Unacyclist

I did many things as hobby in my lifetime, yet unicycling is something to last. Most urban environments offer sufficiently levelled surfaces, it's a bit faster than walking, much more fun though, and it reminds me of my work as Alexander Technique teacher in a mindful and non-intellectual way.

I also love the reaction of people I encounter along my cruises. Today's ride on a sunny autumn day was action-packed like never before, with some big surprises along the way. At the moment, quite a lot of the bike paths I usually take are blocked off, finding a safe route into the CBD can be quite challenging.

Off peak hours, Lygon Street doesn't scare me much, as long as the cars stay on their lanes the parked cars offer enough space for a slow moving unicycle. Bikes overtake me a lot, and while I soaked in the sunny afternoon, a MAMIL (middle-aged men in lycra) overtook me on his racing bike. He swerved over the tram tracks, and threaded his front wheel into the tracks on the way back. Ouch.

In Dr ABC fashion, while some helper guarded the cyclists from traffic, I moved his bike out of the way, before helping the guy to the side of the road. Assuring he was fine, besides some bruises, I cycled on. At the next set of traffic lights, someone had ripped the metal casing for the button open, when I started my index finger hooked into the sharp end and cut it.

Slightly bigger than a needle prick, the wound bled a bit. When I found something to wrap around the finger, I swerved a bit to the 'wrong side' of the bike track, which was greeted by another MAMIL with an 'Fuckwit!' outcry.

At the end of this section of the bike path, a school class was gathered next to it, spotting me early and spreading excitement. "You're awesome! I saw you yesterday! A unicycle!" And when I finally passed next to them, a round of applause accompanied me. After bowing and thanking it was hard to wipe the smile off my face.

The cruise along Royal Parade and the uni campus went smoothly, yet I kept my guard up for a potential encounter with Melbourne Bike Patrol. The center piece of the most liveable city of the world is currently a nasty construction site, with most of the pavement fenced off for a tight pedestrian squeeze. So unlike in the good old days (last December), when there was hardly any car traffic from the State Library down to Flinders Street Station, I had push along the pavement, and then switching to the road whenever possible.

Finally, on the block of Melbourne City Hall, I spotted two blue-shirted bike patrollers on the other side of the road. I continued my ride, swerved onto the pavement to walk over the pedestrian crossing, when I heard my name. "L, can we talk to you for a moment?"

It was the same constable that gave me last fine, however, his approach was this time much friendlier. He told me that a letter is on the way to me, revoking the fine. It become obvious that they had researched the current road code, and wanted to stop any further processing. More importantly, it seemed as if now the entire bike patrol knew about the lack of compulsory helmets for unicycle. At the next block of Swanston Street, one patroller I hadn't seen before, addressed me by name to spread the good news.

I still don't know how happy I can be about the change of events. Even the short talks I had indicated how much the police knows now about me, and at least the Unacycling incidents. Although I get myself prepared to stand my case in court, I don't insist on turning this into a hilarious spectacle.

28 Khwei

Life is just a ride, it goes up and down and round and round. The more riders we meet, the more obvious the arbitrariness of social conventions become. Among all that seems superficially different lye some fundamental similarities.

We get trained to accept the current society as necessary for our survival as species, and even more importantly, as 'nation'. The need for 'a leader' is hammered into our heads from multiple directions. We tend to forget that those moment in life that shaped it essentially, when we fell in love, when we witnessed birth or death, when we felt one with the universe, know no leader.

Life happens, within us and around us, and while we can pay attention to some events others evade us.  Luckily, a lot of interesting events require the participations of a large number of people. You have already missed out on a lot of fun (and some less fun) action if you didn't hang out with occupy yet, yet the evolution needs you as well.

Technology has created a wealth that can easily support every human being on this planet, although most of it found its origin in weapons research. War is still an accepted tool for inter-'national' relations, and a highly profitable area for the application of high tech. The abundance of technological achievements, especially fuelled by Open Source and Creative Commons, could mean an end of all toiling as wage slave.

