AEIOUM

[Igneous]

Open boxes

The previous chapter had laid out the conditions required for creating our human environment. We will now discuss the structures necessary for supporting those requirements. But before we begin, let us first set a suitable precedent and an expectation for what is to follow in this chapter. Otherwise we may fall into a position where we may fail to recognize what is being proposed and perhaps even fail to comprehend the intent of the supporting framework, as the term may be too amorphous to grasp without a prior explanation. Let us therefore start by defining what we mean by a societal structure.

Most of us are either biologically inclined or psychologically conditioned to think of societal structures as something that simply exists; perhaps built and instituted by others and that we have no part in driving their construction, their maintenance, or their transformation. We are led to believe that we are each born into a system or a combination of systems where we are but minor players with limited control over something so large as the machinery itself, which places its barriers in our lives and erects walls against those risky forces awaiting beyond our enclosures for our own benefit. This type of thinking unfortunately is not what we mean by a societal structure, and it must be left behind going forward. Instead, let us consider that we are each responsible for abiding by the structures around us or to reject them and to construct something better. We are all active movers in the functioning of the systems we interact with and it is up to us to direct the applications of these external supports. Without this shift and a willingness to cognitively leap beyond our set boundaries, we will not be able to envision anything beyond what we do not preconceive to be our strictly bound limitation of understanding.

The second point we would like to make is that we often think of societal structures as institutions or black boxes that provide certain essential functions, which we must all abide by for the common good. We often believe that all such structures are built on well thought out processes and rules, and hence they must be correct and well suited to managing our complicated problems. The bigger the machinery, the more moving parts there are, each of which must adhere to more complexity as demanded by the structural integrity of the machine. We often believe the same is true for organizations. The larger the organization, the more bureaucracy it requires as it needs proper methods and procedures to manage its complicated flows of activities. Compensation demands that flexibility is lost with size, while stability is made possible with rigidity. Efficiency is lost with bureaucracy, while predictability improves with additional controls. There is an optimal size for everything but there also exists its breaking point. It is difficult for anyone to determine what the correct set of parameters must be to achieve a successful system of human organization, and we cannot claim that certain formations are better than others, nor can we assume that these black boxes are altogether infallible or irreplaceable in their monolithic importance. Therefore rather than limiting our options to our altogether prevalent inclination for creating governing abstractions, we must instead consider whether better alternative interactions and cooperation can create improved coordination among the individuals of our society. We will hence deliberately avoid equating the proposals with any form of organization or box-container type of thinking. The box is always there if needed, but we must try to avoid the habit of packing our ideas into their prettily adorned and heavily invested caskets.

Thirdly, we must be cognizant of the fact that how societal structures are established and how well they function depend mostly on the nature of the individuals who belong to them, their values, and their culture. It is always possible for an individual to affect change, no matter how small or insignificant they may be perceived or perceive themselves to be. In all cases, it is the imperative of the capable to fix what is broken, to replace what cannot be fixed, and to create something new altogether by offering better solutions; for we who understand each other do not jealously belong to any organization that is disjointed from the reality of our common human organism. Our loyalties first and foremost belong to humanity itself and there is no other artificial abstraction of our making that can be placed above our allegiance. Therefore establishments and institutions that do not work to create those environmental conditions we require are to be considered dysfunctional, sub-optimal, or downright defective. We have our own common values, and we each have our shared culture, and we know what we want. Let us not lose sight of what is important in our pursuit of working societal structures for limited and confined organizational successes.

Lastly, all human organizations are centralized expressions of power and therefore they are all without exception, prone to corruption. This has been a recurring theme of humanity that has occurred without fail for every generation, consistently impacting every single individual throughout all of recorded history. It is certainly not something we can fix by creating better organizations nor can we prevent it entirely with carefully placed controls and fail safes. It is also somewhat inevitable as human nature and group think assures the organization's self destruction by accumulating the personal failings of its individuals and thereby relentlessly eroding away its founding principles. We must instead learn to recognize and to provide the means to effectively fight corruption whenever and wherever it appears and that power does not remain stagnant in concentration for long. This statement is of course also applicable to the proposed structures in this chapter and we will discuss the subject for each of them. In the next following chapter however, we will return and focus in detail to elaborate on this topic and its frequent forms of manifestations in human organizations as justifications for imposing power structures that insist on their own versions of law and order.

Our proposed societal structures will be presented in a uniform format, where we will discuss its aims, the prerequisite conditions for achieving success, the positively helpful effects that can aid in their functioning, and the negatively harmful aspects that can interfere with their proper operation. The proposals will be presented abstractedly and broadly to avoid limiting the applications to the instruments of the zeitgeist or to the mentality of the current generations. And we will refrain from guiding the implementation possibilities as much as possible as that is likely subject to change under many different circumstances. They are also not to be be limited to formalization of rights or the basis of key institutions erected for centers of command. They are instead to be understood as innate parts of our culture, which we as individuals believe are crucial to having the kind of lives we want to live and as something we wish to pass on to the next generations.

One final word before we begin. We have repeatedly insisted that the focus of this effort needs to be on the individual rather than on groups. Even though this has been said repetitively over and over, we must repeat it once again in case the point has still not reached understanding. Our societal structures exist for its individuals rather than for groups. We must remind ourselves that group thinking and generalizations must not make a resurgence when considering these supportive systems. Doing so will assuredly devolve our thinking to concepts adhering to mass, mob, and hierarchical mindsets, which in turn would lead to the degradation of our quality individuals to the level of the chief common denominator. Instead, the proposals should be viewed as the responsibility of each individual to take part in realizing their own manifestation, to provide for those who are unable or unwilling to take up the challenge, and to support other capable individuals in our shared effort to sustain our human environment.

