Subversive Gifts

I was invited into a local gift-economy group on Facebook the other day. It was suggested to me by a neighbour up the road, and I figured I might as well join. Checking out their about page, it was clear that this group is a strict gift giving group. No barter and no credit is allowed. Gifts have to be given without any expectation of any return favour, which limits its economic value to only that which can be given away without pain.

I can't think of an awful lot of stuff that can be given away in this way, but there are a few things that fit this bill. There's good quality stuff that can no longer be used by, such as children's clothes, miss-purchases, and tools or kitchenware that is no longer in use. Also, any kind of stuff that serves as personal promotion, be it product samples, gimmicks or books. Finally, there's surplus food that must either be given away or thrown away.

Of all these things, the only items worth giving away to strangers were in my case two paper copies of a book I helped author. This fits into the personal promotion category. My work on gravity is mentioned in the book together with some of my views on astronomy and geology. The two copies I received from Andrew Johnson were from the start meant to be given away. However, the book is such a deviation from orthodox thinking related to Earth and gravity that I could not think of anyone to give it to. The paper copies ended up in my bookshelf where they have been collecting dust for more than a year. But that has now changed.

The response to my offer to give away two copies of this particular book was immediate, and two individuals are soon coming over, each to get their own copy. Part of the reason for the quick response may be the fact that this book has done rather well. It has good reviews. As a fringe science book, it's quite a hit, and I think I know why.

Fringe views are often associated with politics. This is especially true for Andrew Johnson who has unorthodox views on everything from 9/11 to the climate. This means that his books are only read by those who already believe in his conclusions. Very few people read this kind of books for the sheer enjoyment of the alternative view. However, in the case of gravity and geology there's no obvious political message attached. People can read the book for themselves, follow Johnson's logic and check the evidence for themselves, without ever having to deal with a voice in the back of their minds that either agrees or disagrees purely on principle. But paradoxically, this very fact makes the book all the more subversive.

Andrew Johnson is very thorough, has a great story telling voice and a logical mind. He's nothing like the stereotypic conspiracy theorist presented in the media. Furthermore, the evidence in support of a hollow and expanding Earth are numerous and compelling. The reader cannot avoid thinking that there might be some truth to this alternative view, and if this is the case for gravity and geology, why not other things as well?

The book is an eye-opener. It reveals the fact that much that we are taught as facts are mere opinions, some of which are demonstrably false. We know that gravity cannot pull matter together to form stars and planets. We know that dinosaurs couldn't roam the Earth under today's gravity, and we know that continents are much older than sea-beds. The list of facts that are under-communicated and contrary to dogma is surprisingly long. Once this is realized by readers, other more controversial views may also find a hearing, and therein lies the subversive power of this book.

Tin foil hat

By Rory112233 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Physics as Correlation, Causation and Mechanism

What, how and why are questions constantly asked by enquiring minds. When we see things happen, we want to know the full scope of the events. This is the what part of our enquiry. Then, we want to know how one sub-event led to another sub-event. This is the how part. And finally, we want to know the mechanism behind the sub-events. In addition to knowing how sub-events are related, we want to know why they are related.

This is the essence of science. However, ever since Newton wrote his masterpiece on physics, the why part of our enquiry has often been skipped. Newton wrote his book without ever proposing an underlying mechanism for his equations. His equations describe in detail how things are related, but say nothing about why things are as they are. Newton made no secret of this. He was completely open about the fact that the why part was omitted from his book. This caused a stir at the time. Some went so far as to call his book unscientific. But it's now considered highly scientific to present equations with little to no explanation as to why the equations work. Causation is sufficient. Mechanism is irrelevant.

This line of thinking has gone so far now that many confuse causation with mechanism. When asked why a steel ball starts moving in the direction that it has been hit, the standard explanation will refer to the direction of energy. Equations are then used to illustrate the relationship. However, this is not an explanation. It's an additional causation that happens to correlate to the direction of motion. It says nothing about why the ball starts moving.

On closer analysis, hardly anything in physics is explained mechanically these days. There are all sorts of measurable quantities, including exact equations binding these quantities together. But there's hardly a mechanical explanation to be found anywhere, and this is why I decided to come up with my own mechanics. I wanted to find a simple mechanical model to explain the why part of our enquiry, and what I discovered was that a strict particle model will do the trick. Everything, including time and space can be reduced to particles and motion.

Putting this model to the test, I found it capable of explaining every aspect of physics, from kinetics and optics to field forces and nuclear physics. Even quantum entanglement fitted into this model.

This doesn't mean that I claim to have the one true answer to all questions related to physics. There may be other theories that fit the what and how of physics just as well as mine. But the fact remains that the theory contained in my book is a complete one, capable of explaining the entirety of the physical world we live in.

A particle

My Tao - The Natural Pace of Things

There is a natural pace in nature that we cannot alter. The turnings of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the moon, day and night, birth and death. None of this can be altered. However, we can make artificial changes. Electric light extends the day into night. Green houses make things grow well into winter. Compost makes thing grow faster. By introducing these enhancers, we can increase our productivity and comfort level. We can make life better through technology. But all too often, we go too far, and instead of gains we lose.

This is why we should pay attention to our stress and anxiety levels. If we do things at a healthy pace, we become comfortable and confident. But if we do things too quickly we become stressed, and if we do them too slowly, we become anxious. Doing things in fits and starts make us both anxious and stressed at the same time. This extends to spending habits and life style. Living beyond our means will only serve to stress us, no matter how relaxing the service or good may seem in the advertisement.

The idea that stress and anxiety is a natural and healthy part of modern life is popular, but wrong. Nothing is gained by putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions. However, it's a convenient place to keep one's subjects if political control is the goal. That's why politicians and their minions insist on heated debates and as much controversy as possible. By constantly spooking their subjects, and stressing them in all ways imaginable, no-one retains the wherewithal to oppose the system in an effective manner. No-one can withdraw from the system when neck deep in debt and constantly chasing salaries to pay for consumption of dubious value.