Some people just do the things they consider beneficial to the well-being of their community. Mankind got mindfucked to believe that technological abundance would lead to a breed of couch potato imbeciles. Well, the experiment in social engineering succeeded to some degree.

The retaliation wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention Pakistan, were never declared, just started.  The same holds true for the war against the population of the Western World, which started in 2008 with the first so-called GFC. De facto, it opened the gates to legal economic slavery, just like the feudal system that plagued Europe for many centuries.

The Icelandic people understood that bowing to the IMF meant slavery to bail out the gambles of a feudalistic banking system. The Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and many other European citizens realise that they got sold out by their Goldman-Sachs appointed heads of state.

Let's minimise the use of 'war' money, and experiment with our own currencies. Why not design fancy notes and pay occupiers for the time they spend for the movement?

Evolutionary mathematics

How can a group of people bring about a fundamental shift in society? Can we analyse civil movements with mathematical metrics to improve the efficiency of strategies and the definition of goals?

The occupation in Melbourne is still in its Early Adaptor stage, although it seems to resonate enough with a potentially 'critical' mass that can bring things to a tipping point. Allow me to set out some hypothetical numbers while forgetting about ideological bullshit. Melbourne has roughly 4 million citizens, which means if 5% of the population constitute a 'critical mass', it would take 200.000 Melbournians to liberate this city from its oppressors (if the same thing happens globally).

200.000 sounds like a lot, it's probably more than the 'alternative' parties count as members in whole Australia. But occupy isn't a political party, it's more like a life style choice. So metrics from other areas of life might better reflect such a number can be achieved or not. For simplicity's sake and inspired by sometimes shaky optimism, I assume that theoretically 200,000 could be convinced to commit their alliance to the idea of leaderless, consensual direct democracy.

Between now and 200,000 Melbourne occupiers lies the growth of the movement. Growth happens cyclical, linear or exponential. Although most systems and structures based on exponential growth constitute a big part of the problem, a phase of exponential growth is required to save this planet before the greedy few have wrecked it entirely.

Time for some calculations. Let's take 100 people, committed to contribute to the growth of the movement. The goal for each of them is to find a single ally per week. Even for people with a daytime job this sounds like an achievable target. In a linear model, it takes 2,000 weeks (roughly 38 years) to get our magical 200,000 together. A job for a lifetime, a Sisyphus task. Farewell, Mother Earth, will be late for your rescue as we got sidetracked supporting the system of destruction.

Now let's bring some magic in, exponential growth. Our 100 people win allies, not consumers or subscribers, and show their alliance by doing the same. After a week there will 200 'members', after two weeks 400, and so on. Now guess how many weeks it'll take with this growth rate to get to 200,000. Don't peer ahead and spoil your fun. I happily distract you for a while - isn't distraction the real opium for the masses, be it sport, politics, porn, drugs, drama and media?

Already after two months the barrier to 10,000 allies is broken, and the numbers will jump within the next month (after 12 weeks) over the 200,000 mark. Even with only 10 people as starting point it would take a mere 19 weeks to grow to a number where even a 10% mobilisation rate would exceed the size of most rallyes that took place in recent history in Melbourne.

While this might sound like a pyramide scheme, there's an essential difference. In a flat hierarchy, everybody is allowed to take their share from the gains of the operation. The idea of property, especially of land, contradicts the common interest, especially in highly populated world. And alliance (or membership) wouldn't necessarily mean membership fees (do we really need money on an abundant planet?).

Before we can agree how to heal the planet and to evolve mankind the system of madness needs to be stopped. Dr. ABC, first of all, remove the danger. 200,000 people in Melbourne's streets would certainly bring many things to a stop, and initiate a wave of civil disobedience that potentially brings back justice into society.

Bureaucratic nightmares

Today I got convinced that this part of the world has already been converted to some sort of open citizen prison, Victoria Police acting as prison guard defending national security by harassing whoever appears to cross their path the wrong way.

I found a tiny card next to the penalty notice in my mailbox, which I nearly threw away as advertising. The card informed that L/S/C Mlikota paid me a visit, and asked to get in contact. After the second call to my local police station I got informed that some documents were waiting for me.

