A Cultural Tidal Wave

There's an intriguing demographic shift going on the the West, and particularly in the US.  As a child of the 1960s, I vividly remember the counter-culture liberals activating against an entrenched conservative elite.  Issues included ecology, economic inequality and the drug culture.  Free sex and feminism - yes, they were once related and exploded due to the Pill - were the catch phrases of my peers in the Baby Boom generation.

The Baby Boom was a unique phenomenon in world cultural history.  A huge group of post-WW2 children grew up in a world where economies always boomed, the US was the undisputed leader of the "Free World", and the majority of the population was no longer rural.

Freed from having to work the farm and milk the cows, and dripping with Daddy's money from the post-war boom, an entire generation was afforded the ability to turn in on itself and navel-gaze.

For better or worse, the liberal Baby Bommers made significant changes to society and culture.  In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was set up, marijuana is finally becoming more acceptable, and a mini-Boom of babies - commonly referred to as GenX - were the results of Boomer influence.

The Boomers also managed to elect two of the most corrupt presidents in US history: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  The former was elected because he was young, handsome, loved free sex, smoked dope and played the saxophone; the latter because he was black, which apparently was his only qualification - not to mention that many suspect he was the son of a radical 60s Marxist.

As these generational things do, the Boomers were Marxists because their parents grew up in a time when the US was dabbling in Marxist/Communist philosophy - the 1920s and 1930s, during the Great Depression.  The Boomers echoed, and then carried their parents' dabblings to the extreme.

GenX became the Greed Generation, immortalized in Oliver Stone's Wall Street film, while the Boomers themselves cashed in on organic grocery stores, herbal teas and environmentally-friendly plastics ( a la The Graduate).

Each time a new generation echoes their parents' politics, things got just a little more extreme.  The Capitalists went overboard in the Reagan years with derivatives and paper assets, while the Marxists went overboard with Identity Politics and Share The Wealth schemes, like Global Warming, etc.

What seems to be happening now is a blend of ecological consciousness with kinder, gentler capitalism, self-identifying as the new counter-culture.  In other words, the current emerging generation is creating a synthesis of the two extremes, while eschewing the more radical ends of the spectrum.

Now, you have the YouTube millionaires spouting anti-Liberal rhetoric while working out of their parents' basements.  They are anti-consumerist, preferring to rattle the economic order with cyber currencies and a Digital Revolution.  They are shunning Old Media like broadcast networks and Hollywood movies, in favor of producing and consuming each others' projects, and sharing the wealth through crowd-funding organizations.

Culturally, they are leaving the club scenes, swapping underground band MP3s and amateur film projects, and paying for it all with Bitcoin and Etherium.

It's really a bizarre amalgam of preceding philosophies, at least to the eyes of a geezer, and quite fascinating to watch.  These folks don't buy anything the social institutions tell them, and instead actually seem willing to do the work to research information for themselves - not the mention proudly crow their findings on YouTube.

In the end, the revolution that the Boomers promised, but never delivered, is coming out of their great-grandchildren.  The digital world has empowered them to the point that they can do with a phone what us geezers used to do with multi-million dollar rooms full of equipment and distribution licenses and Hollywood studio monopolies on media, and New York brokers.

In other words, there is a shift occurring that hasn't been seen since the Enlightenment and the birth of the Scientific Revolution.  The Gentleman Scientist of yore is now the YouTube producer.  The great composers of yore are now the synth track creators.  The great artists of yore are now the PhotoShop jockeys.

It is an explosion is slow motion.  This new generation is slowly discovering just how much power is at their fingertips.  They are re-evaluating things like college degrees, when all the materials (books, lectures, etc.) are available online for free.  Who needs an investment house when you can get $1 from one million people?  In fact, the Enlightenment ideal of the educated individual is coming to fruit 300 years later, as the technology catches up to the concept, and this new generation, many with no concept of the philosophical roots of their discoveries and efforts, is inheriting the wind.

It is quite a remarkable thing to watch, as the Liberals become the Conservatives, the Conservatives become the radicals, and both are panicking because there's a whole new deal on the horizon that they never considered.

What is truly gratifying is that all of it is moving toward a libertarian ideal that empowers the individual in a self-correcting marketplace of ideas, where feedback from consumers is immediate and the rewards are direct to your pocket with no middle men.  Better yet, they are impervious to the divisive machinations of the withering elite and have no concept of national borders, racial separation and economic boundaries.

Get your popcorn warmed up.  The show is just beginning.

Cat And Mouse

I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century!