It's important to realize that our pace must necessarily parallel nature itself. We are limited by what nature can provide, and it follows that any activity that goes beyond this limit is wasteful and bound to fail just as much as inactivity. Furthermore, everyone is equipped with a natural sense of this pace. Our chances of success in society are therefore related to the pace at which we present ourselves to our peers.

My stepdaughter suggested the other day that she should send out resumes to employers, even those who had no use for her. What could she possible loose by doing this? Then I pointed out that she would in doing this present herself as the one with no sense of timing or intuition. She would become the clumsy one that shoots in all direction on the random hope of hitting a bird. Employers are people too. They too want to do things at a natural pace. Wading through heaps of unsolicited mail is not top of their list of favourite activities.

On the other hand, if my stepdaughter sends out targeted and well-crafted letters to people who are looking for her specific profile, she'll nail it. That would make her the patient hunter who sits quietly until the right kill comes along. It makes her the pleasant one that always knows what everyone wants and provides exactly that.

This is why I, in my ambition to have my thoughts heard, make sure I promote myself at a leisurely pace. I also make sure I have more than one thing to talk about. That way, I present my audience with an entertaining mix of ideas that sparks the imagination. I become the one with a range of ideas and thoughts, open for discussion and fun to be around.

But all of this is only possible for those with sufficient real savings to do things at the right pace. I could never do what I have done the last several years if it wasn't for a drastic reduction in consumption, and an awareness of how the financial markets lure us into loss making positions. It's only by following my own advice related to finance and investments that I'm able to live life as comfortably as I do.

Fresh shoots on a rose bush

My Tao - Unsustainable Sustainability

To find out what's naturally sustainable by default, and what isn't, imagine a world with no central bank and no government. Immediately, we see that only gold and silver can be money, credit becomes personal, and the family becomes the basic political unit, on top of which we include friends and neighbours. Projects that don't turn a profit are abandoned, and our efforts are redirected towards things that add value to ourselves and our families.

All of this is ignored by almost all politicians. They have a very different view of the world. To them, sustainability is about things matching their personal opinion on what is of benefit and what isn't. It makes no difference if what they wish for is profitable or not. What matters is the overall sense of sustainability. Individuals and families are not considered important, except as resources in their scheme of things.

From this we get a command economy in which politicians codify economic incentives and disincentives into law. Projects that please the political establishment receive subsidies while projects that they find dangerous or undesirable are burdened with taxes and regulations, or right out banned.

Sustainable energy is the political code word for energy that pleases the political establishment. There's nothing sustainable about this type of energy, because they only exist due to subsidies. Without the coercion of taxes, and investment mandates laid upon pension funds, green energy would be impossible. No-one would build wind turbines if it wasn't for the command economy we currently live under.

When politicians get scared, or want to scare their subjects, they produce all sorts of laws and regulations. They sometimes even shut down the economy, as we have seen happening this year.

To support this kind of unsustainable economic interference politicians turn to their central banks. They command them to print whatever amount of currency that is required to cover the most glaring holes created by their irresponsible and immoral edicts.

A curious side-effect of this is that a whole flora of industries pop up in order to profit from the dictates of politicians. Not only do we have unnatural activity in the wind turbine industry and other subsidised industries, we have all sorts of consultants and think-tanks that profit directly from this too. My own brother is currently makings his living from advising corporations on how to be more sustainable and inclusive.

Corporations hire the likes of my brother because the command economy rewards those that tag along with the wishes of the politicians. This is initially done for purely pragmatic reasons. However, those involved are quickly inclined to believe that whatever they are doing is both sustainable and intelligent, because it's far easier to do something believing it makes sense than to do it in the full knowledge that it's merely done for the subsidies that can be had. Independent though is thus abandoned. Instead, the edicts of politicians are taken as gospel.

This has the effect of corrupting the minds of even the most intelligent. My brother managed to state in private that the climate and the flue has made our times dangerous and uncertain. He, of all people, should have seen through this scam. But he has internalized his parroting of political correct thought so much that he even in private is unable to see the nonsense in it.

This means that a lot of intelligent people are completely blind to the ultimate consequence of this. There is a disaster approaching where pension funds will be found to be empty, where governments are bankrupt, and anyone depending on government subsidies will find themselves abandoned. Only those with a safe distance from the state will fare relatively well. Those dependent directly or indirectly on the command economy and its associated central banks will face hard times.

Unsustainable sustainability 

By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Pilot Waves as Time

Entropy has been suggested as time because it has direction. Drop a glass on the floor, and it's evident which way time flows, namely from order to disorder. However, this way of looking at time doesn't work for processes where there's no entropy.

Processes with no energy loss can be filmed and run backwards. It looks correct either way. But this is only because we are as yet unable to capture pilot waves on film. Once we do, we will see that no process is without direction, and that this has nothing to do with entropy. Even if there's no energy loss, we have the pilot waves to tell us which frame of film comes before or after a given frame.

The only particles that have no pilot waves associated with them are zero-point particles in the aether itself. It can therefore be argued that the aether has no time of its own. It transmits and directs time, but time itself is local to each particle.

Each particle interacts with other particles in a time frame that is local to itself. However, particles coordinate their pilot waves with each other. They produce wave fronts and resonant structures. Time is thus coordinated through all systems, yielding a real but non-physical notion of universal time. Atomic time, in the form of single particles and their pilot waves, combine to produce universal time in much the same way that these particles combine into grand structures and systems that include our bodies and the universe at large.

The Arrow of Time

Time has two attributes. It has duration and direction.

Time's duration can be explained in terms of the speed of light. The fact that there's a speed limit that applies to all things means that all transfers of energy from one object to another is limited in how fast they can be made. The bigger a thing is, the harder it is to change its energy. Inertia is in this way a consequence of the speed of light and the limit this sets on how fast energy can be transferred from one object to another. Our subjective experience of time is therefore relative speeds. Time is the duration of one thing relative to another.