[Igneous]

Flying in formation

Imagine a world in which information was readily available and accessible to anyone; where distillation, curation, controls and other forms of censorship and limitations were purely optional and only placed on a voluntary basis as barriers for one's own safety. The data, which can be anything that is possible to translate into thought, could be given by and given to anyone under one's stated and mutually agreed conditions. Others can access this information as well, as long as the requested conditions were met. The transfer could happen in many different ways and take many different forms, but they would all be considered equal in their validity. All data exchange would be viewed as an extension of our will and our desire to relay our ideas to other human beings.

To be able to communicate with one another is in essence to share our thoughts through our intentions. Humans instinctively know how to do this in a variety of ways that many other creatures on Earth cannot even begin to fathom. This unique ability of ours allows us to visualize anything, even to many multiple degrees of abstraction, which is what makes our existence so very peculiar and quite unsettling once we realize how amazingly powerful every single human being really is. Not only this, once we combine our thoughts together to achieve a concerted goal, it becomes a formidable and directed avalanche of force to be reckoned with.

This is one of the reasons why information can be dangerous. It gives knowledge to the ignorant, understanding to the confused, and power to the informed. The lack of it on the other hand is what allows the knowledgeable to have leverage against the ignorant and it is this setup which often causes struggles to contain and to silence problematic voices; which is quite understandable from the viewpoint of someone who needs that leverage, but unfortunately not for the general betterment of human understanding and for helping individuals to make informed and intelligent decisions and to take wise actions. Therefore, if we are to raise the knowledge of individuals and to help them to understand the world that we live in, it behooves us to construct a societal structure that advocates for an open and free flow of information, so that anyone who is interested in gaining that extra quotient of intelligence can do so with relative ease.

1. Objectives: The primary aim of the proposed structure is to create a conducive environment for free and voluntary associations of individuals, so that one will be able to share one's thoughts and to communicate with one another without outside limitations or any other mandatory third party involvement. We must view one's thoughts as one's private property, which can only be given or shared through one's informed and intentioned consent under clearly defined conditions. It is not acceptable for any entity outside of this exchange to interfere in the process and we must ensure that we have the ability to express our thoughts to our hearts content to whomever we wish. The second is to raise the knowledge of the capable and willing individuals so as to elevate their overall potential to achieve good works, and for them to be able to translate, to disseminate, and to educate others who can benefit from their understanding. It is to create an educational chain reaction that will encourage every individual to want to strive to intellectually better themselves and to be accurately informed of the happenings of their surroundings. Thirdly, the structure is to provide accuracy, transparency, accountability, and the integrity of information by applying objective approaches; where tools of scrutiny and independent corroboration are deployed, and where reputations are linked to the honesty and the quality of the materials in a meritocratic fashion.
2. Prerequisites: Information is next to useless to an individual who is not able to understand it or how to use it effectively. It is dangerous in the hands of someone who is ill-intentioned or is irresponsible. It is liberating however to one who values knowledge and who can put it to good use for well-intentioned purposes. For the proposed structure to succeed, there needs to be a critical mass of individuals who belong to the third category. The ratio is possible to achieve if given the right conditions, and it can be sustained for a long period if our quality individuals are able to keep harmful and corroding influences in check. Education is certainly a key factor in providing the right tools to be able to access and to use the information well. Understanding one's own mental and emotional processes and maturing one's subconscious activities to an acceptable level is another factor to consider. A stable and a suitably challenging environment also needs be created so as to give motivation and an impetus for one to actively pursue in increasing one's knowledge. These factors combined will form the necessary basis and a mounting demand for creating the proposed informational structure.
3. Positive contributions: Providing quality academic materials that are useful and are readily absorbable by a large number of individuals can have much potential in attracting those with an ounce of curiosity. These can be introductory and accessible, providing enough incentives for one to invest more time in pursuing the in-depth layers of the subject. Substantive, interesting, and entertaining mediums will certainly help in driving the appetite for similar high quality and meaningful content, and will encourage others to take similar approaches. In journalistic reports of current affairs, competition and respect for accurate and high quality reporting will motivate the driving of the integrity and the accuracy of facts. Analysis and explanations of these facts will cater to providing relationships and their context in chosen narratives, similar to making a case in a courtroom full of jury. Open forums and places of gathering, where purposeful conversations can thrive will attract intelligent minds to share their ideas and encourage others to learn from their examples.
4. Negative contributions: Proliferation of data that debases the human character, which caters to the glorification of those destructive aspects innate within all of us would lead to a consistent breaking down of an individual's desire for quality. Given enough time, corruption would inevitably result and there will be no choice but to starve out the informational flow to correct for the damage inflicted by those harmful influences. Materials that target the subconscious, bypassing the conscious aspect, for the purposes of gaining influence over the mind would turn individuals into unwitting slaves, who frankly will be unable to form one's own opinions on any subject. Information that does not demand the engagement of the active brain will create conditions that will lobotomize and atrophy one's neural capability, and one will be unable to efficiently communicate or to think coherently or to articulate in a causal manner. The destruction of the mind will be brought about by one's loss of enthusiasm for cogitating on meaningful and quality thought.

As for applications of power, data can often be used for purposes of control. There are those who would seek to weaponize it, to use it as a form of leverage over others, or to withhold it for fear of hypotheticals and perhaps even for well justified reasons. Then there are those who would use the information for nefarious purposes, simply because they can. We face a dilemma, where we must communicate freely without external controls but we must also be able to share without the distinct possibility for potential repercussions from our decision to trust in the goodness of humanity under all circumstances. But nonetheless, this is how we must mature as a society. We need to learn to trust each other to be responsible and to act according to our common understanding. We cannot treat each other as children and expect to grow up to be full-fledged adults. We must find a way to treat each other with respect and we must convince and remind one another of the rules we must abide by in order to make this work.

[Igneous]

Navigating our courtship

Consider a world in which disagreements, conflicts, and offences were addressed by means of arbitration by individuals who are wholly separate from the disputes, and who are interested in only serving what is objectively and justifiably the truth. These individuals are anonymous and have the opportunity to provide justice according to their understanding of the law and the particular nuances of the situation, while being mindful of protecting the innocent from false accusations and from various forms of harm. They would be impartial, treating each individual with a benefit of the doubt, and only make judgement according to the evidence presented, tempered by their own common sense and by their own humanity. The role of arbitration would ensure that all individuals are able to receive a fair and humane treatment by peers who are able to sympathize and who can place themselves in the shoes of both parties.