For Valentine's Day, my wife forced me to accept what is euphemistically called a "smart" phone.  I prefer to think of them as dumb devices, because they encourage the user to stop using one's natural mental facilities - like memory - and put everything into a collection device that then sends it off to agencies which use it to harvest one's wealth and data.

I exaggerate a little, because a few years ago, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 for business purposes.  I needed to be able to read and edit documents, look at CAD drawings and communicate with things like WhatsApp groups quickly and efficiently, without havingto lug around a laptop.  Works perfectly for what I need, though I insisted on using a dumb, stupid cell phone for calls - just a small uncomplicated device in which to speak and hear others at a distance.

I refused to become one of these "smart" phone junkie zombies who seem to always be in front of me everywhere I go, wandering aimlessly, paying zero attention to the real world, and hindering my purposeful and deliberate navigation of reality.

I should also note that I operate my Samsung tablet in full paranoia mode.  I keep all the apps in full approval mode and I check every single "permission" that I allow them to have.  I don't allow automatic updates and I place as little identifying information into the "cloud" as I can absolutely control.  I perform all my backups with a direct cable link to my laptop and I don't give Google anything I don't absolutely must to get the function I need.

And I only have one game - Solitaire Suite - which I haven't opened in two years.

At my wife's insistence, I graciously accepted the gift for how it was intended, though inside I was repulsed by it.  It has two SIM cards, one for the 4G data link, and the other my trusty old voice phone number.

It was at this point that I decided to go a different route.  I downloaded and installed the critical apps that I use daily - WhatsApp, Waze, Uber - but I created all new accounts, rather than link them to my other device.  I must say, I had forgotten what a pain in the ass it is to set up new accounts.  I've spent the past month retraining my device to do what I want.

The big difference is that I decided to go full default on this one.  I allowed the apps full permissions, auto updates and whatever else they needed to give me "full service", without my paranoid limits on their powers.  What a mistake that was.

My "smart" phone, only one month old, now regales me with constant advertising (known in marketing circles as "notifications") around the clock.  I spend nearly 10 minutes every morning clearing all the crap off my phone that I pay zero attention to.  The worst are the Yahoo Mail app and YouTube.

Yahoo send me constant updates on news stories that I could care less about, especially since I avoid the Yahoo News wire assiduously.  It also tells me every time I get yet another unsolicited advert (note: my Yahoo account is over 20 years old and I use it primarily now for registrations so all the crap goes to one address and I can bulk delete them).

YouTube, on the other hand, insists on "recommending" videos for me that I don't want to see.  Even if it sounds interesting, I avoid it religiously simply because YouTube recommended it.  I want to screw with their profile of me by not following any regular pattern of viewing or content.

One concession to my paranoia is that I made a custom pouch for my "smart" phone that is lined with mylar to minimize my electronic footprint.  This does make it rather difficult to call me, though folks can still WhatsApp my tablet to let me know they want to call.  It also means that when I use Uber, the phone needs a minute to talk with the network to figure out where the hell I am.  Small bother for peace of mind.

A lot of folks might think I do this to avoid government snooping, but really that is the least of my worries.  I hardly do anything worthy of spook attention, though I fancy my paranoia makes it at least a small challenge to invade my privacy.

No, I am paranoid because I believe that I own my data and identity, and I despise the idea that some monstrous mega-corp is harvesting it for their profit.  In fact, the idea makes me physically ill.  I am not a crop to be harvested for advertisers and marketers.  The idea of Google or Microsoft or Amazon making even a tiny bit of revenue off of my personal data and identity makes me hopping mad!

For this reason, I don't shop online, I don't use any app that requires payment, and I sure as hell avoid any of their services to the extent that I can find a small start-up offering the same or better.  In that I have succumbed to using some anti-social media, I never post personal information, like where I am or what I am doing.  I just link to other information.  This blog is the full extent of my "social" presence on the web, and I use Ubuntu OS and Tor when writing and posting.  In fact, I primarily use a server in Tobago to pop out into the open.

So, OK, my wife fist-whipped me into accepting the inevitable, but I still fight.  In fact, I use Tor and Orfox browser on my phone and tablet, except when things like Waze and Uber require my exact location in order to function the way I want.

I'm neither ignorant nor naive.  I know my paranoid antics do little to protect my data, but I like the idea of creating an entity in the mega-corps' vast data farms that isn't entirely accurate.  I like getting ads in German or French, because they have no idea I am in Indonesia.  I like that the ads have nothing to do with my interests because their profile of me is so bass-ackwards - assuming their ads can get through my various blocks.  I like that targeted junk mail and ads never have my correct name.  I also like knowing who precisely sold my data to whom by which names and addresses they use.  Puts them on my shit list of products and services I will never use again.