Time's direction is another matter. It has to do with the direction that energy flows. The past is where energy was before an event. The future is where energy will be after the event. Now is the state of the world in the present, which is defined in its entirety by energetic particles and their pilot waves.

Since everything in the universe, including our consciousness, is driven forward by energy moving from one object to another, our notion of time is that of perpetual forward motion.

My Tao - Stories of Failure

Stories of success are interesting and sometimes useful in that success can be emulated. However, stories of failure are even better, because success can be due to luck while failure is more usually due to something inevitable. Weakness in ourselves and the world around us are often revealed through our failures.

Furthermore, success is often due entirely to an ability to avoid blunders. An awareness of our own weaknesses as well as weaknesses in society as a whole is more often than not the key ingredient to success. One way to improve our own lives is therefore through an openness about our failures. At the very least, we must be open about them towards ourselves, because if we constantly seek to avoid memories of our blunders and mishaps, we miss out on important opportunities to improve.

A well told story of failure is not only useful to ourselves. It's highly appreciated among listeners as well. It's a great relief to learn that failure is commonplace. Stories of failure put things in perspective. They encourages us to confront our own failures.

While stories of failure may turn some people away from us, it attracts the attention of the more sensitive and intelligent. Only the most superficial of people will react to an honest story of failure with scorn. Everybody else will enjoy it in their own way. Being open about failures is in this respect a great filter. It pushes away people of low quality and little worth to us as friends while attracting people of higher quality and higher worth. We end up with a better circle of friends by being open about failures.

This doesn't mean that we should constantly talk about our weaknesses and blunders. Certainly not in an unthinking way, where no analysis or context is provided. But we should always sprinkle our stories with little failures. It's a great mistake to think that we should only share our successes.

When my wife and I recently replaced two capacitors in her knitting machine, we immediately bragged about it in Facebook. It's fun to share this kind of successes, and it's fun to get the thumbs up from friends all over the place. The comment section lit up with praise. We were suddenly experts at fixing things in general, and it went a little to my head. I dished out advice left, right and center. In particular, there was a dishwasher that I thought I could help fix simply by talking about it. Then Karma hit. Our own dishwasher broke down. We got an F4 error.

Full of confidence, my wife and I found this video on YouTube. Then, we did exactly as the man said, yet the problem persisted. Something else seemed to be wrong as well. After a few more attempts at fixing the thing, we were still no further, and we have now given up.

This was a failure that we could have kept secret. However, its precisely this sort of failures that are worth sharing. Not least because this particular failure fitted so well into the context of me thinking myself an expert on dishwashers. My Facebook friends are now duly informed that I'm not the genius that I thought myself to be, and I'm sure the world is a little better for it.

By Photo credited to the firm Levy & fils by this site. (It is credited to a photographer "Kuhn" by another publisher [1].) - the source was not disclosed by its uploader., Public Domain, Link

My Tao - The Beauty of Evil Self Identification

I came across this little trick quite by accident some ten years ago. My would be stepdaughter was a constant pain to be around, always nagging and keeping me away from her mother. Exasperated by this I told her at one point that the reason for me appearing evil is that I'm actually evil by nature. There's nothing I can do. Tough luck, I told her. Her mother has involved herself with an evil man.

That approach worked surprisingly well. There was no more my stepdaughter could say. Whenever something came up about my person that she didn't like, I pointed out my evil nature. The poor thing was saddled with an evil stepfather. Her miserable fate was something she just had to live with.

A further advantage that I soon discovered was that whenever I had been genuinely grumpy or mean, as we all are from time to time, I could dismiss this too as something inherent to my nature. I would admit that I was mean. I would excuse myself. But there was no need to explain. Being evil by nature, implies after all that anything nice comes at an effort. My default condition is to be evil. Nice is a bonus.

A somewhat surprising effect of this was that my stepdaughter soon came to like this game, and we've become good friends. The fact that I'm open about my dark side must have made her realize that her own dark thoughts were nothing to be ashamed of either. She could share these with her evil stepfather. All sorts of dark things could be brought forth and examined. Instead of being insecure about these tendencies that we all carry with us, she realized its power, and so did I. There's simply a huge advantage in being open about our dark side to the point of declaring it as our default tendency.

There's of course humor mixed into this. My stepdaughter knows full well that I'm not evil. She knows it's a convenient excuse with some truth to it. But truth is that I could do something terrible if I was pressed to do so, and some have come to realize this by now. They can't decide on whether to think of me as a nice guy, or as a would be sadistic murderer. That's not a weakness. It's a strength, and I think a number of my nearest and dearest are internalizing this to the point of seeing themselves in this light themselves. My stepdaughter, my wife, and my children are all of this kind. They are open, honest and nice. But there's an aura about them that tells of a dark energy just below the surface.

All of this comes in handy in a world gone mad with hyper-sensitivity. If anyone gets offended by anything I do or say, that's their problem, not mine. Many are shocked to discover that I'm a selfish tax cheat, that I pay no attention to inconvenient rules that cannot be enforced, that I position myself and my family as best I can in the greater scheme of things, etc. That's evil and selfish, they say, as if that was an argument for anything. Well, it so happens that I'm evil by nature, and I don't intend to change. What are they going to do about that? Shoot me?

As long as we're not at the point where self declared evil people get a bullet to their head, this strategy works like a charm. I can highly recommend it as it makes for more openness, and less self censorship. There's no need for us evil people to pay any attention to what the outrage mob happens to think. If anyone questions the reality of our self identification, we can tell them that it's none of their business. If I can self-identify as a woman, why not self identify as evil? In fact, the latter seems more natural to me, not least because it's true.

