A brief analysis of Occupy Wall St

The Occupy Wall St movement is almost universally misunderstood, even amongst those who would consider themselves occupiers. I cannot truthfully say that I know 'the truth' about the movement though I consistently see the same misunderstandings. Occupy Wall St was an expression of popular anger at the gross injustices of our social, political, and economic systems. There were no official goals, no explicit demands, and no consensus on which specific issues should be the focus. However, if a single message can be gleaned from the entire movement it is this: there is a class war going on and we are losing.

This class war is being waged on a variety of fronts, many of which initially appear completely unrelated. The wars on drugs, terror, and crime share a common enemy: the poor and disenfranchised of the world. Corporate personhood, corruption in government, and the two party system are only some of the ways that democracy is quashed. The consolidation of media outlets, propaganda relabelled as public relations, and internet censorship schemes all seek to throttle the development and exchange of ideas. Concentration of wealth, a currency controlled by a self interested elite, and a predatory economy all prevent people from having the time or resources to effectively enforce their basic human rights. It all comes down to control, control of the masses to solidify the power of a neo-aristocratic class.

The ultra-wealthy elites looked at Occupy Wall St and saw a true threat to their power. People across the country, indeed across the world, coming together to show just how mad they are. We were talking, sharing our struggles, realizing that our personal and financial problems are shared by millions. To borrow from the feminist movement, we began to realize that the personal is truly political. Yet this in itself is not threatening, instead it was our show of strength. We saw how many of us there are, how many of us are mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore, and we started to realize that we are strong. The proletariat were starting to see their true power and the ruling class was terrified.

In response, there was a massive, coordinated campaign to silence and destroy the movement. Occupiers were mocked and vilified in the media, we were supposedly just angry kids who had no cohesive message and offered no solutions. These claims were false or patently absurd, you do not need a solution to identify a problem and the message was simple: there is a class war going on and we are losing. We were relentlessly hounded by police and federal agents, in Denver the peaceful encampment was stormed by pseudo-soldiers with tear gas and paintball guns full of pepper spray. In Boulder we were lucky, the police resorted to sleep deprivation via hourly visits and the city council issued edicts that would criminalize standing still in a public park at night. Yet elsewhere elderly women were being pepper sprayed and a veteran was almost killed by a tear gas canister to the head. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security worked in cooperation with major financial institutions to coordinate a Nationwide crackdown on Occupy communities everywhere. The full and terrifying power of the ruling elite was exposed; the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known, a surveillance system that only the Stasi could envy, and a domestic police force systematically desensitized to brutalizing the same people it is supposed to protect. Driven home at the barrel of a gun, the message was clear: Do not challenge the status quo.

It would be a mistake to say that the system is broken, it is performing the function for which it was designed. The sad truth is that we cannot use the ballot box to resolve our social, political, economic, or environmental problems. The game is rigged, so the winning move is not to play.  I believe that we are speeding towards an abyss, a humanitarian catastrophe where billions will suffer and millions will die. Yet all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. I fear that we will only awake from this artificially induced dream when we are faced with a devastating social crisis. At this point it may be too late, the powers that be might capitalize on this to cement their control or we might enter a new dark age while simultaneously facing environmental catastrophes. No matter the outcome, the longer that we sleep the worse the nightmare will become.

Still, the greatest legacy of Occupy Wall St has yet to make itself known. We stirred the pot, scum may still float at the top but now we are more aware of them. Information has started to spread, ideas flow more vigorously than ever, and a new international network of activists has formed. We know that the system is failing, we know that it must fall, and we are awaiting the next opportunity to bring it down. Now with more experience, more allies, and greater resolve, whenever the next political movement appears, we will be ready.

A Brief Class Analysis from an Anarcho-Transhumanist Perspective

Just like other schools of anarchist thought, anarcho-transhumanists would (or ought to) understand that a just society demands that everyday people control the means of production. I am definitely of the opinion that the means of production and the most advanced technologies are in the hands of a small minority. Technology won't set us free, we have to do that. In fact waiting or doing nothing is the most dangerous thing we could possibly do.

