President Biden’s beloved dog, Champ, crossed the rainbow bridge. The ‘sweet, good boy’, a 13 year old German shepherd, passed away, the reasons undisclosed, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of mom, Jill, and dad, Joe. We salute the good boy and bid him farewell and offer condolences to his doggy parents.
Willem IV Microblog
When you have a long view of history and understand how whole civilizations rise and fall it is easy to see the signs that America is on a path of self-destruction. Everything from libertine cultural barbarity to massive government debt and the growing monopolistic nature of the market points to a day of reckoning that won’t be pretty.
But is America doomed, is it really the end of America?
Going back to having a long view of history, the doom of any society can seem to take decades. For instance, one can see the rot that would destroy the western half of the Roman Empire infect the whole empire way back some hundreds of years before the final collapse in 476 AD. But this fall was delayed in the whole empire and prevented in half that empire in ways nobody could have foreseen in, say, 300 AD.
America is in fact tearing down its spiritual, moral, cultural, economic, and civic foundations and rendering its entire apparatus of civilization weak and inflexible, corrupt and insensible to changing circumstances, and hostile to its own citizenry. The rise of the woke totalitarians, the cancel culture extremists, the corporate monopolies, and the neocommunist political class are all but SYMPTOMS of spiritual and cultural rot. The backwards, savage barbarians who usually threaten a civilization from outside its frontiers are in fact firmly ensconced within and at the top of all of our major institutions.
This does not necessarily mean America is doomed. This does not necessarily mean that the trajectory of self-destruction will remain on course or at the present high speed. It can suddenly slow down, veer to the side, and even reverse course given the right set of circumstances. All throughout time it has been a “humor of history” for unexpected and unlikely things to completely change the atmosphere and balance of power in the blink of an eye.
Those who know history tend to be highly dubious about “inevitability”, save in the broadest sense that old civilizations die of spiritual depravity and new civilizations rise on the wings of spiritual awakening. In any period of decline and fall it is not set in stone either that the old paradigm is going to fall soon or that the transition to the new paradigm will not be peaceful.
Going back to the Roman Empire, the civilizational apparatus in the west fell apart but in the eastern half, the old paradigm of Classical Civilization was peacefully replaced by the new paradigm of Byzantine Civilization. What we see in this one sample is that when an empire embraces the new paradigm it remains and when it refuses to make the transition it falls.
America is an empire.
When we say “empire” you may be thinking of an emperor and an imperial government and of imperialism mixed with some form of authoritarianism. Come to think of it, our empire is beginning to take on those character flaws of empire, but that is not what we mean by empire.
An empire is an expensive landed sovereignty consisting of many entities and nationalities which are united under a broad legal code and common ideals. Empire speaks to the large size, the multiple nationalities, and the single broad unitary legal code more than the form of government. A highly decentralized empire that gives its constituent entities and people groups a high degree of self-determination within a broad legal code tends toward stability and prosperity more than a centralized empire with an authoritarian system.
For evidence of this, consider our empire has lasted nigh unto 250 years compared to the short run of the Soviet empire!
As America sees its spiritual depravity leading to the symptoms thereof, including a corrupt and authoritarian monopoly of power and wealth, it feels like doom approaches. But doom is not inevitable.
What is the path that will save our empire and revive our civilizational apparatus? Basically, the path is a new spiritual awakening that results in a new civilizational paradigm. Such a transition has no room for the monopolists, the totalitarians, or the barbaric libertines. But this is not a matter of outlawing them per se, it is a wholesale spiritual and sociocultural rejection of them and their ideas from the populace. They simply become pariahs and outcasts in the eyes of most people, most all of whom have internalized the new paradigm as part of their very identity.
The transition from the dying and old civilizational paradigm to the new comes from within the spirit, mind, and heart of each person who rejects the old and internalizes the new. Each person who embraces the new paradigm does their small part in saving this empire from ruin.
The new civilizational paradigm is, we propose, the path to revive our land and fulfill its ancient promise of freedom with liberty and justice for all. As individuals and then freewill participatory associations of such people form and collaborate, the forces unleashed by them in the spiritual and cultural life of America become supernaturally charged and all-powerful.
The path to save our empire is like that of the eastern Roman Empire, it is the path of spiritual awakening that embraces the new civilizational paradigm, one person, one family, and one community at a time!
It is not true that America is doomed UNTIL that doom comes. But it is true that our spiritual depravity, which is leading to cultural barbarism and rising totalitarianism among our ruling class, will lead to the doom of our empire if it remains unchecked.
It begins with us, as individuals, rejecting the spiritual depravity and cultural barbarism, it begins with a spiritual awakening, and it grows as we embrace the new civilizational paradigm and begin organizing our lives, relationships, associations, and communities around this.
America is not doomed. The current trajectory is not inevitable. What remains to be seen is if all or parts of this land are saved from the doom slowly building in the spiritual and cultural rot that is growing within every major institution. This rot may take years or whole generations to reach its point of failure, so we may have little time or lots of time, or we may endure a dark winter under the boot of woke totalitarianism before enough people realize their need to embrace a new spiritual awakening and a new civilizational paradigm.
None of this is inevitable. The choice begins within each of us and then extends beyond us as we seek to awaken others and build new relationships and associations based on the new civilizational paradigm. To fulfill America’s promise, we must realize that the heart of that promise is a new civilization rooted in Judeo-Christian ideals and the vision of an empire of freedom with liberty and justice for all.
Our path is fulfillment or doom. Whether all or parts of America will choose the path of life remains an open and unanswered question.
“JUNETEENTH” as a federal holiday is a far cry from addressing the historic injustices and present-day inequities endured by African-Americans, as individuals and as nations of people, within this land. We must do better and we must do so on the basis of equal freedom with liberty and justice for ALL people and for all nations of people who dwell on these shores.
Democrats pushed for and are celebrating “Juneteenth”, June 19th, as a federal holiday to celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in 1866. But merely giving a holiday as a transparent sop without handling the substance of historic injustice and present-day inequity faced by African-Americans as individuals and as nations of people is pathetic and wrong.
Notice the angle of approach here. The issue and controversy isn’t individualistic, it is whole-istic. It is both the individual and the national people with whom they are identified as a part. It is both individuals and BODIES OF PEOPLE. The issue is equity both for individuals and bodies of people whose continuum of existence exceeds individual lifespans.
Equity as historically used means “the quality of being fair and inpartial”, but it also means the quality of getting a fair return on the basis of your contribution to wealth creation. To this day, the African-American as an ethnic body, or domestic nation, has not truly enjoyed equity. Things are better in many ways, but not in every way, and the disparity between the equity enjoyed by those of European ethnicity and the black community is still a gaping chasm.
The Republicans tend toward pretending all the ills of this inequitable and unjust treatment of people of African lineage, both individuals and the whole body of people, is all in the past. Democrats pretend the worse things, which included official legal bondage and then segregation, are still exactly as they were. In both cases, the goal seems to be the suppression and sidelining of the African-American nations of people within our land.
Equity for any nation of people goes beyond, though must include, legal protections against discrimination and violations of their rights, persons, or properties and respect for all their liberty as defined by the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights. It is perhaps no accident that every city with sizeable African-American ethnicities has almost zero respect for human liberty as defined by the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights.
The African-American ethnicities do not need our patronizing charity or special “accommodations” because they aren’t somehow “smart enough” to engage life like everyone else can. A holiday to celebrate the freeing of slaves, which ought to include honoring both the slaves and their liberators, namely the Union Army, is a grand idea. But it is a sop when the substantive work of rectifying PRESENT DAY, as oppsosed to historical or presently imagined, inequities faced by African-American nations of people even today.
Sadly, the only people even speaking about the inequitable treatment of the black community overall are Democrats. Their approach is to foster hatred from black to white, to inflate injustices and create a fearful victimhood among black people. They use the crises faced by the black community to excuse morally backwards assualts on the liberty of, first, the black community, and then all Americans.