By John William Waterhouse - one or more third parties have made copyright claims against Wikimedia Commons in relation to the work from which this is sourced or a purely mechanical reproduction thereof. This may be due to recognition of the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, allowing works to be eligible for protection through skill and labour, and not purely by originality as is the case in the United States (where this website is hosted). These claims may or may not be valid in all jurisdictions. As such, use of this image in the jurisdiction of the claimant or other countries may be regarded as copyright infringement. Please see Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag for more information., Public Domain, Link

My Tao - The Beauty of Outrage Politics

The world is going crazy. Everything imaginable is being turned into politics. There's hardly a thing that doesn't outrage somebody at some level. Words must be chosen carefully. Publicly venting an observation can land us in trouble, even if factually correct.

While this can be tiresome for all, it's especially tiresome for people working for large institutions closely associated with the state apparatus. One wrong utterance and we're fired, and/or funding is denied.

The amount of cognitive energy spent on this nonsense is immense. It's so draining that entire departments can be completely disabled for days or weeks on end as everybody seek shelter from the outrage mob, triggered by some random comment.

While this can be unnerving for the state's subjects, it's pure brilliance seen from the perspective of citizens, because the less efficient the state becomes, the more freedom there is for us to enjoy. Completely preoccupied by a virus and a bunch of gender and race issues, the tax office is far less efficient these days than it used to be. Schools are forced to let parents home school. A lot of wiggle room has been created.

Outrage politics has set in motion a general trend. People are turning away from central institutions. Tired of the unpredictable and rabid nature of outrage politics, they seek alternatives outside the system.

The more the outrage mob gets involved in state affairs, the more people drift away. With bureaucrats preoccupied with silly issues, our freedoms expand. Far from becoming less free, we are gaining freedom. However, this applies only to those of us who reject party politics. Only we who refuse to play along are able to reap the benefits of what's going on. The rest will become increasingly angry and locked up in mindless rants. They will fail to profit from the freedoms that come with outrage politics.

By David Shankbone - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

My Tao - Control and Understanding

Yesterday's success was short lived. The capacitor blew anyway, and had to be fixed.

Blown capacitor at the back

Our initial reaction was that we could have anticipated this. The fuse blew for a reason. Something was wrong, and the capacitors were old. Had we replaced the capacitors right away, we would have saved ourselves some time and bother. However, this ignores the fact that we did not know for sure if there was anything wrong. Had we fixed it right away, we would have acted without knowing for sure that we were doing the right thing. That would have left a feeling of uncertainty about the whole operation. We would have fixed the problem, but we wouldn't have had the benefit of knowing that there really was a problem and that we fixed it.

That distinction is important. Now that we know that we fixed the problem, we know that we did the right thing, and that we were in fact in control of the operation. Otherwise, we would have saved some time at the expense of not knowing if we really knew what we were doing.

Furthermore, the time saved would have been minimal. Having opened the knitting machine yesterday, we knew exactly what we were doing this time around. It took us less than ten minutes to get back to where we were when we replaced the fuse. Feeling more confident about what we were doing, my wife and I went about the business of replacing the capacitors. She held the circuit board and capacitors, and I held the soldering iron. We fiddled with the components that were smaller than the originals, but we found a way to put them into place anyway.

Capacitors replaced

We could have replaced the capacitors yesterday. However, that would have come with some anguish and possible regret due to the apparent extra work. The certainty we attained this morning when the capacitor blew, trumped the fact that everything could have been done marginally quicker.

This illustrates that it's not important to be the quickest or the best when faced with a challenge. What's important is control and the ease with which things flow when done in the proper order. Going forward, my wife and I now have the insight needed to make similar fixes with confidence. That would not have been the case had we done things quickly but with less control.

The slow and controlled is always better than the quick and perilous, because success is not a question of speed. While edgy agility may win in the short term, patience and sound understanding of situations are the essential ingredients to sustained success.

My Tao - Missing the Obvious

One of my wife's knitting machines stopped working the other day. There was a bang and a puff of smoke, and that was it. After some research, she found out that it must have been a capacitor that blew up, so she ordered online spare components and a soldering iron. Once her parcel arrived, we went ahead with the repair. We opened the machine. I plugged in the soldering iron. I was just about to start. Then, my wife asked rhetorically if we shouldn't start by simply replacing the fuse. I put down the soldering iron, replaced the fuse, and turned the machine on. Sure enough, it worked like a charm!

The obvious first step was right there in front of me, yet I completely missed it. All the talk of replacing capacitors had made me so set on the idea of doing some soldering that it completely escaped me that the problem might not be the capacitors.

Had this been the only case of its sort, it wouldn't deserve any mention. However, this type of situations come about way more often than I like. Completely obvious facts go unnoticed and ignored. Why does it take me so long to realize the obvious?

Our south facing balcony has a shady corner. For years, I figured it nothing more than a quaint architectural feature. I used it as a shed for pots and gardening tools. Meanwhile I struggled with plants getting burned in the intense summer sun. Why did it take me so long to realize that most plants don't like intense sun? That's what the shady area was for. Delicate flowers thrive in there.

My list of missteps of this kind is very long, and I'm sure others can relate to this as well. In fact, most people still don't realize that real money is gold and silver, not fiat issued by central bankers. Most people still think that politicians hold answers to problems in society while it's increasingly obvious that they are the source of most problems. Most people think that problems must be solved by others, and that a majority needs to be in place for action to make any sense. Yet, here I am, three years on after having terminated my bank accounts and registered business activities. Acting solely through proxies when doing business I'm much better off than I ever was.

The key to success, I'm sure, lies in mindfulness. We have to accept that solutions, even the glaringly obvious ones, come to us sometimes slowly and sometimes as epiphanies. Either way, we must set off time to relax and meditate. We must absorb the evidence in front of us and fully integrate it into our psyche. When flowers express stress. Internalize it and process it. Then, the solution comes to mind on its own.

