Intelligent human beings have an internal moral compass that operates based on instincts. It is true that culture, nurturing, education and socialization have a great impact on our behavior and belief system, but by and large, when the level of intelligence within a given social group reaches a certain point, society becomes enlightened, which is synonymous to a society guided by progressive, secular, and liberal values.
This is a follow up diary to: Network: The Case For Organized Resistance (A Thought Experiment)
What is crowd intelligence? It is societal-level decision-making based on the collective wisdom of crowds. One important aspect of this is that the better educated citizens are, the better decisions they will make, collectively.
That is why education, science, secularism, and intellect are highly valued by progressives and liberals, in the understanding that a citizenry capable of critical thinking will make better decisions about how to better organize society.
Conversely, that is why sociopatic individuals with predatory tendencies thrive in social environments where ignorance is widespread. In such environments, they are able to manipulate the masses by exploiting their base instincts, which include superstition, racism, jingoism, nativism, extreme religious fundamentalism, and extreme nationalism.
Exploitative, sadistic, and megalomaniacal ruling classes take advantage of ignorance in order to enrich themselves by extracting wealth and power from the population.
Today, in the United States, there is a struggle between a ruling class that has been able to take control of the levers of power during the last few decades, and a rising opposition to their tyranny, made up mainly by liberals and progressives.
This ruling class, which is symbolized by organizations like ALEC have taken full control of the "Stupid Party," or the Republican Party, and partial control of the mainly "Complicit Party," or the Democratic Party establishment.
They have taken control mainly by exploiting base greed and ignorance of the politicians, and this has resulted in a situation where towns, cities, states, and the federal government have become not only unresponsive to the clamor for justice by the population, but complicit in perpetrating crimes against the citizenry.
So in essence, the sociopathic, sadistic, and megalomaniacal ruling class (Wall Street banksters, ALEC, and others) have taken over the government and the mainstream media.
The control over the media is particularly insidious because it allows them to infect the entire society with a very carefully-designed ignorance-inducing virus (or stupid virus) via a mist-like cloud of misinformation and propaganda 24/7. This relates to the aforementioned need for ignorance to be widespread among a population as a necessary condition for them to be manipulated into acting against their own interests, and thus, exploited and enslaved. A real-live case is the Republican Party and its odious offshoot, the Tea Party. And of course, much of the Democratic party establishment, that although being more intelligent, their betrayal is more damaging because it is based on opportunism and greed.
Given this reality, it is imperative for progressives to coalesce into a very cohesive movement using a unified and coordinated approach, with short-, mid-, and long-term strategies.
In my previous diary Network: The Case For Organized Resistance (A Thought Experiment), I asked people to participate in a "thought experiment." The idea of the exercise was to prove that it is possible to coordinate actions, nationwide, even for the almost impossible proposition of "herding cats," which refers to the difficulty of getting diverse groups of progressives to act in unison, in a disciplined, strategic, and coordinated approach.
Why did I conduct this (basic) experiment? I truly believe that sane and intelligent citizens acting in unison (with unity of purpose and clear vision and goals) could tear down the Corporate State and help bring about a "more perfect union," which is the promise by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Furthermore, I believe that because of the incredibly damaging and propagandist (psychological) effects of the corporate-owned U.S. media conglomerate, our cognitive abilities (as a whole) to understand how much power citizens really have have weakened under the constant barrage of misinformation and fallacious and absurd narratives.
I also wanted to demonstrate that even thought we are all very diverse, of different races, ages, educational levels, geographic location, live experience, etc., that by putting our minds together we can up with a very clear understanding of the root problems affecting country.
And if so, with a little extra effort, and by building on this concept of "crowd intelligence," we should be able to "quickly" come up with a powerful and unstoppable course of action to not only remove these nefarious, sociopathic and parasitic forces that have taken over our country, but to bring those who have committed crimes, to justice, including war criminals and the financial criminals who looted the economy (and continue to do so right now).
If we, collectively, come to a full understanding of the current state of affairs, then the time to plead and beg government officials to do the right thing is behind us; the time to beg and plead the corrupt and manipulative U.S. media conglomerate to stop lying, obfuscating, manipulating, and misinforming at the behest of their corporate owners, is behind us.
They had a chance to do the right thing; in fact, they had many, many chances. They've seen the suffering, the consequences of the looting, and the manipulation. They know about the thousands of suicides committed by people who could no longer function under the brutality of the system, the spread of poverty, of hunger, of homelessness, including children. And they don't care.
If we are able to create a rapidly-growing nationwide network of social justice activists and find a way to aggregate the collective wisdom of the crowd in order to identify a very clear course of action to take on the Corporate State, this would represent a truly terrifying prospect to the corrupt ruling class.
We, all of us by the millions, would be lifting the curtain and finding just a few grotesque but feeble individuals that have thus far been able to control the minds of millions of people in order to plunder, exploit and enslave. And we will know that we're talking about the trinity of evil: The Corporatists: The Politicians on The Take: The Propagandist U.S. Mainstream media.
I am of the opinion that there has to be a series of coordinated steps nationwide against the the criminal corporate cabal, the media, and the corrupt politicians, as a first step to reclaiming the country. And that once those steps begin, the associated tactics need to be relentless, ongoing, nonstop. I have share very concrete ideas: Psychological Operations As Protest Tactics.
But they are preliminary. The most important thing now is to recruit as many people as possible from all over the country. I suggest we follow the for elements described in the book titled "The Wisdom of Crowds," by James Surowiecki: Diversity; Independence; Decentralization; and the most important (in my view) Aggregation: Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.
Networked "Brain"
Here's my vision about the map below... Fist of all, I envision it as the beginning of some sort of "crowd intelligence" brain being born, to wish every day more and more neurons will be added, increasing its intelligence exponentially from the moment on.
I asked some volunteers to engage in a simple experiment: to report which city they were from, and to share their understanding about what's wrong with the system, and most importantly, what needs to be done to fix it.
I started in the San Francisco Bay Area (Ray Pensador), and (Daily Kos users) Odysseous replied in Austin, and Chi replied in Houston, and postablue in Boca Raton, and ahumbleopinion in Cincinnati, and Red Tom Kidd in Portland, and Himself in Rochester, and Simplify back in the SF Bay Area, and SethRightmer in North Haven, and katiec in Orlando, and cynndara in Richmond, and ladybug53 in Chattanooga, and k9disc in Hudson Valley, and Mentatmark in Erie, and cherrymapin in Easthampton, and many others.
Thank you all for participating! Look at the map; watch the murmuration video. Get inspired. Let your moral compass guide you; let's act together for the good of the country, for the next generation; and for a better world. But we will act; the time for begging the powers that be for justice is over. Now is time for us to act.
Proposed next steps: Please visit my website at www.raypensador.com and sign up to my email list (which will be private and will never be shared with anybody). I will send a weekly email focused on three things: Recruiting people; Finding a mechanism to share ideas about how to take on the Corporate State; Taking action (diverse, relentless, timeless, ongoing, organized, strategic, focused, impactful, and effective).
My vision (dream, expectation) is to help facilitate the birth of a new type of movement, and then get out of the way and see if it can take fly on its own. I'm not looking for any recognition or praise in any way. I just want to see justice done. I want to see our country move in the right direction. And yes, I do want to see those who have been pillaging and plundering be brought to justice.
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Some energy driving us... Murmurations
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The current state of affairs. Let's change it!
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