One may be forgiven for thinking neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want the black man or black woman on this land to have full dignity and sovereignty and to enjoy the same level and quality of life as every other ethnic group in this land.
Perhaps the only difference is that a program of rights suppression and inequity inflicted on the black community, mostly by Democrats who control areas of major clusters of people of different African ethnicities, is now envisioned by Democrats for the EVERY ethnicity in the land. The only exceptions would be the new vassals and rulers above us serfs, and the new apparatchiks, party elitists, and politburo, of their one-party totalitarian monopoly.
The new version of communism, woke communism, is an incestious marriage between rulers in the corporate world, the world of culture creation, and the political world whose malevolent intent is to become monopoly overlords while invoking all the bogeyman fears and utopian pipedreams rooted in the Marxist ideology.
Woke communists use virtue-signalling and histrionic outrage both to make “victims” feel powerless and to delegitimize and demonize their competition. The aim is to shut of any critical analysis about and transparency as to their true agenda while painting a broad bush condemnation of any dissent as somehow being phobic, racist, or intolerant, regardless of the true facts or the intent.
Creating victims and oppressors out of thin air and fomenting mistrust and hate between groups in their coalition (the victim groups) and groups outside their coalition (the “oppressors”) makes it easy to divide and conquer while preventing real scrutiny of just what you are trying to pull off- a coup against the basic dignity and and spiritual sovereignty of every human being under their rule.
The black community is a convenient tool, excuse, and vehicle to power for these woke communists. Make no mistake, if you are a black person, these woke communists, regardless of their ethnicity, don’t see you any differently than the people in Africa who captured and sold Africans into slavery, the slavers who transported them, or the plantation owners who bought them.
Simply running away from the Democratic Party to become a super Republican and cosigning their nonsense about how there is no more injustice or racism to speak of afflicting the black community is also a bad reaction. Republicans don’t fight for the real liberty of their core base, made up of mostly European ethnicities, how do you think they will stand up for you?
The typical Republican reaction (that everyone is to blame for whatever their present circumstance and must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps) is cruelty itself, aimed mostly at dispossessed and disadvantaged nations of people among us who DID NOTHING to contribute to their present state of affairs!
If you argue, “but the black community has problems it must address for itself”, ask yourself what vehicles and means it has to do that and what its starting point is. The federal government has literally run this entire multinational empire as if only some national peoples mattered, but now that empire is turning on everyone who isn’t ideologically pure. In short, the average person of European-American extraction is finding the same empire that essentially only saw European nations of people as truly American has begun to see only people who tow this ideological line of woke communism as deserving of respect and dignity.
African-American nations and all other nations of people are being subordinated to the woke nation! The ideology of the few is being made a bondage for the many. But, for all that, it still remains easier for the average white person than the average black person.
The inequities faced by the average black man and black woman in America will no more be solved through holidays than through a neocommunist war on America’s goodness and freedom itself. If everything good about America is trashed and nothing remains but the substance of the Democratic Party Platform, we all become little more than chattel owned by a corporate and political ruling class and their cultural and bureaucratic apparatus.
How is the monopolistic “rainbow totalitarianism” of corporate-governmental “woke communism” ever going to help African-American families and businesses prosper? It isn’t, it would only further degrade their options and limit their sovereignty.
What does equity look like for the black community? Namely, we would propose a law making it easy for any sociocultural body of people, especially the African ethnicities, to form new “domestic nations” based on “fraternal bonds” (including ethnicity), like indigenous tribes. We propose that lands dominated by them also be made like unto reservations. We further propose that they have seats in Congress proportional to the members of their “domestic fraternal nation.”
In matters of local land use, marriage, family, most economic matters, social needs or social services, and civil matters generally, domestic fraternal nations would have a broad autonomy within a larger framework of laws crafted by free republics and the federal power.
This establishes self-determination for those African ethnic “tribes”, or domestic fraternal nations, within America. These domestic fraternal nations would be ruled by and for the African-American people who are both Africans by ethnicity and also fully and equally AMERICANS of equal value and dignity.
These African-American domestic fraternal nations, which may coalesce around similar religio-cultural affinities, would also now be able to be served more rationally with direct aid given to the domestic nation’s government and meted out as they deem fit. While any sociocultural group of people could form a domestic fraternal nation and any lands its members own in some concentration could gain a special “homeland status”, the African-American domestic fraternal nations must have a priority of care because their nations within this land have received the most abuse and the least equity!
The idea of reparations from “white people to black people” on an individual basis seems asburd. But African-American nations of people among us can be given reparations from the United States of America which, as a multinational country, abused these nations and owes them reparations.
It is true no living PERSON was ever a slave or a slave owner. But nations have an existence that transcends the lifespan of individuals, their life and existence has a continuum of sometimes thousands of years. So also do empires, such as ours. The American empire is a Union of multiple states but also a land of many nations of people. The African-American nations among us have had a long and torturous history with the government of our Union and to rectify this, and bring them to parity with all other nations of people among us, is a radical and just necessity!
A similar reckoning between the United States and our indigenous domestic nations is also envisioned. The goal for each and every domestic fraternal nation being freedom and prosperity through internal sociocultural and socioeconomic autonomy within a large and pluralistic society of equals where the grand vision of an empire of liberty prevails equally and justly for ALL.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans will back these ideas because, at root, both agree that this country should become a unitary state ruled by an incestious partnership between the political class and the corporate class who are assisted by a culture-creation monopoly and a centralized bureaucratic apparatus.
True equity for African-American nations of people can only come when these ethnic groups have domestic fraternal nation status, when their clusters of people enjoy reservation status, and when aid and reparations aimed at bringing them up to the common living standard flows from our country through their own leadership. The distributed African-American nations of people must both be given true and effectual autonomy and they must be embraced and treated as 100% equal Americans, like every single nation of people within these United States of America.
The grievance is not between “white people and black people”, it is between the government of our Union and the African-American nations among us. This isn’t a racial issue, this is a sovereignty and justice issue. This is a conflict between an oppressive government and domestic nations of people abused both by that government and its partners, namely the corporations and institutions of this land. The “white man” has a stake on promoting justice for the black man, because the injustice they might tolerate against the black woman will become the injustice aimed at the white man.
When we understand life and things like justice and equity, including liberty and basic human rights, from the perspective of nations of people in relation to a multinational empire of freedom, which America is destined to become, things become clearer. Likewise, as the true grievances of African-American nations versus our “empire” and its government become clear, so too does a better path forward become visible and obvious.
Our vision of America is to become a Commonwealth not only of sovereign republics (i.e. “states”, though we propose many more states), but of member “domestic nations”, like unto indigenous tribes, which all enjoy self-determination. Such a massive decentralized empire of freedom, with liberty and justice for all, would be strong in national defense, would enjoy a robust free market, and would be a pluralistic society where racism, bigotry, and intolerance are truly rare and where most everyone most of the time gets the freedom to choose the sociocultural milieu in which they live.
Just as the “domestic nations” of indigenous tribes did not wane in their patriotic love of this country, which they defended, so too the proliferation of diverse domestic fraternal nations will not balkanize America but, rather, increase patriotism and justice and spread both wealth and equal liberty to every single citizen of our pluralistic empire of freedom.
This vision for America as a united Commonwealth of multiple free republics and autonomous domestic nations with their own distributed homelands is the ONLY path to preserving liberty for all, fulfilling our country’s true destiny, and rectifying historic wrongs.
Any effort to rectify the inequities faced by African-Americans today or to rectify historic injustice against African nations in this land MUST empower these nations of people under a system of self-rule and self-preservation run by their own leaders for their own people with the backing of our entire country, of which their nations are a valuable part.