I consider myself a transhumanist first and an anarchist second. Frankly I am very selfishly motivated, yet what I understand as necessary to achieve my own goals demands a just society for all. Anarchy is a necessary condition for transcendence, hence anarcho-transhumanism. As far as I can tell, there are two primary causes for this.

1) It is impossible for any one person to discover their most ideal trans/post human existence. The best way for each of us to find the most fulfilling existence is to allow people to have an enormous variety of experiments in living. Watching and learning from others provides the best opportunity to find the life I want, thus maximum liberty for all is necessary. Hence, anarchy.

2) I find the implications of singularity combined with current power structures to be unbelievably terrifying, far more horrific than anything I have ever learned or thought of.

Consider the current power structures of today. I tend to divide them into three categories; physical control, informational control, and resource control. Physical control refers to policing and military forces. Information control refers to propaganda and restrictions on the availability of information. Resource control refers to restricting or specifying what resources are available, who can obtain them, and how they are obtained.  These three work as a tripod to support each other; when one starts to fail the other two attempt to prop it up but this can only do so much. As of now, if one arm fails then they all fail so power structures are strongest when all three are maintained more or less equally. Modern advanced technology greatly improves two of these means of control yet is undermining a third. However, given enough advancement, any single arm could support and permanently enforce a power structure.

Physical control has been improved via modern military weapon systems (drones) and crowd control (LRAD and ADS). These are terrifying means of physically forcing compliance while far more effective and terrifying ones are being sought out and developed.

Resource control we see through our capitalist economy. With the means of production in the hands of a small minority, compliance can be demanded at the expense of going hungry. As economies of scale continue to shift in favor of greater and greater consolidation, the means of production will be further consolidated into the hands of a smaller minority. This could be counteracted by technologies like 3D printers but we're a long, long way, from being able to print food. Even then, there have even been calls by some to require federal registration of all 3D printers. Typically this is where many transhumanists like to claim that technology will set us free, they could not be more wrong. Mainstream usage of 3D printers and similar technologies is prohibitively expensive and will continue to be long before they can supplant our current economic systems. Thus through the near future, if not longer, resource control will continue to be a very effective means of controlling people.

Information control is beginning to fail, thanks to the advent of the internet. It is making huge waves and this form of control is the most likely arm to collapse. The power elites know this, that's why there have been so many attempts to control the net. Propaganda is no longer as effective as it once was and people are constantly being exposed to 'dangerous ideas,' such as anarchism. Corruption is more and more apparent and discontent is rapidly spreading. Attempts at censorship will continue until they succeed or one of the other arms of oppression attains a certain level of advancement.

This is where it starts to get terrifying. Imagine any one of these types of control taken to an extreme.

Physical control could be enforced via robots and drones. I've seen proposals where a fleet of microdrones would be dropped over an area to search out and eliminate a target(s). Big Dog and others (such as Petman) are getting very rapid improvements as well. Streets policed by platoons of terminators may be impossible to overrun. Unless people maintain the right to bear arms, which is one of many reasons I support 2nd amendment rights, this would be the end of civil disobedience, permanently.

Resource control could be total via extreme vertical integration. As efficiency ramps up via technological improvements to production, it becomes increasingly prohibitively expensive to enter a market. If a single organization, or oligopoly of organizations, control food production then they could demand obedience by not providing food. We're already seeing this start to happen. Include in this control of money, paper money could be deemed obsolete in favor of credit cards. These cards could be turned off at a whim by a totalitarian system, preventing anyone deemed undesirable from obtaining food through established means. Compliance would be guaranteed by the need to fulfill the basic necessities of life. The only possible counter to this would be farming cooperatives, which are far less efficient than factory farms and could easily be shut down with the excuse of having committed some minor crime.