Any more, we basically have two options: live the Neo-Luddite life as a nomad in the Gobi desert, or succumb to the all-invasive Machine that is modern life.  I take some gratification that I can do the latter without completely giving in.

Fungal Monday

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you've done pretty much all you're going to get done and everything from this point on will be anti-climactic?  Yeah, me neither.

Don't know what I did right, but for the past week, Russia has been lighting up like a Christmas tree.  We've been getting about 1,000 hits a day from there, in addition to the regular traffic.  And there's no rhyme to the hits.  It's like folks are randomly reading the entire archive...which is fine.  About time someone did.  I figure it's the CIA using Tor to pop out in Moscow to cover their tracks.  Makes me feel important.  But, to all our new friends in Russia: Добро пожаловат!

At any rate, been a busy weekend, what with shooters and bombers and the Indonesian National Police knocking off the Number One Most Wanted Guy Around Here (NOMWGA).  As usual (here or anywhere else), this has little effect on controlling terrorism.

See?  The fundamental flaw in the War on Terror is that every time you get one, two more spring up because all this whole mess achieves is pissing off more people.

Look at the States.  First, they ban drugs, so that creates a blackmarket, which increases prices and attracts more unwanted types, who start fighting the law enforcement, so the cops get military style weapons and training, so the the bad guys do too, which makes the cop twitchy and start killing folks, who get pissed off and start killing cops.

It's all just one endless circle.  Violence begets violence, one smart guy once said.  The more you piss in someone's Wheaties, the more they want to poop in your garden.  You get nastier, so they get meaner.  You up the ante, so they raise the stakes.  All of these Warons (copyright and registered) will eventually lead to complete collapse, and at this point, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

One thing I am absolutely sure of is that someone is making a fortune off all this mess.  In the West, they say, "Order out of chaos," and in the East they say, "Opportunity in chaos."  Pretty much the same thing.  Stir up some shit and then sit back and invest in the outcome.

In the end, we are all to blame for it since we buy into it.  We obey authority.  We bow to governments.  We swallow our pride and dignity to serve corporations.  Worst of all, we consume the society that was created for us, and it was created for us because on an individual level, I don't know anyone who wants all this crap.

And so we come to the axiom that a person is smart, but people are stupid.

We've all been conditioned to turn to authority figures any time life gets out of hand.  The problem is that those same authority figures are the one causing life to get out of hand.  The result is that we increasingly depend on authority to save us from...in effect, authority.

What's worse is that we have been further conditioned to call anyone who sees this particular insanity "conspiracy theorists," even though just a brief read of history tells us that pretty much all of history is one big conspiracy.

Like mushrooms, the visible caps are just a tiny part of the organism.  Beneath the soil are massive networks of interconnecting filaments that ultimately create a network of seemingly unrelated items.  I call this the Fungal Theory of History (FTH), and we are the ones being kept in the dark and fed shit.

In the rich loam of society, the tendrils of FTH spread out and suck nutrients out of each of us.  The FTH has no chlorophyll and depends on decay and rot to feed its massive network.

I am afraid that the only way to rid the Earth of this subterranean infestation is to completely uproot society.  The more we fight and kill, the more rot and decay we create to feed the fungus.  We must remove the food source - move into the light where fungus is scorched and dies.  Without the shadow and the rot, fungus cannot survive, since it cannot convert light into food.

Where I lose hope is that uprooting involves some pain.  There won't be any more TeeVee or PokemonGo sucking our life-force out of us, but only by disconnecting from this digital infestation can we hope to rid our world of this slimy parasite.  However, looking around, I see little will to do the necessary.  Folks are pretty happy handing their lives over, it seems.

I'm not a Neo-Luddite and I think the internet is the greatest learning tool every devised by humans, but the Fungus is working overtime to distract us from realizing the incredible promise that is literally at our fingertips.

I am afraid that the whole thing must come to a crashing halt.  There doesn't seem to be a way out otherwise.  One could, say, buy a huge ranch and set it up under a set of rules that are written into the deed restrictions, but that violates my love of free will and sovereign ownership.  However, I am unable to think of another way to demonstrate the benefits of complete freedom from the FTH and the "authoritarian" mentality.  It is so completely bound into society and culture now, and the "education" system has robbed us of the ability to think independently.

So on this fatalistic Monday, I pull back from the Fungus and wonder what the result will be of this infestation.  In the end, by the time we figure out what's happening, we are old and the young folks have been taught to dismiss us.  By the time they are old and realize we were right, then their kids won't be listening.

It's a vicious circle...kind of like a Fairy Ring.