The posturing by Democrats and their hijacking of the grievances of African nations in this land as an excuse to further erode liberty and excuse monopoly power grabs is reprehensible and barbaric. Likewise, while the Republicans generally tend to soundbite more in the direction of individual liberty, their refusal to countenance any real rectification of historic injustice and present-day inequities inflicted upon African-Americans is reprehensible and disgusting.
In both cases, the problem (of injustice and of assualts on liberty) is seen strictly through an individualistic lens, clouding both the reality and the solution from ever being truly seen. The ability of people to govern their own free republics and domestic fraternal nations as they see fit, within a broader ethic defined in the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights, has not even been considered. The shared or collective right of every national people to be self-governed and to be treated equally by every institution in this land chartered by our government should be the new front on the battle to advance civil rights for all.
America is good because of our ideals and principles, even if they remain unfulfilled and even if politicians in our name have violated them both historically and in the present. Republicans refuse to evolve to a more 21st century approach to fulfilling America’s promise as an empire of freedom for every nation and person in our land, seeing things from a purely individual perspective. Democrats, on the other hand, attack the very substance of America’s goodness, deny its existence, and evince a design of monopoly totalitarianism, albeit through both corporate and official channels.
When African-American domestic nations and their distributed homelands, are governed by and for themselves with the backing of all of America, and when they are treated like indigenous tribes and given reparations aimed at bringing their quality of life up to a common standard, then we can say the problem of historic injustice and present-day inequities has been truly addressed.
The African-American nations among us do not need the Democratic Party to lord it over them, violating things like their right to self-preservation (Second Amendment) and throwing meaningless sops to them or inciting their young people to hate white people. This is disguised racism. African-American nations among us deserve both internal autonomy and self-determination as well as real reparations given from our country to their nation.
By making the issues of historic injustice and present-day inequities a purely individual issue, the Democratic can conceal their contempt for the African-American nations of people as sovereign ethnicities who deserve self-rule and who should be backed by our entire country. Democrats want to control these people and are only using their legitimate grievances as an excuse to lord it over them and everyone else.
The era of exploiting the black woman and the black man without duly and justly compensating them and ennobling them as equals must end.
Politicians in both Parties must step out of the way and give real power to these people as domestic fraternal nations while offering reparations which their leaders manage and which aim to equalize their standing in relationship to all the nations of people within this land. Giving a holiday to celebrate an emancipation that has not been fully realized for all African-Americans and that is being eroded for most all other Americans is meaningless theater.
Willem IV- If our societies are going to bring benefits to most all the people most all the time, then we must replace tribal bias in public policy, the marketplace, and culture with principles embraced by, and which can be articulated by, a mostly independent thinking citizenry. We propose that principles must replace bias as the driving force behind public policy, the marketplace, and the culture!
What we have is a system of tribal bias that excites partisans but that brings less and less benefits to fewer and fewer people less and less of the time. Most of the time, most people’s needs and interests are not served well by public policy, the marketplace, or culture.
The problem is tribal bias and those who are in a position to exploit it for their own parochial interests at the expense of the common good.
Everyone has bias. Generally, bias is a prejudicial disfavor and unfair favor in one direction but not based purely on reason or merit. Our cheering on of sports teams is classic bias, only we hope the referees are unbiased and call the game according to objective facts and merits.
In American politics especially, and in most countries to some degree, bias by society’s referees, from the press to the courts, and by individuals who vote, resembles the sports team anology. Whatever their team is, be it a Party or a perceived ideology, like the left or the right, it can do no wrong, the other team can do no good, and every situation will tend to be judged on the basis of how that interpretation itself benefits the team.
This shallow kind of cultish identification with a political “team” is the major reason why the actual positions and policies of the team’s all-star lineup, be it the Party or its perceived representatives and leaders, shift so wildly. They are always finding situations where they were for something before they were against it and all their “fans” applaud each shift not on the basis of principle but on the basis of how it advances their team.
Of course, only the other team is biased, your team is absolutely principled, even when the principles followed and/or their definitions shift wildly over the years.
When a political “team” is formed it begins to make its own position of power in relationship to the other team of teams its highest aim. Winning elections and adding seats to a legislature or winning a key office, like a premeiereship or a presidency, is all about cobbling together a coaltion of “fans” whose parochial interests are addressed, often at the expense of the other team’s fans. The actual rock-ribbed principles that may momentarily be invoked are really just putty and window dressing.
Political teams demand loyalty of players and fans and will excoriate any referee who dares rule against them with hyperbolic, nay, histrionic invectives like unto a doomsday preacher invoking the final judgment. The ability to even see past anything more than “what gets points for my team” is completely compromised.
Simply deciding to stop backing your team in a biased way isn’t such an easy solution either, especially if you have real, deeper, principled and/or parochial reasons to oppose the other team’s agenda. If you resort to principles even when it zings your former team, and if it advances the other team, then your own principles and/or parochial interests could be fatally compromised.
Extricating ourselves from the bias is not an easy task once it has been hardwired into the political system and the name of the game is basically this: your team wins seats and power by any means necessary or loses them and loses power. The fact some of America’s founders in the early days despised and feared the appearance of Parties on these stores reveals their deeper, if tragically ignored, wisdom. Parties and partisanship, which is bias writ large, tend to undermine principle and focus on short-term “election wins” which never produce long-term benefits to anyone.
Without addressing, much less proposing, the possibility of abolishing Parties, which may be impossible, it should be noted: the very existence of the Party structure that exists in most “democracies” today makes this kind of tribal bias inevitable.
When the purpose is merely to win votes to gain seats, principles are always the first casualty. No major winning political party has ever been absolutely and consistently true to any set of principles it held, say, 30 years ago! Principles can be changed as new data reveals the need to adjust our understanding, but the rate at which “principles” or their definitions change in modern politics is intense. It reveals either a stunning ignorance of truth which leads to constantly shifting principles and/or changing the definitions of principles or, more likely, blatant dishonesty.
The “players” cheered on by the “fans” almost to a person have no higher principle than to stay in their position, whether it is an elected position in public office or a corporate/institutional position of public trust. This doesn’t mean no players and no fans have any principles, but it does mean that principles are not very important and there is little real devotion to them.
We could explore the real parochial interests pursued by the real shot-callers who are essentially owners of both or all teams and how this makes a hash of any so-called “democratic process”, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say, only the “owners” of the teams, who form one competitive club, benefit from this tribal bias.
Let’s walk away from the bias and examine our principles. What ideals or societal goals do you think are important? What role should major institutions (like governments, family, the church, private associations, businesses, corporations, and etc.) play in your life? What moral, ethical, and/or philosophical guidance should apply to social and other norms, to public life, the marketplace, public policy, or law?
If you don’t have an idea about what your principles are and what priority you place on them, then you are easy prey to whatever “team” captures you with slick marketing and manipulation.
To put put it more clearly; if you desire to not just be prey to others and to be independent, then you should be able to identify and explain both your principles and the ideals, moral and ethical standards, values, or convictions that underlie them.
It bears repeating here that, while may be all the rage to claim to be an “independent thinker”, unless you can articulate both your principles and their underlying ideals and etc. then you are not really an independent thinker. You may not be a strict partisan for one of the teams, but you will tend to gravitate toward people and parties, from time to time, who outmarket the others in relation to your perceived parochial interests.
You may argue that the average person working 40 hours or more per week and struggling to make ends meet doesn’t have the time to do this. Unfortunately, your education from the earliest years to university should have prepared you and empowered you to do this on your own, and on an ongoing basis.
It may not be any accident that all education in the past 100 years is more about indoctrination than empowerment. People who were never given the tools and the time to become independent thinkers and who then become full-time wage slaves may imagine they are independent thinkers, but they cannot articulate either their own principles or the basis of those principles. They were never given the time or the means to do this, which is itself an injustice inflicted by our top-down sociocultural and socioeconomic hierarchies of power.