We must let our minds wander into areas unexplored. We must study to learn, rather than to parrot. We mustn't accept anything for truth before we know it to be so. On the micro-level, this means that we mustn't simply assume that capacitors must be replaced when there's a problem with a knitting machine. On the macro-level, we must realize that liberty is personal and always within grasp. If politicians can live prosperous lives by meddling in other people's affairs, why shouldn't we live equally prosperously by keeping our labor and wealth out of their reach? If we work mainly to pay taxes, as I did for many years, why work? We're not slaves.

A shady corner of our balcony

My Tao - For Things to Remain the Same

... everything must change.

These are the wise words uttered by a fictional aristocrat in a book about the great upheavals that took place in Italy some 150 years ago.

Nothing is as important to the political elite as the appearance of change and progress. They know that their existence is predicated on this. Without the general public's belief in their importance in history, they will loose all significance. There's therefore a constant need to create history through strife, intervention and resolution.

The more their significance is threatened, the more important it is to engage the average man and woman in some kind of epic struggle.

The play book is the same every time, so there's nothing new in this. First, there has to be some issue of dispute. Then, there has to be struggle and strife. Finally, there has to be resolution through intervention from them, the aristocrats. It's essentially a variation on the old doctrine of split and conquer.

The never ending array of political issues currently being dreamed into existence is based on this doctrine. We have to band together behind some epic cause, and those who are not with us in this are by default against us.

First, there was the climate, with Great as a divine character. Then there was the flu, and now it's history itself that is an issue. Statues and other symbols of oppression have to be removed. There's a general atmosphere of outrage and fear, all feeding into a sense of urgent action. Energy is directed towards symbols. Resources are directed towards green projects, and people are locked down for no good reason at all.

All of this is designed to move attention away from the political elite and onto our neighbors and friends. The hope is to ignite a civil war of some kind. Then there will be a power vacuum that the political elite can fill. By being the ones bringing peace and stability back to the world, they will be seen as heroes and a necessary element of life. Without rulers, we're doomed.

What is never mentioned, is that the divisions and strife were brought about by the political elite themselves. They were the ones dreaming up the climate crisis. They came up with identity politics. They put everything in place for the riots and the looting.

To point this out is futile. It achieves nothing apart from setting us up as a faction in their game. Instead, we should stop talking, and start doing. By becoming anarchists ourselves, we can position ourselves so that we either profit or remain unaffected by the turmoils of the world. By remaining outside of the strife, we can take advantage of the same relative calm that the elite use for their own ends.

Rather than siding with bandits of one color or another, we take up service for a king. A wealthy friend or acquaintance may find our skills and personality useful. Even a gardener for a rich land owner is better off than most people. Why not seek service with such people? If we have savings of our own, we can be that king ourselves.

Once we are in a position where we can view the political stage as a circus where there's money to be made from the follies of others, we are well on our way to become Tao masters. Once there, we can join the dark forces that manipulate deliberately to produce chaos, or the good people who would rather see the outbreak of true peace and harmony. Either way, we profit from staying outside of the circus. If we side with the good, we have the added advantage of security. Should things come completely unglued, we're in a better position to get out of our predicament with our heads still attached to our necks.

By Copyright by the Calvert Litho. Co., Detroit, Mich. - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g02091. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

My Tao - Layers of Spin

The world is going mad before our very eyes. Every possible issue has been turned into politics where feelings trump facts. The weather has been subject to politics for so long, many are not aware that it hasn't always been this way.

As of late, the madness has been turned up another few notches. There is massive monetary manipulations of the markets, there is a mysterious flu pandemic that we must submit to, there are riots in the streets over the death of a suspect detained by the police.

All is spun into complex webs of political narratives. Everybody has an opinion, but no-one has any facts. Bricks appear in the streets before "spontaneous" riots break out. Restaurants and shops in black communities are torched by mysterious white people during racial riots.

The motives for these actions are unclear. The only thing we can say for sure is that life is being made increasingly difficult for an increasing number of people. If this is done on purpose or not is a matter of opinion. So is the color of the perpetrators. Far left blames far right and visa versa, and there's no middle ground. We are either with them or against them.

Spin is carefully put together, and only spotted as such in retrospect. When people woke up to the inconsistencies in the climate narrative, they got distracted by the flu. When that narrative fell apart as well, there were suddenly riots in the streets. The distractions are constant and never ending.

We are rapidly approaching peak politics, a world where nothing is left to the individual to decide, except for which faction to side with. In such a world, there's no point in trying to voice reason. This is not a time to show our colors. Rather, it's time for positioning. We must focus on the likely outcome of current events. The whys and the whats are for historians to figure out. Our job is to navigate these troubled waters with an eye for consequences rather than cause.

By Arnold Paul - Selbst erstelltes Foto, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

My Tao - Natural Arrangements

Modern society, with all its complexities, are powered by energy. Complicated arrangements of all sorts are set up for our convenience. Factories produce products available to us through a complex web of logistics. Behind every convenience of everyday life lies an expansive machinery in need of energy.

The complexity of society can, at least in part, be judged by the amount of energy that it consumes. Primitive societies consume less energy than more complex ones. When we see energy consumption drop, it indicates a drop in complexity. When it rises, things are likely becoming more complex.

Seen in this light, its interesting that worldwide energy consumption has dropped by 20% so far this year. This indicates that complexities that we have relied on in the past are being dismantled. Much of this is probably confined to production and logistics, including air travel and tourism. But other complex structures may be dismantled as well.