Human beings are often prone to quick judgement and are quite unreliable judges at that. When involved in an unfortunate incident, we are inclined to blame the other side while donning on the role of victimhood, while we perceive of offences that may or may not actually exist. In other more severe scenarios, we might infringe on another's sovereign domain and their peace, or even bring harm and trespass against another. Or we may be affected by those who would do these things to us and would like for the transgressors to be brought to light and for them to atone for their wrongful actions. Each of us want justice as we understand the term, and if this is how both parties are inclined to act, then we need objectivity to settle such matters. Otherwise we can only look forward to injustices predicated on the opinions of biased favoritism; the very opposite of what is needed for a lawful society to exist.

The law, as naturally understood by our innate sense of decency is not flexible nor is it ambiguous. It is truth embodied and clear in its intent. But when defined as an imperfect formalization of our common understanding, it requires our participation and an invocation of our humanity to give it full expression and to give it its proper meaning. Without this contribution, we can only state that it is a set of directives and commands; perhaps to be dictated by those who would assume the mantle of authority; possibly creating an environment for fearful obedience and an aggrandizement of the select few. In such a situation, power can be concentrated in the hands of those who would claim to be the arbiters of the law, when in fact it may very well be its usurpation, unjustly robbed from each individual. If instead the law is to function as the application of order by everyone, for everyone, where each person must be judged according to their impartial peers, then the role, the responsibility, and the opportunity for this arbitration must be given to every capable individual who is willing to step up to that challenge.

1. Objectives: Our proposed structure must provide for the means to allow humanity to play a pivotal role in the process of making judgments and that this is performed by the arbitration of our equals, who can sympathize and yet who can make objective discernment for those of us who are caught in difficult situations. Egality demands that we must judge all people as how we would like to be judged in turn, and this requires individuals who are sensitive to our pleas while also capable of being stern in regards to the application of the law. Because when it comes to the enforcement of rules versus our own humanity, it is the natural law of the human being that must govern over the application of laws set up through bureaucracies. The next aim is to place the responsibility and the power of judgement in the hands of those operating outside of the legal and enforcement systems. While the structures for applying the law and the machinery required to run it must exist to establish order, the act of making judgments must be made by those who can provide a countermeasure to the limitations of legislation. It is not the responsibility of the legal system to dispense justice but to aid in providing the discipline and the tools required to facilitate in making that judgement. The final decision must rest with the individuals who have the ultimate say in the rulings and the system should help them to make that informed choice. The last aim of the structure is to provide protection for those who are placed in the position of making judgments by anonymity. The role of deciding the fate of another human being can be uncomfortable and perhaps even dangerous for some. It is not an easy task for one to make potentially life altering rulings for another nor should there be an opportunity for external interferences to play a part in the decision making process. Those who make the judgments have as much need for protection as those who are involved in the cases and these individuals should remain anonymous in the interest of all parties involved.
2. Prerequisites: There can be no justice unless it is given by those who are familiar with the law and those who live according to its precepts. And if we are to be judged by our peers then we who would take up this challenge need to meet this basic standard. We need to be intelligent, logical, and discerning. And we need to be familiar with our own sense of natural law. Without these conditions, we can expect no better than for chance rulings, popularity contests and biased favoritism, mockeries and witch hunts driven by sensational arguments. We also need a functioning legal system and jurisprudence that can facilitate in delivering the parties to swift decisions. It should not be necessary for disputes to drag on through lengthy court hearing or for them to be placed in backlogs due to lack of capacity or due to other hindrances such as time required for jury selections. The process must be streamlined so that disputes can be resolved quickly, and this should be made available to all individuals who choose to go through the expedited route, which should provide the same options and opportunities to be subject to judgments given by peers. Lastly, we need laws that are enacted in the best interest of human beings rather than for fictional abstractions. The two should not be conflated or obfuscated. The laws we create are meant to serve the people, and it is we who must consciously choose to follow them or not based on our understanding of what is naturally lawful for the human being. If there are discrepancies, then our expression of the rules must be judged false, and we must be willing to declare them null and void if they do not serve our best interest.
3. Positive contributions: Laws that are simple to understand and yet intuitive makes it easier for everyone to follow them. If they pass the test of common sense and they are enacted to help improve operations rather than to impinge or to restrict, then there will be less likelihood of disputes and confrontations. Creating a suitable and prosperous environment where law breaking is minimized would also aid in smoother judiciary operations and would help in avoiding the need for interventions through arbitration. And giving multiple choice of recompense to the involved parties would allow for more civil and acceptable outcomes, in terms of the type of punishment that one is willing to serve for a given sentence, and the conditions required by other parties for them to accept closure. Finally, law enforcement performed by intelligent adults known by the communities they serve would decrease the likelihood of conflict escalations as it would be in their best interest to keep their own communities safe and problem free.
4. Negative contributions: Heavy-handed tactics by law enforcement and brutality betrays and erodes the trust of the community, and only creates animosity toward those who need to apprehend law breakers with sufficient amount of force, if need be. Those who are not disciplined and who are incapable of acting with restraint only tarnishes the reputation of the entire legal system, and this would only further endanger and belittle those who are entrusted to keeping order. Legal representation, coordinators of judicial procedures, and the entire legal machinery that enriches themselves at the expense of their clients would sow mistrust and disdain from the communities. They would be seen as hypocritical and without honor, thereby individuals will take matters into their own hands through vigilantism rather than go through structured arbitrations. And laws that are ratified and burrowed deep into legislature without agreement from those who would be subject to those laws would create a system whereby bureaucrats will try to dictate rules that are in constant opposition to what is actually required by the individuals of society. This would only further exasperate the dehumanization of individuals in favor of group order and the glorification of those who would place themselves above the law.

