Truly, it is a case of pseudo-ADD; the same type of ADD that almost everyone causally admits to having in today's society, from the newbie to computer technology that is your grandparents, to the crackberry addled wall streeter who quotes Gordon Gekko @ cocktail parties.

Despite aspiration & occasionally acknowledged "potential" w/ writing, such pseudo-ADD partially explains why the only thing I consistently write are responses in debates, forums, etc, which, despite sometimes being rather wide-ranging, have incentive enough due to another person in the debate, to remain more or less on point.

Still in an "information hungry" mode as a reaction towards previous forays into the misnomer that is labelled "higher education" (college), this results a majority of time spent on consuming information (via Internet, books, etc.), & not as much (not yet) producing.

No doubt, some of our greatest philosophers would probably find themselves bitten by the information bug, although perhaps Diogenes would distract them long enough by chucking rocks at their monitors to prevent such an anachronistic occurrence.

Perhaps the "beta" tag should be worn still?

Ironically, this entry could be seen as a meta-commentary on information overload & my attempt to overcome it, so perhaps it wasn't entirely a waste of time.

From personal experience, having literally grown up on The Internet (renting circa- 1999; ownership began in late 2000 with the purchase of my first computer), the implications are not far off & can be rather disturbing, especially with the known effects of multi-tasking (an activity any internet citizen is more than aware of) has on the brain & how the brain learns less effectively versus mono-tasking (one task at a time).

The prospect of more & more people multi-tasking, becoming constantly busy, forever having their attention monopolized by the increasingly statist monopoly over the "maintenance of life" doesn't bode well for things that do require attention & time: thinking, questioning, argumentation, study, intelligence, etc.

At times, both the "limits of human knowledge" & "opportunity costs" seem to give credence to the reformists attitude of utilizing the "system" to reform it, as everyone of us, no matter how radically we adhere to our ethics & morality, have to learn to subsist in state-society to maintain our own existence.

Be it from the direct evil of working within the government, or from the morally better option of working in the markets that are constantly being marginalized & controlled by the government itself, to achieve this.

However, there is also the observation that learning to "deal with" state society is a waste of resources in of itself, since utilizing any portion of it necessitates some sort of reliance upon state-society, unless one were to abdicate oneself to nature completely (& somehow managing to find a portion of land where no state or individual of state-society can interfere with you).

This entry has given me an idea regarding analysis paralysis itself, & it's importance in the ever solidifying information economy, & the effects on individuals it might have, including the genesis of new "mental disorders" or psychological problems.

Existential depression, internet addiction disorder (IAD), & pathological indecisiveness are a few candidates that come to mind, although the current specifications (let along the wikipedia entry) for IAD are frankly laughable, imo.

I now end this post with the danger that the above written was absolutely nothing new (not surprising), but the hope that utilizing the information regardless, eventually leads towards new avenues of argument & thought for myself, & if I'm lucky to be so influential, others as well.

2 much information, 2 little time (using '2' is more efficient than 'too', no?).

フィン

Labels: memetics, statism

Introducing Flash Mobs For Liberty (FM4L)*

*This is a working title; I'd really like to get a smoother abbreviation / name going, but this'll do fornow.


q. What is FM4L (Flash Mobs For Liberty) ?

a. Flash Mobs For Liberty is the latest strategy being developed to help further libertarianism both as a valid idea amid the state-society, & as a more prevalent mememtic idea that goes beyond reactionary feelings amid economic & political crisis.

Additionally, FM4L also hopes to help to propagate & "fight against" the statist memes of: entitlement, collectivism, parasitism, theft, & coercion, via novel strategies that closely identify with primary concepts of a stateless society: de-centralization, non-coercion, & voluntary action, co-operation, & trade.


q. How?

a. The first & primary strategy is via the use of flash mobs (per title of the project):

A flash mob (or flashmob[1]) is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.

The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via social media or viral emails, rather than those organized by public relations firms or for a publicity stunt.

Yup, no shame in that, this project is largely a publicity stunt :D.

However, it will not be publicity for publicity's sake, but for the sake of propagating new attention, word of mouth, & memes, which all help to propagate relevant but previously unknown, inaccessible, or uncomfortable idea's into society via affected individuals.


q. 'Affected'? That doesn't sound peaceful...

a. Forgive the terminology, per memetics, but this is nothing but a peaceful venture.

FM4L seeks through purely voluntary, almost benign situations into drawing attention to certain ideas & topics of discussion.

A good example of this is the TRUTH campaign, regarding the hazard's of smoking, although perhaps not with such a huge budget as their's :p.


q. Okay, glad that's cleared up. This flash mob thing sounds interesting, how do I join?

a. Nothing concrete has been made beyond this page just yet, but considering how flash mobs are organized, not much will be anyways!

Watch this page, however, for further details on the FM4L's first mission into the memetic sea of society, & perhaps even be on the look-out for some sort of official page with pictures & bright colors :)


This idea is still very early, & I'm mainly just writing it here to give this blog some (any) content to make it worthwhile. Hopefully, I can readjust the sidebar, & maybe make a formal static page or site for this idea later on.


Update 1 [7:30pm]: Since work was busier than anticipated today (weekends are usually slow), I couldn't get as much written down as I wanted to originally, but I did manage to come spruce up my layout offline while coming up with a main page for the FM4L project.

I normally wouldn't have bothered, but I felt like I improved on what was already a decent design.

I also played around with some logos, as well as drafted the first mission & some extraneous objective stuff...

Most of that won't appear for now, I don't want to be too ambitious too soon.

I will however probably elaborate more on the idea behind this project & post it up if I don't manage to get a logo & static-page together instead, though.

Thought also went into the inital scope, which I'm going to be catuously labeling vaporware until a static page appears.

I do however plan on submitting the page to reddit, which if nothing else is accomplished, would be acceptable.

I do intend on carrying on the project on a personal level, with or without massive interest.

It would be nice if I also bought a digital camera (at some point, tight on money etc.) to document my progress as well :)

Anyway, more to come by the end of the week.

Labels: libertarianism, memetics, promo