A Few Quick Thoughts on Freedom and Technology

We have known of the innate characteristic need of members of our species to control individual other members. We also know of our desire to control other species. We attempt to control other species in many ways, screen doors to keep out insects, fences to keep alligators off the Alligator Alley HWY between Naples and Miami, cages in zoos, barbed wire to keep in livestock, nets to capture fish, insecticides-sound waves-scare crows to keep species from our crops, shock apparatus to keep pets within boundaries, rewards such as Bananas-fish-doggie biscuits-bones-toys to evoke preferred behavior.

We as parents start right away by using such techniques to control our own children. We have cribs with cages, pacifiers to prevent crying, toys to keep little humans busy, Mobiles, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, Legos, Dolls, Tonka Toys and just walk down any Wal-Mart Toy section and tell us we have not come a long way since you were a kid. Now we have friends and Family programs for Teens and Cell Phones. We had pagers in the last decade. We have new technologies coming out now with 3G technologies which identify the location of the child. We have GPS units, Active RFID Tags, to find children, watches with ELTs, RFID and/or GPS. In our schools we have new technologies to track kids all the way from their house using such devices described above to the bus stop, once at the bus stop, on the bus and in schools.

We can even control whole Armies with Blue Force Tracking, PDAs, Bio-Metrics, under skin RFID, all by satellite, RF, non-active pinging, AWACS, etc. There is even talk of figuring out ways to track your enemies troop movements, Red Force tracking by hacking into their system, then marching them into your strong points or over whelming their system and crashing it or disrupting it to cause chaos. Those folks at DARPA of course have all sides figured out before deploying such technologies. Since we are doing all these things and have all these technologies now. We can track Student VISAs and people of interest from questionable countries and possible International Terrorists by way of RFID active ID cards, under skin RFID active Satellite tags. We can track rental cars, cell phones, computer surfing, emails, phone calls, etc. See links below:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,21781,00.html

If we continue this forward movement based on fear and therefore track everyone, are we still in fact living in a free society? Who might decide who is good and who is potentially bad? What thoughts did you come away with after watching; "1984," "Gatica," or the latest rendition of the Genre with Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" where one could be arrested for evil thought before an event? And if we fail to use this technology who are we to blame when another International Terrorism Attack happens?

If we rely on our judges to make determinations in secret courts, Judges, which are either elected or appointed in a political event we may face additional problems in that, we know that they are not without question on morality. Politicians in our modern political system in fact reward those who wish to serve with above the law stature upon proving they are the most manipulative of those seeking such positions. We know with all the different jurisdictions and abuses in the United States that there are enough Kangaroo Courts in this country to make one question the reality of justice.

We humans are all of similar genetics. We are all not perfect in every way and for certain not perfect in the eyes of various religions, which have influenced our legal system from the first colonies to the present period; different religions with all their idiosyncrasies of required morality to remain in good standing and without inner guilt. Religion uses many tactics to keep it's members in check and control. For instance many Baptist Churches play their music at 90 beats per second putting people into a theta state of mind for larger tithing contributions and mind control to insert the message of being good and doing right? Changing, modifying and sustaining desired behavior. In the US Military and armies through out recorded history they have marched in cadence to help deliver the message of discipline, strength and honor to the whole and team. Hitler talked in cadence and was said to mesmerize crowds when speaking. These techniques had served him well as have such techniques for many, many generations. We can see cadence in literary works; poems, the Bible, Koran and many other religious doctrines. When you listen to modern day politicians which have risen, you will also find they have mastered such art of speech. Rap music has beats that are conducive to this frequency of theta states of mind.