To become a fully independent thinker one must be able to articulate one’s principles and that which underlies them. Anything less and you are being patronized by powerful forces of manipulated influence and control who simply want you to support their team, often without any benefit to yourself.
Principles must be known and articulated so that you can, in making them visible to yourself, use them as a plumbline to judge any party, policy, or person who holds office or any kind of public trust as to whether they deserve your support or not.
What are your principles and upon what are they based? Know this and then examine every act and actor on the public stage who clamours for your support, patronage, or vote.
If enough people did this, and truly got in touch with the things they deeply believe and support, then the bias of our shallow politics (as well as marketplace and culture) would give way to a more reasoned discourse and to a more results and people focused public policy, marketplace, and culture that brings benefits to most people most all the time.
Willem IV- What are gaps for freedom and how can understanding them make you wealthier, more successful, and more fulfilled as a human being?
A phrase we often use at The Freedomist is “gaps for freedom.”
We live in an increasingly less and less free world. This is true in America, where The Freedomist is based, and around the world. And it’s not just something political. In fact, the political aspect of freedom is the least of our concerns: most of the hindrances to you enjoying a life of freedom with unlimited prosperity are not “political” in nature.
We do identify and confront the hindrances to freedom, from the corporate dead-end of wage slavery to cultural authoritarianism from the press. But, that being said, our creative energy is focused more toward identifying and imparting gaps for freedom and how to profit from using them.
So what is a gap for freedom?
A gap for freedom is some method or means by which you can be self-sufficient and enjoy your inherent spiritual sovereignty as a human being created in the image of God without external manipulation or control in an otherwise unfree environment where most people are not enjoying freedom.
The tendency of human beings who are not constrained by moral and ethical limits and accountability thereto is to gather power unto themselves at the expense of others. The robber baron, the dictator, the overbearing boss, or the machismo man lording it over wife and kids are all symptoms of this malignant trait.
It is necessary to see freedom beyond mere politics. Non-political hindrances to your freedom as a spiritually sovereign person include relationships that aren’t healthy, overbearing bosses, wage slavery in a dead-end job, social pressures that shun you for otherwise moral or legal conduct, and the list goes on.
We often refer to liberty as defined by the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights as one of the three principles of freedom. The other two inlcude a virtue founded on four core ideals and common decency and independence founded on material and financial self-reliance, including mutual self-reliance through some form of freewill participatory association with other people.
As to virtue, these four core ideals include Unity in diversity, Popular sovereignty, Democratic equality, and Rule of law as understood from a Judeo-Christian worldview and as applied in a balanced manner with one another. Any relationship or association and any form of system of governance that gets these in right balance according to a more enlightened definition of their deeper meaning has a great chance of being successful.
As to independence, this really means you either individually or through purely voluntary freewill participation in some relationship, association, or community of trust can meet your basic human needs without any dependence kn anything or anyone that doesn’t respect yout, your values and beliefs, and your dignity as a human being.
Virtue, Liberty, and Independence are the three legs of freedom as we understand and promote it. Our application of this kind of freedom is balanced and harmonious and it is comprehensive, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional.
With this in mind, therefore, gaps for freedom include whatever allows you to acheive this kind of freedom in your life, regardless of what society around you is tolerating and choosing. If all your neighbors are wage slaves struggling to make ends meet and stuck in their jobs without any hope of advancement, you don’t need to be yourself. If your neighbors are happy to conform to social pressures by celebrities or the press or even college professors, you can wave your banner of independency and choose your own moral code without caving in to any of that.
A gap for freedom is some legal means by which you can obtain freedom, using virtue, liberty, independence as your guide, even when everyone around you is not walking in freedom.
Here is an example in the US.
You desire what humans have always desired since our creation: to cluster together in the closest proximity with people you can trust deeply because they share your beliefs and convictions and because they care for you as much as you care for them.
Assume you have a band of 20 families and aorund 5 single adults who share these same convictions about how to live and who want to all live next to each other in a small but private neighborhood. Legally, if you built such a neighborhood with 20 houses and 5 apartments you could not restrict the future sale or leasing of those spaces to people who are in your little community of trust.
But through a mutual benefit corporation, whereby the members of your little band of like-minded people, you could actually make identification with your community a requirement of membership. In that case, each member owns shares of the corporation, which in turn owns the buildings, but membership in the corporation is limited to your trust community.
It is important to state here that Freedomists do not advocate large-scale communities like this which would tend to balkanize society.
In our ideal free and pluralistic society model, many clusters of up to 120 or so adults in private neighborhoods plus housing as we have it today (based on the fair housing act, which we support) would form communities of diverse sociocultural communities of trust whose members all respect the basic dignity and freedom of all other members of that pluralistic community.
We vehemently oppose using race as a basis of these clustered living neighborhoods and we would never countenance denying housing to anyone based on things like race or sexual orientation or religion.
You can use MBC (mutual benefit corporation) as a gap for freedom to exercise your freedom to cluster around what amounts to a form of an extended familial community of people. If, however, you abuse this gap for freedom to promote racism or intolerance toward others outside your trust community, then you are becoming a hindrance to the freedom of others.
The use of this gap for freedom can both give you a legal means of enjoying this instinctive human need to cluster and increase your wealth and happiness. An MBC properly organized can substantially reduce costs to obtain land and build housing both through the power of collective buying and if members participate in the work with expert oversight. When, say, 30 families and 10 singles adults all contribute to a fund owned by an MBC, they may have options on real estate opportunities that none could have as individuals.
For almost any situation where it seems there is something that prevents you from exercising freedom there are legal devices, like an MBC, or financial and other means, like a mutual assurance fund for health care, that create the conditions whereby you can exercise your virtue, liberty, and independence in peace and prosperity.
When you connect to other people of a like mind and based on freewill participation to build these gaps for freedom, you increase the odds that you will enjoy freedom in peace and prosperity.
You can be MUCH MORE FREE than you currently are, if you do not feel very free right now, by identifying and using gaps for freedom. This is especially true if you connect with other people who have similar beliefs and convictions and who also desire such freedom.
Hopefully by now you understand what a gap for freedom is. In these pages we will identify gaps for freedom individuals can use and groups of people, using freewill participatory association, can use to exploit these gaps and use the principles of freedom to prosper and become fulfilled human beings.
To recap: gaps for freedom are legal methods, means, and devices (like self-employment, the MBC, or a mutual assurance fund) that give you a way to experience real freedom even if society around you is not choosing or experiencing freedom.
At The Freedomist, one of our main lines of content development is focused on identifying and explaining gaps for freedom and imparting techniques for exploiting them in the most resource-efficient manner possible. Becoming a subscriber means you want to become free as a spiritually sovereign person created in the image of God and in whatever form of freewill participatory association you deem suited to your convictions and lifestyle.
Willem IV- We propose and promote a 21st century version of a spiritual nationhood that, if one adopts it through freewill participation, will produce universal freedom and prosperity among its peers.
Whether you are a tribal member in beleaguered Biafra under the rule of the corrupt Nigerian government, the “zoo” as many oppressed tribes refer to it, or a frustrated German citizen who wonders when your government is going to actually act like it cares about Germans, the answer to your crises of freedom isn’t necessarily what you think it is!
What you all share, regardless of color, race, ancestry, or nationality, is a lack of personal and shared freedom with dignity that promotes prosperity for most all the people most all the time. Everyone around the world can discover, adopt, and tap into the spiritual and philosophical energy of a form of nationhood that truly allows them to transcend their local and personal limits to connect globally for real empowerment with others of the same new international nationality.
Are you African and do you feel the world looking down on you as if nobody from Africa can be good or nobody of African lineage can be smart, excellent, good, or whatever? This is all lies, deception, meant to keep you down and suppress those superior qualities God has built into you as an individual and Africa as a whole continent. It remains an oppressed, colonized land whose people the rest of the world have largely despised and abused!
