We have become slaves to our own indifferences.

So a couple of days ago I posted a video on YouTube asking is it possible for at least some in the anarchist community to come together, put aside their differences  and work together on issues they can agree upon. Hopefully this video is just the first of many more on the subject. 

Although I'll be the first to admit that the video is not my best work and making videos and being able to properly express myself in front of the camera is not my strong point, it is something I am trying to work on. I do know I am very passionate about freedom and living life without boundaries and controls. I know that I have been this way for as long as I can remember so if I can find a way to express that with you through video it is something I want to try to do. 

The point of these new videos are to hopefully begin to bring together those that are willing to talk openly and respectfully with each other on the various differences of anarchism, and yes maybe even bring in those theories that come close to anarchism. To begin to make some actual progress. To stop the infighting and tearing each other down and not just between the more separate theories but even the fighting going on within these groups. This kind of behavior does no good to anyone or any movement. I believe in my heart there are enough good hearted and well intentioned people out there, regardless of the "color" of anarchism they embrace, that can agree to disagree on some things and work together to find common ground so that real progress can be made. When real progress is made it doesn't just glorify one person or group or theory, real progress will improve all of our lives and those lives that are yet to come. 

You see I'm a dreamer. I envision things. I daily strive to see this world differently. Yes, I understand all the complex social economic theories out there regarding power, control, markets, socialism, individualism, etc. I get them, I've read them but quite frankly I don't care about that, at least not now. What I do care about is seeing myself, my family, my friends, those around me and the rest of humanity begin to live a life to their fullest extent. This can only ever be accomplished with the full liberation of human kind. I know what you're saying though, those other things I said I don't care about so much are important, and they are, but the continual focus and debate on them does nothing but bottle up the full potential of true freedom. These subjects have been debated now for centuries and we have gotten no closer to freedom because of those debates.  We have only been successful in creating a bigger divide amongst ourselves. This, unfortunately is what we as humans do best, divide ourselves and weaken our causes. 

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Anarchists Coming Together

Well I have finally started the philosophical video series I've been wanting to start. Fellow #anarchists beware. I am not trying to lose friends or step on toes but build relationships and coalitions to find our similarities and stop fighting about our differences. I truly believe we share more common ground than we think and if we are ever going to really move forward and make any real impacts in our communities we must be more open minded and welcome differences and discussion. Please feel welcome to join in the discussion.

P.S. Sorry for the wind noise. It is something I am working on. 

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Life changes and my openness on cannabis

I wanted to take a few moments and write about a couple things that I hope will open your eyes and heart and give you some awareness. One is about something that has become a very large part of my life and caused significant changes. The other is something that could alter or improve that.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with a rare spinal disease called Syringomyelia. I don't expect many, if any, of you to know what that is, most doctors don't even know about it. It's a rare debilitating disorder that attacks the core of the spinal cord with cysts that are incurable and barely treatable. My form is from a congenital birth defect and is fairly advanced. In three months time I have gone from being perfectly normal and healthy to walking with a cane, not being able to tie my shoes and experiencing high amounts of pain 24 hours a day. My spinal cord is swelling and crushing the nerves in my spine. It's painful, debilitating and can lead to crippling of the limbs and paralysis.

Not much is known about this disease. Very little research or awareness is being done and many times patients have to teach their doctor what it is and how best to treat it. This, as expected, has changed my life forever. It's caused me to stop and rethink my goals and plans in life and begin to set new ones, and although one could become very depressed with this news (and I certainly have had my down moments) it is teaching me more everyday to appreciate the simple things in life. To slow down and enjoy the present. To learn that life isn't what is thrown at us but what we make of what is being thrown at us.

Now this brings me to my second subject and something that sparked the idea for this article in the first place. It is the right of every human being to be able to choose and use the best treatment available to them. We, along with our families and physicians are of course the best at knowing what is the best treatment for bodies and the illnesses we might face. It is not a politician, body of elected officials or any other spurious group that claims any authority over us. 

We should never allow that to happen but in fact, that is exactly what we have done.

Cannabis, among many qualities, is one of the best treatments for my disease. It not only has proven to be a great pain killer with no side effects, as opposed to the many side effects of life long treatments with prescription narcotics, it has also shown in study to help promote new spinal tissue growth which over time could possibly begin to heal the damages done to my spinal cord by this disease.