The power of judgement is subject to law and when wielded in the hands of those who can understand it, it is just in its application and rings true for those who would recognize it as being in line with one's common sense. When it is based on a poorly expressed law however, it is poorly understood, and those who would administer that power can only do so much to give it a semblance of validity. But when judgement is given by corrupt hands, it is lawlessness embodied and the power they exercise end up being meted out on their victims for the benefit of those who would pull on the strings of the scale and whisper softly into the ear of lady justice's heightened persuasion. We need both a legal system that adequately expresses our natural law and we need those who are able to understand it to make up for the limitations of our penning. Each individual has the power to arbitrate and we must take this responsibility upon ourselves to ensure that justice rules in our society.

[Igneous]

Potential Traders

Envision a world in which exchange of legal goods and services was a private matter; mutually agreed upon between two or more parties in the transaction and that it was illegal to interfere in this exchange without due cause with a specific permission gained from the judiciary. Imagine that the means of exchange used in the transactions were themselves subject to the same arrangement and that it was illegal to breach the privacy of ownership or to influence the transaction in any way, shape, or form. An individual's belongings and private property would be respected and protected under the law and it would not be legally possible for any entity to claim ownership or to commandeer them without one's expressed voluntary consent accompanied with just compensation. All individuals would be able to own their property in their entirety and would be able to transact as they see fit without requiring intermediaries or external permissions or allowances.

Trading is an intuitive human activity whereby we share our talents, works, belongings, time, potential, and energy with others. It is one of the most effective ways of translating our power in the service of others so that they may do so likewise and return us theirs in turn. Many types of exchange arrangements can be made to facilitate in these trades, but every one of them requires our willingness to expend our energy and effort to meet those agreements. It is our willful cooperation that allows the trades to be possible, which forms the basis for what we refer to as economics and commerce. But if we were to be forced against our will, manipulated, or tricked into making these exchanges; if we were to be prevented from making voluntary trades, or threatened or penalized for doing so; or if an entity was to insert oneself as an absolute intermediary between lawful exchanges and that it was illegal to avoid this monetary choke point; then we must conclude that mutually satisfactory exchanges between sovereign human beings cannot occur in such an environment and that it would be prudent of us to avoid or to eliminate these obstructions and hindrances.

In order to aid in the exchange of goods and services, we often employ currency, which is our way of abstracting the value we attribute to various material and temporal things of this world. This monetary expression is akin to a flow of current that carries with it our energy and allows other human beings to exchange it for other things we derive from actual work. By itself it has no meaning, much like how a symbol represents something else entirely. But when enough people agree on its value and decide to use it as a means of exchange, it is able to carry out that transformative action of carrying with it that motive force; giving individuals the desire to carry out their request and to expend their energy on the given task in return for compensation. It is a system that rewards work with tokens, which has about as much value as the willingness of the individuals to work for its accumulation. That willingness is the only power it truly has, and we must see to it that we are able to use it to our advantage for our own purposes.

1. Objectives: We need a structure that will facilitate in allowing individuals to make lawful transactions without interferences and without fear of reprisals. We need to be able to buy and sell what we want, at the price we agree on, without external conditions demanded by unwanted third parties. We need to be able to trade with whoever we want, in whichever manner we desire, in the time and place of our choosing. Every individual must be able to choose for themselves what is best for them and it is not the domain of intermediaries to insert themselves into the conversation uninvited. Secondly, we need a structure that allows for each individual to own their means of exchange, which adequately expresses our willingness to work and to accept it as a means of payment in conversion. It is our energy and our lives that give the currency its meaning and we need to have control over it in order for it to have any utility. In other words, the tokens must work for us and not the other way around. Lastly, our structure must ensure that a human being is never expressed as property or attributed a value of any form. The goods and services an individual provides is separate and distinct from the inexpressible value of that individual. The value of a human life is priceless and it must never be measured up against things we consider to have material significance no matter how considerable that measure may appear to be.
2. Prerequisites: The existence of a free market where competition can thrive while monopolization and institutional favoritism are prevented and disincentivized is a necessary condition for individuals to be able to create wealth for themselves and to have a say in how trades are made. Marketplaces where small businesses can have extended reach and where they can compete through proximity, quality, and reputation should allow for enriching local economies and giving them additional purchasing power and financial leverage. Small and local businesses should not be in a position where they must contend with larger ones, as price manipulation and economies of scale would create an environment of unfair competition, where disproportionately large enterprises would easily barrel over the operations of limited means, leading to the destruction of communities and communal bonds. Larger entities should instead focus on those services and goods that cannot be provided by the local operations, and they must be required to work with the local communities to help them to mutually flourish in a properly functioning economy. If properly implemented without bias, this would naturally create competition and the exchanges resulting from the trades would allow for goods, services, and tokens to flow effectively through the local circuits. Additionally, the creation of efficient logistical systems that can easily gather and connect independent operations would lower their costs and thereby improve the finances of all parties involved. This would include pick-ups and deliveries, shared platforms and places for doing business, as well as interfacing with external services for imports and exports. The infrastructure that caters to the local economy should be more advantageous to the locals while allowing them to better coordinate in bigger trades beyond their immediate vicinity. Reducing the cost of living and the ratio of work to leisure should allow for every individual to be able to devote their spare time and resources to doing things that go beyond the preoccupations of earning a living. The energy we devote to doing work is well and good, but we need to also be able to expend our energies beyond them so that other aspects of our lives can be worked on, while giving that spare time and energy to others who can improve our conditions in different and often hospitable ways.
3. Positive contributions: The implementation of a monetary system that allows for individuals to save effectively for multiple generations would promote financial responsibility and a stable base from which economic activities can be sustained. Businesses run on fundamentals and focused on efficient operations and performance as part of a natural business cycle would create an environment where competition and opportunities can exist, delivering higher quality of goods and services to their clients. Currencies that accurately represent the reality of velocity of exchanges and trades, while taking into consideration the quality of goods and services that are expressed through them, and operating in an environment that avoids speculative activities would result in better economic performances and give an improved measure of energy flow occurring in the communities. Efficient regulation, knowledge, and design of currency inflows and outflows into and out of communities would provide better protection against harmful surges while also giving the necessary stimulus in areas that need those additional investments in order to rightly prosper.
4. Negative contributions: Allowing large organizations to compete with small ones would only lead to the destruction of small businesses and communities and prevent independent operations from earning a living. This would result in less diversity of goods and services, less overall economic activity in local communities while funneling the goods and services to large central camps of commercial concentration. By preventing individuals from owning their means of sustenance and by forcing them to become employees of large business interests, the energies that could have been used in productive ways for themselves would instead be spent on performing the work that is designated to them by their fief employers. This could create a situation of commercial serfdom, where individuals might be looked on as mere resources and interchangeable employees in business operations, as it would trivialize the value of the human being to numbers on balance sheets. Establishing a currency system where individuals are viewed in such a manner would only treat the human beings as resources to be extracted from and simply negated off of the books as liabilities at the end of their shelf life.

