There’s a part of me that says I should feel bad about being so interested in citizen journalism and then letting my sites and Twitter accounts set stale. Why? I can always start again. I can also let it sit stale forever, just another testament among many of tried and failed Internet experiments. Maybe someone else will be more interested in it than I was and take what I started and keep going. Ultimately I’ll trust myself and will not force myself to do something I am not interested in.

And it’s been alright. I’ve focused on finding a way to enjoy my work situation, even though it isn’t ideal. I’ve focused on my motorcycles and other vehicles, because I learn a lot about myself by giving myself a technical challenge. I’ve been reading and watching good movies, just because I want to, not necessarily to learn anything. I’ve been spending time with friends and enjoying entertaining them and enjoying them entertain me.

I have a large whiteboard above my computer that I wrote, “Unblank the Blank” in big letters on. I wrote it because I was worried that my drift away from the topics that I thought were more meaningful than motorcycles, hanging out with friends and learning enjoy whatever situation I am currently in, meant that there was something wrong with me. But I’m alright. I’m not saying that I won’t ever be interested in the deeper subjects again, but at the moment they just don’t seem as important.

I’m not sure why, but that’s OK too.

This has also been a slow and steady process of experiencing the uglier sides of a money driven society. Even though we don’t live in a truly free market society, I think that corporations rose out of the desire for people to make more money for doing less work. A few years ago I would have seen such thoughts as blasphemy, but the hard truth I have experienced is that most* upper management is made up of people who figured out how to take advantage of others in order to live luxuriously. *not all, there are a few awesome humans in upper management that I am happy to work with.

I used to be an Objectivist and read just about everything by Ayn Rand. Her work so perfectly fueled my ego that for some time I was able to get away with believing that I had more control over my own life than was actually true. Fueled my that illusion, I was able to run my own business for two years and make a decent amount of money. After two years I was so emotionally burned out and unable to go out and find new business that it folded. I took no joy from doing my own thing anymore and took a job as a manager in the same industry. That’s where I’ve been for the past four years and have found it difficult to be excited about business, especially big business.

I am also privileged. I grew up in a middle class family with an entrepreneurial father. My parents paid for my college and I have my degree. My first job was not in fast food and I was able to work closely with a businessman who was growing his own business. All of these experiences were by little to no effort of my own. I’m lucky and many people are not. Privilege is not a concept that capitalism acknowledges too readily.

And that is the big problem with a system of capitalism. It assumes that people are made completely by their own effort. It disregards the multitude of personalities, personal psychologies and circumstance. There are many propaganda phrases you’ll hear to try and make up for these shortcomings. Trickle down effect. Rising tides lift all boats. Etc…

It took me awhile to stop accepting an economic concept as a cure all for humanity. I wanted a cure all and capitalism seemed like it. Coupled with anarchism I thought just maybe I had found the perfect marriage of two concepts. But then I realized that anarchism as a concept is really incompatible with any other ism.

Power structures are formed out of political concepts. Capitalism, socialism, communism are just other ways of saying “we need a universal concept that will fit human nature perfectly”. The problem with that thinking is there will ALWAYS be someone with a different perspective from the individual and certainly from the collective.

Anarchism by itself is just a declaration that you do not think that your life or anyone else’s life should be ruled with violent threat by another individual or group of individuals. Maybe that’s just another formula for humanity, but the way it differs is that it does not require that you accept it or die. Other political concepts usually do… yes, even capitalism, which is why concepts like corporations were formed.

Does that mean I swear off all the virtues of the concept of capitalism? Hell no. I love voluntary cooperation. I love entrepreneurial spirit. I just think it needs to be coupled with the healthy seeking of other perspectives and ideas.

Although many of these protests are billed as peaceful, their end goals are not. If you want to use government to further your ends, you are using the same violence as the corporations, banks and any other power monger who seeks to control the masses.

