Can Revolution Produce Freedom in the Technological Age of Surveillance and Control?
by Aaron Dykes
Control through electronic surveillance is totally pervasive now… But can technology produce a strong revolution of freedom, independence and self sufficiency as well? I’m hopeful, but not convinced.
After reading up on the history of cybernetics, the ARPA (DARPA) Internet and television, I’m about ready to go Amish, or low-tech Amish.
The Technological Age & The End of Freedom?
The topic of the Unabomber came up again. It concerns a favorite passage of transhumanist Ray Kurzweil (included in his book Age of Spiritual Machines)

Will people be simply exterminated? Will the population be gradually but sharply reduced through population control, eugenics, family planning and propaganda (as is actually happening now), or will the masses instead be treated as “pets” with cute hobbies and trivial pursuits, but no real meaning in society? The question remains, or could be a combination of all of the above.
In the face of mass unemployment and depopulation, is violent revolution justified?
For reasons I explain in the video above, likely not.
It is not clear who could be stopped with force that would in turn result in stopping, or slowing, the tyranny; the tyranny exists, but it is systematic and compartmentalized in the hands of thousands, and probably millions of people. There are countless corrupt and even evil officials, but stopping them will not stop the system. Moreover, violence has become a trivial event for media sensationalism and a tool in justifying greater police state powers, etc. Thus, violence is the wrong approach on many levels, including moral.
Gandhi


Liberty Through Revolution, and Liberty Through New Revelations

Though other methods were attempting – the Tea Party protest, for instance – the revolution was ultimately fought through violent, guerilla warfare. One of Thomas Jefferson’s most famous quotes – as author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States of America – is:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Years later, in his letters to John Adams

Jefferson discusses the case of ancient Rome



But Jefferson argues that even if Brutus



“How can a people who have struggled long years under oppression throw off their oppressors and establish a free society? The problems are immense, but their solution lies in the education and enlightenment of the people and the emergence of a spirit that will serve as a foundation for independence and self-government.”
“If Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government?… If their people indeed had been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. ‘Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will’.”
“But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was,… what could even Cicero, Cato


“These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. But this would have been an operation of a generation or two at least, within which period would have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who would have quashed the whole process. I confess, then, I can neither see what Cicero, Cato

Thinking Our Way Into a Future That Needs Us
The take away here is the need for education – not just training, or common core standards to produce automatons and robot-like worker bees, but real education based upon enlightening and empowering information. If the future needs anything it is thinkers, not regurgitators, memorizers, replicators and drones – technology is undoubtedly already quite good at all that.
The Founders were great scholars of history and political theory and instituted limited government after careful consideration of all the things that went wrong with past systems, and what the best options were for encouraging freedom on several levels. They weren’t perfect, and in fact were quite flawed as individuals, but they did make a principled attempt.
Today, in the age of technology, computers and the Internet, freedom is losing to the control freaks, engaged in mass surveillance, mind control, economic centralization and oligarchical collectivism. Is there room for freedom in this technological society? Could a peaceful revolution succeed?
That depends upon what we can learn from technology’s inspiring possibilities – but also what we can learn from the many lessons of the past. Hint: most of these lessons are being wholesale ignored, as power for the state and corporate institutions concentrates and grows to levels well beyond dangerous, looming and eerie.
Or will we become just “pets,” as the musical act Porno for Pyros predicted?:
From Truthstream Media @ http://truthstreammedia.com/can-revolution-produce-freedom-in-the-technological-age-of-surveillance-and-control/
For more information about true liberty see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/liberty
Thanks to: http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/