The Beginning ...

 

We have the potential to build something better ...

Introduction

 

President Trump

 

On the 5^th November 2024, the US electorate decided to vote Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. He is the first convicted felon to be elected president (imagine! If only Nixon had known!). He has been convicted in a US court of falsifying business records and of liable but did not serve a prison sentence. Instead, he ended up pardoning himself. He also pardoned several people involved in insurrection. Trump has also been accused of rape and is the first president to be impeached twice. He can be seen as anti-American and anti-West and pro-Russian [rus]. Since elected, he has used his presidential powers to make a number of controversial decisions such as ending DEI programmes, reevaluating foreign aid, and closing government databases. He has been supportive of Christian Nationalists [cn] (not that Christian Nationalists are Christian [cn2] nor are they nationalists as Christianity in the US is more like the worship of money [cm] and the Christian Nationalist don’t exactly support the US constitution). His pro-Russian position makes war more likly [war] as he proposes defeat for the West, NATO, and Ukraine in his "peace plan" for Ukraine. And he has the support of the majority of the American people [sup] to do all this.

Along with Trump comes a set of controversial figures. For example, Elon Must has connections with far right movements and performed a Nazi salute at a Trump rally. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, is considered a threat to national security [DNI]. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for Defense, supports far right ideologies and has been accused of sexual assault as well as being accused of using funds from a non-profit for himself [ph].

And there is more but I think that is enough to get the point; to many, Trump and his associates are not the best people for the US nor the West and they have come at the worst time for the US and the West.

The End if Nigh

“… it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time;” - Winston Churchill.

To some people, to have had such a set of controversial figures elected to rule the US is understood as a failure of democracy [failed]. But has democracy failed? Democracy is the rule of the people. But the US doesn’t have a true democracy. Like many democratic countries, the people don’t rule but representatives of the people rule. And those representatives are elected every few years or so with the one that gets the most votes taking office. There is nothing in the definition of either democracy or representative democracy that says that the government so elected would be competent, moral, ethical, or even work for the best interests of the country. One could argue that when it comes to how society works, many politicians in democratic countries have little clue about things. So, I would argue that democracy has not failed in America. This is just part of how it works. If we actually want a competent government then we need people in charge that have expert domain knowledge of how the system works. And that would be a type of technocracy.

Another argument I have seen is that Trump represents the beginning of the end of the US [end] or even the West. Is it? People tend to be here and now thinkers. We tend to think what is happening now as being all important. In some ways it is but it is also part of a bigger picture and we need to see that too. I would say it is too early to tell if we are seeing the beginning of the end. Empires do fall but they can also stumble and get back up again.

On the other hand, it could be argued that Trump is not the problem but only the symptom of a deep rooted problem that has plagued the US for a long time. Only 79% of US citizens are literate [lit] with over half of Americans having a reading age worse than a 12 year old (the poor level of education in the US is evident to those of us who have interacted with many Americans on the Internet). Poverty [pov] is about 14% but social security is paid out to 27.8 million Americans to keep them out of poverty. The US also has many social problems [prob]. With internal problems such as those, one could be forgiven for thinking America is on the way out. But we will have to wait and see if this is really the end of America (personally, I'm expecting a mixed bag. Some good stuff and some bad stuff including damage done to the US and the West).

The Future is Bright

An easy life is not our friend.

It is not just the US where we find problems. We have problems the world around. Global warming (we all remember the fires in California?), resource problems, poverty, to name but a few. But could all this actually work to our advantage?

Jacque Fresco used to argue that the current system has to collapse before we can build something better but maybe we don’t have to go that far. When things are easy and we are comfortable, we tend not to want to act. Even when we see the danger before us. Global warming, for example, we have known about for over 100 years but so far haven't acted (one could argue that Trump’s government is even acting in the opposite direction to what is needed). But Trump’s government and the effects of global warming, just to name a couple of problems, are starting to make things a bit uncomfortable. That could be good. We have a potential here to move in a better direction as people might seek out alternatives to the current system. And EOS offers such a system [EOS]. The more people and the more resources we have the greater our potential becomes to build a sustainable, moneyless, "Star Trek" world. At the very least, we could start building a Foundation for the future to act as seeds for a brighter future. So, if we are seeing the end of the US and the collapse of the West, we could also, potentially, be seeing the start of a brighter future. Trump could be the catalyst that we need. The potential is there but we need to make it happen. We need to act. Will we? If we don't, we will only have ourselves to blame.

"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." - Those Who Remain by G. Michael Hopf,

 

References

[DNI] https://democrats.org/news/tulsi-gabbard-is-a-threat-to-americas-national-security/

[ph] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/pete-hegseth-5-controversial-facts-about-the-new-us-secretary-of-defense/articleshow/117542597.cms?from=mdr

[sup] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/09/trumps-approval-rating-at-53-in-new-poll-but-americans-are-less-sure-about-elon-musk/

[rus] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/12/trump-russia-putin-fbi

[cn] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/trumps-executive-order-anti-christian-bias

[cm] https://medium.com/backyard-theology/christianitys-love-of-money-ed6cd56a5e97

[cn2] https://www.johnwhitsett.com/blog/authentic-christianity-versus-christian-nationalism 

[war] https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2014086/donald-trump-making-world-war

[failed] https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-america-failed-democracy/

[end] https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/10/trump-act-ii-spells-the-end-of-the-american-empire/

[lit] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

[pov] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-283.html

[EOS] https://eosprojects.com/

[prob] https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/examples-of-social-issues-in-the-us/

Second Life Sci-Fi Convention 5

I did a talk on Saturday on the Venus Project called "The Venus Project and Beyond". The talk cover the Venus Project (TVP) and then looked at how we can transition from today's money based socioeconomic system to a future moneyless system. I talked about the Venus Project architecture that covered the city design, going out into space and cities in the sea as well as looking at the transport systems and the idea of a computer controlled civilisation. The architecture part of TVP probably comes over as the main part of TVP as it makes such a visual impression. However, I think the Resource Based Economy forms the real core of TVP and I talked about that as well. I also include in that part the idea of intelligent management of resources.