You talk about your revolution, well, that’s fine
But what are you going to be doing come the time?
Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?
Will you talk of freedom when the blood begins to run?
Well, freedom has no value if violence is the price
Don’t want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

But what about those people who don’t want your new restrictions?
Those that disagree with you and have their own convictions?
You say they’ve got it wrong because they don’t agree with you
So when the revolution comes you’ll have to run them through
You say that revolution will bring freedom for us all
Well freedom just ain’t freedom when your back’s against the wall

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

Will you indoctrinate the masses to serve your new regime?
And simply do away with those whose views are too extreme?
Transportation details could be left to British rail
Where Zyklon B succeeded, North Sea Gas will fail
It’s just the same old story of man destroying man
We’ve got to look for other answers to the problems of this land

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

Vive la revolution, people of the world unite
Stand up men of courage, it’s your job to fight

It all seems very easy, this revolution game
But when you start to really play things won’t be quite the same
Your intellectual theories on how it’s going to be
Don’t seem to take into account the true reality
Cos the truth of what you’re saying, as you sit there sipping beer
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn’t care

You’re far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you
What’s the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That’s the kind of self-deception that killed ten million jews
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use
So don’t think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government and all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course
Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution’s for
You romanticize your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now

Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game

Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
There’s nothing that you offer but a dream of last years hero
The truth of revolution, brother………………. is year zero.

Everyday after work I am left feeling exhausted when I get home from work and that leaves little motivation to post to my newly launched independent journalism site. This is a depressing realization because I was excited about this project and fear it will be awhile until I feel comfortable at this new job to relax and spare myself some battery power for when I get home to work on my own projects.

What is strange about the amount of energy a person has to dedicate to the different parts of their lives is partly a matter of just sitting down and taking action despite the feeling of exhaustion. So I am able to sit down and scroll through the feeds and re-post a couple of related stories to my Twitter account daily. Beyond that it is hard for me to come up with new ideas and full fledged articles for my site. I can sit down and start typing and occasionally bust through that hump, but for the past few days I have let my exhaustion win out and have been sleeping and recreating with friends in an attempt to recharge. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, I am just frustrated that I don’t have enough energy to do everything I want.

My main worry is that I am stuck in an endless loop of working a 9 to 6 job, not having enough energy to do the things that I am truly passionate about, and spending far too much of my life on the things I don’t really care about and not enough time on the things I do care about. I think there is real danger of that without recognizing the possibility of becoming addicted to comfort and forgetting who I really am and what I really want to do with my life.

So I post this for no other reason than to remind myself that how I am spending most of my time is not completely in line with my desires at the moment, and a warning to my future self that I am stuck in a bit of a rut and want to make sure that I find a way to become unstuck.

In the meantime, I would love to try to keep the flywheel spinning on citizeneyenews.com. If you have any posts that you would like to write for the site, please let me know and I will give you admin access and you can post away. I would also be willing to share access to my Twitter account in order to keep it fresh and the follower count growing. I am starting to come up with some guidelines for the contributors to the site, and would be willing to share them with anyone who is interested in posting.

Also, I got laid off from my job, so I have had to put a lot of energy towards my job search and haven’t had as much energy as I have wanted to dedicate to this.

I also created an umbrella site called Red Guy Blue Guy Media. I did this for two reasons. One is that I liked the logo I created so much that I wanted it to have a site of its own. The second is that the logo was a little too “you versus me” for my taste for citizeneyenews.com. I love the emotional impact the logo has, but I want to make sure that citizeneyenews.com stays focused on reporting about citizen journalism and not only the opposition to it.

Please feel free to spread the word about either of these sites and as always I am looking for feedback and participation on both.

The logo is getting some good attention on Reddit, so if you have an account, please take some time to upvote it.

*EDIT* If you want me to hear my sonorous voice read this post, here is an experiment.

Free Flow of Information

I’ve been a fan of the free flow of information ever since I had my first Internet connection. My passion for learning and discovering new perspectives and ideas was largely fueled by the first time I fired up a free trial of Prodigy Internet dial up service (in 1995 with my blazing 9600 baud modem) and typed my first search term into the Yahoo search engine. I was 13 years old and was one of the computer nerds lucky enough to see the World Wide Web grow from its roots.