Every African who joins us and becomes a peer of our spiritual nation is valued and wanted, we embrace you as our equals and invite you to join in the vanguard of leading the way to the birth of a new spiritual nation and a new civilization. It will be a civilization with roots in all the major lands and people groups who come together under one banner as equals and who create a new people, virtually a new “race” (though we deny any notion there is any but one human race), without antecedent or precedence!
Go around the world, envision every country, and you will find groups of people by religion or “race” or ideology who are more like us, followers of Yeshua who desire to manifest the Kingdom of God on this earth inasmuch as we can. And many of these people are facing disadvantages and discrimination, bias and prejudice, hatred and oppression.
The Igbo of Biafra are under the Nigerian heel. The Karen of Burma face a genocidal military junta. Inner city African Americans face massive economic and sociocultural discrimination. Christians all over the world, including the West, are vilified and their moral code is virtually outlawed. All over, in every land, different groups face abuse for different reasons justified through warped man-made ideologies that are at variance with God’s standards of righteousness and justice.
It can be hard to recognize the discrimination and abuse other groups face when your group is facing abuse. The Christian, straight, white male male feeling abused by woke necommunists in every US institution feels angry, but they must also see and oppose the systemic economic and sociocultural abuse faced by denizens of American inner cities, especially if they are of African descent or simply not white. The reverse is also true.
The Igbo Christian must see also the abuses faced by the Yoruba Christian, and both must see the shame inflicted on Fulani women! If the Igbo and Yoruba Christians become Peers of Upadaria as well as the abused Fulani women, all are kin, all are of the same NEW tribe!
The “untouchable” in India can become a Noble in our nation and will come under the care of our institutions as we build them. They too must see the abuse of others in other castes and tribes.
It is our desire and great task to identify, confront, and seek to overcome all these forms of abuse and intolerance and to preserve and defend a Christian sociocultural moral and ethical tradition along with the sanctity of historical Christian institutions such as marriage, family, kinship, and community. But our foremost and immediate approach is unilateral efforts to find gaps for freedom and build on a de novo, from new, basis.
We are positively for our moral and ethical traditions and institutions, based on our particular concept and convictions around marriage, the family, kinship, and community. We are not, however, on some crusade to return the whip for the whip, to impose our way of life or to punish those who do not share our convictions.
Our aim is quite literally to build a globally-distributed spiritual nation of people based on shared ideals, principles, practices, and mandates to be a vanguard people of a new civilization founded on Kingdom ideals.
Whoever does not wish to follow the Upadarian Way does not have to, but whoever desires to follow this way we commit to supporting in their right and persons from all hazards. If you do not follow our Way, we will neither force your nor shun or shame you.
The Upadarian Way is founded on our spiritual sovereignty as beings made in the image of God.
For those who wed, it involves the Holy sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman in lifelong monogamy as the very picture of our Union with Christ. Even those who do not wed in this life are wed to Christ and participate in the universal Union of all Believers which is depicted in marriage.
For us, only marriage between one man and one woman for life is a form of worship to God that depicts the Union of Christ with His Bride, the Church Universal.
As to children, the goal is that most all Upadarian children are raised in a loving home by their own biological or adopted parents who are monogamous for life.
It is, finally, based on a concept of extended kinship in which every member of an extended kinship group feels deeply that the success and well-being of every other peer of that group is as important as their own well-being and success.
From spiritual sovereignty to marriage, children, family, and extended family our distinct and chosen way of life is ours by right to live, to the exclusion of all others, to proclaim, and to build our own relationships, associations, communities, structures, and institutions around.
We desire to live our national way of life in peace and to be at peace with our neighbors.
Upadarians are followers of Yeshua called together from around the world to become a new spiritual nation that is itself a witness and influence for Yeshua to the nations.
Our way of life and our shared identity transcends and replaces anything limited by history or previous experience and anything that contradicts God’s righteous standards for the nations. If you have been limited by your past, by the alleged sins of your ancestry or by the prejudice directed against it, becoming a Upadarian is a step away from those artificial limits.
As it says, with promise, “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord!” Our spiritual nation may lack, and doesn’t seek, an army or a political state but it’s ruler is the Lord, not man, and its ways are the ways the Kingdom manifested in a unique diversity expression, as ordained by God. If you become a Upadarian by adopting our 17 Protocols as your lifestyle inasmuch as you can and as led by the Holy Spirit, you become a peer of a nation whose God is the Lord.
The man or woman in the furthest reaches of a Biafran village, a Karen village, an American inner city, or a German city who embraces our nationhood, by adopting the 17 Protocols of Upadaria as their lifestyle choice, comes within a sacred border of God’s blessings of provision, favor, and protection. We call this our “pomerium” and it surrounds the physical spaces occupied and every piece of land owned by a peer of our nation.
When you become a Upadarian you do not renounce your ancestors in some shameful dishonoring of their persons, but you do stake out a new path without historical antecedent and, among fellow Upadarians, you are simply and only an equal peer, regardless of whatever history in your personal life or among your ancestors.
Have you committed a crime and paid your dues but society won’t let it go? Have you made mistakes or committed sins you are ashamed of that still haunt you? As a Upadarian, when you adopt our nationhood and take on a new Upo Name among your peers, you create a new story for your life and your future and nobody will hold your past against you.
If, for instance, you have violated God’s laws on marriage, as a Upadarian, you make a fresh commitment to move forward in whatever state you are in on a clean slate and from henceforth to follow God’s standards for marriage. We do not condemn you.
Have your ancestors been abused throughout history until your very appearance and skin color is uzed, subconsciously or openly, as a mark against you? Is your race or tribe disfavored by the powers that be or through systemic bias? Becoming a Upadarian means that among your peers around the world, you are an equal in worth, value, and affection. You are truly seen as a peer and your own history and ancestry may form a beautiful part of your own tapestry, but they don’t define or limit you.
In Upadarian society, as we build our own genesis structures and institutions, nobody will be left behind, no poor person will suffer lack of good care or resources owing to lack of funds, because we will find ways, through voluntary freewill participatory associations, to assure one another of adequate benefits. Wherever you live in the world, our standard of living and quality of life will become universal and nobody will be left behind as we work together to build a worldwide socioeconomic and sociocultural infrastructure and diverse new virtual-to-local structures to meet our own needs on our own terms.
Are your facing some collective ancestral shaming by divisive totalitarians who aim to incite angry riotous mobs and fling them at society to destroy individual liberty and traditional institutions? Becoming a Upadarian means your nationality has no antecedent, we Upadarians have never conquered a single land by force, oppressed or enslaved anyone, or started any violent uprising or any wars.
If someone speaks of your “white privilege”, explain that your true color is Upadarian Blue and that your people come from many ancestries but have no history as either oppressed or oppressors!
Upadarians not the next evolution of Western Civilization or Western man. Western Civilization is within our historical heritage, as are Germanic, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern civilizations (Sumer, Egypt, and Israel). But the streams of ideas and principles and useful standards and practices come from diverse peoples and civilizations, such as West African, Zulu, Confucian, Indian, and the like. We find truth and wisdom in dozens of peoples and civilizations which all flow into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
If it seems the torch of Kingdom Civilization has gone from Israel to the Classical world, to Europe, and to America in the past, we believe the fifth great Kingdom Civilization will emerge here and there among nations and lands all over the planet. We further believe that our unique people, whose name is the same as this new civilization, will be the vanguard people of this new civilization.
People of many shades, both of skin color and ancestry, will form this new spiritual nation. This new spiritual nation will in turn also inspire many other nations of people, who may have the same ancestry, to adopt the ideals of this new civilization. These diverse nations will become a Kingdom People within the universal nationhood of all Believers in Yeshua.
