THE MORE POWER AND INFLUENCE THEY HAVE, THE MORE TRANSPARENCY SHOULD BE REQUIRED OF THEM

Intro by Steve Cook

We can do ourselves and our descendants a great service and lay the foundations for a better future by ending government by deceit and the mismanaged mess it leaves in train  – in other words, insisting our corporate and political governance becomes honest, “or else”.

Man’s greatest asset in the game called “survive!” is his ability to Reason.  The reasoning process is based upon the data or information or knowledge or understanding or “knowing” one has. Where the information upon which the reasoning process is based is false, the conclusions arrived at can be erroneous. No matter how great the ability to reason, if the information is false, the reasoning process is booby-trapped. Where one does not know the information is false, one can feel that there is “something wrong with people” and that Man is a fickle and capricious beast that “has to be controlled”. It is no coincidence that those who aspire to be the ones doing the controlling are very often the ones supplying the false information that sabotages efforts to reason.

The best way to liberate Man is to knock off lying to him.

This highly perceptive article by Caitlin Johnstone really nails what we must do in that regard, the basic principles that must form the foundations of our new grassroots movement as we sweep aside the barbarism of the crumbling Empire and emerge from its Dark Age.

I’ve added some emphases to draw your attention to what I feel are key points.

Information Anarchism

by Caitlin Johnstone

SOURCE

Our civilization is built upon lies and obfuscation to such an extent that advocating for transparency and the democratization of information can be a complete political position, all by itself.

Rather than claiming to know what’s best for society (whether we should move left or right, whether we should espouse this model or that model), it is perfectly legitimate to simply support giving humanity the information tools necessary to know the truth about what’s happening so that they can collectively determine for themselves what direction to take.

This would mean supporting the end of the mass-scale manipulations and obfuscations used by the powerful to influence the way the public thinks, acts and votes, and it would mean giving them the democratic infrastructure to steer their civilization in response to the true information they’ve got access to.

It would mean supporting the end of government secrecy and advocating transparency for any institution with any degree of power over the people. The more power and influence they have, the more transparency should be required of them, whether they be governmental, corporate, or financial institutions.

It would mean supporting the democratization of information and the end of mass media propaganda. It would mean breaking up institutions which have too much information-sharing ability and giving more information-sharing ability to those who don’t have enough. Rather than a few plutocrats influencing the public, the public influences the public. The public can collectively uplift individual voices and ideas that they like, but no voice is given an unfair advantage in whether or not that will happen.

It would mean supporting the end of internet censorship and algorithm manipulation, so the information the public sees is determined not by billionaire megacorporations in Silicon Valley but by what’s in the zeitgeist and what the public finds interesting.

It would mean calling for an end to the war on journalism and opposing the persecution of publishers like Julian Assange and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden for exposing inconvenient truths about the powerful. All efforts to increase transparency for the powerful and share information in the public interest would be praised, not punished.

In my personal opinion it would also mean supporting the legalization of psychedelics, because giving people the tools to gain information about their inner dimensions is as important for helping them understand the direction society should take as giving them the tools to gain information about their external world.

It would mean the complete absence of any authority controlling people’s access to information or ideas in any way. Call it information anarchism, if you like.

The idea of true information anarchy can be as frightening to the ego as the idea of total societal anarchy, because nobody being in control means there’s nobody to stop it from going in a frightening direction. What if ideas I don’t like gain popularity? What if people start thinking wrong thoughts and believing wrong beliefs?

But that’s kind of the appeal, in my opinion. Really taking the brakes off of the way information moves through our world and letting humanity take full unbridaled advantage of the interconnectedness of our brains at this unprecedented juncture in terrestrial history could lead somewhere very bad, but it could also lead somewhere very good. And whatever ends up happening would be because of our own decisions instead of the decisions of a few powerful manipulators.

And right now the latter is what’s happening. We’re on a collision course with extinction via environmental catastrophe or nuclear war, and it’s because of the decisions made by powerful people who are continuously working to control what ideas and information we consume. If information was really freed up, along with our ability to collectively control the direction humanity takes going forward, it’s hard to imagine we’d mess it up any worse than they have.

And in my opinion, that’s what real freedom looks like. Giving humanity the tools to go whatever way it wants to go, even if it’s the way of the dinosaur. If you really, truly value freedom, in my opinion that’s the wisest place to take your stand.

Wanting the truth to be known whatever it may be is a standalone ideology, and it’s also a standalone personal philosophy. Wanting the truth to be known not just in the world but in your own life, even if it’s uncomfortable or embarrassing. Wanting unhealthy dynamics in your interpersonal relationships to come into awareness. Wanting your unhealed traumas to come into the light of consciousness where they can be healed. Wanting your delusions to be seen so they can be dispelled by truth. Wanting it all to come out into the light: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It’s possible for an individual to live an entire life that is guided by truth and by the desire for truth, and I’m fairly certain it’s possible for all of humanity to live that way as well. We can all push for that, if we decide we want it. We can all decide that we’re sick of being lied to, sick of being manipulated, sick of the completely backward status quo of secrecy for the powerful and surveillance for everyone else, and we can use the power of our numbers to force it to change.

And from there we can sort out together what kind of world we want to live in, guided by the light of truth, whether toward harmony or oblivion, come what may.

The People’s Manifesto: bringing down the miserable Empire of Liars