Being able to direct how trades and commercial activities are made is to have the power to allow or to disallow the flow of willful intention between consenting individuals. If used for the purposes of improving the overall quality and the efficiency of work, or if it is used to prevent breakages and harmfully disruptive inflows or outflows of energies, then the coordination can be considered supportive and useful for aiding in exchanges. But if used to stifle transactions due to ill-considered, cronyistic, or malicious reasoning, or if used to promote those favored by special interests and for personal gain, then it is but a tool to be used by the authorities to leech the wealth out of the individuals for their own enrichment. We must be mindful of who we trade our energies with and we must be cognizant of the fact that it is we who have the ultimate power in saying where and how that energy is to flow. It is our own willing consent that determines our trade and we have every right to give our support to whoever we want and for whatever we wish.

[Igneous]

Oyster's pearly gates

Let us imagine a world in which individuals could travel to anywhere without restrictions or conditions as long as the location was not privately owned or claimed as an area set aside for a specific purpose. The movement and the location of an individual would be considered a private matter, which would only be disclosed through one's strictly expressed voluntary consent without fear of reprimand or penalization. Mandatory identification would be prohibited as a breach of one's privacy and requiring one to gain access to society and its services would be a violation of one's fundamental right to remain unidentified and to remain anonymous. On the other hand, gaining entry into restricted areas would be determined by the conditions set forth by their owners, who would be protected under the law to legally do as one wills with one's own private domain. There would be a mutual understanding between the guest and the host to strive to meet their agreed conditions to gain access.

To go wherever we want, to meet whoever we wish, and to do whatever we like at any time and at any place is the natural condition of any free living being. The degree of freedom we enjoy however is primarily determined by our proximity to others and how much liberty our neighbors are prepared to tolerate from us. We draw up boundaries around the subjects of our contention, we invent rules for proper and safe engagement, and we concoct penalties and enforcement for violating our conditions in our mutually and satisfactorily agreed upon treaties. We expect these measures to guarantee our commonly shared desire for privacy and security and that sensible individuals would respect them as they would want of us to do likewise. In this way, we tentatively agree to limit our own individual freedom of movement if only for the sake of protecting ourselves from those who would potentially trespass against our domain.

The concept of owning space as property for one's private use is essentially to stake claim over that area so that others will not be able to use it or to access it without one's approval. It is a compulsion based on territorial dominance we naturally possess as living organic beings. We need to keep our boundaries clear and set such that we are able to adequately live off of the resources provided by that territory and we need to protect it so that we can dissuade others from taking them away from our personal needs. So we bunker in and defend our lands because we fundamentally need them to survive, and we expand and grow them because we believe that enlarging our domain is justified and necessary. The measures we use to guarantee our borders and to ensure that our lives are not threatened are many and varied, but they are all at the base rooted in our desire to protect ourselves and our possessions from others and to keep them sufficiently away from us at a safe distance.