The police woman that gave me my charge (by contesting the penalty I now get charged in front of the Magistrate Court) acted very helpful, and didn't even ask for my ID before handing out the paper work. I'm not too sure whether police sees (and checks) incoming numbers, I'm sure she was convinced that I spoke to her about this charge on the phone earlier.

I browsed quickly through the papers, and found the same outdated legal definition from 1999 I saw already as attachment to $464 worth of fines. So I smiled at her and asked whether it is common to get charges delivered in person, as I contested a number of similar fines, and thus will get more charges soon. I pointed out to her that the current Road Code, as of 2009, has a different definition for bicycle.

I pulled out the printout of the current version, showed it her and said that this is the reason why I contested all that fines. An older police man joined the conversation, and tried to reach the constable in question. I mentioned that I don't mind to go to court to make my case, having the written law on my side. 'But he only wants to help...', unfortunately, he didn't.

Of course, as its my local police station, sun was shining, and it's a pain in the ass to drive a car along Sydney Road on a friday arvo and find a park, I had my trusty unicycle with me. The copper wanted to make me wrong, and started the usual false argumentation. Danger of cycling without helmets, which I countered with the lack of compulsory helmet laws in Europe. 'You'd better get back then', and I squeezed a grimaced 'Thank you, sir' as reply, took my papers and left.

It took maybe four or five statements back and forth before this happened - I usually insist on quoting the definition, and pointing out that a unicycle has ONE wheel, no gears, chains or belts. Meanwhile, the police woman looked like checking my printout online on her phone. At a distance, it looked like good cop, bad cop, luckily with a counter between us.

The accused at Parkville on Monday the 5th of December 2011 did fail to wear a securely fitted and approved bicycle helmet at Royal Parade whilst riding a unicycle. Does anybody else notice the bit of Orwellian Newspeak in this charge?

When people in uniform don't like the word of the law if you hold it under their own noses, and still insist that you must have done something wrong, because they don't err, the police state has arrived. They follow orders, not the law. I mean, with the legal situation whether I'm 'guilty' or not bases on the ability to count. Does a unicycle have two or more wheels? Does it have gears, belts or chains?

Not mine :( Yet identical in its setup: One wheel, no belts, gears, chains

Coincidentally, each time I got done on the unicycle I was on my way to Occupy Melbourne, each time to different locations: Flagstaff Gardens, Father Bob's and City Square. In comparison to my harassment I witnessed much more bewildering and violent police activities in each of those (and other) locations.

Occupy inspired me to film one of those encounters with Melbourne Bike Patrol (there to fight BIKE CRIME). I failed to connect to Constable Miletta from human to human, and have already a new strategy for the next time he or his fellow bike crime fighters infringe on my right to freely move through Melbourne's public space.

Now I can rehearse my defence in court, and investigate how to turn the pages by asking for compensation for the continuing harassment. We don't need police to enforce laws that protect people from themselves, even if they don't exist. We rather need protection from people in uniform making their own laws.

Strange consequences

The problem is, if god is dead, then you lose the most important word in your language and you will need a substitute. God was one end, one extreme, and when one extreme disappears from your mental vision the necessary and inevitable is that you will fall to the other extreme, and that is what has happened... Instead of god, fuck has become the most important word in our language.

In between

Since all phenomena (or phenomenally appearing things) which arise, present no reality in themselves, they are said to be of noumena (in other words, they are of the Voidness, regarded as the noumenal background or Source of the physical universe of the phenomena). Though not formed into anything, yet they give shape to everything. Thus it is that phenomena and noumena are in unison, and said to be of one nature. They are, like ice and water, reflection and mirror, two aspects of a single thing.

Cloudseeding

Humanity has always invested heavily in any scheme that offers escape from the body. And why not? Material reality is such a mess. Some of the earliest "religious" artefacts, such as Neanderthal ochre burials, already suggest a belief in immortality. All modern (i.e. post-paleolithic) religions contain the "Gnostic trace" of distrust or even outright hostility to the body and the "created" world. Contemporary "primitive" tribes and even peasant-pagans have a concept of immortality and of going-outside-the-body (ec-stasy) without necessarily exhibiting any excessive body-hatred. The Gnostic Trace accumulates very gradually (like mercury poisoning) till eventually it turns pathological. Gnostic dualism exemplifies the extreme position of this disgust by shifting all value from body to "spirit". This idea characterizes what we call "civilization".