We also know there are many other stimuli which effect humans. Certain music in stores will assist in helping retailers sell more. Certain room temperatures at retailers, book stores, coffee shops, C-Stores will increase impulse buying, which are generally amongst the highest priced items and definitely the highest profit items. McDonalds use to have unpleasing colors in their furniture to help turn over the tables faster. Your mind did not enjoy those colors for long periods of time and so you left allowing for others to sit down. Today they want you to stay longer for the QSR to look busier and thus busy attracts more customers. Another reason why restaurants try to first sit people by the windows to make the place look busy so more patrons stopped at the café along Main St. USA. This same techniques is discussed in retailing textbooks, Restaurant training centers and Food Service industry magazines. It is in the hand books of most of America's favorite chain restaurants have this in their management handbooks and manuals. In prisons they have found that pink calms inmates and there is less civil unrest. It has been used in mental institutions and clinics for decades. Fire Truck studies show that Yellow is the fastest to be seen, red lights make people tense. Full moon nights any policeman will tell you, "it will be a long night." Meaning more crime during those nights, sometimes up to three times as many calls and criminal events.

Even as we are evolving the last 3,000 years of generally accepted written history seems to elude to the fact that the same stimuli which worked then is working now and we as a species will not readily evolve out of such reactions to stimuli any time soon. Three thousand years is a drop in the bucket. Ten thousand years is really not all that either. Having traced my ancestry back to 422 BC, it is only 65 generations. Not really enough to have a totally significant innate or genetic change although through nurture and adapting which mankind appears to be quite good at.

Now let us discuss a most interesting phenomena, that of Frequency Pollution and Frequency Manipulation, which has come into play in the last century. Surely mankind has not adapted or even understood what is going on with our biological systems in that regard yet.

With cell phone towers everywhere, high frequency power lines, computer use, AC electricity in our homes we may find our brains being disrupted to such a degree that we may find our ability to reason and think somewhat lessened. We also control the minds of people and their ability to see reality by mass media, entertainment. Why is our country so divided? Well, could it be perhaps the media? Could the last Bush VS. Gore election close race be due to the equal amount each received from the media? Could the landslides of more recent elections have been caused by the media? After all the media loved Clinton and Reagan was part of Hollywood having been Screen Actors Guild President in a prior period in his life? The modern stimuli is everywhere telling us that we are sexy if we where this type of clothing, that type of shoe, listen to this type of music or drive that type of car; BMW had done a convenient survey and the conclusion? BMW owners had sex on average of 2.3 times per week compared with Porsche owners 1.6 times, no matter that you were twice as likely to contract a Sexually Transmitted Disease if you owned that car? We call these carefully done studies to promote a thought or stimulus to buy a certain product; Advertising. We are bombarded with it nearly everywhere we go. Which is a good thing since when you buy something someone is gainfully employed making it.

Maslow predicts those things that humans desire in the order they desire them based on your position on his hierarchy of need pyramid. Respect from your fellow man, social acceptance ranks up pretty high along with food, shelter, clothing, sex and self preservation.

The greatest force to control mankind in most recent civilizations is 'fear'. Our laws are based on fear of punishment, religions control by fear (you could go to hell? Very hot there, you could burn your tushy buns to a crisp? Not good). In sales, the now famous Zig Ziglar discusses the take away trial close as a good technique which evokes a sense of fear of loss. For instance; "if you do not buy this 850i 'Today' it could be sold tomorrow and we will not have another one in this color just like you want for at least 6 months, maybe never they say?"

There are so many common forms of everyday stimuli, Caffeine from coffee-chocolate-soda pop, Nicotine from cigarettes, amino acids in food, etc. Then those who partake in illegal drugs, legal prescription, herbal or other such as vitamins have artificially changed their stimulus. All these factors can change the way we think, the decisions we make and the roads we take.

