Found a great post on lewrockwell by SEKIII about his view on the fallacy of copyrights. These ideas can be expanded to the current digital media debate with the RIAA. A novel take on copyright licenses that allows free use of someones work in the public domain, is called copyleft. This basically gives each person possessing a copy of the work the same freedoms as the author, including:

1. the freedom to use the work,
2. the freedom to study the work,
3. the freedom to copy and share the work with others,
4. the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative works.

We practice this method on our site which is detailed in the footer at the bottom of every webpage.
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This originally appeared in The Voluntaryist, July 1986.

Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947–2004) was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of free-market anarchism.

Having done every step of production in the publishing industry, both for myself and others, I have one irrefutable empirical conclusion about the economic effect of copyrights on prices and wages: nada. Zero. Nihil. So negligible you’d need a Geiger counter to measure it.

Before I move on to exactly what copyrights do have an impact on, one may be interested as to why the praxeological negligibility of this tariff. The answer is found in the peculiar nature of publishing. There are big publishers and small publishers and very, very few in between. For the Big Boys, royalties are a fraction of one percent of multi-million press runs. They lose more money from bureaucratic interstices and round-off error. The small publishers are largely counter-economic and usually survive on donated material or break-in writing; let the new writers worry about copyrighting and reselling.

Furthermore, there are a very few cases of legal action in the magazine world because of this disparity. The little ‘zines have no hope beating a rip-off and shrug it off after a perfunctory threat; the Biggies rattle their corporate-lawyer sabres and nearly anyone above ground quietly bows.

Book publishing is a small part of total publishing and there are some middle-range publishers who do worry about the total cost picture in marginal publishing cases. But now there are two kinds of writers: Big Names and everyone else. Everyone else is seldom reprinted; copyrights have nothing to do with first printings (economically). Big Names rake it in – but they also make a lot from ever-higher bids for their next contract. And the lowered risk of not selling out a reprint of a Big Name who has already sold out a print run more than compensates paying the writer the extra fee.

So Big Name writers would loose something substantial if the copyright privilege ceased enforcement. But Big Name writers are an even smaller percentage of writers than Big Name Actors are of actors. If they all vanished tomorrow, no one would notice (except their friends, one hopes). Still, one may reasonably wonder if the star system’s incentive can be done away without the whole pyramid collapsing. If any economic argument remains for copyrights, it’s incentive.

Crap. As Don Marquis put in the words of Archy the Cockroach, “Creative expression is the need of my soul.” And Archy banged his head on typewriter key after typewriter key all night long to turn out his columns – which Marquis cashed in. Writing as a medium of expression will continue as long as someone has a burning need to express. And if all they have to express is a need for second payments and associated residuals, we’re all better off for not reading it.

But, alas, the instant elimination of copyrights would have negligible effect on the star system. While it would cut into the lifelong gravy train of stellar scribes, it would have no effect on their biggest source of income: the contract for their next book (or script, play or even magazine article or short story). That is where the money is.

“You’re only as good as your last piece” – but you collect for that on your next sale. Market decisions are made on anticipated sales. Sounds like straight von Mises, right? (Another great writer who profited little from copyrighting – but others are currently raking it in from Ludwig’s privileged corpse – er, corpus.)

The point of all this vulgar praxeology is not just to clear the way for the moral question. The market (praise be) is telling us something. After all, both market human action and morality arise from the same Natural Law.

In fact, let us clear out some more deadwood and red herrings before we face the Great Moral Issue. First, if you abolish copyrights, would great authors starve? Nope. In fact, the market might open a trifle for new blood. Would writers write if they did not get paid? Who says they wouldn’t? There is no link between payment for writing and copyrights. Royalties roll in (or, much more often, trickle in) long after the next work is sold and the one after is in progress.

Is not a producer entitled to the fruit of his labor? Sure, that’s why writers are paid. But if I make a copy of a shoe or a table or a fireplace log (with my little copied axe) does the cobbler or wood worker or woodchopper collect a royalty?

A. J. Galambos, bless his anarchoheart, attempted to take copyrights and patents to their logical conclusion. Every time we break a stick, Ug The First should collect a royalty. Ideas are property, he says; madness and chaos result.

Property is a concept extracted from nature by conceptual man to designate the distribution of scarce goods – the entire material world – among avaricious, competing egos. If I have an idea, you may have the same idea and it takes nothing from me. Use yours as you will and I do the same.

Ideas, to use the ‘au courant’ language of computer programmers, are the programs; property is the data. Or, to use another current cliché, ideas are the maps and cartography, and property is the territory. The difference compares well to the differences between sex and talking about sex.

Would not ideas be repressed without the incentive (provided by copyrights)? ‘Au contraire’ the biggest problem with ideas is the delivery system. How do we get them to those marketeers who can distribute them? (Ed. note: most readers probably know the answer to this in 1996, this was written in 1986)

My ideas are pieces of what passes for my soul (or, if you prefer, ego). Therefore, every time someone adopts one of them, a little piece of me has infected them. And for this I get paid, too! On top of all that, I should be paid and paid and paid as they get staler and staler?

If copyrights are such a drag, why and how did they evolve? Not by the market process. Like all privileges (emphasis added), they were grants of the king. The idea did not – could not – arise until Gutenberg’s printing press and it coincided with the rise of royal divinity, and soon after, the onslaught of mercantilism.

So who benefits from this privilege? There is an economic impact I failed to mention earlier. It is, in Bastiat’s phrasing, the unseen. Copyright is a Big publisher’s method, under cover of protecting artists, of restraint of trade. Yes, we’re talking monopoly.

For when the Corporation tosses its bone to the struggling writer, and an occasional steak to the pampered tenth of a percent, it receives an enforceable legal monopoly on the editing, typesetting, printing, packaging, marketing (including advertising) and sometimes even local distribution of that book or magazine. (In magazines, it also has an exclusivity in layout vs other articles and illustrations and published advertisements.) How’s that for vertical integration and restraint of trade?

And so the system perpetuates, give or take a few counter-economic outlaws and some enterprising Taiwanese with good smuggling connections.