Information control has the most horrific implications. Consider smartphones today, we are all carrying microphones and cameras which constantly transmit their location. At any time someone could be listening in. This serves primarily as an augment to physical control though can easily be used to discredit and outmaneuver any political dissident. Now imagine the trend of increasing integration taken to a greater extent, implants. Contact lens like interfaces (the natural extension of Google Glass) and cochlear implants (the natural extension of many bluetooth devices) could be hijacked for direct control over sensory input. At an extreme, they could be used to cause temporary blindness or deafness. More realistically they could serve as direct delivery of propaganda. Now take this just a little bit farther, brain implants. These could be imposed under the guise of security, or they could simply be sold to us as the new hot thing. They could directly interfere with signal processing or cognitive functioning. Say goodbye to free will, you are now a semi-autonomous cell of The Borg.

Granted each scenario is a very extreme case but it only takes one to pan out, or some combination to pass a threshold, for control to be total.

So, back to the connection with anarchism. The above scenario must not be allowed to happen. Yet it is inevitable if the current power structures persist for just a couple more decades. I don't need to convince you how hard the power elites will try to stay in control. They will use whatever means necessary and will never draw a humane line. More than I want to transcend, I want to avert this outcome. It terrifies me more than I can express.

A total dismantling of all power structures is the only way I can think of to make sure this does not happen. This clearly requires an egalitarian distribution of the means of production, among many other things. As far as I can tell, there is no anarcho-transhumanist theory on how to go about this but the 'technology will set us free' attitude is dangerously naive. There must be an anarchist revolution before transhumanist ideals can be truly achieved.

On a relevant side note, I think anarchism and transhumanism are intricately linked. If we manage to have an anarchist society then there will be people who seek transcendence. That would catalyze a transhumanist revolution and the continued liberty from anarchy would allow it to continue to the furthest extend I can imagine.

Digital music revolution

How did you discover your favorite music? If you were born in 1900 you might have heard it on the radio or at a local show but unless you were wealthy you probably didn't have any music to call your own. If you were born in 1950 you grew up during the British Invasion, vinyl records and rock n roll stations were the way to go as genres multiplied and diverged. If you were born in 1980 you probably had a walkman, albums were cheaper in casette form and you could share music with your friends as the RIAA cried bloody murder over mix tapes. If you were born in the 90's you probably saw the last of casettes as cd's took over and were immediately eclipsed by mp3 players. If you were born after 1996 your music collection is probably larger than those of all your ancestors combined.

Children born today may never know a world without Pandora or bittorrent, they will dive headfirst into the music of any generation and may never come up for air. Computer technology is revolutionizing the musical world and we're the lucky ones in the middle of it. We can now create virtual instruments that produce sounds we feel instead of merely hear and we can share our tastes with those across the globe. No longer are we limited by physical instruments, artists worldwide are experimenting with the sounds that will define our generation and shape music for decades to come.

General MIDI summed it up well, "[the synthesizer] is a machine designed solely for the purpose of creating any imaginable sound that the operator knows how to specify, and he must specify it in a kind of detail that has never been possible or necessary before." House, techno, dubstep, chill out, a vast array of genres have been springing up over the past two decades even as they themselves subdivide into finer and finer categories. I can imagine a world 20 years from now where music played solely with physical instruments is considered classical or even archaic. Those bands won't be outdated, they haven't been so far but just as performance was forever changed by the microphone so is production being changed by the computer.

Deeply involved in the electronic music scene are a number of experience enhancing drugs, notably MDMA. This is having a profound effect on music even if our society naively chooses to sweep it under the rug. While certainly not the only drug in music, molly changes the experience at a fundamental level which matches up very well with modern music. Rave music in particular (included in this but not mentioned specifically are all bass heavy genres of music) has a feel to it that is inseparable from its sound, a song can be melodically simple and astoundingly invigorating due to the heavy vibrations the listener feels. MDMA is known for enhancing the feel of music and, as this safer-than-alcohol alternative grows in popularity, the physical sensations of electronic music continue to intensify.

Music is raw emotion distilled into vibration, it has a power over the human spirit that has never been fully understood and always powerfully felt. As our collective ability to alter sounds expands faster than we can explore its effects, I expect we will find insurmountable joy becoming hopelessly lost in this electronic music revolution.