A combination of all these things will effect what we do, how we think and our over all motivation in one direction or another. There are those who wish to control humans for various self interested reasons, for the benefit of a civilized and productive society, to change the direction or movement of the over all game. Those with the strongest sense of character can over come stimuli by the innate human spirit and will, the fulfillment of genes or the pursuits of happiness. Having studied the over achievers and the writings of the notables of the last 4,000 years, most of these writings of course belonging to the most current periods due to loss of writings of ancient times such as the destruction by fire of the library in Alexandria or the private collectors who have claimed possession, it appears that the human spirit or human element, if you will, is in fact the wild card. Perhaps this strong will possessed by small percentage of the whole along with the adversity and life experience can battle the obvious stimulus to go beyond the mere animal instincts, to persevere and press on towards a greater goal. There will always be members of the whole who cannot be controlled by the simple stimulus of the masses, a certain subset of the whole that does march to the beat of a different drummer. These standouts are of interest as human civilization progresses forward due to the ideas and warnings in such movie, theatre or literary works of a controlled society; that of the 'Borg', beehive syndrome, those who truly do possess free will, that ever elusive often questioned gift to mankind. Some say a curse.

Calvinists would question the essence of the idea, but cannot deny it completely as one observes behavior of the characters in this VR life experience we participate within this dimension. Those who will not surrender their free will, the daily stimuli which comes and goes, can and will change the course of human history thru directional shifts in momentum and rightfully so. Or will we, based on the daily dose of stimuli outcast those who are independent thinkers, not necessarily subscribing to the academia brain washing or engrained linear thought process? Will we surrender our minds to the drugs, frequency waves, manipulated food intake, mass media hysteria, sound & fury, crisis and controversy and the norm? We live in chaos, renewal, patterns of systems all running together, our purpose is to do more than merely be born, procreate and die. With the brain power available to the human race we can set a new course, take the human speices to a higher level, the next step and the next as fast as we are willing to go. It is interesting for a species, organic machine so well adapted to life within the chaos itself that we have grown to appreciate the status quo, the norm and so adverse to change even though change is the only constant. Without it, we are stagnant and without life's sense of purpose other than the birth, procreation and death cycle, we remain trapped in linear thought and time, doomed to repeat.

The United States is an interesting case study as world civilizations go, our greatest spurt of growth coming from innovation, strength of the individual, drive, ambition, motivation, etc. Yet as things move faster people fear, fearing change is also a stimuli, as we said and as you probably can see from your daily lives that fear is a huge stimuli, now then; should we allow the fear. Fear from international terrorists, fear of lawsuits, fear and fear of change to stop the forward progression of mankind? Surely not, this is a great nation, but it has not reached it's full potential, not even close, we have barely scratched the surface of possibility for our future destiny, why stop here? We have come too far, the bumpy road too long, to merely call it quits, our present families and our ancestors in the commitment to press to design this great system and to have all we are and all we have built, should never let such ideals die simply to slide forever backwards into a swamp, tar pit or marsh of mediocrity.

As we round out what appears to be a ten-year or decade long war on terror and as we get our own house in order and move back towards a government for the people and by the people, based on reality not contrived stimuli from sources without the best interests of the people also in mind, it is quite possible that we may actually be in grasp of the utopia we all seek. When we read controversy in the newspapers, listen to debates on TV, see tabloid headlines meant to shock and cause distrust and insight conspiracy theories, scroll down web pages with innuendo and half-truths; we need to remember that we are all in this together and much of what is discussed and put out there is nothing more than spaghetti against the cold refrigerator door, looking for a place to stick. If we will think harder, look deeper and concentrate on moving the ball down the field, we will leap out of the water before it boils and calmly reset the dial for the proper temperature for human life. Just because the coffee shop is a chilling 55 degrees does not mean you need to buy more products or leave the store. The issue is with that which controls the thermostat and the other half is your reaction to it. You and me, us and them can agree to disagree at times, agree at others and still leave room for all our pursuits without placing blame targeted to people or events, now that would be a concept.

We know that mankind will always use all possible strategies available to control his fellow man, with this known we need to track what needs to be tracked while maintaining our freedoms and we need to use such new technologies to best serve the continuation of all we are and all we have built.

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs