I
want to talk a little about how I plan to take over the world.
The
first thing to be done, as far as I can see, will be to draw a map.
If you’re going to correct or change the nature of something, you
should understand how its pieces fit together. Problems are
interrelated. Poverty exists because somewhere someone is profiting
from someone being poor. While it isn’t a horrible idea to start a
homeless shelter or something comparable, it isn’t really
addressing the core issue. We start wars that have everything to do
with energy. We have ridiculous fiscal policies that are directly
related to misunderstandings and failures of our legal system and
privatization. If you can explain where the money goes and identify
who is profiting, you can then know how you need to move your chess
pieces.
Luckily,
we live in the information age. My only hope for humanity comes from
Google. Let me explain. Because information can be stored, copied,
compiled and manipulated with clicks of a mouse, significant amounts
of it can be distributed very quickly. This is very important for a
number of reasons. One, it makes it hard to pin down where and how
something started. The number one concern I have is for the safety of
myself and the people I care about. If I can get the information
working instead of making myself a target, I succeed where many fail
when they invent or try to change something.
Secondly,
if it is to be believed that people are getting less and less likely
to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes (of this I
have many doubts) it allows you to understand things in terms that
can stand against even the most vigorous Colbert interviews. You can
make qualiasoup-esc shorts for Youtube. You can make inforgraphs. You
can compile all the links and resources in easily researchable and
clickable ways. Surely, I shouldn’t have to sell you on what the
internet is capable of, but I think it’s important to lay out some
of the specific ways of outreach.
I
want to act like a virus. If you’re going to change something, why
not play by the rules that are already getting a response and shift
the tides without causing too much of a fuss? When religions were
trying to take over the one that came before it they adopted the
myths and gods of previous traditions into their own framework. I
think I might have enough sense of the American ethos to spin an idea
that would make sense in couch-potato terms, or over-worked and under
paid terms, or “if only I had the time” terms. Expediency and
convenience are a lot of peoples’ guiding light. It’s unrealistic
to blow up or boycott gas stations, but if you give each consumer a
tool to manipulate and get the most out of the gas they inevitably
have to get, you’re winning.
I
have a hunch that the more you teach and trust people with, you’ll
be “surprised” at how well things can actually run. What’s the
alternative? We keep killing the planet, we keep funneling money to
the top 1%, we continue to lament all the time and effort lost, and
ideas for real change stay firmly locked in documentaries. It gets
really old hearing the potential disaster scenarios by enabling and
trusting the public. The current state of the world, as my one friend
Chet pointed out, is that we have weapons that can wipe out all life
on the planet. Explain to me how it gets much worse if we’re
talking in terms of potential. Here’s a clue, no matter the state
of the world you shouldn’t trust anyone or anything implicitly.
Luckily, I don’t play by the rules of trust and forgiveness and
stick to results instead.
With
my map, I want to identify the clogs in the system. Where will a
little information or a little money get things running smoother?
There is no end to the problems people face, so how can you fix all
of them with the least amount of effort? What I’m learning is that
you have to do the Googling for other people. If one can’t
recognize or care to acknowledge a problem, you can’t argue or
expect anything from them. I’m also trying, with much effort, to
learn the amount of informed and willing to fight people that are
simply waiting to be enabled properly. A shared burden looks less and
less like a problem over time. A ton of people all fighting the same
battle from their computer screens is important, but not the kind of
impact I’m looking to create.
This
brings up another strategy of mine. I will make acts become visible
while remaining invisible. I want to be the billionaires of today
you’ve never heard of without the burden and anxiety of protecting
my empire. I want to have my representatives in the media. I want the
“small” changes and adjustments I make around the country or
world to make the news. And from what I’ve seen of the news I
should be accomplishing this accident let alone with the plans I’d
lay out.
Power
is simply the control and manipulation of resources. Living in an age
where information can reach around the world and back in seconds
means the old power paradigm is dying. What are considered to be
“resources” will shift and someone will move in to commoditize
it. In my view, nothing is more powerful than workable information.
This is something that costs arguably nothing. Well before we started
making fumbling economies and playing with numbers we don’t
understand, our goals were to eat, sleep, fuck, and stay alive. I
don’t think the world has to burn over and over again for people to
start forming a better perspective of what they are doing with their
time and information. You don’t care to wage war when everything
you need is available.
For
the record, big bubbles on my map will be health/food, education, the
environment, and poverty/income disparity. If you or someone you know
thinks themselves informed or passionate about one or more of these
issues, I’d like to hear from you. It needs to be more than merely
teaching people. Getting hands in the dirt is the only long term
practical solution in my view. The alternative being us staying
perpetually misinformed or disenfranchised being passed around by
corrupt corporate ethos. I’d also like to state that this blog
exists so that when people say “I never saw it coming” or “I
didn’t realize Nick P. was actually serious” we can still get the
required amount of irony life so obnoxiously demands.