In 2001 I watched the Internet rapidly change when Yahoo began keeping its homepage updated with breaking updates to the 9/11 tragedy. There was no other source that was quicker at giving updated and relavent information about my changing world. That was the first time I noticed instant updates to information and felt it was shifting the way media would operate.

I became obsessed with any site that when refreshed in the browser would show completely new content within seconds. One site that was truly embracing the breaking news model was Drudge report. I laugh to look back at Matt Drudge’s site when I first started using it. It looks exactly the same today. I was a budding liberal during that time of my life, but Matt Drudge was the only source on the Internet giving the instant satisfaction of knowing a story before your family heard about it on the 5 o’clock news.

I started hoping for an Internet that would evolve in a way that not only gave everyone the ability to instantly find out about any event in the entire world, just by typing a search query in, but a world that was run by the reporting of its citizens without any checks or balances but the natural free market of ideas. It was a wild dream but I soon started to see parts of it come true.

In came the forums, chatrooms and blogging platforms. Now they weren’t just a place to be social with like minded individuals. They were also to communicate information to as many people as possible. It still felt limited but I was usually able to find out more information about most news stories than any main stream media outlet would afford me.

And then there were specific sites and blogs dedicated to news for specific subjects, usually electronic or gadget related. Around these more fragmented and specialized communities were blooming and Internet advertisers were raking it all in.

Social Media

Then something massively shifted. Truly social online networks began to emerge. MySpace and Xanga and eventually Facebook and Twitter were allowing many individuals to connect and explore each others worlds. I met many of my friends through these networks and started to find more and more information relevant to what I was curious about.

I think it was 2004 or 2005 when my mom called me from California and was telling me about the huge fires that were happening in my home town. She was frustrated by the poor reporting of the local news media and was afraid the fire was going to burn our family home down. I hopped on the net and began to use my developed Internet sleuthing skills to find out at much as I could about the fires that were directly threatening their home. I obtained USGS maps of the fire and overlayed them in Google Earth. I was able to search Twitter and see what people on the ground were seeing and coordinated their tweets to see how close the fires were getting. I began blogging all of the information I found and received thousands of visitors a day looking for the same information I was compiling and sharing. It was a rush for me to be part of the media, part of the news. I was happy to find that my website was listed on one of the local main stream media’s websites as a source of updated news. I rode that Internet fame for the next few days and felt I could do more to sustain that experience.

Unfortunately my energy had to go towards growing my business (web design) so I could pay my bills, but in the meantime I kept following the growing information explosion and used as many tools as I could to compile the information that was useful to me.

Journalistic Revolution

It’s 2011 now and this year has been the most incredible year yet for citizen journalism. Between the revolutions in the Middle East to the more local Occupy movement, I have been hooked to the feeds trying to understand everything that is going on around me and what it means for my future and the future of our species.

I think of myself as a philosopher but I think deep down I’m truly a journalist. I often desire to be that person that helps inform others of the immediate events that could potentially effect their lives. When I post a link to my Facebook, or Twitter, or Tumblr, or blog or whatever social media tool I use to get my interests out there, most of the time I am thinking like a reporter and am genuinely interested in bringing the most relevant information to my social circle. The motivation is partly ego driven, but I also think that we all long to connect and keep each other safe, and the information I share is my contribution to that.

My main source of inspiration is with the recent Occupy protests. I didn’t understand the movement, and honestly still don’t think the movement has completely understood itself yet. So I went seeking answers. What grabbed me more than the protests was the emerging citizen journalists and the new medium they were using. The live stream. At first I thought of it as a camera shaky mess with really annoying teenagers trying to be the first to capture a cop pepper spraying a protester but the more I watched, the more I started to see stars emerge. Tim Pool was the first I spent 10 hours watching at Occupy Wall Street. While watching the live stream with my friend Marcus and chatting with him about what was going on while he watched another live stream, I knew I had found something I really enjoyed. Later I hopped on the live stream’s chat and found out more information about what was going on when the streams became overloaded by the tens of thousands like me who were seeking information on the protests.