Now I am not a new advocate for the legalization of cannabis, I have supported that for many years. I am not a recreational user and never have been but I also see that as a personal choice and not of some bureaucrat who has no authority to control your life. I am now though, faced with this in a personal way. To make the decision to use a treatment for pain that will cause damage to my body as I continue to use it and only offer moderate relief or to risk imprisonment if I choose to use a medicine that will offer a safer treatment for my condition.

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Does Government Restrict Our Potential As Humans?

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Peaceful Parenting, My Simple Philosophy

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The Anarchist Duty

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Changing The World, One Peaceful Child At A Time

We have all heard it said many times that children are like sponges, they soak up everything around them. Most everyone will agree to this but how many have actually stopped to really think about it?  I try as much as I can to watch my children and learn as much as I can from them as they are learning from me. One thing that becomes quickly apparent is that they mimic everything I do as their dad. From the 4 year old to the 13 year old they, in many ways, do what dad is doing. They are everyday learning and developing who they are by watching their mother and I. Then all of a sudden I really think about that and I become worried.

I mean how often do we as parents really think about this? Do we realize that a child is born pure and without influence. They have no agenda or belief system. They are free from prejudices, bigotry and hatred. They only see the world as it simply is, pure and untouched. They are curious, learning everything they can.  They know no boundaries and the only right and wrong they know is a natural set or rules or a natural morality, if it hurts me then it must be bad and if it hurts me then it could hurt someone else so hurting someone is wrong. I mean think about it for a moment. Every child is born naturally an explorer, scientist, artist, thinker, atheist and anarchist. Then we influence them, whether negatively or positively, with our parenting, sending them to school and to maybe to churches. So much of a child's world view and how they treat and think about others is built upon how we raise them. When you think about it like that it kind of makes parenting a little more scary than it is. There is no doubt that with parenting comes great responsibility but raising a child can and will be your greatest accomplishment in life.

Once a parent realizes how important it really is that we positively influence a child as much as possible then we can begin to rethink how we guide a child as a parent versus how we were raised or others around us were raised. It's been said that the best way to change our world is to change the way we raise our children. Remember that children are our future and how we influence them today will greatly influence them as adults.  It must be completely logical to realize that a child raised in a peaceful, nurturing and loving home and shown not to accept violence in their life or toward others and one that is encouraged to find their own identity and to never give up your personal freedom to anyone would grow to be a person that wouldn't accept violence and only freedom in their life.

Unless you raise a child in isolation though there isn't a way to raise a child with the total absence of violence in their life. Even if you try they will see it in other places eventually. What we must do though is raise them to not to tolerate it in their lives. Teaching them to never accept violence as a solution to any problem in their life is something we can do and not only do it through words but in our actions, reactions and interactions with them. By taking a stand that you as their parent will not accept violence in your life or the home your family shares will do more than words ever will. Remember a child will learn more from how they see you live than how you tell them they should live.

Think for a moment of how we could make such a major impact to our future and more importantly our children's future if we could raise an entire generation of people that no longer accepts violence as a legitimate solution to any problem, a generation that looks to peaceful interaction with each other to find true solutions. This is a major point to peaceful parenting. The first is the obvious and that is having a closer relationship with your children but the possibility that raising a child peacefully could change the world they will live in is definitely something worth sitting back and taking in for a moment.

In the end doesn't this all just make sense? If we raise a child in an environment that they are taught that violence can solve problems and it is used against them to correct them and make them comply wouldn't it just make sense that they will grow up thinking violence is ok to use and be used against them to get them to comply to rules? Can there really be any negative side effects to raising a child peacefully, tolerant and non-violent? For thousands of years people have raised children much the same and for thousands of years we continue to use force and violence against each other and allow ourselves to be ruled and controlled by institutions that use force, violence and threats of violence against us to gain our compliance. Is there a connection? Doesn't it make sense to stop using violence and force against our children and teaching them to accept violence has any legitimacy? I dream of a world where the only time my children may ever see or use violence is the rare occurrence that they may need to defend themselves. Lets work together to make that dream a reality for all of our children. 

