “Shirehold” community, but, we propose, you will need something like this in your life if you desire less material dependency and more personal freedom.

The practical elements of having your own local food through renewable resources and having your own local micro-factory which uses recycled materials to produce consumer items, and many more, are not possible without a new underlying paradigm and culture. We have to be able to build freedom on our own through personal choices, relationships, associations, and communities of trust based on organic cohesiveness that can scale globally.

It won’t be easy or fast. Many changes can happen just through adopting a more freedom-oriented mindest and paradigm, but also many changes take years of mutuality and collaboration on a local to regional and global scale. Where you live may or may not change, but how you live, how you spend time and money and who and when you do this with will shift in a manner that more directly harmonizes with your God-given “wyrd”, which we explained is the scroll of purpose and destiny fulfillment for your life.

These Shirehold communities may not, especially now, take the form of an intentional community where everyone has a residence on a shared piece of real estate. Their smaller “Kinship Groups” of 10-20 adults and 5-10 nuclear families with attached single adults may have some form of clustered housing options for participants, but even these may just be a neighborhood group who gather at a Common House for activities and functions.

Clustered housing is definitely an idea we support, but it is more essential, and more practical, for most people, to remain in their existing homes, especially if they own them, and not to physically change their residence. What is essential is that when you gather with a group of people who have all adopted the same sociocultural identity and way of life, which is a function of national identity, you begin to act as an extended multi-family household that cares for its members as a large extended family or a tribal village of old would have.

It is important to not that Upadarians are from every race and ethnicity. Anyone who adopts our nationality through freewill participation and by making the Pledge of Peers between themselves and God alone, is a Upadarian.

Among us we have no race or ancestry, though we do honor our ancestors as individuals. Upadaria has no past. There is nothing we have done to be ashamed or proud of, our history begins now and we have a clean slate. When you become a Upadarian, your spiritual nationality is Upadarian and this transcends all identities save our identity as followers of Yeshua.

Every Upadarian, regardless of racial background, ancestry, or anything else is an equal Peer, loved and valued as kin and as part of our tribe, our People. The disadvantaged and downtrodden and those who experience prejudice and hate are our welcome kin and know that as a Upadarian, every other Peer of our spiritual nation will stand with you and for and against your abusers! We are not white or black, brown, red, or yellow, we are all Upadarian Blue!

(Note that we do not mean to erect some sort of color-blind society that doesn’t recognize past and present abuses based on race and ethnicity. Nor do we want to whitewash or erase diverse cultures and historical peoples. The idea here, specifically AMONG those who ADOPT our shared nationality, is that we are creating a NEW spiritual nation not limited to or defined by historical or present-day social constructs of race, or to bloodlines or ancestry. We are a new spiritual nation and a “race”, that isn’t a race, built on shared ideals and values. Our “color” comes not from our skin, but from our flag, and that color is blue.)

Back to our essay.

Each Shirehold is like a distributed little tribal village, a kindred of around 100 or or so adults and their children, centered on the nuclear family and kinship groups of around 5-10 nuclear families and attached single adults. This is the modernized version of the ancient way which you adopt by CHOOSING to participate in such groups of people ONLY if their shared ideals and etc. harmonize with your own wyrd. This is all freewill participatory association, nothing is manipulation or coercion.

Building freedom in our world takes a new approach based on unilateral action and connections, all based on freewill participation, that are both very local in their application and global in terms of networking for mutual profit and support. Our approach may or may not be the only one of its kind, perhaps others exist (we hope they do!), but we predict this approach will become more and more prevalent among freedom seekers and freedom builders in the coming decades.

Our blueprints and frameworks can be accessed and plugged into, through premium paid subscriptions to our Virtual Commonwealth (our platform). You can then use these blueprints and frameworks in your own autonomous manner and eventually opt to create a formal chapter community within a chapter organization of a Branch Society of our NGO.

This is how we propose freedom will emerge unilaterally and globally through unilateral activities, one person and one family at a time, as facilitated by a virtual platform that connects people on a virtual-to-local basis.

From this will emerge:

1. a new freedom-building lifestyle and governance philosophy as a personal discipline and shared way of life that can can be adapted and applied to making better choices, building better and stronger relationships, and consciously aligning your life, relationships, and associations with God’s scroll of destiny and purpose for your life as a spiritually sovereign human being

2. a new nation of people whose God is the Lord, adopted by individuals who are called to be part of such a nation, a nation called from all races and ethnicities, a nation with a clean slate and new history begining now, and called to be a wholly new ethnicity, whose people and communities are distributed globally as a beacon of the Kingdom and of freedom to the nations

3. a new international commonwealth of freedom organized as a virtual platform and an NGO with many Branch Societies, Chapter Organizations, and Chapter Communities based in the modern multi-family extended household, called a Shirehold

4. a global network of distributed cities called Shires seeking some form of legal standing as private developments and of freedom refuges, called Upo Hubs, Upo Hub Communities, and Upo Cities, with special economic and sociocultural status under national and international laws (like tribal homelands or special economic zones)

5. a new a worldwide “freedom civilization” with adherants in every land that transforms lives and communities and results in a flourishing of freedom around the world that no power on this earth can overcome or prevent from being established

Building freedom requires unilateral activities among people who come together in freewill participatory association to create the things that enhance their lives while influencing the world around them without solely or primarily depending on convincing the majority to embrace these ideas.