The next was a live streamer at Occupy LA, just last night. His Internet handle is @OakFoSho and he had been live streaming both the Occupy Oakland and Occupy LA protests. He was as collected and coherent as Tim Pool but also had awesome equipment to help him capture the experience.

Interview with OakFoSho

Interview with Tim Pool

Information on the equipment used to live stream

Tim Pool confrontation with police

Tim Pool accidentally films a group of angry anarchists

OakFoSho at OccupyLA

I suggest following both of their Twitter feeds, because they will be the first to live stream the huge Occupy events:
@oakfosho
@Timcast

My Idea(s)

The best idea that has floated through my mind today would be to start a new website dedicated to information on how to participate in citizen journalism. I would research and write articles about live streaming equipment, Internet tools to use to broadcast live information and introduce up and coming citizen journalists to the world. I would also encourage others to contribute content and maybe eventually have a team of volunteer article writers. This way I can get a foot hold into this movement and see other areas where I could use my skills to grow the new media.

I have other ideas too such as a way for citizen journalists to display all of their media in one place and connect with other citizen journalists and journalism enthusiasts. But first I want to focus on my easier to execute idea to see if I can indeed be part of the start of a beautiful thing that I am certainly passionate about. The opportunity feels too ripe not to take.

Above all I would like to ask my readers for feedback, ideas, insights, encouragement, discouragement and anything else that will help me to figure out my place in this rapidly changing world of information. So please comment and I will be sure to keep you all up to date with my venture as it evolves.

I realized that even though people can speak the same language, their philosophy dictates how words are associated with concepts. I unconsciously realized this last night when my friend used the concept of wisdom in a way that I did not agree with. His father told him, “Wisdom is learning from other people’s mistakes. Fools learn from their own.” I was taught that wisdom was knowledge that you gain through experience, which would contradict what his father said. And yet both definitions could be disputed as incorrect if you look back on the Aristotelian definition of the word. But both hold truth in them if the definitions of the words are adjusted appropriately.

So even though we may all communicate with the same language (regionally) we can use it in a very different way. I think this also relates to my realization about the concept continuum. It’s the different levels at which people are using words to convey concepts.

I am trying to challenge myself to translate what people actually mean, rather than strictly adhering to the definition of the words that they use. It’s difficult because I am a bit of a purist when it comes to word definitions. I think if philosophers took the same approach they may be able to find universal values within each of their systems and come to agreement with many different philosophies. At least that’s my theory that I will be slowly testing and have already been unconsciously testing for awhile now. I also think that philosophers that have a solid grasp on linguistics have the upper hand when trying to explain our nature.

I also envy those that speak many languages as their grasp on concepts must be more fluid than your average English-only speaking philosopher.

tl;dr: even though many of us speak the same language, different individuals and groups of individuals tend to use words to represent concepts in vastly different ways. For example a capitalist sees the concept of capitalism as the free market where a communist sees the concept of capitalism as corporations tugging on the strings of power in order to further their means. Even though we speak the same language we are all saying many different things, which is why there is so much disagreement in the world.

Visual example based on the meme that I started:

*EDIT* This can also be applied to help explain why people write moral nihilists off as sociopaths or how Christians write Atheists off as immoral heathens. While those conclusions are patently false, they can be explained by the use of the language.

When it comes to nihilism, I don’t necessarily accept the concept of morality to be valid or complete, but what other people hear when I say that I think I am morally nihilistic is that I am without a guide when it comes to judging whether I perform a behavior one way or another. That is short sighted and untrue of course, but the way we interpret the language through the use of these concepts can block our ability to understand one another.

I’m writing to you about your May 19, 2011 post titled, “Taboo Concepts: Morality and Amoralism.” I am writing to you, because I don’t like your use of the word “need,” and no, I am not a grammar nazi, I am a philosopher.

Here are the statements from your posting which contain the word “need”:

“I wonder if the concept of morality is so flawed that it NEEDS to be thrown out.”