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Finding Peace with Each Other Could End the Need for the State

Wars, threats of wars, protests, shootings, mass surveillance, bombings, terrorist threats, global financial collapse, widespread viral infections and world wide civil and political unrest are in our face almost daily. Maybe more so than anytime in human history are we seeing such widespread unrest and violence. Whether or not this is true the fact is that we see it much more. It is in our face daily with instant news, information and communication at our finger tips. For the first time in human history we are able to see things as they happen all over the globe. We not only can receive a news report from some news agency that may have edited the report before airing, we can also view video footage of the actual event posted by just a regular Joe like ourselves only minutes after the incident. With this age of instant communication and information at our finger tips gone are the days where we just accept the story we are told to believe by the media because its the only story there is.

Today many people find the truth in this world by simply seeing the pictures and reading the articles from those directly experiencing the situation. Because of the available information as it happens it makes it very difficult to now spin a story for propaganda purposes and make it believable. More and more people are realizing that something must change. Words like revolution and secession are being used daily and are almost acceptable. Many see this public outcry and dissolution as an opportunity to restore our government to the way it was or maybe build a new one that is even better but I want to challenge that thought today. Today I want to make you think and question if that would be the right direction for us.

Many times because of habit, conditioning and superstitions people only see things through a very narrow view. We as a people only see how things are and what they could be, based on what we think we know, this is known as our perceived reality. Many times though there is another reality, there is the truth, but because many are closed minded they fail to see things outside of the box, they fail to challenge themselves intellectually. Their fear of the unknown becomes greater than their desire for truth.

This is what is happening today in regards to government, not just ours but all government. If people were to be honest with themselves most would admit to having a disdain for their government. No sane person loves government, we just all tolerate it. It has been called a necessary evil for a reason and not because it is so necessary but because it it so evil. So the question is, is government really that necessary?

Its funny how we argue so fervently for a system we hate so much. It is much like an addiction. We know its bad for us but we can't help that we want to need the system. We fear the unknown without it. We have become so dependent on government that it has literally enslaved us. No matter how you slice it government is simply someone who rules over you. For someone to rule over you something has to be sacrificed, what you give up is more than your earnings and property, you are giving up your freedom, essentially part of your life. This is a form of slavery. Governments, no matter how small, will always continue to take, it is in their best interest to keep you a slave. Worst of all governments use force and the threat of force to do this. Government is simply evil. Many are finally starting to realize this, that no matter how small or good a government can be or for what purpose their plunder is used for, the use of force against a sovereign individual for personal or public gain is inherently wrong. This is in fact the basis for the Non-Aggression Principle which is rooted firmly in the abolition of force and violence unless for personal defense.

The Voluntaryist Creed: Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at (Google Affiliate Ad)

When you finally realize that government by its very nature is evil it begs the question of why do we tolerate this system? When you use violent force against another it matters not how good the outcome is for when the means for which you came to that outcome is evil you will only end up with evil. We try to reform it, shrink it, control it and we have been trying this for nearly as long as government has been around but with no success.  Isn't it time to throw away the propaganda we have been spoon fed, shake off our prejudices and start thinking outside of the box? Isn't is time to begin entertaining the idea that people can live in peace together without the force and violence of government?

To begin to seriously think about living in a world without this system of control I believe there are a couple of questions we must ask and seek answers to. Why we created government in the first place and can we be moral enough without government? I make no claims to have the answers to these questions, I only offer my opinion of what I think the answers could be but I do hope that this can begin the discussion.

First lets look at the question of why did people create government in the first place? We know there must have been a time when it did not exist and that people instituted the first system whether voluntarily or by force. The question is though, what compelled us to voluntarily give up certain rights or freedom to another or what compels someone to think they have a greater claim over your life than you do? Although we could never be sure of the answer to this question we can look around us to what we know of governments past and present and get a pretty good idea of why someone would create such a thing.

Here is my idea. All governments lay claim to being a protector and mediator of people. It is possible that government first came into existence to settle the differences between people or to say it differently, people could not work out their differences and government was a way to sort them out.

We know that for as long as we have had a recorded history, people have been labeling and dividing each other, it has become human nature to see the differences in each other than to see the similarities. With all the knowledge and awareness we now share though we continue to divide ourselves by our differences. White, black, brown, Jew, Christian, Muslim, conservative, liberal, American, Mexican, gay, lesbian, straight, etc. Is this behavior embedded in our DNA? Have we become so conditioned that we can only see each other this way? Maybe we still have some evolving to do before we can see past these differences?