Because copyrights permeate all mass media, Copyright is the Rip-off That Dare Not Mention Its Name. The rot corrupting our entire communications market is so entrenched it will survive nothing short of abolition of the State and its enforcement of Copyright. Because the losers, small-name writers and all readers, lose so little each, we are content – it seems – to be nickel-and-dime plundered. Why worry about mosquito bites when we have the vampire gouges of income taxes and automobile tariffs?

Now for the central moral question: what first woke me up to the problem that was the innocent viewer scenario. Consider the following careful contractual construction.

Author Big and Publisher Bigger have contracts not to reveal a word of what’s in some publication. Everyone on the staff, every person in the step of production is contracted not to reveal a word. All the distributors are covered and the advertising quotes only a minimal amount of words. Every reader is like Death Records in Phantom of the Paradise, under contract, too; that is every reader who purchases the book or ‘zine and thus interacts with someone who is under contract – interacts in a voluntary trade and voluntary agreement.

No, I am not worried about the simultaneous creator; although an obvious victim, he or she is rare, given sufficient complexity in the work under questions. (However, some recent copyright decisions and the fact that the Dolly Parton case even got as far as a serious trial – means the corruption is spreading.)

One day you and I walk into a room – invited but without even mention of a contract – and the publication lies open on a table. Photons leap from the pages to our eyes and our hapless brain processes the information. Utterly innocent, having committed no volitional act, we are copyright violators. We have unintentionally embarked on a life of piracy.

And God or the Market help us if we now try to act on the ideas now in our mind or to reveal this unintended guilty secret in any way. The State shall strike us – save only if Author Big and Publisher Bigger decide in their tyrannous mercy that we are too small and not worth the trouble.

For if we use the ideas or repeat or reprint them, even as part of our own larger creation – bang! There goes the monopoly. And so each and every innocent viewer must be suppressed. By the Market? Hardly. The entire contractual agreement falls like a house of cards when the innocent gets his or her forbidden view. No, copyright has nothing to do with creativity, incentive, just desserts, fruits of labor or any other element of the moral, free market.

It is a creature of the State, the Vampire’s little bat. And, as far as I’m concerned, the word should be copywrong.

This is the ninth chapter from Les’ online novel titled, Spiritual Survival In A Temporal World, for our companion site JustGetThere. This chapter again covers diet on multiple levels and how it relates to  inner peace and relative harmony.

Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World

Chapter 9

I’ve been thinking about what’s been said so far and I thought it might be a good idea to do another chapter on diet before moving along to something else. Although ‘eating’ is a physical act, it has major spiritual implications. In a certain sense there is no such thing as the physical. It is just a more manifest expression of the spiritual which is… everything. It’s all spiritual. Light is life and there are degrees of light precipitating downward into the manifest until light becomes solid. The sun is an expression of something finer and that is, itself, an expression of something finer and so on and so on up and in; the reverse being more and more down and out; for the sake of illustration.

The sun causes plants to grow. There is a fiery nutrition there which is absorbed by animal forms which consume them, including your own. Sunlight transforms into a power which makes the physical body possible. So, let us think of your body as frozen sunlight; light in extension.

This power can take the form of many things beneficial and many things poisonous. It’s a mere alteration of one thing assuming a myriad of states all as a result of the operation of the sun which, as has been said, is itself an expression of something finer.

Alcohol is a poison. Snake venom is a poison, whereas the serpent power is the resident motive force in everything. Snake venom anti-toxins are made from snake venom. There are many powerful truths that can be intuited from this by the inquiring mind. It appears from this that life and the conditions in which we find ourselves are all a result of the choices that we make. We make these choices based upon our reasoning and knowledge. When reasoning and knowledge are sound we make profitable and correct choices. When they are not, our choices are unsound and lead to undesirable conditions and complications. One of these is dis-ease or, the loss of harmony. Harmony in being is the optimum goal.

In today’s world, the common diet is more garbage than gold. So it is with our other diets; what we take in with our minds, what provokes our feelings, what we breathe and HOW we breathe. Proper breathing and eating both require a similar degree of attention. Fifty percent of the digestion takes place in the mouth. If you don’t chew your food long enough for this to take place well, …you do the math. It is the same with breathing. People who do not have control of their breath are in a poor position to manage negative emotion or to center their mind. Their energy is much less than it could be. Every organ is affected because posture is affected which effects everything else. Much of what I say may seem simplistic. It is up to the reader to extrapolate from what they read.

It’s the reverse of what it natural and normal for you to put shit into your body. Shit is supposed to come ‘out’ of your body. We’ve come to a point as a society where we put garbage in and garbage out. It’s a small percentage of humanity that takes the proper course.

Unfortunately, with many who are attempting to do the right thing another feature enters the mix and that is to become extremist in one’s practice and in one’s judgment of others. Keep in mind what has been said about snake venom. You can poison yourself trying to do the right thing, just as much as by doing the wrong thing. It is harmony you want, not some idealized white dove in the meadow of personal purity. Don’t scrub the pot so hard that you break it.

Some alternative dietary modalities verge on insanity, such as those who proclaim that eating honey is stealing from the bees, or that milk is only for calves and so on. I’m not a meat eater but I know that for some people at their level of personal development it is necessary. I’ve seen as many healthy meat eaters as I have unhealthy vegetarians. The thing to remember is that some meat may well be better than other meat. Some vegetables are better for you than others and, more importantly, some vegetables are better for you personally than others. A lot depends on your heritage and where you live and the particular genetic complex you have arrived at in your ongoing journey which does not end with death or begin at birth.

You can stop all input from the world outside and wind up unhappy in a room alone with no idea where to go. Consider balance above everything else and include ‘intention’ and a sincere desire to encounter the indwelling self. I have said in other places that if anyone were to go into a room for several days and take only water and for the duration ‘pray without ceasing; falling to sleep when it is unavoidable and awakening to immediate prayer with out ceasing that they could not fail to have an experience with the indwelling self. Think about it. You could not fail to have an experience. But who would do this? Not many would do this.

This is preferable to walking away from the world when you are not ready. But you do want to step away from the world at this time because the world has become a whirlpool that is sucking the inattentive and the willing down into a maelstrom of darkness. It is so because the opportunity for spiritual transformation is so great. Whenever the door begins to open for a spiritual quantum leap, all of the forces of ‘the world’ manifest strong attractions for the purpose of distraction from this possibility. It’s physics really.

Develop a burning need for union within. Let is accompany you on your daily rounds. In the midst of the chaos and lies and false advertisements for something that cannot be acquired or purchased in the marketplace, let your mind and heart be made aware that all is well and that none of this can touch you.

Diet is one of the keys to being able to do this. Breathing is also diet because you are eating air. Investigate the blood, oxygen exchange. The mind eats as well. Controlling your diet on all of these levels will grant you a positive state in which to experience inner peace and relative harmony.

People get stoned because they don’t feel good. They don’t feel good because of all the bad diet on all the levels of consumption. You would become very high if you were judicious and cautious about your diet. When you practice meditation as well, the collective benefits are truly impressive. It’s not only the bad advice that you need to avoid. It is also the bad advice that masquerades as good advice.

The key to gaining benefit from this book is to think about what you have read and then let your intuition guide you toward realizations that are uniquely your own. You must seek out your intuition and thereby widen the gateway through which the information passes. Think of it as doing spiritual sit-up and push-ups because it is just that. You must exercise something in order to develop strength and ability. Good diet on all levels is a good start.

In That Shape Again

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By Les Visible | JustGetThere Featured Author

Letters from the Devic Realm

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane.

He has owned a metaphysical bookstore and some restaurants and worked in construction, as a cook, a club bouncer, a newspaper editor, a resort manager, a radio announcer, a standup comedian, as a lead singer in a rock and roll band and whatever he had to do to get by.

He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories. The truth has not been injured in the writing of this blurb. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com

During this embryonic stage of identity, we have sought after the historical beginnings and trailblazers who helped shape these ideas. The one thing you notice when researching, is that there isn’t much new material on the subject presented in the 21st century. This is the very reason we decided to launch this site, coupled with self-sufficiency and personal empowerment. The idea of making an updated documentary, or series of videos on the subject in a practical modern sense, is something we are working for in the future as well.

It seems that some other non-statist brothers and sisters have had the same idea, they are seeking to produce a modern documentary on anarchism. We applaud the efforts of Aragorn, Steffi and friends, as they take on this big project.

Please help them in anyway you can to help their idea manifest to a reality that will benefit us all.

Agora! Anarchy! Action!

—–

Via Anarkismo.net

To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive documentary about anarchism has ever been made. This is a project to create a documentary which is as much a basic introduction to anarchism, as well as a story which looks at anarchism historically and globally.

Anarchism: A Documentary

Fellow anarchists!
To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive documentary about anarchism has ever been made.

Of the often very dated films on anarchist themes that are available, most either misrepresent anarchism (1981’s pro anarcho-capitalist ‘Anarchism in America’), are focused on specific moments in anarchist history (‘Living Utopia’, ‘The Angry Brigade’, ‘Lucio the Anarchist’, etc), or discuss the wider social justice / alter-globalisation movements (‘Fourth World War’).

Such an absence is unfortunate, for we think that now, more than ever, a broad, accessible documentary introduction to anarchism would be of tremendous value to those of us who wish to share the history, ideas and promise of our diverse, protean movement with a general audience.

Instead of complaining though, we’re just going to knuckle down and make it ourselves!

We envisage creating, over the next year or so, an engaging, entertaining, relatively mainstream film that will cover – via interviews with prominent anarchists mixed with archival footage, narration, person-on-the-street discussions and explanatory animations – a historical overview of anarchism, an explanation of the core principles (anti-authoritarianism, anti-capitalism, mutual aid…you know the stuff!) and an exploration of all the contrasting but ultimately complementary views held by contemporary anarchists from around the world.

We’d also like to deliver a message of realistic hope and a call for action in this time of social and ecological crisis.

Being long-time anarchists ourselves, we recognise the importance of a supportive community in ensuring our project succeeds in fairly portraying both contemporary and historical anarchism and does not fall prey to personal biases or prejudices. We will thus be communicating openly and honestly with the broad anarchist community about our progress and underlying vision.

More pressingly though, we also recognise the importance of mutual aid and so, even though we’re soliciting it through capitalist channels, we humbly request your modest donations (at http://www.indiegogo.com/Anarchism-A-Documentary). These will help us with our frugal travel, eating and living expenses, as well as with editing and post-production costs. Those who cannot help financially are more than welcome to offer couches for the night. Shared dinners and good company will also be essential to the completion of this ambitious task we’ve set ourselves, and if you donate some music to the soundtrack we’d be eternally grateful

We eagerly await your participation, your suggestions and your constructive criticisms. We promise to weigh them up fairly as long as you promise not to pepper pie us if, in some cases, we respectfully disagree.

With love and hope,
Steffi, Aragorn and friends

PS: Our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anarchism-A-Documentary/1…=info
Both pages linked here contain a FAQ section for further information.

Related Link: http://www.indiegogo.com/Anarchism-A-Documentary

Anarchy logo at top of article by anarchia89

Source: Mises.org

New single by Vinnie Paz from Jedi Mind Tricks, off his solo album ‘Season of the Assassin’. Song kicks ass and needs no introduction.

Click the thumbnail to view full-size image, then right-click and chose “Save [Image] As…”

Red & Black: Click to view full

Gold & Black: Click to view full

These images and their creator are anti-copyright, but please attribute/linkback if you dig ‘em.

This is the eighth chapter from Les’ online novel titled, Spiritual Survival In A Temporal World, for our companion site JustGetThere. This chapter highlights several different diet techniques that could best suit your lifestyle and goals for weight loss.

Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World

Chapter 8

Now where was I? Diet, right… Today I think we talk about types of diet and let me set them out and then discuss them. I won’t be discussing any of the specialized diets that deal with particular maladies, physical imbalances or weight loss programs. You can find this sort of thing in Cosmo where their relative merits can be considered in the context of the advertisers present in the magazine.