“It goes on to say that this concept is rooted in subjugation and is thus a false concept and the exploration of ethics NEEDS to be scrapped.”

“What is interesting about this is that there is no NEED for moral “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”.”

“If it is rooted in an idea that humans no longer have a NEED for, then I think the concept NEEDS to be abandoned. ”

” I think the entire study NEEDS to be reconsidered and redefined.”

Here is the issue:

When the word “need” is used in a statement, the statement usually also requires a condition in order for the statement to be rational. For example, the statement “I need to breathe air” isn’t rational. However, the statement “I need to breathe air in order to stay alive” is rational, since it has a condition.

This is similar to the fact that that statement “The Earth is traveling at 65 thousand miles per hour” is an irrational statement; 65 thousand miles per hour relative to what? to the sun? to the cetner of the galaxy? to the vacuum of space?

Like velocities, the word “need” is also relative. It roughly means “must happen”. In order for a statement containing “need” to be rational, it usually needs to have a condition. “something must happen for X to occur”, not just ” something must happen.”

You said, “I wonder if the concept of morality is so flawed that it NEEDS to be thrown out.”

The concept of morality is so flawed that it MUST BE thrown out? Why must it be thrown out? What condition requires it to be thrown out?

Realize, that like many people, you misused the word “need.” Often times when someone uses the word “need” without a condition, it’s because they really mean “want.”

Rewording you original statements with “want” instead of “need”:

You wonder if the concept of morality is so flawed that that you might WANT to throw it out.

You WANT the concept and the exploration of ethics to be scrapped.

You have no DESIRE for moral “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”.

You WANT the entire study to be reconsidered and redefined.

I think it sounds more persuasive when you say “need” rather than “want.” “need” roughly means “must be” whereas “want” means that you just desire it personally. But however persuasive it is to use the word “need” instead of “want”, it is fallacious to imply that what you really want is the same as what must be.

I am a moral nihilist. Perhaps that is why I’m more sensitive to the meaning of “need” more than most people. “Need” is very similar to “should”. For example, “I SHOULDN’T kill people” v.s. “I DON’T WANT to kill people” and “I NEED a drink of water” v.s. “I WANT a drink of water”.

I would like you to be more careful when you use the word “need.”

Notice I that I do not say that you SHOULD be more careful when you use the word “need,” I say that I want you to more careful when you use the word “need.” Such is the fate of the moral nihilist.

—–

…reading back over what I wrote, I now feel like rather stupid. Although I still think that statements containing the word “need” must have a condition in order for them to be rational, I now realize that many of your statements did contain conditions. For example, your statement “I wonder if the concept of morality is so flawed that it NEEDS to be thrown out.” In that statement, the concept of morality possibly being flawed is the condition you wrote for why morality might need to be thrown out. However, your use of the word “need” still bothers me, but I see now that it is not because you forgot to leave out the condition. Maybe it’s actually because your conditions don’t actually demonstrate the need. For example, I could say “I need to eat breakfast,” which is an irrational, because it does not provide a condition. Instead, I could also say “In order to get to school (I’m a college student), I need to eat breakfast.” The statement now contains a condition, so a missing condition is no longer what makes it irrational. However, my statement is still irrational because the need does not follow from the condition. I don’t always need to eat breakfast in order to get to school. I’ve gotten to school many times without eating breakfast. Perhaps when you say “I wonder if the concept of morality is so flawed that it needs to be thrown out” the thing that’s not quite rational is that throwing out morality does not follow from morality being flawed. “need” means “must be.” It is not a “must” for morality to be thrown out because it is flawed. Rather, you desire / want morality to be thrown out because it is flawed. I think my idea that in many instances words such as “want” are more truthful than the word “need,” still seems valid. I don’t know. I hope that not all of what I originally wrote was actually garbage.