Becoming a Upadarian is the key to liberation in a 21st century reality controlled in all the world’s major civilizations by a ruling class whose values are hostile to God’s standards of righteousness and justice for all peoples and all people. Even though “Upadaria” is not intended as the sole new form of nationhood founded on the person and works of Yeshua, it may be the only form of Kingdom Nationhood you can immediately access.
If it doesn’t make sense to you why adopting an intentional form of Kingdom Nationhood can liberate you and result in an increase in your own freedom and prosperity, then this call to nationhood is not for you! If something stirs within you about this, if you are ready to defy those who judge you based on ancestry or skin color, or your own past mistakes, then you may indeed have been born for such a time as this!
Becoming a Upadarian is not a formal thing. Yes, there will be Upadarian organizations and structures you can join or Upadarian services and websites you can subscribe to, but you don’t have to join anything or buy anything to become a Peer of our nation.
When you read and understand The 17 Protocols of Upadaria and when you have a basic knowledge of the meaning of our core mythology, in the form of our fictional future timeline (written in 2147 AD), then you have everything you need to decide if being a Peer of our spiritual nation is part of God scroll of destiny and purpose for your life. And when you do that, if you tell others who have done the same, your only color is Upadarian Blue and your shared ancestors are Yeshua and the Apostles. You are an equal and our shared goal is to see to it, through our structures and freewill participatory associations, that the common standard of living and quality of life for all Upadarians everywhere is the highest.
This will take time and effort on the part of every Peer and every Upadarian structure and institution that emerges. Nobody will simply fly in and hand out benefits, we will work together to build economic exchanges and structures that result in universal opulence among those who participate.
Richer Upadarians won’t simply send their wealth to poor Upadarians, our approach will be to focus more on enabling the poor to begin participating in economic exchanges that appreciably add to their wealth. But, recognizing some people and communities will be starting so far behind that catching up would be too difficult on their own, some benevolence and charity to fill in gaps and give a hand-up are envisioned.
In the end, whether a Upadarian Shirehold (our name for an extended multi-family household group) is in Africa, Asia, Europe, or the Americas, or anywhere in the world, a common standard of living and quality of life will prevail, regardless of the outside society and its economy. Freedom and prosperity on a universal basis is our norm because we are a nation whose God is the Lord and Yeshua is our King, God is our protection and provision.
Willem IV- Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, stated on June 7, 2021, that it was “suspending Twitter indefinitely” from their country’s internet over Twitter deleting a tweet by President Buhari and its continued allowance of tweets by Biafran independence activists. (Full disclosure, we support Biafran independence.)
Twitter responded by arguing that access to “a free and open internet” is a “basic human right”, a “right” this company, although private, doesn’t value internally (Twitter is not a free speech platform). The truth is that Twitter is a private company and a private company banning access on the basis of political opinions, as Twitter is alleged to do, is not the same thing as Nigeria’s government banning a private platform from its internet.
But the moral high ground is lost. True, it may be legally defensible for Twitter to ban anyone it wishes to ban, but when Twitter experiences the ban hammer from governments that use the same language Twitter uses to justify its bannings, and when that justification is thin, no tears are shed.
If Twitter relents and restores the deleted tweet by Nigeria’s President and begins cracking down on Biafran dissent, it makes its public image worse. It would have to reinstate Trump at that point!
Twitter presents ifself as a neutral platform. But this is a myth, even if it is the true intent. No human being can be neutral. What is more, the staff, especially moderators, of that platform lack any kind of ideological or philosophical diversity. Most tend to fall into the left-authoritarian spectrum. Twitter pretending it doesn’t take sides is setting itself up for easy fault-finding because the weight of judgement tends to run against the orthodoxy of its staff, and that orthodoxy cuts against people right and left of the political divide, by the way.
This is Twitter’s right. They began as an essentially free speech platform and have evolved into something like a hybrid between a publisher, gatekeeper of “acceptable content”, and limited free speech zone within a spectrum of acceptable orthodoxies but with limited tolerance for dissent. All of this is perfectly legal. It may eventually prove to drive people away from the platforms like Twitter to alternatives, if or when something truly viable comes along, but so far their bottom line hasn’t suffered due to their shift away from pure unadulterated free speech on a strict First Amendment basis. The people paying the bills like it and the audience hasn’t exactly turned away wholesale.
It used to be, if the speech was protected by the First Amendment, it was protected on Twitter. As a corporation, Twitter decided to bend to its clients, namely investors and advertisers, to define the limits of speech it would allow more narrowly. As the rules became more extensive, the ability of moderators to keep up with all the needed moderation has fallen behind.
This has resulted in inconsistencies and gross mistakes, banning content labeled as false which later turned out to be true, while allowing grossly false content to remain unmoderated and unchallenged. Users whose views run afoul of a narrowing orthodoxy, more reflective of a left-authoritarian staff than a broad cross-section of perfectly civil and legitimate beliefs, find that policies about hate speech, racism, bullying, and all the other triggers, become easy excuses to justify bannings.
Most people don’t want those things, but the definition of what constitutes those things is broad and its enforcement is opaque. And that is the problem. Nobody is seriously defending actual racism, hate speech, and bullying. But the instances of where these rules are applied and not applied have been questionable, mostly because it wasn’t obvious or evenly applied.
If you cannot enforce a standard evenly, consistently, or fairly in a way that everyone can easily understand, then you have a governance problem. You also have an optics problem in the international community.
Unlike Twitter, who tend to read the standards and norms of a free and open internet in a less than objective and consistent manner, always in a way that favors their particular ideological bent, we absolutely support Twitter acting as a private, corporate, world power pursuing its aims and interests. Twitter is now seen as a not only such a “soft power”, able to sway election outcomes, but, for some world powers, a potential threat.
In becoming a platform for limited free speech whose owners clearly push their own ideology, which is their right, Twitter is no longer seen as neutral and is seen as a player in its own right. There is a reason the Red Cross steers clear of politics; it doesn’t want governments to view it as a potential competitor or ally to the opposition.
Twitter isn’t a country. But it does wield soft power on the world stage and is, in a new kind of way, more of a world power than many countries. Twitter definitely has its own policy goals based on its own ideology, which it pushes on its users through content, through programs and initiatives, through charity, and through its very concepts of what is or what isn’t acceptable speech. All of these things are, as much as Twitter likes to pretend some form of absolute a priori objectivity, ideological value judgments not shared by most people or most governments.
Twitter as a free speech platform could not be said to be for any given side. Through taking this new tac, as a limited free speech platform and partial publisher which makes ideological statements as if they are objective truth nobody should object to, Twitter no longer has the same kind of neutral status as the Red Cross deserves.
As noted, all this speech moderation is perfectly legitimate, even if a growing plurality of people, whose speech almost no normal person thinks should be banned, find the platform to be useless. Eventually it may happen that Twitter’s list of banned users reaches parity with those left standing.
Either way, when Twitter touts a human right to access a free and open internet it is rank hypocrisy on a moral basis, even if legally it’s not the same thing for Twitter to ban a country’s President as it is for a country to ban Twitter. Although a country can choose what businesses operate in its borders.
Twitter could have argued that banning access to a private platform that users who wished to associate with violates a right of free association. But pretending Twitter operates as a “free and open internet” in its culture, content promotion, and governance system is laughable.
We have never touted a free speech platform. We don’t object to Twitter choosing who can use its platform, even if we think their governance is sorely lacking because they have too few moderators, a stunning lack of diversity, too many rules that are opaque in their meaning, and too many users. Twitter should have transitioned to a more moderated platform more reflective of its own orthodoxy by hiring and training many more moderators and by enacting very clear, transparent rules that leave little doubt as to interpretation.