This is a big vision, it begins small and it can be useful in your life in the here and now, but the work involves many tens of thousands and may require multiple generations.

Willem IV- It may be very hard to see, but a loving and all-powerful God leads us down a path we ourselves would choose if we only knew the arc of our entire history and the true nature, scope, and possibilities of our eternal destiny, which is shaped so much by what we do and endure in this short life.

The necessity of these experiences, good and bad, happiness and suffering, pleasure and pain, in terms of our eternal pathway and destiny cannot be fathomed in this life.

God does know what our eternal soul needs and must be shaped and formed by in ways we will not understand until we see Him face to face. If we fix our hearts and gaze on eternity and on our Creator, and if we have faith in His wisdom in plotting our course and experiences, we would see that “all things work together for the good of those who love God and are the called according to His purpose.”

And by “the good” we mean a good that is beyond the temporal, a good that is forever but that cannot be obtained except through the paths He lays before us.

Some may say, “if God was loving, He wouldn’t need to use suffering to shape us in any way!” But you assume that is the way things can be, you do not have faith that “He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

The truth is that suffering “must needs come”, in this life, and God has said it. God cannot lie and God is love. When we realize how truly miniscule this temporal existence is compared to eternity,  when we see how light even the very worse and most horrible affiliation in this life is in comparison to the reward, we may see that we really have zero reasons to complain.

As to suffering, God has endured more than we could barely in the slightest endure or know. If God did not even spare His own Son from suffering, but loved Him and loved us, then how do we say “if God loved us He would not allow ANY suffering?”

I take it as an article of faith that if it was possible to shape us and prepare us for eternity without any suffering, that God would not allow any suffering. Therefore, since He does allow suffering, I take it as a necessity that I being a finite mortal being cannot comprehend.

It SEEMS simple that a God who is all-powerful could create a universe without any suffering. But as God is real and God is a rewarder of those who love Him, and as suffering does exist in this life, but not in eternity, then there is no question to me as to its necessity even if I do not understand WHY it is necessary.

The question I had to resolve as I grappled with this classic question on why suffering was even allowed by a loving God was: is God real and does He reign? Then I asked, “does He love me and His Creation?”

Once I became convinced He was real, that He loves me, which I have felt and seen in ways I cannot present to you or explain, then I saw that if God allows it, then it is good, even if in my finite and mortal being it looks and feels awful.

Watching a loved one die, being faslely accused and ruined financially, being extremely violated in horrible ways, and even being murdered in a terrible and agonizing ordeal, are all things even those who love God suffer in this transient mortal coil, which we shed in due time and which, while it shapes us, is forgotten as it were.

We have to realize that God Himself endures and bears this suffering with all of us. From the gas chambers of the Third Reich to the abusive parents one may endure today, from the victim of rape, to the sufferers of dementia or cancer, God experiences and endures all this Himself with us. He is touched by our every affliction and as bad as it feels, if He did not take it on with us, it would destroy our very soul for eternity.

It may be if we truly had a transcendent view of Creation and of our own existence, we would not even see our suffering in the same way, as something bad and awful, we would see it as something necessary, beneficial, and transfigurative for our eternal souls. It would seem rather like medicine than a “punishment.”

To get out of your own way and to see eternity operating in the here and now is supernatural and transfigurative. It is also possible to those who love God if they seek Him through the Word, through prayer and worship, and through fellowship and counsel with fellow Believers. Alignment of your existence in the day-to-day and how you spend your time with God and His Word begins a process of tearing down the veil between us and our Creator and reveals more and more of who He is and how much He loves us.

If you spend little time in His presence through things like reading the Word, prayer, worship, fellowship, and the mutual counsel of fellow Believers, then it is not a wonder that you struggle with such earthly questions about transient matters that will not matter in your eternity.

Those who dwell in Him do not have all the answers to things we cannot comprehend in this life, but they know His love and can live in that, come what may.

I know the suffering I even now endure, things that cause pain in my flesh, break my human heart, and peirce into my soul, are on a path I myself would have chosen, knowing the price I would pay, to get to where I wanted to be for eternity.

Imagine the person who loves God and experiences some brain ailment, like dementia, alzheimers, or some mental illness like depression or schizophrenia. They endure a period, perhaps years, where they cannot comprehend or interface with reality and it seems they have lost their faith. But this path, even this, they themselves would have chosen to get to their desired eternal destination. This is necessary for their eternal welfare and benefit.

I know that a loving God only allows such things because they are necessary in ways I cannot begin to fathom or explain, though I imagine in my simplistic way that a loving God would never have allowed them. I know He is and He loves me, therefore I know this is a necessity or it wouldn’t exist.

This may not be the answer you want to hear. I can only pray that you come into His presence and experience Him in your inner man, deep in your soul, outside of this temporal reality, outside of time and space itself.  Then you will have a focus on the eternal good instead of the transient things of this short and limited life that will pass quickly.

God is good and He rewards those who love and serve Him in ways that totally outshine any price you pay on the necessary path that leads you to your eternal fate! You either believe this or not, you either enter into His presence or you don’t. But no logical answer from any finite mortal being will satisfy your desire to understand that which it has not been given for us to understand!

Suffering and pain in this life, no matter how powerful and awful, are quite literally a nano-moment compared to eternity and the price we pay in this life, while necessary to shape us, is microscopic in comparison to the reward we gain.