First off, there is ‘macrobiotics’, a system of bringing into balance ones physical being by eating particular foods in proportion to each other. It should be noted that the founder, George Ohsawa was a chain smoker who was working on making a macrobiotic Coca Cola when he died of heart disease. I practiced macrobiotics for a period of time and I can tell you that it is a near perfect diet for those it is suitable for. I had tremendous energy as well as a sense of enduring equilibrium. The downside to macrobiotics that I have seen involves two conditions. One of them is that a certain portion of practitioners become food Nazis. These people are no fun to be around. The other is having insufficient information followed by reduced benefits.

If I were to want to explore macrobiotics at this time I would not read George Ohsawa because it could well have you tired, confused and moving on in a short period of time. I recommend Michio Kushi and you can get all the information you want from one of his centers around the world. It makes sense to attend one or more of their courses. For those whose systems and temperaments are sympathetic to this diet you will find the changes that you experience to be remarkable and possibly even supernatural.

I’ve mentioned temperament and suitability. Let me be very clear here. No one diet is the answer for everyone. No diet will be successful if you ignore basic eating disciplines such as thoroughly chewing your food; not drinking during your meal or for twenty minutes before and after, observing correct posture and having a peaceful or ‘settled’ demeanor while you are eating. These are all big considerations whether they seem to be or not.

The next diet I would recommend is Arnold Ehret’s mucusless healing system. This basically presupposes that mucus in the body is responsible for most of the body’s ills. Arnold came up with a system that substantially eliminates the mucus from your body. Arnold was capable of incredible strength and endurance. Wikipedia (which I don’t like to use) has some interesting things to say about Arnold including his manner of death. I have practiced this diet as well and it’s a good one for those so disposed.

I suspect the raw foods diet might have evolved out of this and I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that one and here is why. I’ve observed the raw foods discipline and it’s another of those fanatically-disposed systems that one should be careful with. Elements of Veganism also fit into this category. This system can have you spending most of your waking hours preparing your food. It can be quite expensive and time consuming and has become a temporary trend among celebrities and trust fund babies. I’m not saying it isn’t a good system though I think it would cause a gas problem with a lot of people. You’ll have to look into it and see if it is for you. I think that saying cooked food is poison is a pretty stupid comment and makes everything else suspect to me. However… this diet is far superior to the ordinary human diet and you would be better off with this than with the rest of the options in the mass diet.

Basic vegetarianism is a good catchall for anyone seeking to evolve their diet. It’s a good place to start and after a period of adjustment and familiarization you can specialize further on. Veganism is a curious one for me and I find that I don’t generally like to be around Vegans because they have a real capacity to develop a fascist mindset. You might hear that, “I don’t eat anything with a face.” Well, potatoes have eyes. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. When I hear that eating honey is stealing from the bees, my bullshit meter starts to act funny. When I hear that a cow’s milk is for the calf or curious views on chicken eggs, I begin to wonder. I’m not saying milk and eggs are good for you. I rarely if ever consume them but I do eat cheese and yogurt on occasion. My system of operation violates tenants of every one of the systems I have mentioned but that’s me. I’m basically a vegetarian but I occasionally eat fish and have NO PLANS to stop. Probably the Hindu and Thai diets suit me most.

Kinesiology is something you might look into as you develop a diet for yourself. All of us have some intolerance to something and it would be good to find out what that was.

Here are some things you should absolutely avoid; soft drinks, refined sugar and artificial sweeteners, processed foods, commercial meats, milk as a beverage, commercial snack foods and candies, most canned foods. This isn’t a comprehensive list but it’s a good start. You will note that I don’t mention caffeinated products like coffee and tea. I think moderation is the key with these but you must remember that caffeine affects the adrenals in a way similar to continuously starting your car while it is already running. Certainly caffeine is no good for you.

You can’t go wrong by eating whole foods, fresh vegetables and fruits. I’m not sure about organic foods as a total commitment; then again, if you can afford it, why not? It’s good to maintain perspective. Eating right will not make you immortal. It will not change other bad behavior not connected to diet. It might make changes easier and that’s the idea. Diet is just one thing to be concerned with. It is a big concern. Take a look around you at the appearance of people who have no concern about what they eat. Look at the society as a whole. Need I say more?

Nothing that I will discuss or consider in this book is going to be comprehensive. You need to look into things on your own. One thing I will HIGHLY recommend is Robert Gray’s healing system. You want to get The Colon Health Handbook by Robert Gray and his healing products. There are a lot of colon cleansers out there and some of them are radical and uncomfortable to use. This is the best, the slowest program and the most complete. It takes around two months to accomplish it but you will NOT BELIEVE how you will feel after you have done it. It will blow your mind. I’ve done it several times now. It makes very good sense to clean your colon at the beginning. Follow the instructions exactly and do not waver. It may cost you 2 or 3 hundred dollars to follow the complete program but you will not regret it. You absolutely will not regret doing this and the energy harvested will give you a major jolt in terms of continuing.

Regardless of which diet you embrace you must remember that eating too much is a mistake no matter what. Try to learn to stop eating when you are only half to two thirds full. It will make a tremendous difference in your well being. Remember to eat slowly and consciously and with gratitude. Remember to fully chew your food and not to drink liquids while you are eating. Look into occasional fasting.

If you should choose to follow up on what you read here you will find the benefits to be priceless. Don’t get sucked down into the hole that the wider culture presents. That is not the way to go. We may have more to say about diet as we go along. For myself I usually eat only once a day. Don’t be a fanatic. George Ohsawa says that if you follow his diet 90% of the time you can eat ten percent of whatever you want. I don’t know where we are going next but we’ll find out when it happens. Be well.

And a song

Everlasting Love

___

By Les Visible | JustGetThere Featured Author

Letters from the Devic Realm

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane.

He has owned a metaphysical bookstore and some restaurants and worked in construction, as a cook, a club bouncer, a newspaper editor, a resort manager, a radio announcer, a standup comedian, as a lead singer in a rock and roll band and whatever he had to do to get by.

He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories. The truth has not been injured in the writing of this blurb. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with David Bollier about his latest book, VIRAL SPIRAL. It’s about how the Internet is building a new digital republic. And Cory Doctorow tells us about his science fiction novel, MAKERS. It imagines the birth pangs of a new remix culture.