Sinking

The people travel

from here to there

coming 

going

Their destination

reverses itself

over and over again

The Tao remains firmly

planted in one place

and yet cannot be left behind

Four kings guard

East, West, North and South

The paths they guard

are precious

and cannot be separated

Each has a colour

that can't be blended

Each has a sound

that can't be imitated

The center remains still

It has no colour or sound

yet the rest could not exist

without it 

Occupied world

The last battle has just begun,

the lost battle cannot be won,

an endless fight to the death,

until the very last breath.

If we kill what we don't know,

we'll miss the best of the show -

what our hearts are yearning

are healthy steps of learning.

So for an exciting start

learn to open your heart

and let it speak through you.

Don't try too hard,

don't be too smart

and you'll know the next thing to do.

Alien thoughts

This universe is one of the most amazing places,

it hosts an incredible abundance of different races,

joined in the ongoing game of evolution,

which creates in mankind so much confusion.

We're here to see what's there,

accepting that we're in it together,

longing to make everything better,

we're here to share and care.

We're doomed to be free,

free enough to choose slavery

or, with a little bit more bravery,

become what we're born to be.

If we give each other space,

things just fall into place.

Violet Skies

The concrete sky deflected the rockets,

brought light into the tunnel's middle,

just like a reversed ancient riddle

with eyeballs bouncing in their sockets.

A wall of smoke enveloped all

light beams piercing the veil,

an occult quest for the holy grail,

united in this strange hidden hall.

The sound of the underground,

echoing, reverberating, oscillating,

synchronising and liberating,

in a cosmic game of lost and found.

I savoured breathing some fresh air

after leaving this special vanity fair.

Antidote to weltschmerz

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.

A full moon as guide
shone through a sky of chemtrails
when I did my work.

More than three thousand words

Sleep deprived space cat

If you ever meet Schrödinger's cat,

it's probably already dead,

as well as still alive,

now ain't that a jive?

I saw a cat that was not there

I found it in some twisted data

it just appeared on my inner radar,

and seemed to ask for a little care.

It's a strange companion,

evanescent,

still, radiant,

with a scent of fried onion.

And while I miss to hear it purr,

I'll never have to eat its fur.

Won't lovers revolt now?

Round and round we go,

tuned into the cosmic flow.

Obsessed only with winning,

the wheels of war keep spinning.

I cannot keep the silence

in times of useless violence,

soulless systems of oppression

destroy the labour of compassion.

Although life is only a game,

blissful ignorance remains a shame,

an insult to our inherited nature,

often disguised as high culture.

Will we remember our cosmic connection

and help mankind's conscious resurrection?

Modern History

Many areas of human investigations suffered and still suffer from hybris, especially history. 'We live in the best times ever' describes a short-cut towards the gathering of knowledge that inevitably leads to misconceptions, and it seems like the 21st century is especially prone to foster this myth.

What can we learn from history if we assume a beginner's mind towards the mystery of life? What attitudes might change if we don't take for granted that the current society doesn't reflect the most advanced human civilisation that ever stepped on this planet? Can we advance the evolution of mankind if we let go of the cultural arrogance that seems so normal in contemporary times? What do really know about our ancestors?

The name we give our species is 'homo sapiens', and exists as a genetically distinct race for about 60,000  years. We have only little evidence for most of that time, until the invention of written language, which is considered to be the birth of civilisation, about 6000 years ago. I hesitate a bit using these numbers, which indicate quite a lot of certainty about facts reaching that far back, I just consider them as reasonable hypothesis worth of some more scrutiny.