- Groundhog

The biggest show stopper for me so far is the concept of marriage. It’s a concept that I absolutely loathe, so it is difficult for me to be objective about it but I will try. I see marriage as some sort of ancient tradition that ties women to property. In the modern day it is a strange legal landscape that uses violence in order to coerce men to stay monogamous. As Doug Stanhope says, “If marriage didn’t exist, would you invent it? Would you go “Baby, this shit we got together, it’s so good we gotta get the government in on this shit. We can’t just share this commitment ‘tweenst us. We need judges and lawyers involved in this shit, baby. It’s hot!”"

So that’s basically my point of view without getting too detailed on all the statistics and financial horror stories I have heard that come from this concept. I think that if a relationship is working and you want to make a good and honest go at that relationship, why get the state involved?

I am more oriented towards the monogamous style of relationship so I seek people who share that same value. The problem with being the monogamous type is that it often comes along with the concept of marriage.

Not to say that married people are all miserable and slaves to the state. I know happy married couples. But I think they’d be happy and remain together without the legalities.

So I find myself in yet another minority group and will probably always have issues dating due to my view on marriage. I might not be as alone as I think I am in this viewpoint, and maybe posts like these will prove me wrong. What do you think?

I do plan on going over the concepts of monogamy and polyamory in a future post, but I am still way too on the fence on that to even form a meaningful opinion as of yet.

The hate and anger period lasts a lifetime for some people. I think the anger is a healthy response to the disillusionment and helps motivate an individual to keep seeking the truth and run from the lie. The problem is that many become addicted to this anger and the pursuit of truth transforms into revenge. That is where the hate starts to grow in so many. That hate gets projected on the world and blocks any chance at compassion. That is the part of atheism that I try to distance myself from.

Recently I’ve been watching a backlash to the atheism group at Reddit and have been trying to figure out why Reddit’s hivemind is attacking them. I look through the posts on that section of the site and find myself laughing with agreement. I also feel my anger and self-righteousness well up. Part of me wants to join the fold again and rail against religion and the horrors that it has brought to this world. It reminds me of that first spark I felt when I started to wake up and realize how dangerous it is to avoid reality and believe in the unbelievable.

But then I remember being Christian and hating atheists. I saw them as pompous know-it-all assholes. I was intimidated by their book knowledge and had very little to back up what I believed in. I just felt god and could not explain it and these atheists were calling me an idiot for having this feeling. I have always considered myself intelligent so it was so insulting to be considered an idiot in the eyes of atheists. I spent the better part of my high school and college years debating god and religion to try to show that I could stand my ground. I fought against atheists until I eventually gave into agnosticism. It took falling in love with an atheist to take the next step and give up the concept of god all together. Without that step I am unsure what I would consider myself now.

I don’t like the term atheist. It is a term that pits people against a false concept. Any time you are against anything you create an environment of conflict where no one but those who thrive off of conflict actually learn.

I consider myself one that learns by throwing myself against what I disagree with. I do it until I either give into the ideas that I hate or finally accept that I can never believe those ideas. I do not think that is how most people learn and is a psychological trait of mine that I tend to project on everyone else.

Knowing that about myself I try to stay out of conflict with people who I am trying to educate. My unconscious often betrays me and I end up offending and creating conflict anyways, which is frustrating. But fortunately I always have the opportunity to realize my mistake and try again. That is what I am attempting to do with this post. I am exposing my normal psychological strategy and perspective so I can open the grounds for conversation rather than conflict.

I feel bad for the religious minded that are just trying to get a laugh from the Internet and keep coming across atheist humor that offends them. They don’t want to see the world for what it is and it sucks to see what others think about them. It’s offensive and hurtful. It is like being woken up with a face full of shaving cream by your prank-loving friends when you are having the best sex dream of your life. Some people just want to keep dreaming, and I think that is a valid choice as long as it does not step on my freedom to explore reality.

So on behalf of my angry, and sometimes hateful atheist brethren, I am sorry. We’re angry and you don’t understand why and are not motivated to understand why. But I don’t expect you to be unless you really desire to see what we see. Until you decide differently, I will do my best not to educate you and leave you to your lols.

…and also find a more compassionate path to help educate, rather than just making you feel like an idiot. You aren’t an idiot. You just decide to not pursue knowledge the way I do.