I found the interviewees’ use of the term “market” to be a bit misapplied from a market-anarchist perspective, but since they are neither anarchists nor market-anarchists, that’s to be expected. They seemed to use it in the sense of any transaction involving money; when, of course, market-anarchists typically use the term to include all forms of voluntary interaction and transaction — whether money is involved or not — and exclude any non-voluntary forms, such as state-granted monopoly privilege (e.g., copyright itself, discussed but not conceptually dismissed in the interviews).

If, however, you can understand that the “market,” as referred to in the recording, means all monetary transaction (state-supported and not), then there is much to be gained from listening. The interviewees make fantastic points about non-monetary motivation, the emergence of a new free-culture, Creative Commons licensing, the IP monopoly, ignoring unenforceable state mandates, the downfall of dinosaur media companies with the rise of filesharing and instant worldwide distribution online, and more.

The idea of the commons is an ancient one. Peasants of medieval Europe seldom owned their own land. Legally, it was held by the nobles, the king or the Church. But they did have the right to use certain lands in common to grow crops, cut wood, or graze livestock. As capitalism took over from feudalism, the commons began to be privatized. First, land and forests were enclosed. As commodity relations spread, more natural resources, like water, followed suit. In our own era privatization has gobbled up a huge new arena of the commons as intellectual property, from the patenting of traditional plant varieties and the copywrighting of traditional folk tales to the human genome and biodiversity itself. [...]

I also dislike the conflation of intellectual “property” with physical property that occurs in the interviews. They speak to the idea that IP law is certainly overbearing and weighted in favor of state-tied industries and corporations, but they don’t dismiss the idea of IP altogether. Personally, I’d like to see the two subjects discussed as separate concepts, but unfortunately the prevailing view does not lend itself to this dichotomy.

In this vein, the interviewer makes reference to copyright as having been created to protect the rights of the artist, when in fact it was (and is) a monopoly system designed to protect the interests of publishers — artists be damned. This is touched on slightly, but Doctorow puts forward a watered-down version of his usual argument, referring instead to the intent of the US Constitution.

Despite these quibbles, I quite enjoyed the interviews, and they serve to reenforce the notion that the Internet is indeed a bastion of freedom and alternative interaction previously unimaginable. Long may it live!

This is the seventh chapter from Les’ online novel titled, Spiritual Survival In A Temporal World, for our companion site JustGetThere. This chapter addresses diet, and the practice of eating with gratitude.

Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World

Chapter 7

We’ve all heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” You’ve probably also heard, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” You’ve likely heard, “for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.” These are all connected to a common truth. Life feeds on itself and how you think and feel about what you eat has a great deal to do with its impact on you.

Life is a radiant ‘serpent power’. You’ve seen the mystical serpent with its tail in its mouth. It’s called ‘serpent power’ because when viewed in operation by those capable of seeing it, it behaves in a serpentine fashion. If you want to see an example of our mysterious origin and how the force that animates us behaves then close your fist and look at the spiral that it makes.

It is important to follow a proper diet. A proper diet functions on more levels than that which affects the stomach. We consume with our hearts and minds as well. It’s good to remember that both heart and mind are only different levels, or expressions of the same thing. It’s also good to remember that one does not live by bread alone.

Everything is composed of sunlight which is also radiant energy. The green in your vegetables is a chemical change that sunlight went through. We are light in extension. Think of your body as frozen sunlight that feeds on sunlight. Without the sun there is no life and no light. Of course, this sun is a physical expression of another sun and there may be more rarefied examples deeper in or further up; depending on how you see it.

I’ve said at other locations and on many another occasion that I believe one of the most powerful emotions that a person can possess is ‘gratitude’. A key feature that you should possess when you eat is, ‘gratitude’. Eating with gratitude is a magical act of great power. Observe how people eat and you will learn a lot should you be open to the evidence. Observation of life and a willingness to see into it will reveal understandings and truths that are hidden from most.

I am not a religious person and I belong to no religion. This does not mean that religion is not, in part, based on real truth. It means that religion obscures as much as it reveals and it often and invariably interprets wrong. Religion tends to view God anthropomorphically. It makes God a bigger you with all of your prejudices and shortcomings. God becomes a big idiot who reflects your little idiot perspectives.

Those who have looked more deeply into spiritual things with a questioning mind often come to see that all spiritual things have a scientific basis and can be explained and understood in scientific terms. Of course, there are those elements that will always be beyond the conscious, reasoning mind but even they conform to rules of behavior.

So, I practice certain behaviors that you also see among religious people. I always say ‘grace’ and I am, as much as I can remember to be… grateful. Eating with gratitude will change your life. I do not pray in the conventional way but I do contemplate and aspire toward a higher ideal of myself. I not only profoundly believe in a divine agency, I ‘know’ it is there. I possess a capacity to be willful and rebellious against my own best interest too… but, I’m trying to quit (grin). As will be the pattern here, before we can talk about the best diets and the choices of diet it is necessary to talk about the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of eating. It is important to know that we are feeding on different levels all the time and that the physical act of eating is only the most widely recognized practice.

In these times gratitude has been bred out of the process the same way that whole and nutritious food has been replaced by unhealthy garbage. You don’t see people take a moment to bless their food these days. You see them pile in, talk with their mouths full, drink while eating so that the digestive process is interfered with, not bother to chew so that complete digestion doesn’t take place, etc. You see the litter of our fast food nation everywhere and you see the physical condition of those who exist off of it. If I can get any idea across to you, I would want it to be gratitude. Be grateful. Get in the habit of being grateful for everything and you will see that you have more and more reasons to be grateful.

You don’t have to believe in a white-bearded fascist on a far away throne. This god is no more real than the god that the atheists do not believe in. But there is a living conscious force in you and if you feed it, its presence will grow. My wife does not believe in this god and generally is not inclined in this direction; though she is more spiritual than she will admit. The key inducement to my marrying her was during the first dinner I prepared when I asked if she minded if I took a moment to be grateful for my food. “Not at all.” she said and she joined me and has since. She understood the principle.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because much of contemporary religion and the religion of any time may be filled with absurdities and priest centric machinations to part you from your money and your reason does not mean something is not there. It is what feeds you. Be smart. Be grateful. Grow into a better idea of yourself and let your suffering diminish. Eating smart is a way to turn down the flame. If, as the Buddha taught, “All life is pain caused by ignorant desire.” then the more erratic and impure your flame, the greater is your suffering. Passionate people suffer more than others, DEPENDING on the nature of their passion. Turn down the flame and consciously feed it. True enjoyment will come and you will be healthy and filled with life.