I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed to make ending statism a possibility. We must stop labeling and dividing each other before we can truly see an end to this system built to mediate those differences. If we could stop seeing differences in people and just start seeing that we are all really the same. See that we are all made the same, think the same, fear the same, dream the same and hope for the same things. Stop pointing out the superficial and circumstantial differences and begin to look inward and see our similarities. When we begin to do this we begin the process to end the need of government in our lives, for without these differences to mediate over there is no need for a mediator.

My second question is: Can we be moral enough without government and what is the basis for that morality?

When we realize that government can in the end be nothing but evil, that it takes away more than it could ever give and that the reasons man created government in the first place can be made invalid, we will then realize why it has no real value in our society. Once we realize as a society the lie that in keeping government we are in some way protecting our moral code, we will instead see that the basis for our morality is simply found in our humanity. If we understand that we are all equally the same and equally think similar thoughts and equally fear the same fears and equally dream the same dreams then we must conclude that all men should be treated equally the same and if my neighbor is essentially the same as I then why would I want to do harm to him or her. So instead of doing what we are told is right or wrong we will now know what is right and wrong. Obedience to law is not done because of moral principle it is obeyed because we fear punishment. We do not need to be told what is right or wrong we only need to open our eyes and see what is right and wrong. So instead of seeing our differences, dividing ourselves by those differences and placing different values on people based on those differences we should see each other equally with love and respect. See that every individual holds the same human rights that you do and not because of their skin color, religion, geographic location, gender or sexual orientation but simply because we are all human. Once we see each other through equality, love and respect we will no longer have the same desires and reasons to initiate harm against each other. We will then realize that these institutions we have built to define and regulate morality are no longer necessary.
 

Now I know right about now many of you are chuckling to yourself and thinking I've probably lost my mind if I believe all this. You are probably thinking that even if what I say is possible there just aren't enough people in the world to live this way to make this happen. Call me a dreamer, I wear that title proudly, but I believe what I speak of is possible.

Through out the history of mankind we have been met with seemingly insurmountable tasks and have accomplished them. We have changed our thinking and society many times just because people started to see things differently. We have nearly ended bigotry and hatred toward the difference in skin color because we as a people finally realized the inherent wrong in doing that and now just a few decades later most people look beyond skin color and now just see a person. In even less time we have made great leaps and bounds towards society fully accepting gays and lesbians. Yes there is still work to be done in this area but over the last 3 or 4 decades many people, if not most, now see only a person and not a gay person.

In both of these examples changes were not made because of some edict from a government, this kind of real change cannot be force upon a people. These awakenings in society have happened because people finally opened their eyes to see the truth and once the truth has been realized a revolution of the mind will begin to happen.

I believe again is the time for people to open their eyes and see the truth, the truth that people are capable of living in a peaceful society with voluntary association with each other. The truth is that government holds a monopoly on the use of force and violence and uses fear tactics to gain control of the people which in the end is a form of slavery.

I believe all of this is possible but only if we begin to open our eyes and make changes in our lives, in our families lives and then to in our communities. We must see government for what it truly is, a powerless slave-master. We must see it as an idea that we created and can just as easily do away with. You and I are sovereign people, not because a person or group of persons say we are. We are sovereign simply because we are human.

We must begin to find peace within ourselves and teach it to our children. Learn to respect everyone regardless of who they are. Find ways to depend less upon the system and more upon yourself, your family, your neighbors and friends. Question what you are told to believe and teach your children to question everything. Most importantly is to pass these ideas on to our children for they truly are humanities future. The greatest way to change the world is to change the way we raise our children. Teach them that violence only begets violence and that violence against another is wrong even if its cloaked in an American flag. Teach them to not accept violence in their lives, in their families and in their communities. Teach them to be individuals and not slaves. Teach them to think for themselves and teach them to see the similarities in each other instead of the differences.

If people do these things one day someone will finally wake up and realize that there is no longer a need for these institutions of force and violence mankind created. One day someone will wake up and be truly free and once and for all the slavery of mankind will be something only told in a history book.

Teach your children love and respect instead of hate and differences. Teach them to be free and that violence is wrong. Share these ideas with everyone you know and live them in your life. Once you do the revolution will have begun, the revolution of your heart and mind which must always happen first. Don't beg for freedom just simply be free.

 

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Defining Morality in a Stateless Society - Liberate OZ

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