There are plenty of complex structures in modern society that are in fact superfluous. They only exist due to a perceived convenience that may not even be real. While their existence may be vital to many, they can be completely removed and replaced by something simpler. Examples of such superfluous structures include:

1. government
2. welfare state
3. police
4. paper assets
5. derivatives
6. fiat and crypto currencies

All of these things are artificial artifacts that serve to replace naturally occurring phenomena. The natural alternative to the points listed above are:

1. family and voluntary associations, instead of government
2. charity, instead of welfare state
3. private security, instead of police
4. physical assets, instead of paper assets
5. capital equipment, instead of derivatives
6. gold and silver, instead of fiat and crypto currencies

Should some or all of the items in the first list disappear, corresponding items in the second list will take over. The second list contains elements that are naturally occurring. While some may seek to suppress or trivialize elements in the second list, they cannot remove them. Furthermore, the top list requires more energy in order to be sustained. Any attempt to replace the second list with the first will drain a society of resources, as happened in Soviet Russia and other places where Communism has been tried.

From this, its clear that anyone relying on elements in the first list are in a more precarious situation than people relying on elements in the second list. The first list can be removed in its entirety. There is not a single item that holds any kind of permanency.

With energy consumption now down, there's a real chance that at least some of the items in the first list will be reduced or removed. The current push to remove or severely limit the police may well succeed. Those relying on the police rather than private security may soon find themselves exposed and in need of rapid rearrangements.

But it isn't only the police that's currently under pressure. Tax revenues have plummeted together with the drop in energy consumption. Not a single one of the state's many projects are sufficiently funded to remain in operation. Welfare checks may be reduced, or their purchasing power will be curtailed through price inflation. Either way, welfare dependency will become increasingly painful and ultimately impossible. Things are going to get ugly for those invested in or dependent on the first list.

While this may sound like the end of the world to some, it's a good thing for most. A full replacement of the first list with the second will lead to more prosperity, even as energy consumption goes down. A great beneficiary will be liberty. Without the state, we will no longer need to register with government officials before seeking gainful employment. There won't be any taxes either. We can do our own charitable work with our own money. Rather than letting the state take care of this for us we'll do it ourselves according to our own priorities and values.

In the absence of a state, things will revert to something simpler and better:

• Gold will be money
• House rules will be law
• Arbitration will be voluntary
• Security will be private

Every man and every woman will be a sovereign. Without the state to enforce laws of oppression, anyone trapped by an evil sovereign will have the option to escape. Instead of going from one country to another in search of liberty, we can go from one household to another. This is not to say that the natural state of things will be Utopia. There will always be evildoers, and even gangs of evildoers. But they will be few and far between because of their inherent inefficiencies.

Good sovereigns will far outnumber evil ones because the oppressive, intrusive and disruptive behavior of evil is inefficient. This is why good always triumphs over evil. This is also why poor but safe states, such as Portugal, are less oppressive and insistent on conformity than prosperous states. The Portuguese state simply lacks the resources to keep a lid on people's freedoms.

A consequence of this is that most Portuguese people are likely to go through the coming crisis relatively unscathed. They are well connected to the natural order of things and therefore more likely to find their way through a simpler system. However, welfare recipients in the US and other wealthy nations are going to suffer, especially in big cities where things have become highly artificial. Riots, violence and unrest will become increasingly the norm as the current order of things come unglued.

It may take decades or even centuries for the coming unwind to come to its conclusion, at which point we'll have a minimal or non-existent state. Then, as things improve, someone will come up with a way to do things better through artificial means, and there will be a new cycle.

By Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov - http://lj.rossia.org/users/john_petrov/166993.html, Public Domain, Link

My Tao - Winning by Refusing to Play

The idea of action through inaction is both at the heart of Tao thinking and the most counter-intuitive aspect of it. Our very existence is based on action. We have to eat in order to live. How then is it possible to achieve anything through inaction?

The answer to this is that positioning is by far the most powerful form of action. A sailboat doesn't cross the ocean by brute force. It crosses the ocean due to skillful positioning. The same is true for most other aspects of human affairs. Leaving out our trivial day to day pursuit of three meals a day, no action is often better than action.

In addition to action through inaction, my Tao teaches another paradox, namely victory through a refusal to play. This too is an option that most people overlook. We keep playing the game of finance and investments even when the odds are heavily stacked against us.

With constant interference of central banks and politicians on the side of big corporations, we're at a huge disadvantage when we play their games. However, if we refuse to play, then we don't only save ourselves from losses, we win. That's because the game is designed to siphon wealth off the hands of participants. If the participants leave the roulette table, the casino owners loose, and we win by default.

The way to do this is to sell all paper assets and buy physical gold or silver instead. Some cash must be kept at hand so that we can cover day to day expenses, but apart from that, no cash should be held. The reason for this is that cash is casino chips. As long as we hold them, we're still in the casino.

The optimal position is to stay as far removed from the casino as possible. That implies a minimum of cash, a self sufficient house with a modest garden and a profession that can be practiced outside the system.

Keeping costs down during our isolation from the casino is essential because the play may take years, or even decades to fully exhaust the opponent. However, our financial gains will accumulate during our absence. Our gold and silver savings are likely to last longer than anticipated because the casino losses are automatically our gains.

This strategy only works when the casino is rigged, as it is today. During healthy periods of fair play, we're not going to win anything by staying away from paper assets. But herein lies its beauty. It works the best when things are dark. It is precisely when we wish we could leave society for a while, until everybody sobers up and comes back to their senses, that this strategy is most likely to land us financial gains. The crazier things get, the more likely we are to win by not playing. When regulations become Byzantine, taxation oppressive, state "investments" wasteful, and riots, protests and political correctness are everywhere, gold and silver offer us a way out.

This is not lost on politicians and central bankers, so they come up with ways to discourage this type of refusal to play along with their games. They may even resort to confiscatory taxation or outright banning people from owning precious metals. In that case, we need to move to some other jurisdiction, or find a sheltered enclave with a thriving parallel economy. But in the absence of such draconian measures we can stay in our modest house and wait out the storm.

Historically, this strategy is the winning one almost half the time. To know when it applies, we can consult the Dow/Gold ratio or other measures that indicate the level of froth in financial markets.