This book is about ‘spiritual survival’. It is necessary to constantly point out that everything we can see and perceive has an invisible source. Acknowledge it. Be grateful. For those who are sincere and possessed of genuine interest, you will find much to assist you in these pages. And it is important not to associate any of it with me. Take what is useful and place your gratitude where it belongs. I’m just another climber on the ‘spiral staircase’. Since we are all on this staircase and since it is a spiral, always remember, try to never piss over the railing.

Remember too that this is a book about being welcomed into a community that will form around you as you think and feel and eat your way into it. Gratitude will be the light source that allows you to see AND recognize your companions. We all want to live in this community and we can but we must journey there and it is a journey within as well as without. You don’t simply buy a bus ticket. Many a prosperous soul eats properly but misses the connection between the spirit, mind and body. Living on a trust fund and dressing in white; attending seminars and talking about high minded things doesn’t guarantee anything. We need to approach the thing itself with humility and awe and most of all, gratitude. Talking about it steals the energy to do it.

In the next chapter we will present various diets and the esoteric practices that complete them. We have different needs and no one diet will work for all. For the moment you can start feeling grateful. Let your heart soar in the contemplation of what awaits you. Be grateful that someone attends your every footstep and waits at every point along the way. You are never alone and all the forces of good will fly to your side once you have taken hold of the conviction to carry on… once this conviction has taken hold of you.

Prevail

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By Les Visible | JustGetThere Featured Author

Letters from the Devic Realm

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane.

He has owned a metaphysical bookstore and some restaurants and worked in construction, as a cook, a club bouncer, a newspaper editor, a resort manager, a radio announcer, a standup comedian, as a lead singer in a rock and roll band and whatever he had to do to get by.

He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories. The truth has not been injured in the writing of this blurb. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com

Means also talks about the high numbers of American Indian children in foster care, and the plight of the poor in America.

Via the Republic of Lakotah blog.

This is the sixth chapter from Les’ online novel titled, Spiritual Survival In A Temporal World, for our companion site JustGetThere. This chapter addresses the “habitual mind”, and how to change these patterns through meditation, awareness of our reactive mind, and perseverance .

Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World

Chapter 6

There are a lot of disciplines out there (and in there). They span the gamut from the most intricate forms of hidden tantra to celebrity diets. Somewhere in the process, some small percentage of people may be helped by some of these. In most cases a lack of consistency in application accounts for failure. Failure also comes because the discipline is flawed or useless. We could talk all day about the how and the why of more subjects and processes than 10,000 meth-infused monkeys could discuss over 10,000 lifetimes and with about as much success. We’d like to add here that the more talk given to anything, the more the understanding and capacity to practice will depart. It disappears somewhere into the massive landfill where all the cell-phone conversations go to die.

There are some definite disciplines that will make your life better and we’ll talk about some of them; mental attitudes, diet, physical practice, emotional balancing, aspiration, imagination, determination, concentration and others. It won’t do to begin doing all of these things at the same time and later on in the book we’ll talk about time frames and adding on. Begin with care in a few small things and let the power that collects from doing a few small things the right way carry you into larger venues of being and acting.

Every time you change something that you have been doing you are also letting go of what used to occupy that space. If you begin to eat tofu-dogs where you used to eat pork cracklings then it stands to reason that tofu-dogs are going to replace flavored pig skins. There are flavored pig skins on many levels; physical, emotional, mental- subdivisions of and… beyond.

Anything can be okay for a few days and, like many before you, you may feel that you are breezing along and motoring on up the highway. Enter the reactive mind. The habitual mind can be triggered from various locations. Things that you hear and see will do it. Previous operating patterns will do it. Things you used to do may wait a few days before dropping in and wanting to know if you would like to cop some of the ‘same old same old’. Like the ache of an old love affair, the siren is going to sing to you of attractions that never were anything but a hallucination and are going to provide you with a new hallucination where the dog vomit looks like a wood-fired, brick oven pizza.

Here’s where the path veers. It may take five or ten hot button hallucinations of a condensation-beaded beer, a drag on a good smoke, the touch of willing, seemingly beckoning flesh, some Mexican-style jalapeno pork rinds… whatever it is it’s going look better than it actually looks and it’s going to promise you things it never, ever gave you at any time. It’s going to look the way that bar-hog looked last night at 3:00AM and not the way he/she looks this morning. It’s a routine as old as time and it’s part of the terrible ache of mortality and guilt that makes you old and longing for death… sooner or later.

The reactive mind is many things. It is as many things as it can take the shape of to get you to react while it tickles the emotions and the appetite and the ancient longing for something… something complete… that only comes when you have cut everything lose and long for nothing but the bliss of the eternal moment you are in. Then you can taste this and touch that but there is no sticky slime to weld you to the item in front of you or in your mind. The mind is actually both in and out and surrounding and composing everything which is all made out of the same thing and is all the same thing taking different shapes to appeal to different appetites so that you can sit in the cage and push the same button over and over that triggers that feel good thing which can’t be the ‘real, feel good thing’ because it ends and you have to do it again and there… there you have the world and all of the fantasies and shelves filled with products and the idea that you will be the one to drive that golden spike a few millimeters closer to the unreachable edge.

We need to go slow… start with one pushup and add another when the desire to do another comes from the strength that came from having started and being determined to do it right by not racing down the highway like somebody that got born again and who finds out that now that they are saved they can just indulge in every common thing except casual sex unless they are married because once you get saved you don’t have to do anything any more except make sheep noises in the pasture and expand horizontally while you wait for the chariot from Heaven to arrive. I hope you caught your reactive mind playing ping pong with your objective mind as you tried to figure out what might be wrong with this paragraph.

Watch yourself. Watch yourself and something is going to happen to your reactive mind all by itself as we take away some things and add some things in the hope of revealing some things. Don’t fight the reactive mind but you can do with it what was suggested earlier when talking about meditation; cast out thought. Stop thinking. You can also use replacement therapy. Put something you have chosen in place of these automatic images. Also you can pull it out of shape like taffy or put a clown nose on it or just take off it’s clothes. I often do this when I see some psychopath engineering the deaths of thousands while talking up the usual lies that get your reactive mind to go along with the program.

Before we can move on to other useful disciplines we have to address the basic circumstances of your being. We have to recognize that we have patterns that are out to get us. We have to be able to take a moment twice a day to meditate. Meditating is like sitting up in bed and calling your mother. Keep doing it. She will come. It’s like pulling the fish of death out of the great sea but it can also mean tossing bread on the sea or sailing on the sea or floating on the sea or merging with the sea.

At no time in your life will you suddenly hear horns and be informed that all of your troubles are over. Often the troubles you have are the clear evidence of where your reactive mind has put you and also helpful signs concerning behaviors that are no longer needed. Imagine that everything is perfect but that you are not seeing it. Learn to be still long enough that something deeper can emerge and engage you in a dialogue. All of the blessings of the spiritual realm are based on scientific fact and truth as yet undiscovered. You start to do certain things and certain things will begin to happen and resistance to your own well-being will come up alongside.

When you change your diet you will not notice much for the first few days, although you might feel better right away (and you might not). But after a few days the old taste requirements are going to start talking to you about Pistachio-flavored pork thins. Trust me on this. If you hold out for ten days to two weeks your taste buds will change and they won’t remember how Boysenberry Pork Rind Ice Cream tastes. All of the five taste sensors will be getting all of the things they ever got from the new things to which they have adjusted. You HAVE TO have enough drive to get this far. Alternatively, poor health may eventually force your hand… some terrible trauma or loss… life does this when you won’t.

We’re going to go into diet for the next few chapters and see if we can figure out anything about food. We’re going to make this so easy for you. No matter how easy we make it you won’t find it easy because it will be YOU who is fighting it. Yes… once we conquer the enemy within there will be no counterpart in the world without; no matter what ‘appearances’ say.

Something Good (is coming soon)

___

By Les Visible | JustGetThere Featured Author

Letters from the Devic Realm

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane.

He has owned a metaphysical bookstore and some restaurants and worked in construction, as a cook, a club bouncer, a newspaper editor, a resort manager, a radio announcer, a standup comedian, as a lead singer in a rock and roll band and whatever he had to do to get by.

He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories. The truth has not been injured in the writing of this blurb. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com

Darian Worden has posted a succinct outline of effective steps anyone can take right now to build liberty in their own lives, and thus to increase the measure of liberty in the world — from the ground up.

Think about what you can do in your personal life to expand freedom – then act on this knowledge.

- Individual Liberty -

A free society is founded on individual liberty.

We have complete liberty when each person is free to do whatever he wills, so long as he does not infringe on the equal freedom of another. The individual’s freedom should not be interfered with until he interferes with another person’s freedom.

Liberty is equal: each person has full authority over her own life, and no person has authority over another. One may influence or persuade others, or agree to have someone take charge of a task. But there can be no social ranking that claims one person inherently owes obedience to another. As much as possible, individuals should have equal decision making power in organizations they choose to work in.

All relations, from the most intimate to the most elaborate, must be based on consent. People must be free to opt out of any social arrangement, and force can only be used against people who forcibly interfere with the liberty of others.

- Personal Liberty -

Creating a free world begins on the most personal level.

If you want to be effective at increasing freedom, your daily activity should be consistent with the principles of individual liberty.

Good people can slip into bad habits. This does not mean they must be condemned to forever be an enemy of freedom. But it does mean that self-improvement is necessary.

When you change yourself, you change the part of the world that you have the most influence over. And your changes will influence those you are in contact with.

Ask:

- How well am I living up to the principles of liberty?

- Do I insist on relating and organizing on a consensual basis that respects individual dignity and desires?

- Do I obey others, or do I obey myself?

- Do I act as if other people should decide the purpose of my life?

- Do I act like other individuals should live for me, not for themselves?

- Do I act like my political, social, or economic rank entitles me to be obeyed?

- Do I hold individuals to different standards because of the categories that other people have thrust upon them – race, gender, sexual preference, immigrant status, etc?

- What can I do in my current situation to expand freedom? Should I put myself in a different situation?

Attitude is very important in working toward liberty. Are you oppressed? Or are you engaged in conflict with people who wish to oppress you? Thinking that you are powerful and free may make it so.

Self-improvement is an everyday process. But you can only start building a free world when you make a conscious effort to enact principles of individual liberty in your daily life.

[...]

Read the rest at Center for a Stateless Society »
Download as a PDF from LibertyActivism.info »

(post photo by vcastelo on flickr)

This is the fifth chapter from Les’ online novel titled, Spiritual Survival In A Temporal World for our companion site JustGetThere. This chapter addresses the “reactive mind”, and why controlling emotional responses to triggers from situations or people, is mentally and spiritually beneficial.

Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World

Chapter 5

Let’s talk about the reactive mind today. I see that in the process of writing this book that there are a number of approaches. Thinking about it, it occurred to me that I should intersperse related topics between the topics. That way we can creep up on things like diet, which is coming soon to a justgetthere blog near you and other subjects that won’t be injured by appearing a little later in the game. I like the idea of digressing and bobbing and weaving- more of which will appear when we talk about the martial arts- and stinging like a disappearing honeybee, floating like a butterfly and moon-walking across the stage to the beat of the auctioneers hammer at Neverland.

I can assure you that progress toward real independence and spiritual as well as temporal survival and security, not to mention general, overall well being, are highly dependent upon your control of the ‘reactive mind’. You know what that is right? That’s the part of your mental makeup that reacts to thoughts and words and situations. It triggers emotions and it can wind you up tighter than a Republican’s sphincter without anything more than your getting caught up inside the thoughts inside your head. I realize that using imagery like tight Republican sphincters is a bit of a misnomer given their predilections as viewed in news bites over recent years but you can go ahead and think of it in terms of the personality type instead of otherwise… whatever that might imply.