1. Objectives: The main objective of our societal structure is to allow individuals to move without restrictions or conditions in areas that are not privately held or set aside for specific use by communities. As long as we do not enter into private domain, it is not business of anyone to determine where an individual may go, their movements to be monitored and tracked, or to be coerced or forced to travel in and through specific means. Open and non-private spaces set aside for common use must be for the benefit of all and these areas should preserve the dignity of we the sovereign beings to go as we choose in however manner we wish, as long as we do not impinge on the ability of others to do likewise. The next objective is to provide a structure that will allow for travel without identification and to only require it when gaining entry into private or specific-use common domains. The use of identification to allow or to deprive another individual their freedom of movement is to relegate that person to be a captive, who is beholden to the authorizer to dictate to them their terms of privilege. There is no need or justification to force another human being to use a tag or a label or an identifier to have the ability to move in non-private and open spaces, nor does it add any value to security by treating them as guilty of charges that are hypothetical and contrived. The third objective is to provide a system that will facilitate in movements of individuals through private and specific-use common domains in a robust, secure, efficient and amiable way. Entry through gates, ports, and community borders exist so that whoever goes through them must show their intent to abide by the rules set forth by the community and that they are guests who must agree to their condition of stay or else risk a penalty for violating their agreement. It is a promise to behave well as a welcome guest, and the process of entry must ensure that it is desirable for all parties involved to use the system, and that it can work for both the hosts and the guests in a mutually respectable and beneficial manner.
2. Prerequisites: Travelling can be an uncomfortable and dangerous activity, which is why transportational infrastructures exist to avoid having to trudge through harsh wilderness and tough terrains. We would much prefer to reach our destination with as little hassle as possible as part of an enjoyable journey. The mode of transport we use may be for minimizing the travel time, or it may be for its specific travelling experience, or it may purely be for the challenge that the transportational means can provide. Hospitality services are necessary to cater to travelers and various supportive operations must exist to ensure optimal function and ease. Meanwhile, logistics and business operations should use dedicated and regimented means that are separate from the regular movement of individuals so as to prevent negatively impacting the movement of one another. We need all of these things and likely more to be able to effectively move around in our society. But above all these requirements, it is crucial that we have friendly destinations to travel to, amicable places to move around in, and reliable methods to travel with. Without these preconditions, our movement is greatly hindered and our inclination to explore would be restricted only to the areas and means that are considered acceptably hospitable. We need to reach a level of societal decency in which we can travel to wherever and whenever we please, and that we can always find a friendly face willing to welcome us with open arms.
3. Positive contributions: Efficient, aesthetically pleasing, and comfortable transportation systems that are accessible to all individuals would allow for a greater movement of people, spark interchange of ideas and viewpoints, facilitate in exchange of goods as well as improving overall trade and economic activities. Promotion of tourism and encouraging individuals to physically move and to personally visit and to experience other places would vivify and help to sustain local businesses and instill pride and understanding of one's history and heritage. Dedicated, accessible, and clearly defined means of gaining legal entry into private and community defined boundaries can help protect the safety of the hosts and also ensure the security of the guests during their stays. A broken system would not only endanger the hosts but also the guests as well, and an unrestricted movement through these areas would likely result in friction and confrontational divides across all fronts. As for open areas that are not under private or specific-use community agreements, minimal or even absence of regulation or jurisdiction could potentially create places where absolute freedom in its purest form can exist. Some of these areas could indeed be defined as pure wilderness where anything can happen, but they can also provide opportunities for a different kind of life to be experienced, and for new communities to form and kept intentionally and consciously separate from the rest of society.
4. Negative contributions: Preventing or restricting the movement of individuals through quotas and artificial scarcities would have a significant negative impact on trade and economic activities as well as demeaning the character of the human being to a geographically constrained prisoner. If the restrictions are arbitrary and the rules are imposed out of fear, then the situation can become even more dehumanizing and downright abusive. If the legal means of gaining entry into private and community boundaries are broken or intentionally circumvented, then this could create an environment full of dependent individuals who cannot function without the aid of black market sponsorship and would likely be relegated to second class non-citizenship. And if no individual can be trusted to behave well and are deemed as potential dangers to be tracked and monitored for potential crimes of even the remotest of possibilities, then this can create a prison-like structure run by fear-ridden paranoiacs and opportunistic authoritarians.

Having the power to decide who gets to enter or leave an area or a premises is to have the authority to use force to stop or to physically move the individual against their will. It is to be tasked with guarding the security of the domain from possible dangers but also allowing an efficient movement of individuals to go through with a clear understanding from both parties. But if taken upon the whims of the guards to make these decisions for themselves or if implemented with no regard to respect for human dignity, then the system has a high chance for corruption and prejudices to play into their decision making. We must remind ourselves that it is our innate condition to be able to go where we wish and that it is we who voluntarily accept to limit our movement for the sake of our mutual safety and for show of good faith as we enter the domain of others. It is not the right of anyone to impose one's authority beyond their clearly defined limits and any such actions should be viewed as an invasion of one's private domain and a violation of friendly relations.

[Igneous]

Healthy choices

Let us consider a world in which an individual's cellular body, its biochemical processes, the brain and its conscious and sub-conscious aspects of the mind, the surrounding bio-electric, thermal, and various energy fields within and around the body were all considered a part of one's own private domain. Affecting these body parts without one's informed knowledge and amicable consent would be to trespass against one's sovereign territory and would be considered an act of forceful invasion against the said person. Health as a term would be viewed as the optimum functioning of the natural and unique biology of one's own body, wherein the physiological, electrical, and chemical processes would ideally operate in harmony to achieve maximum vitality. There would be a wide general knowledge on how to properly take care of one's health and the occurrence of serious diseases would be seldom encountered and quickly remedied. Critical emergencies would be addressed efficiently and readily, and the life expectancy and the quality of life of every individual would approach their optimal level such that most will grow to advanced old age with ease while retaining much of their bodily functions.

It goes without saying that we each have a body, our bodies are our own, and we are separate and distinct from one another as unique biological beings. We each have our kin who share much of our genetic composition, and we also have distant relatives who we share much less commonalities with. But despite our perceived differences, we are in essence a single species of shared blood, and our physiology is similar enough in many ways that the methods we use to improve our health can be shared and applied to one another with great effect. We refer to the formalization of this method as the practice of medicine, and we need the practitioners of these healing methods to be knowledgeable, competent, and compassionate to the plights of those who need their expertise. But we ourselves also need to know enough of those common methods of healing so that we are not beholden to the interventions of these medical experts for every minor issue we encounter.

Medicine is but one of the tools used to achieve good health, most often employed to bring balance to an unbalanced body through the direct application of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Healing happens when the body responds to these treatments in a net positive way, and the individual needs to monitor and gauge whether the healing takes place as expected while keeping possible negative effects in check. There are also other non-direct methods and long term re-balancing efforts that can be applied, which may be as effective or even more so than the direct ones, and which can also be done in conjunction with other short term and readily observable treatments. We need a variety of these options to be available and we need those who we can entrust with our health; to help us to be strong and to fight off diseases; to be diligent with examinations in search of potential problems; to care about our well-being and our lives; and to respect us and our decisions as individuals to choose for ourselves our methods of achieving good health.