It might feel good to think about ourself as representatives of the smartest band of humans ever lived, the most civilised, somehow the end of linear development towards amazing engineering achievements we witness today, with computers, cars, planes, rockets, satellites, skyscrapers and the lot. Yet this attitude might be much older, just replace our current technology with state of the art achievement known at a given period of time and our ancestors might have fallen for similar misconceptions.

Life, as we understand it nowadays, contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the essential axioms of modern physics. Okay, I went a bit far here, however, the theory talks mainly about 'systems in isolation' than tend towards entropy (disorderly chaos) without the input of 'external' energy. Although conceptual space (language, scientific theories) allows to state this, and although this idea helped advanced concepts to develop with tangible effects on our perceptual reality, it doesn't necessarily reflect we universe we live in.

It seems to me like the hapless attempt to separate order from chaos. implying that order is 'good' and chaos is 'bad', and that we wonderful human beings can create order of out chaos. Yet chaos and order are already conceptual categories that depend on our perspective, and our ability to factualise our experience. Art often transcended this assumed dichotomy, as does modern science in some areas.

Life means always transformation, as well as movement, and creates order, even without intention. An amoeba needs food and avoid danger, which indicates that even the most 'primitive' forms of life create order out of chaos. The accumulation of carbon in living cells on this planet, which started billions of years ago, provides the basis for our current civilisation, which is addicted to ancient forms of carbon as basis for 'external' energy generation.

Life needs energy in some shape or form. Plant life transforms the thermal energy of our sun into chemical energy, this chemical energy can be consumed by animals, which use this energy to move around much more than plant based life, and humans came up with with symbol systems that transferred the knowledge how to utilise all that chemically bound energy from plants, animals and other dynamic environmental processes for their own survival.

Let's take the question whether an amoeba 'knows' or has awareness for its need for food and the existence of danger in its environments aside for a second. The modern homo sapiens knows about the need for food and about the avoidance of dangers, we consider ourself to be aware of this probably in a different way from the other forms of life on this planet. We are a special species on this planet, much more capable of shaping our environments in ways that serves our needs to keep alive.

Yet although humans can shape the environments to better serve our needs, as a species we might have started just relatively recently do to so. Hunter-gatherer societies have less of an environmental impact than modern man, their survival depended more on applicable knowledge about it than on shaping it to their liking. In some remote places these societies survived until now, indicating that 'civilisation' is a potential for our species, yet not a necessity.

Again, it depends just on the perspective to claim that 'culture' came with civilisation. The genocide of many indigenous societies in order to 'civilise' them has destroyed many cultures. The way 'Australian history' is portrayed offers a good example of the common misconception that the most violent culture is the best, ignoring the fact that transference of knowledge doesn't need highly abstract symbol systems manifested in written language.

As we haven't got a time machine, we can only guess from what remains over time what happened in our ancient past. Yet many artefacts of culture deteriorate extremely fast, most materials to store symbolic information follow the Second Law of Thermodynamics, lose the order imposed by man and transform back into the randomness of chaos. Stone provides a platform to preserve information for thousands of years, yet seems highly impractical from a modern perspective.

In other words, an ancient civilisation 20,000 years ago that would have used similar information storage like we do today, wouldn't have left too many marks that could survive until today. Atlantis, if it ever existed, might simply evade rediscovery by insufficient methods to maintain information that can survive periods of history which most people can't imagine anyway.

One myth of the 'linear' development of human technology describes their preferred tools, from the Stone Age via the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. While humans aren't the only life form on this planet deploying tools, most other species that use tools haven't generalised this principle for all areas of life. Yet even in the stone age humans created artefacts that defy the idea of 'primitive' societies - a lot of 'brain power' has gone into the construction of Stonehenge, and maybe even the Sphinx.

While a spearhead made of stone was exceeded by more clever technology to hunt, it shows already a lot of ingenuity. Unlike the modern approach of 'one size fits all', it combined know-how from different areas. A stone-age spear is composite of a wooden shaft with a stone tip, most likely tied to it to keep it in place. People were already dressed, which means there was knowledge of making clothes from natural materials. Natural fabrics deteriorate much faster than stone and metal, yet even the Neandertals dressed and embellished themselves with jewellery.