But claiming that it is a basic human right to access a free and open internet, when all your “qualifiers” for acceptable speech tend toward opaqueness or a particular ideological orthodoxy, shows a lack of self-awareness. If people have a “right” to access Twitter why has Twitter banned speech that was not otherwise illegal, that, if Twitter were a government platform, would be protected speech?
As an example, Twitter bans anyone who defies or argues against it’s supposition that “gender is a social construct.” This ideological statement is most definitely not agreed to by almost every other person around the world, but Twitter insists it is hate speech to disagree. Its reasoning lacks logical depth and this kind of stance clearly places it within a narrow ideological camp. In one day, if all Twitter users decided to post their own views on this, perhaps 70% would be banned.
Imagine if #saywhatgenderis became a thing. Twitter would suppress it from trending, probably block it, and ban the ring leaders. This is hardly the kind of company that can claim to be a champion of free speech!
People do have a right to free speech and a free and open internet. They don’t have a right to access Twitter, which is not a free speech platform and which isn’t a public space. Twitter has every right to make its own ideological statement on gender something you get banned for disagreeing with. But the consequences are that people and governments no longer feel any moral obligation to treat Twitter as anything but a corporate power on the world stage with an agenda that goes well beyond just defending free speech.
A government can ban certain businesses from its country, they have the sovereign right. Twitter has no standing under international law, it is a private platform, and no government has to allow any business to operate in its borders, whether physically or virtually. Because Twitter has made itself a player with its own agenda, it is now being treated like an external power trying to effect the political climate within another country, something governments are loath to allow.
If Twitter was a free speech platform, like it used to be, warts and all, then it could make a moral case against actions by governments, such as India, Russia, Nigeria, and China to ban free speech. It could claim to have no agenda, but already, in its gender ideology, Twitter is showing it wants to control the very narrative in a very important political issue for every country on the planet.
Twitter, though a private company, albeit with more money than some countries and more power too, isn’t a champion of free speech on its platform. It doesn’t have to be.
To claim a moral high ground as a champion of a free and open internet, which necessarily involves an internet where all save criminal speech is protected, is just not going to fly. No country is going to threaten to sanction Nigeria over this move, the moral basis of doing so doesn’t exist.
But let’s be clear, Abuja isn’t protesting Twitter for banning the speech of its President. All its complaints about Twitter allowing Biafra activists to speak freely, accusing them of terrorism, are authoritarian excuses that are worse than Twitter banning its users. Perhaps if said activists said gender is determined at birth and isn’t a social construct, Twitter would have banned them. Instead, they rail against the excesses of Buhari’s security thugs and his allowing the Fulani herdsman to terrorize the land.
Abuja wants Twitter to ban more speech and sees the fact Twitter protects its own orthodoxy from too much dissent as hypocrisy. Clearly, the logic runs, Twitter isn’t protecting these Biafran activists because it stands for a free and open internet. Twitter isn’t banning this speech, which is quite pointedly against the Buhari regime, because it wants to undermine Nigeria’s stability. It’s personal. It’s not principled.
This is nonsense, but abandoning its former stance for free speech and resorting to a very sloppy and opaque application of limited speech rules, while making dissent from their gender ideology bannable, has opened Twitter up to such attacks. When American platforms argue that China should let them in, China can reply, “we are doing to our internet what you do to your platform.”
Is it the same thing? No. But the moral difference between a private platform that claims to be for free speech banning otherwise legal speech or dissent from its ideological statements on gender and a government claiming to be looking out for its people keeping private platforms out whose services would benefit those people isn’t too far in the eyes of many.
We propose the creation of diverse niche communities, not free speech platforms, within a pluralistic ecosystem. We remain convinced that private communities paid for by their subscribers and not beholden to corporate sponsors are the cure for top-down, poorly governed mega platforms. We argue that smaller, paid subscription based communities built around niche interests and shared ideas or what have you, and connected via API hooks within a larger, decentralized digital ecosystem, are the future of the internet.
Twitter is wrong insofar as it cannot claim to be a free speech platform or that is holds the moral high ground. On the other hand, the authoritarians who run the Nigerian federal government are far, far worse. They are defying Twitter’s refusal to become even less of a free speech platform by banning everyone the Buhari regime hates.
In this particular case, Twitter is right to defend the free speech of the Biafran activists, while the deletion of Buhari’s tweet may have been impolitic, it was probably deserved (the man is an unscrupulous liar). But claiming that everyone has a right to its platform is morally laughable. The difference is, Twitter can only ban you, Buhari wants to use violence to silence the Biafran activists.
IT’S WAR ON THE RANSOMWARE HACKERS- The ransomware group, Dark Side, has earned the ire of the Federal Government after their hacking and blackmailing of the Colonial Pipeline. This attack shut down fuel for a good portion of the southeast, leading to gas shortages and gas lines at the pumps, and the victim, the company, paid the ransom. But little did the ransomware attackers realize the ire that would come their way. The Department of Justice announced that they have “turned the tables” on the hackers, recovering most of the Bitcoin paid in ransom, and disrupting the network.
By attacking core infrastructure these allegedly Russian hackers have finally gotten to unwanted attention of a massive system that prides itself in doing the impossible. Imagine the entire US “intelligence community”, including NSA and CIA, waking up every day looking for ways to make your day go badly. This is what the “Dark Side” group has earned, and what many of these Eastern European and Russian or other hackers have earned for themselves: the unmitigated ire of the entire US Government directed every day at them.
It is about time. These types of people who stop people from getting dialysis or shut whole hospitals down truly deserve to be disappeared late in the night and never to be seen or heard from again. They endanger human life on a massive scale, on a war crimes scale, and they must be made to pay a steep and ridiculously high price.
We applaud what Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, “By going after the entire ecosystem that fuels ransomware and digital extortion attacks, including criminal proceeds in the form of digital currency, we will continue to use all of our tools, and all of our resources to increase the cost and the consequences of ransomware attacks and other cyber-enabled attacks.”
Willem IV- It is now emerging as all the rage to become a quantum thinker. Whether this becomes a true trending fad or not, it has gained enough traction so as to warrant a thoughtful response and explanation.
While people may argue the definition, in general, the ability to step outside of the confines of time and space and the ability to perceive and then understand the origins and potential outcomes of a given event or data point from multiple perspectives and facets all at once is quantum thinking.
It is a form of thinking that is multidimensional, multi-faceted, and non-linear but that is capable of translating into any dimension or facet, though it often requires explaining those dimensions and facets in a linear manner to a broader audience.
Can quantum thinking be taught or is it an innate capability one may develop if one has it but which not all people can develop? Is it purely a function of IQ?
I tend to believe that almost anyone can benefit from and learn some level of quantum thinking but that most people won’t because they are habituated to think as they do. They may be ego-stroked, for a fee, into imaging they are quantum thinkers, but most people tend to be unwilling to truly change their mode of thinking as they get older.
That being said, linear, one-dimensional thinking from a limited perspective of mostly personal experience or internalized acculturation serves most people, most of the time, for the roles, functions, and lifestyle most tend to follow.
While it may be argued that quantum thinking is “superior”, it is far more complicated, it can be cumbersome, and it may not be necessary in most cases, for most people, most of the time. Quantum thinking can overwhelm you with possibilities and opportunities, but it can also open your mind to new possibilities and opportunities you never saw before and which could greatly improve your life.
For as long as I remembered I was blessed, or afflicted, with the innate ability and tendency to use quantum thinking, though I did not call it that. Ideas like non-linearity, eternity, no beginning, quantum entanglement, and even the concepts related to emergent reality from 2-dimentional data are not complicated to me.
For example, long before I heard of the concept of 6 degrees of separation, I spoke of a global web in which anyone was indirectly removed from anyone else on the planet by only 5-7 people. I actually used this deliberately to connect to famous or influential people, so it wasn’t a theory, it was a practical methodology for personal advancement which has served me well.