1. Objectives: Our primary objective is to provide a structure that acknowledges, understands, and ensures that an individual's body, mind, and energy are one's own sacrosanct domain, and that trespasses, assaults, and involuntary or coercive violations made against them are to be considered unjustifiable and inexcusable. There are no higher powers, no noble intentions, or any overriding authorities who can enforce their will on another human being's biological impulse for self preservation and corporeal autonomy. Each functioning adult is responsible for one's own belongings and we have no right to tell anyone else what to do with their most basic of necessities that make up who they are as biological beings. Our secondary objective is to provide a structure where optimal health can be achieved easily by everyone through their own means and methods without requiring external interventions. We are each responsible for our own health and as long as the environment is conducive to our bodily needs, we should be able to take care of our bodies in our own way using the best methods available to us in however manner we choose. Our third objective is to ensure that high quality healers and facilities are readily accessible, who can address medical emergencies and can provide their expertise to individuals in need of their specialized services. Our bodies are extremely fragile and there are many types of complex problems that can be difficult to treat without the help of dedicated and experienced healers. We need a system that works in the best interest of all of us as patients, and we need capable practitioners who can treat and perform their works according to their utmost of abilities without hindrance. We need to enable those who have the compulsion and the relevant knowledge to heal to effectively do their work.
2. Prerequisites: The first step to achieving good health is to understand what it means to be healthy. We are by nature well equipped and adapted to live on this world as biological entities, and as long as we apply those principles that keep us working in optimal condition, we can continue to live with vigor and with relative ease. We need to achieve the kind of lifestyle that reduces toxic stress and promotes the elimination of stressors. They are material and mental in character, emotionally and psychologically taxing, and they can drain our reserves of finite attention and limited energies in various ways. Being healthy then is to be of functioning mind, functioning body, and to have functioning emotions while getting rid of those elements and influences that cause their dysfunction. We must achieve this basic level of understanding if we are to establish anything that can effectively work towards optimizing one's health. We must also develop an expectation of what it is to be a healer who practices those methods designed to achieve good health. Vowing to do no harm to the patient is to respect the individual, to give promise and to give one's best effort to treat that person, and to ask for one's trust in cooperation and acceptance of service. We need healers who have the capacity for compassion and who genuinely care about the well-being of the people they treat. They need to be able to do their work without ulterior motives or conflicting interests, and they themselves need to receive the same level of respect from the patients and from those who would support, assist, and facilitate in their activities. The healers themselves need to function properly before they can be expected to help others.
3. Positive contributions: Hospitals, clinics, and other dedicated facilities for healing and treatment are beneficial to ensuring that bodily ills can be readily remedied and traumas mended quickly. Being able to easily access these services means that individuals can heal faster and return to working function earlier. Providing safe and accurate methods for non-specialists to be able to assess their ills and having affordable access to medicines can help reduce the instances of heavy medical demand, which should alleviate the pressure bottle necks in medical facilities. Emergency services and mobile medics who can provide significant local care without needing to transport the patients to dedicated locations would help in time critical scenarios and provide an effective life saving means to be deployed where they're needed the most. But most of all, creating a clean and biologically conducive environment where instances of serious diseases can be minimized and constructing safe and habitable living conditions that can prevent the occurrence of bodily damages would be most beneficial to improving everyone's health. Having thorough and effective methods of measuring the state and possible complications in an individual's body and its workings would go a long ways in preventing the emergence of diseases and future hardships.
4. Negative contributions: Providing medical care in a profit-based model would only exasperate and encourage the creation of serviceable clients rather than medical patients who need healing by specialists. It would create a situation where a patient's health would be used as a means for extracting sales, where operation efficiencies will be optimized through omission and refusal to provide medically effective but cost ineffective treatments in preference to maximizing capital gains, and where priority decisions will be made according to a cost benefit analysis and by the calculated result of accounting statistics. Supporting industrial and technological solutions without sufficient studies on their impact on the human body and preferring options that are promoted by financial leverage would increase the chances of damaging our health. These factors alone will guarantee the proliferation of damage-caused diseases, which will inevitably cause an excess of sick individuals who need constant and costly care. By not preventing diseases and by not addressing their prime causes, the medical system will have very little capacity to remain effective and it will not be able to perform its intended function.

To have the knowledge, the tools, and the willingness to heal another human being from their ills is to have power over one's death. By their refusal they can be the harbingers of the end, but by their compassionate effort they can bring back those caught in the clutches of their imminent demise. In a similar way, to determine who is allowed or disallowed to receive care, or how an individual is to be treated is to have power over one's life. By their refusal they can prevent individuals from getting the help they need, and by their reasoned ethics they can manage the lives of others according to their own terms. We do not need any authority over our health nor do we need to rely on others for our own responsibilities. The power to heal is inherent in every one of us and we are each able to provide it in our own way. We are here to help one another in the best way we can, but we can never claim to have the right to treat another's body as our own.

[Igneous]

Herculean labors

Envisage a world in which it was possible to choose a profession in large part through one's own effort and through one's desire to do the work. Demands from individuals and community members would provide plenty of economic opportunities, and it would be a relatively simple matter for anyone to offer up their services to gain meaningful employment or to create other forms of transactional and mutually beneficial relationships. Compensations received from the works would be more than enough to procure a decent quality of life, and this would meet the necessary criteria for obtaining a habitably acceptable standard of living. By one's skills, abilities, and dedication, it would be possible to increase one's compensation, allowing a larger accumulation of wealth to be obtained; to be used for lawful activities such as on luxuries, on savings, or for other uses, completely through the individual's own choosing.

Human beings have a natural inclination to work for a living. We each have our aspirations, goals we want to achieve in our lives, and we want to be the masters of our own domain. Oftentimes, we just want enough resources to be able to have the simple things; such as a home, a family, discretionary spending, a retirement. We would like to acquire these and to establish ourselves by spending our time on the occupations we enjoy doing. But going beyond the immediate concerns of sustenance, we also look for significance in our labor. In order for us to have meaningful and productive lives, we must perform meaningful and productive work from which we can use to forge our future. We need to be able to personally contribute to the process without being dependent or beholden to anyone else, and the opportunities must exist to allow for everyone to be able to pursue the work that they feel they can best derive their happiness. These occupations can hopefully provide us with fulfillment and purpose, and from which we can derive our personal satisfaction by aligning our desires with palpable results. We seek these out, we look for the best circumstances that will allow us to live the kind of lives we want and through which we can put in our willingness and effort to make our dreams a reality.