Cottage

By Valtov at fi:wikipedia - Originally from fi:wikipedia, Public Domain, Link

My Tao - To the Abyss and Back

A Tao master positions himself with a keen eye for risk and reward. Even when 100% sure of himself, he's never all in. He knows his limits. He knows that he may be wrong, and he knows the consequences of being wrong. Not only does he know these things, he acts on this knowledge. A Tao master will never throw caution to the wind and go all in just because he feels lucky. It's therefore extremely rare for a Tao master to find himself broke, or in other ways defeated.

However, we're not all Tao masters, and even Tao masters may find themselves defeated at some point. What then? Is this the end of the road? Staring into the abyss of failure, is it time to jump?

It's easy to think that all is lost when disaster strikes, especially if it's due to greedy or irresponsible behavior on our part. A 20 year old day-trader found himself suddenly short some 700,000 dollars. He responded by taking his own life. It was the only way out, he thought. The alternative would be a life as a slave for his creditors.

But bankruptcy is not the end of the line, even if it's permanent. I know, because I'm bankrupt myself. I have no official income or wealth, but I still owe the Norwegian taxman some 50,000 dollars. Few people are as relentless in their pursuit of money as the taxman, so there's no hope that I'll ever get off the hook. Yet I'm living a more fulfilling life now than I ever did.

As it turns out, there's a whole world out there that's free of taxmen and bank clerks, and its a far better world than the one we're supposed to live in. Once we leave the system behind, no-one cares what sort of debt we may have with a bank clerk or taxman. We get your pay outside the system.

We all have friends and family that may find our skills useful. They can either provide some work directly, or act as proxies. I pay all my bills through my wife and children. They also help direct money to me for my investments and labor. In this parallel economy, I'm quite wealthy. I have gold and a fixed income. With no taxes, bank fees, or erosion of saving through inflation, I'm doing very well on a very meager income.

This is not to say that bankruptcy is a smart first move towards personal liberation. It's not. The first move should always be to get into the parallel economy. Its only when all is clear that we can rationally choose to leave the taxman short changed. I went bankrupt after I was well established in the parallel economy. I nevertheless had a moment when I was staring into the abyss, and I very much advise against going that far. It's better to play things safe than to risk suicidal anxiety attacks. But a bit of risk taking is sometimes just the thing to do to regain some sense of autonomy. By facing the taxman head on in a position of safety, I quickly recovered from my depression.

All is not lost, even if things unfold in a chaotic and detrimental way. The door is always open to a better and simpler way of life where debt to banks and taxmen are irrelevant. There is plenty of folk tales about this. If we're truly down and out, we find a king for whom we take up service. If we're escaping the system with booty of our own, we establish ourselves as kings. Either way, there's the dynamic in which the king and the servant enter into mutually benefiting arrangements. The good servant may even become prince and king as the story unfolds.

There's a semi-magical world out there where life is both simpler and more honest. As the current system becomes evermore unlivable, this alternative will rise to dominance. Taking up service for a king is not the end of the line, but the beginning of an adventure. Luckily for us, it may even become the norm in a not too distant future.

By Michael Gredenberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The 5th Empire - CHAZ

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is a newly established anarchist area in which the state has been substituted by voluntary policing and government. It remains to be seen how successful this will be, but I suspect it will end badly. It came about in the wrong way and is therefore wide open to all sorts of problems.

Expelling a police force from an area doesn't in itself usher in voluntary interaction among people. It leaves a power vacuum open for grabs. There's no guarantee that the power vacuum will be filled with liberty minded people. It may as well be filled by gangsters and war lords, eager to set up a dictatorship.

The correct way around this would have been for the residents and business owners in the area to have hired private security ahead of the expulsion of the police force. In that way, there would be no ambiguity as to legal arrangements.

Private legal arbitration should also have been established ahead of the expulsion. The assumption that people will automatically adopt the arbitration method promoted by the anarchists is naive, and unlikely to work. Would be dictators are not going to abide by anyone's rules but their own. Having more or less invited such people into the area, the anarchists are likely to find themselves voiceless in their newly established free state.

While it's still possible that everything ends well for the anarchists, it's more likely to end in tears. Anarchy is best established organically with the gradual replacement of government institutions. Instead of direct confrontation, we discretely sidestep the system. We use private arbitration and private security, and stay away form the banking system as much as possible.

By Brian Gomes Bascoy - https://www.flickr.com/photos/peramides/49990329077/, CC BY 2.0, Link

My Tao - The Real-Estate Trap

The taxman has it easy these days. With everything registered and reported into him, a few keystrokes on his computer is all he has to invest of effort to check on us. However, this has made him lazy. If it isn't in the computer, he won't check on it. Barter and savings in tools, furniture and precious metals will not be taxed unless we report this ourselves.

This has not gone unnoticed. People are increasingly turning to the parallel economy for their livelihood. The less we register with the taxman, the better off we are, and a point is rapidly approaching where taxation becomes close to impossible. The taxman is therefore forced to revert to earlier practices, less reliant on voluntary reporting by his subjects. The trend is towards taxing that which is visually apparent rather than that which is reported.

The easiest thing to tax is real-estate because it's impossible to hide. It's physically anchored to the ground. It cannot be moved out of the taxman's reach, and can therefore be confiscated if need be. This is why the default target of any tax-regime is real-estate, and we're about to see this come back in a big way. Most states and local governments already tax real-estate, but there is a long way to go yet. There are all sorts of improvements that can be made in the tax-code. A second home can naturally be taxed more than a permanent dwelling, a luxurious house more than a modest one. Windows and chimneys can be counted. The possibilities are endless, and they will increasingly come into effect as other tax-revenues dry up.

Those who have invested heavily in real-estate are likely setting themselves up for a shock as they will be the prime target for the taxman in coming years. They will be hit by a double whammy as they find themselves hit by higher taxes and lower real-estate prices. With a lot of people finding themselves forced to sell real-estate in order to avoid the constant drain of taxation, prices for certain pieces of property may even go negative.