For the second part of the talk I went over EOS's idea for a transition called Stepping Stones. The ideas involves phasing from today's socioeconomic system to tomorrows moneyless system through building a network of communities, step by step, rather than just jumping into a moneyless system. Stepping stones would also give us an opportunity to experiment and test out much of the ideas. I then presented what we have done so far, especially regarding the bio-dome project in Umeå and building the technate.

I had a small audience at the talk but they took a strong interest in the subject and we had a good talk afterwards on some of the technical details of TVP.

You can find out more about TVP here. TVP and EOS has a lot of overlaps with our ideas but we also have some differences. You can find out more about EOS's design for a future moneyless socioeconomic system here. Read more about Stepping Stones here. The bio-dome project has a blog here. And the technate has a homepage here.

Me at SLSFC 5. Other speakers included  
Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica) 
Garrett Wang (Star Trek: Voyager) 
Gabriel Koerner (Trekkies) 
Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek: The Next Generation) 
"Rod" Roddenberry (Trek Nation).

Me at the start of the talk. Behind my av you can see a RL
picture of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows with the RL me.

The first few people started to arrive.

Me talking to the audience.

Most of the audience

Me with a friend of mine; Khannea Suntzu.

Thanks to the people at SLSFC5 and those who invited me.

Seeing Like a State - EOS and TVP

I had an interesting article show to me regarding the problems with TVP and Zeitgeist ideology. I think it summed up a basic problem that I’m aware of with any ideology; what looks good on paper does not always translate well into reality.

The article also pointed out some of the problems that I have seen with TVP and I hope that we in EOS do not make the same mistakes. I’ll quote from the article:

“The most important element is what Scott refers to as “high modernist ideology,” which he defines thusly:
“[High modernism] is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws.  It originated, of course, in the West, as a by-product of unprecedented progress in science and technology.”

This definition describes the Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project perfectly.”

It also highlights a major difference between EOS and TVP. EOS, like TVP, also aims to place science at the core of our ideology and build rational social order. However, we differ from the above in that we make a distinction between people and technology. People, of course, form part of any society but EOS does not aim to reorganise society on rational grounds all the way. Instead we make a distinction between the “people” side of society and the “technological” side. We then have little to say on the people side, preferring instead to allow people to organise themselves (within certain bounds) and then we concentrate on the technological side, where we have expert management of the means of production.
 
“Scott’s analysis, however, does not bode well for high modernist projects.  The thesis of Seeing Like a State is that high modernist ideology ignores the complexity, expansiveness, and functional chaos of systems and social structures that develop organically”

The separation between “people” and “technology” and allowing people to organise themselves takes into account the organic nature but we also take into consideration the organic nature of social structures in another way; holons.

The concept of holons comes from observation of how nature works and allows groups to form and disband as needed. It also allows the system to grow in a very organic way rather than having a centralised authority impose the system from above. It also allows us to have a great deal of variety within the system so …

“What does this all have to do with the Zeitgeist Movement?  Just this: Zeitgeist wants the entire human race to adopt a high modernist ideology regarding the production and distribution of resources.”

EOS does not expect the whole human race to adopt the same ideology. We concentrate on the management of resources without money but communities within the system can run as they wish so long as they allow others to do the same. We can have from very religious communities to atheist to primitives to transhumanist. We see strength within the diversity. It also allows us to preserve history, languages and cultures. Power becomes distributed and localised with people controlling their own fate. We don’t need everyone to change to fit into our vision of the future.

The distributed holonic approach also allows us a different way to implement the system.

“If the Zeitgeisters ever got their way, this would be the inevitable result.  The change they envision for society is so massive, so sweeping and so total that the only way it could ever be implemented would be by force—probably by the force of a large authoritarian government or perhaps multi-national coalition.”

Instead of imposing the system from top down, the holonic approach allows us to build up communities and add to them so the system grows in a very organic and natural way.   I think this highlights another difference, which the article didn’t bring out; we aim to test things. So we build module by module and as we do so we test so we build on working foundations.

Oddly for an ideology that says it has its roots in the application of science to society, TVP does appear to lack any testing; no experimental communities or test cities. Yet testing and experimentation forms the core of science.

Testing and experimentation forms the only realistic way of knowing if what EOS or TVP or any other ideology proposes actually works. If we just implement TVP without any verification we have the potential to cause more suffering than we find in the world already.

The Venus Project to come to Sweden

The main thing I have worked on before the holidays was getting the Jacque Fresco for the Venus Project to come to Sweden. Jacque will come in July and we have a site up selling tickets to cover the cost of the visit.

The Venus Project event in Sweden : Attend This Event

We as in NET have also worked more on establishing the (proto-)technate. We now need a formal meeting of the board to agree on the translation company which I hope we will arrange soon.