In every decent society and in every dynamic of cooperative human interaction, there is a form of exchange where one's effort, time, and attention are given to another in receipt for compensation. It is our own willingness to do something in exchange for something else that summarily describes what we commonly refer to as work. Without it, nothing in the society would function. Although we would much prefer to spend our time in idle leisure, it is also important for us to be able to focus on those things from which we can be rewarded for our efforts. If there were no incentives to do anything or if there were no rewards for a job well done, then the only remaining motivation left for work is for the sake of one's own survival. This is not a conducive situation for creating a cooperative human society, as it can only lead to barbarism and limited primitive works. And much like how every biological life must exert their individual effort to live a free life, we too must contribute personally to feed ourselves. To be placed in a situation where we are forced and fed by another is to be held captive, and to be given or deprived of privileges by a controlling hand is essentially to become its pet. For us to be self-sufficient, there must be amply available opportunities to acquire a decent quality of life without having to be at the mercy of those who would dictate the kind of works we are permitted to do. If the options for viable alternatives do not exist, then the work is no better than indentured servitude, no matter how well it masquerades in the guise of superior technicalities.

1. Objectives: We need a structure that will create many quality opportunities such that we could choose to do something meaningful and something we could be proud of, where we could do anything we wanted and be anyone we wanted to be through our own willingness to do our best to gain the necessary knowledge and to develop the needed skills to do the work. We need only apply ourselves to the task at hand, we would be the masters of fulfilling our own life's purpose, and we would personally take ownership for our own means of living. Secondly, we need for the material necessities of sustaining life to be accessible and in balance with the amount of work we perform. The ratio of compensation to the energy required to provide a quality life should be such that it should be possible for anyone to be able to live off of the minutest of earnings from one's labor. The effort should be more than enough to enable leisure, time, and other opportunities to enrich one's life in other ways aside from the primary activities related to that of ensuring corporeal survival. Thirdly, we must provide a structure that will enable viable creation of independent operations and that monopolization and centralized consolidations are prevented from occurring through well supported awareness and by effective means. Growth of organizations and co-operatives follow an all too prevalent trajectory of unrestrained consumption, which often inevitably leads to the destruction of competition as well as the overall human potential for independent challenge.
2. Prerequisites: There are many different types of occupations we are each able to perform according to our unique skill sets and abilities. In all instances however, the most important characteristic we must share is the willingness to do the work and that we are each able to focus adequately to ensure the success of our endeavors. There must be a compatible work ethic for the chosen profession, we must strive for competence and satisfactory results, as well as providing support for each other in our combined effort to meet our goals and ambitions. If capable individuals do not have the motivation to achieve or if they do not have suitable incentives to perform work, or conversely if there are no disincentives for not doing the work, then the inevitable outcome is likely economic stagnation and societal decay. We must first ensure that we have enough capable individuals who are willing to be active in forming their professional lives, and who have the discipline to avoid spending their days in idle leisure. Secondly, there must be a suitable expectation for work and of what that entails, and that the best position from which we can derive our satisfaction is for each one of us to be our own boss. We must have that entrepreneurial spirit and an effective environment in which we can prosper. We need to be able to bootstrap ourselves and to be able to take risks without being penalized for having the audacity to pursue open opportunities. Our failures should be stepping stones to our successes and they need to be easily recoverable if we are to continue on that path.
3. Positive contributions: To have wealth is to be able to meet life's necessities with ease and of having the luxury to do other things aside from the preoccupation of staying alive. A wealthy society is where this basic rule is considered objectively true for every individual partaking in it. No matter how wealth itself is expressed and quantified however, it must always translate into its material form and detailed in how it pertains to the survival of individuals. It is this viewpoint which is the actual measure of the wealth that an individual has and it would be useful to monitor the relative ratio of the cost of living, especially for the most disadvantaged individuals of society. By using this data, an active and cooperative effort can then be made to set this ratio above a certain threshold in order to ensure that every individual of the society can stay wealthy. Another positive impact would be to increase the efficiency of work such that less effort needs to be made to produce the same result. Achieving this through either technological innovations or through operational optimizations should lessen the need for toil and create more time for leisure and for other activities that can aid in increasing one's happiness. Emphasis on quality and uniqueness of works that are produced in harmony with ecosystems should create ample local ventures for meeting various types of demands, both domestic and beyond. And by providing local communities with the necessary means and materials to sustain their self-sufficiency, it should be possible to derive multi-generational benefits from the resulting transactions and to self perpetuate the process of renewing economic health.
4. Negative contributions: Mass production begets mass consumption. Mass consumption begets mass control. Mass control begets mass homogenization. And mass homogenization ultimately leads to the obsolescence of independent and unique human beings in the prism of the mass paradigm. Although it makes perfect logical sense to concentrate our efforts to create sophisticated organizations and technical marvels, for us to become cogs in the machinery for the sake of efficiency is for us to become machines ourselves; where drones carry out their tasks as instructed and where old parts are swapped out or upgraded once they reach their expiry dates. If reducing labor and cost to maximize profits is the primary motivation for work, then the asymptotic limit of maximum efficiency is an employee and sole benefactor of one with fully automated operations performed by perfect machines. This is simply untenable and is fundamentally incompatible with the continued existence of prosperous communities of human beings. Technology itself however need not be rejected outright to enable a machine-powered and automated vision that can potentially be beneficial for many human communities. For example, there are many things that need not be mass produced in large centralized operations, and many mass productions can potentially be customized and fabricated in separate and decentralized ways. One only needs the means, the design, and the materials to dynamically make anything locally as required, instead of mass producing and expecting mass consumption to match the incoming supply and inventory. If the demand for alternatives exist, then the opportunities are sure to follow.

The power to incentivize and to motivate individuals to perform work is to have the ability to organize and to direct their focus on a common objective. But to prevent individuals from performing work and to stop them from engaging in trade without one's permission is to exercise a similar but inverse form of power over them. While the former is conducive to creating a prosperous and productive enterprise, the latter in the meanwhile can potentially harm the operation itself and curb the financial independence of its members. If we are to have a society that is economically productive, we need to exercise organizational restraint in favor of individual and entrepreneurial freedom, encourage independent operations over institutionalization of businesses, and to create workable environments that would maximize the economic output of communities in a sustainable manner.