People will much prefer to save in precious metals which is close to impossible to tax. If used directly in commerce it cannot even be taxed at point of transaction. It will evade taxation in the same way other kinds of barter evade taxation. A piece of real-estate can be transacted for an official amount close to zero, combined with an unofficial amount of gold. But the amount of gold required may be negligible because the main attraction for the seller may be the lower tax burden rather than the gold.

As things stand, the trend is towards heavier taxes on real-estate. We should therefore be careful, and not invest too much in it. A modest house with a garden in a rural area, or a small flat in a town, are our best options because there are limits to how much the taxman can take from the lower end of the wealth spectrum. However, renting a house may not work out very well because landlords are likely to pass the cost of taxation onto their tenants.

As with all things related to the Tao, we should seek balance and modesty. A debt free barter based economy is more likely to provide us with the balance and harmony that we crave than leveraged investments in a highly regulated and taxed economy.

By User:Brendel at en.wikipedia.org - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

My Tao - Not My Country

We're constantly told to care about our country, and it's easy to get carried away on waves of emotions when we see things happening that disturb us. However, we mustn't loose sight of the fact that we don't actually own anything beyond that which we possess through labor or voluntary trade. If something doesn't threaten us directly, we have no business interfering in it.

So when my brother tells me that I have to care about wind turbines being built in Norway because it's my country, I shrug my shoulders. Norway isn't my country, nor is it anyone else's country, and if the wind turbines are being put up on public lands, I got no business interfering. At most, I can argue the folly of putting up wind turbines, and I can agree that it's a giant waste and nothing short of wanton destruction of wild life. However, as far as I'm concerned, the wind turbines belong to the politicians who put them up. They're not mine, and since I don't pay any taxes I can't even argue that they are partially mine.

The same goes for political issues. While it's disturbing to see fascism rear its ugly head, it's none of my business as long as the rioting, looting and wanton destruction of property happens in far off places. However, should any of this happen in my neighborhood, I would gladly step in on the side of the Goths. I wouldn't ask permission or petition the government for protection. I would get a gun and stand guard.

Party politics, with its elaborate system of petitions, voting and demonstrations is nothing but a giant distraction. It takes our attention away from that which is near and immediate in favor of things we cannot do anything about. This distraction is immensely useful for those who seek to rule over us because it allows them to rob us blind while we're busy elsewhere.

If we allow ourselves to get carried away by party politics, we'll get ourselves entangled in all sorts of webs spun deliberately to trick us into fighting someone else's war. That's why I refuse to get angry about stuff far away. That energy is better spent fighting for my personal liberties. By staying calm and collected, and out of the eye of our would be oppressors, I retain an element of surprise.

While I'm full of sympathy for those fighting for their liberties in far off places, my concern is limited to my own personal realm. That which interferes or directly threatens me will be resisted. All sorts of tactics will be employed, and my recommendation is that others do the same. Intelligently applied terror is far more effective than bucket loads of petitioning, voting and random rioting. Those who wish to be left alone need only be rigorous and intelligent in their resistance, because would be rulers much prefer obvious targets than those that are cloaked in obscurity, danger and resilience.

By Two_owls_at_Kuala_Lumpur_Bird_Park-8a.jpg: Brandon Lim derivative work: Snowmanradio (talk) - originally posted to flickr and uploaded to commons at Two_owls_at_Kuala_Lumpur_Bird_Park-8a.jpg, CC BY 2.0, Link

My Tao - The Madness of Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza was employed as Don Quixote squire in the famous novel about this self proclaimed knight and his trusted servant. While much has been said about Don Quixote's delusions, little has been noted about the peculiar madness of Sancho Panza.

The odd thing about Sancho is that he's quite aware of his master's madness, yet nevertheless fully prepared to trust him and invest his time in his service. When Don Quixote eventually dies and all their adventures come to nothing, Sancho has no regrets. His only sorrow is the loss of his master.

While it is true that Don Quixote provided many memorable moments for Sancho, and that the two men developed a close friendship during their adventures, this was not in the end what motivated Sancho to carry on for as long as he did. The true motivating factor was the promise of a great reward. Sancho was to be given an island to rule for himself once Don Quixote's many imagined enemies were finally defeated.

Sancho Panza carried on in the firm belief that a great reward was just around the corner, despite the evident madness of his master. Nothing made any sense. There were no dragons, no distressed maidens, no giants and no armies of infidels, only windmills, prostitutes, foundries and goat herders. Yet, out of all this, a great reward would nevertheless materialize?

While it's easy to dismiss Sancho as an easily fooled simpleton, truth is that he's no moron. He's down to earth and well aware of what's going on. He has no need of a master, yet he invests his time and energy into a madman's projects because the promise of a great reward is too much to give up for something as trivial as reality. To Sancho, reality is subordinate to hope, and this particular madness is much more common than we like to admit.

We all engage in some kind of wishful thinking from time to time, and a great number of us are willing to stake our financial future on nothing but hope and hot air. The promise of a comfortable pension at some future date keeps most of us going and paying into various pension schemes, even when we know that it's all an illusion. The wind turbines going up all over Norway are paid for by the sweat and labor of honest Norwegians. The promise of a prosperous and green future is clearly delusional, but most Norwegians continue to pay into this madness with the same sort of enthusiasm that Sancho had for Don Quixote.

We all know that politicians are full of hot air and delusional beyond repair, yet the great majority of us prefer to trust them with our money, convinced that we will reap much more than we pay in. Most everyone is suffering from the same madness that Sancho Panza suffered in his life, and when the welfare state collapses in a not too distant future, most people will have no regrets beyond a nostalgic longing back to the days when the illusion was still alive.

By Gustave Doré - originally uploaded on nds.wikipedia by Bruker:G.Meiners at 14:22, 28. July 2005. Filename was Don Quijote and Sancho Panza.jpg., Public Domain, Link