So plainly said, if we consider covering up ourselves out of shame and/or need, making ourselves look better by jewellery and mostly having some common yarn and maybe song as an indication of culture humans did so maybe even hundred thousands of years ago. The simple act of cooking accomplishes already some chemical transformation, as does the production of leather, so even our prehistoric relatives deserve to be considered quite smart.

Considering that even Neandertals showed signs of what I happily call culture (tool use, burials and thus most likely language), we cannot surely say how much their use of symbols went. A lot of natural surfaces can easily be scratched by a stick, and all sort chemistry happens when we use fire. Any symbol system not manifested in stone, and older than about 3,000 years would have a hard time surviving. Clay tablets might have been the earliest form of written language, but they could as well just be just remnants of the idea to make information last a very long time.

One most important fact about human nature finds only little consideration, especially in science and likewise often in history, our existence as social being. I find it hard to imagine that being hostile towards other human beings come natural, basing a society on hostility might be just a quite recent development. Independent of the language we use, emotional expressions are universal, and empathy most likely played quite a big role in tribal societies.

We have to literally dig deep to get an impression what happened in our past, and once things get buried for a while, nature starts recycling. Although it seems popular to create history by transporting the mechanism of contemporary society into the past, I don't think it's a legit way to understand our ancestry. If Atlantis existed just 6000 years ago, only stone remnants would have survived.

Our contemporary fondness of 'keeping records' still doesn't come very natural to most humans, and so there's little trustworthy information about earlier cultures. Only relative liberal societies offer an insight of their culture, conservative cultures prescribe official interpretations of their 'values'.

Once we stop seeing contemporary mankind as precipice of evolution, we can start a conscious evolution.

ago chaos civilisation culture energy form history humans information knowledge language life lot modern natural order seems societies species stone survive towards years

created at TagCrowd.com

Peaceful warriors

The battle has already started,

human rights have been thwarted,

many people are born into slavery,

others lulled in by epic hypocrisy.

It takes two parties for a fight,

both insisting they are right,

sticking in their favorite roles

pushing opposing magnetic poles.

Once we become aware,

we can start to care,

yet it needs strength to dare

noticing what's really there.

By gently tuning into the cosmic flow,

we can stop the fight and start to grow.

Twitchings of a dying system

More and more people realise that money has no more value attached to it, and about its role to maintain a system of domination that enslaves the majority of mankind. Many still believe in the myth of money though, and happily accept imposed austerity by a bunch of wealthy crooks, who most likely prefer to be called banker or politician or journalist.

2012 has just begun, and real life manages to exceed some of the doomsday scenarios believers in the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar subscribe to. As last act in the old year, Obama signed off the NDAA, converting US citizens into property of the state. Any US citizen can now be taken by the military for indefinite detention.

The Stanford Prison Experiment provides enough evidence to rethink the idea of prisons at all, instead Alex Jones visions of a prisonplanet become reality. However, as world leader in the private prison industry, lobbying for more crime makes just perfect sense. NDAA doesn't even require crimes to be committed anymore - the government knows best, and doesn't need to tell anything.

So I can only hope that the brave people trying to employ the people's mic in Grand Central Station will resurface, and not end up in an infamous FEMA camp, most likely run by Serco or Wackenhut. NDAA retroactively 'legalised' the abhorrent treatment Bradley Manning received for shining a light on shameless human rights abuses conducted in the name of American people.

The wrath of inane governments doesn't end here. Julian Assange is now for more than 400 days in house arrest, a form of punishment Galileo received for daring to claim that the Earth spins around the Sun. Even before the American entertainment industry is granted extraordinary rights to force anyone on the planet to prove their innocence from 'piracy', the FBI took down megaupload, most likely the biggest file-sharing (cloud-storage) site on the internet.

Even more, the FBI convicted New Zealand's police to raid the mansion of the owners of megaupload, and seized their asset in a foreign country. Meanwhile, illegal assassination of Pakistanis (and most likely Iranians) with drones continues, not to mention the eternal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Within the US, civilians have now lost any human rights. Similar to Eastern Germany, the number of people employed by intelligence agencies exploded out of control, so now a sufficient number of criminals can be produced for the interest of shareholders in the private prison industry.