What I’ve done here- writing this the way I have and using provocative graphics in what is supposed to be a spiritual groove; all high-minded and like that… what I’ve done is to give you an example of the reactive mind inside your head as you read these words and wonder why I said this and that. This is something to keep in mind no matter what you read or feel or see or think or any part of the perceptions you have and the way you manage their interpretations. It’s always good to put yourself inside the mind of the writer and it is possible to get right there too. Just as there is a great deal going on behind the scenes in the world outside, there is also a lot going on behind the scenes of the world inside. Smoke and mirrors work in both directions.

It is my belief that control of the reactive mind is one of the most important issues you can address. Imagine what it would be like to not have your mind automatically react. Imagine what it would be like not to have your buttons pushed by your own thoughts and feelings or the words and actions of others. Imagine what it would be like to be so centered that nothing threw you off balance. It’s not impossible. In fact, it is quite possible. I’m no friend of Scientology and I can assure you they have been no friend to me but I would like to point out that everything they do is about controlling the reactive mind. Unfortunately… it looks more like their controlling it than you controlling it.

The military does this with you. Religions do this with you. Cultures do this with you. Your parents did this to you. Your schools did this to you. Doesn’t it make sense that you should do this to you to offset all the bad programming you ran into? Of course, all of the influences previously mentioned did not leave you with only bad programming. Some of the programming was good. We want to remove the bad programming.

How do you decide which programming is good and which bad? First you must come to some understanding of who you are? Who are you? Based on that you can determine if what you are is an effective representation of who you are. All of the battles you are fighting outside of yourself are based on inner conflicts. We know very little about ourselves and what lies beneath. There are things going on beneath the surface of your mind of which you are completely unaware. There are tangles and pressures and all manner of forces which work their way up into thoughts and words and actions.

You have to put on your tool belt and dive into the deep. Meditation is one way to do this. In the esoteric tarot, card number 17 is “The Star”. It is the card of meditation. Its name is Tzaddi which means ‘fish-hook’. The 12th card is called “The Hanged Man” its name is Mem and it means water or more specifically a body of water, like the sea. The 13th card is called “Death” and its name is Nun and it means a fish. Think about this.

You can take the fish-hook of Meditation and drop it into the great sea of the subconscious and catch and pull out the fish of death. I am not recommending nor discouraging this path. I wish merely to show you that there is a lot more to some things than might appear from cursory examination and the same applies across the board. You can take all of the tenants of Yoga and find them to be resident in the system of Hermetic Science and Alchemy. All of these sciences cross-reference. All of the real systems are complete, comprehensive and perfect. The only thing that is not is you and I and that is because the reactive mind of the personality is making you less than you could be and certainly less than you are.

Remember as we go along that the whole purpose of this book is to introduce you to a community of kindred souls and to provide certain tools that will grant you some protection from the dangers that consume everyone all around and which you can witness and hear about every single day. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. The reactive mind makes it nearly impossible to concentrate… to see time for what it is… to gain maximum enjoyment from life and to live and grow infinitely beyond anywhere you may be at the moment.

Treating with the reactive mind is best left for the next chapter. It’s enough for now to know that it exists and to begin to watch how it works. If you make it a point to be observant about how you react through your day, you will see and perceive some interesting occurrences that will cause your mind to point some things out to you that you might not have been paying attention to before.

It is important to realize that life is a magic show in all of the best and worst ways. Life is brimming to overflow with magic and we don’t see it because of the reactive mind. We don’t see the beauty of existence because we are in a continuous reflex mode. Something happens between puberty and adulthood that closes certain doors and the closest we ever get to the spontaneity and openness of our childhood is when senility sets in. We’re supposed to lose our innocence and we are supposed to regain it but…

This book is going to weave in and out of a great many areas. We’re slated for about 35 chapters and we are only on chapter 5. There’s a point to the manner of presentation and a point to the pointing at and to. I’ve nothing against Republicans or anyone unless my reactive mind tells me I do. We have allowed ourselves to become very confused about what is going on and this can be proven to be true just by looking at the dissatisfactions in our lives and the fact that we don’t change the conditions we are in.

This book isn’t for everyone. This book is only for those who want to find a way out of the hamster cage and into the clear living reality of a free human being. The tools to achieve this are available. Few people realize the power in imagination and faith as well as so many qualities we hear about every day and don’t think about. Opportunity abounds and life itself wants you to be prosperous and well. Something is concealing this from the popular mind.

Thank you for the supportive letters. We’ve only just started here and I think you will like where we wind up further along the road.

I’m Coming Back

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By Les Visible | JustGetThere Featured Author

Letters from the Devic Realm

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane.

He has owned a metaphysical bookstore and some restaurants and worked in construction, as a cook, a club bouncer, a newspaper editor, a resort manager, a radio announcer, a standup comedian, as a lead singer in a rock and roll band and whatever he had to do to get by.

He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories. The truth has not been injured in the writing of this blurb. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com

Today’s Sound-Off is a special May Day edition — as a salute to workers around the world.

[The title of this post is] a reference to a popular rallying cry of peasants and factory workers who were scared that the Bolsheviks would impose centralized authority over their autonomous farms, coops and seized workplaces. Of course in the most quintessentially cynical Russian move Lenin had his Bolshevik goons start using the anti-Bolshevik slogan, thus confusing the workers into supporting State Power when they thought they were supporting local autonomy. On the one hand this is reminiscent of the “zaxlebax” principle, which reminds us that the terminologies and definitions of left and right have shifted so drastically over the years that we should pay attention to the underlying ideas and not stop at false assumptions. On the other, it expresses the overlap of Rothbard’s call for the establishment of repossessed producer’s coops with the slogan’s original meaning.

— from Invisible Molotov, who has made a PDF of today’s essay selection available for download.

For Earth day, I decided to post this illuminating interview of Joe Rogan speaking about his psychedelic experiences. Some of the things he says are very profound, and resonate with my own thinking of humanity and the controlled paradigm we have all been born in. It can be changed in the blink of an eye by our thoughts alone. I won’t spoil it for you, so sit back and enjoy.

In this interview, Joe Rogan discusses his experiences with DMT and sensory deprivation flotation tanks, while sharing thoughts about 2012 and predictions for the near future. Daniel Pinchbeck, editor of the website RealitySandwich, conducts this thought provoking interview.