It has been said that in order to engage in quantum thinking one needs to be engaged in higher level math for many years. I do not agree that this is absolutely necessary, mostly because many of the hard concepts explained by higher math are understandable to me, sans the math.
But I do think anyone, including myself, would benefit from the mental experience of using higher math. I also think that learning and using higher math can allow someone otherwise unable to engage in quantum thinking to do so.
It may not be a coincidence that I took a math aptitude test when considering enrolling in a university and was told it was the highest score ever in the history of the campus. I’m not sure this was true, they may have been engaged in exaggeration. The truth is, math is not my favorite thing, but it comes quite easy. I am convinced, therefore, that if you do not already innately use quantum thinking that you should begin with algebra and advance into the highest levels of math possible.
That being said, for many who use math to access quantum thinking there is possibly a difference between their perception and mine. Namely, for them this is all a mathematical formula, but for me these things are not a formula, they have a certain experiential quality I cannot explain in linear language, or in plain English.
When I sense being outside the time and space continuum, it is not a formula, it is a certain reality I feel and experience just as I do the linear reality.
The ability to engage quantum thinking is not all we need. Linear, one-dimensional thinking in the here and now is also useful for daily activities. It is also useful for marketing purposes, I might add, because a direct appeal to a need or desire cannot be complicated.
A bus driver may find quantum thinking a distraction from navigating a roadway. But when they are not driving, they may use quantum thinking to determine their next career move or to understand the potential future developments in society or their industry that may impact their life.
If they begin learning higher math and even the principles of logic, as a discipline, they will begin to use quantum thinking more and more. They may not feel and sense multiple dimensions of reality or non-linear reality (though, who knows, maybe they will) but they will have a mathematical comprehension that is quite useful.
As this concept of quantum thinking begins to be shared, and if it becomes quite the fad, I suspect a watered-down or fake version thereof will be sold to stroke people’s egos that they are quantum thinkers, without any of them experiencing actual quantum thinking. It will be far easier to sell the ego boost of fake quantum thinking than to actually impart the skills of quantum thinking.
Being a “quantum thinker” doesn’t make you better than anyone or necessarily smarter. Many linear thinkers run circles around me in terms of success and happiness and, in the end, all who follow God’s best for their life with excellence (as we often say) will eventually, if not in this life the next, become quantum thinkers.
I have spent all my conscious life, over 45 years, actively engaging in this kind of multi-dimensional and multi-faceted as well as non-linear thinking to navigate life. I have used it to see and predict future realities, to connect with people of influence in order to advance myself, and to see problems and solutions from many angles to suss out true origins and probable end results.
But I also learned to use and apply linear, one-dimensional, and single faceted thinking or presentations to navigate daily activities and to reach people where they are through communications and marketing.
Knowing when and where to apply the two primary types of thinking and knowing how not to get overwhelmed in all the possibilities of quantum thinking are skills I still strive to perfect.
Can you learn quantum thinking? Generally, I think most everyone can learn some level of quantum thinking, while some will have more innate abilities than others, and that learning higher level math is the best way to approach this if it is totally alien to you.
One the other hand, there are those who do innately seem to have this skill and for them quantum thinking is not limited to or obtained through mathematical forms, though it is likely they also have good math skills.
Quantum thinking is not the only way to think and at times it isn’t even the best way to think. People can have quite happy lives with only linear thinking and nobody will really navigate this world successfully through only quantum thinking.
If you are offered some quick way to master quantum thinking, don’t fall for it. There is no quick way to do this, unless it is innate already in your thinking, as it may be, in which case you don’t need some quickie way to master it. It takes years of discipline, even if you innately have the basic skills.
Quantum thinking will never replace the need for linear thinking in the here and now. It isn’t ever one or the other and one can be quite happy without any quantum thinking at all while one is unlikely to be happy by only ever using quantum thinking.
Ironically for me, linear thinking was more of a struggle, I am far more comfortable in a multidimensional and non-linear reality. I learned that without linear thinking as well I would fail to truly experience the here and now and would find quick decision-making in the here and now to be difficult.
Quantum thinking may become the rage, and many will gladly take your coin to stroke your ego and convince you through some simple exercise that you have mastered quantum thinking in 30 days or less.
Don’t follow the hype. Quantum thinking is useful and can be learned through disciplined efforts over many years, but it will never eliminate the need or usefulness of linear thinking in the here and now, and mastering it doesn’t make you better or necessarily smarter than anyone else.
About our featured photo: a B17G the author flew in, demonstrating a kind of immersion into the past, seeing that plane as both in this time and representing another time, allowing oneself to experience the very sounds and smells of the past, and letting that inform your present future. This is a kind of limited quantum thinking.
Society benefits from tolerant tribalism because it prevents the emergence of “One Big System” of an authoritarian bent and prevents divisions and strife along tribal lines. Tolerant tribalism is where you identify with a tribe but you do not have intolerance toward other tribes in your community or society. Tolerant tribalism is unity in diversity, intolerant tribalism is hatred and authoritarianism.
The tendency to always view an ethnic group, race, religious group, Party or a other group as always good or bad, with no exceptions, is a form of intolerant tribalism. Intolerant tribalism is when your identity with your perceived tribe is the only thing that you consider it right or OK to be part of. It’s beyond simple tribalism, where you adopt a tribal identity of some kind but don’t have intolerance toward other tribes.
Feeling your tribe is the best isn’t intolerance. Feeling your tribe is best and others are just a pure evil that needs to be expunged from society is intolerance.
Those who argue against all forms of tribalism, even tolerant tribalism, are coming from the perspective of atomized individualism wherein we are all separate but non-differentiated and are only subject to One Big System (OBS) which everyone is subjected to. Tribalism forms voluntary identities and purposes shared by numbers of people and is a necessary intermediary between OBS and the individual. Without some form of tolerant tribalism we become mere nameless cogs in the machine!
For example, Christians believe Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to salvation, but they recognize the humanity and dignity of people of all faiths and don’t assume everyone in any faith community is all this or that. There are those who become intolerant tribal toward others, and in the name of Christ, but this is a contradiction of the Gospel and of core Christian ethics.
When your tribe and the leaders and/or institutions that represent your tribe, like a politician or a news source, cannot ever be wrong while the others are always wrong, you lose the power of critical thinking. You cannot see things objectively and are likely to miss good ideas and opportunities that are presented by other tribes you have foolishly dismissed.
Often, people infected with this malady of intolerant tribalism do not know or refuse to use basic rules and principles of critical thinking. They generally don’t really have a “true north” set of ideals, principles, or values that govern their thinking. Not using or knowing these things makes intolerant tribalissts easily controlled by the tribal leaders they associate with, to the point where it becomes hero worship and idolatry. Knowing your true north and using critical thinking and logic in light of your core beliefs, values, and convictions prevents you from falling for intolerant tribalism. It prevents you from missing good ideas from other tribes. It keeps you safe from hero worship.
The intentional tribal identity of our new platform, Upadaria, as “Upadarians”, is a purely voluntary identity based on explicitly shared ideals, principles, and practices. It is a tolerant tribalism that welcomes others, even within that same platform, on the basis of shared human dignity and a love for freeedom for all.
A society riven by intolerant tribalism is a society headed for some form of crisis where one tribe wins power and lords it over others in some authoritarian fashion or where the tribes fly apart, resulting in upheavals and even potentially civil war or secession, or some form of insurrection. Eventually, violence follows intolerant tribalism.
As for tolerant tribalism, it does not cause division, it can engender organic unity across diverse groups. Tolerant tribalism prevents the individual from beyond absorbed by an OBS while also preventing them from becoming separated from or hostile to the larger society.
Intolerant tribalism is bad for any society and if we adopt it, becoming blind to any flaws in our tribe and to any good ideas from other tribes, we shorten our own horizon of opportunities and we increase the chances for upheaval and crisis in our society.