As computer processing and storage capacity also increases exponentially, the totalitarian dream of knowing everything about everyone comes closer to reality. Sharing counteracts the racketeering methods of corporatist fund raising, and thus becomes the target. Whether its information about personal interactions in public interest (Wikileaks), media (megaupload) or even chocolate (Occupy Melbourne's free chocolate stall was removed by the council guarded by ten police or so), sharing for free doesn't feed into the greed of those who want to dominate us.

Right now, the next official war (against Iran) is talked up, to distract from the last massive bailout Obama granted the banking mafia, and the massive debt crisis Europe experiences. How stupid of a population has been indoctrinated by state schools quenching creativity at its core? With about 17% illiteracy among the OECD nations it's safe to assume that current education fails essential targets.

When I grew up in Germany, my country wasn't involved in any war, and our 'laws' seemed to prevent us from engaging in first place. Without 'external' enemy, we could focus more on how we wanted our community to be. In peace, we could consider the future, the world we wanted to leave behind for our children. Worker's right and environmentalism were the main areas of activism - people occupied the site of planned nuclear reactors, were striking for better wages.

Any country involved in war needs to increase the average level of general fear to maintain their strategy of temporary insanity. Otherwise they might get called out on their blatant disrespect for human life and the murders committed in the name of freedom and democracy. Eleven years after 911 the business plan for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan becomes apparent, innocent blood spilled massively for corporate profits.

Most governments in the western world are nothing but a Muppet Show nowadays, legally souvereignity has been outsourced a long time ago. Only people can stop the corporate take-over of this planet.

Occupations of the occupy movement

It's long after the 'get a job' phase of the occupation of public space. For more than three months now, the local occupation had its ups and downs, yet is still swinging. 'Job' is quite a terrible word, and 'work' is mostly simiarly ill reputed. Gen Y and Z just love to chill and watch the world go by.



Of course, generalisations are generally wrong, and before I get accused of ageism I want to point out that I met revolutionary work horses of all ages, as well as incapable people. The level of engagement reflects personal attitudes, motivations and skills, and the proficiency of any task done depends on the right mix of those.

Before I get philosophical, I want to describe the 'roles' within occupy that seem special. To avoid people how do nothing else but decision making (also nown as leaders) this process is outsourced to the entire community effected. To allow this transition, the dominance of leadership is replaced by facilitation by the moderator team.



Facilitation is nothing new, the process of non-violent conflict resolution as described, implemented and exemplified by Marshall Rosenberg existed most likely in many society that considered themselves civilised. Humans need social contact to better organise the daily survival requirements, and if we were like wolves to each other, we would have extinguished our species long ago.

Facilitation describes the process of helping people to communicate better. It has the power to connect parties that used to kill and hate each other, and I think it even has the power to end the political economical domination that endangers the health of Mother Earth and of mankind. It's a simple process, yet requires individual skill and/or talent.



I've seen many different people in their 'role' as facilitator, with highly differing qualities. It takes only little for a 'weak' moderation team to be derailed, and many blame 'the process' for this outcome. Unless the facilitators embody the process, we cannot really decide whether the process works or not. In a way, it's their personal responsibility to be a shining example of respect and compassion for everyone, combined with good listening and communication skills.



Luckily, people get mostly inspired by example. As long as a team of five facilitators gets their act together, the magic of group flow to find consent in a GA happens easily. Dissenters can get heard, without having the impression of being forced to conform. I have experienced some fabulous examples of facilitation, and many dreadful ones. Those exposed to less inspiring examples often call for the process to be improved.

In this emerging movement many roles exist only for a short time, depending on the requirements for specific projects. Many tasks don't require special skills, or some that can be learned quite fast. We have to accept the obsolescence of most 'jobs' that exist today. Crafts and their related skills will never come out of fashion, but talking a hapless victim on the phone into a new energy supplier contract, or defending the same person against the energy corporation's 'ownership fee' when transferring a contract might not be needed in the long run.