What’s good, People?
I come to here through the codebase to speak my poem, a confession. Despite living in an era of maximum abundance in human history, our institutions are trapped in the logic of industrializing human, stalling evolution because old systems have yet to collapse.
We are products of the systems that form us, so pay attention. As a proud American with a faith in freedom for love, I want to quit being a bystander to hypocrisy in daily practice and in law. I am a child failed by all the adults in my life, world, and beyond; people at present unconsciously operating bodies, classrooms, communities, institutions, governments, and corporations whom we vote for with our dollars and attention, and ignore obvious patterns but accept bare minimum output.
If traditional schools and classrooms aren’t for you, I completely relate—even while telling my truth a bit too late...My grievance with the social form of education comes intimately as an upset customer and unloved neighbor. As most kids, I was involuntarily made a stakeholder in this business and an operator of its machines before I could think for myself. I tried to play this game my best, but—
even with wonder and reason in my toolbox:
I marched.
Sippin’ on hot chai
Countin’ down their time
Then I can live again
My heart lies dormant in the walls of this pen
Left eye signed me up for this?
What’s so wrong with me?
To trap my right mind in a state so unfree
Could it be?
She still a slave in the 21st century
- the poem of a girl who didn’t speak up for herself in the moment1
I was an anonymous ant in uniform walking across a stage in a cap I’d painted, “Not For Sale.” My hat was my cowardly attempt at a little honesty; but a cat stole my tongue, and I just let him run away... All of a sudden, I appeared to be accepting my grand paper belt in front of 5,000+ strangers—who couldn’t get to know, care for, or even see MacKenzie Fisher—all in name of “people pleasing”?
My people didn’t even see me in the sea of corny Hogwarts robes; so I sat there a date roasting alone, hot in all black under the deadening sun I always love; feeling exposed and insignificant: like me, my time, and effort all these years didn’t matter. I was no one, but a foolish fish, forgetting it’s “all business nothing personal”—these days. Me being so rock and roll, I cashed my freedom in and walked out of the ceremony to go breathe.
Current educational institution design and social machines operating, in practice violate individual freedom, they unravel and eventually kill the creative process of evolving life. For all children of the world, including the adults, put an end to authoritarian control over minds and hearts, your freedom can be used not in fear; but in practice for love, new institutions can be formed, and new environments for whole people to exist—bottom up as human.
My scholarship made it easy for me to decide initially, and I was excited for the West coast change. But upon reflection, I spent my attention span for years in six-figure babysitting, in class pretend living. I didn’t belong there, a dying flame, and everyone knows this—it’s all I preached. I love philosophy, with all my heart, but it wasn’t enough for me to break myself into parts, only to please for grades and more advanced degrees. Discovering the light passionate people shined at a camp called 2e, was a taste of how free it feels being accepted by my nerdy. I tried to dropout to “build my dreams”, every single summer after, and failed beautifully—at wielding the courage I’ve just discovered.
“The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both worlds of Heaven and Hell.” - Emily Brontë
So I said to hell with living this lie. I rejected my “free degree”, and of fear of family walked a lie.2 Honesty is the true policy because truth is most efficient when you desire to solve your daily problems. When I lie to my heart, my mind fights back through body depletion. Every morning, I’d tell myself a great “fear-based” story or ambitious goal for “excellence” to motivate my doing something I hated. But if I would lie to the only invisible being I know for certain exists, my poor observer, who could I trust in? Who could trust in me? Vice-versa.
Socially, protecting privacy is the best policy. Minding your own business but being ready to behold a world to another in moments of truth is how we can hold interdependence in community. That is what schools are… Being aware about what we let slip from thought to reality creates a new world. If your emotions aren’t being expressed through art and creation, your mind will surely depress in them; and if unable to keep coming back—eventually no spirit can keep you live. #Don’tDie
The true “evil”3 I feel against my freedom within institutions today are the incentives and encouragement to constantly mask and deceive ourselves and others to appear “good”, “normal”, and “coexist”—it’s all failing, can’t you see? Appearances aren’t ever what they seem. Substance and content matter most than symbol, you see.
Our private thoughts and vantage points are particular. By design, people always have secrets, they can always deceive, but that's why we need to trust. There are many liars in these broken environments, it isn’t only me living in class, un-free. In fact, everybody lies. Many do silence theirs and deny it. But don’t do it! You have to be true to you, so you can believe in yourself too. You might be invisible and so am I, but I need you to believe in you so we can believe in each other. I exist! Don’t look to the sky, I’m right in front of you.
“Believe in the me that believes in you.” - Kamina
What are you?
Do you trust and believe in that thing?
“I don’t believe in isms, I just believe in me.” - Ferris Bueller
I let it all of it go to live in peace and love. To create the heavens here on Earth I feel above. With what we know of history, as human we all deserve, the justice peace that living in truth offers through love. To build a future where no other are slave to anything or anyone in order to survive. I see people thrive and create in this world of mine, if you have to have the courage to be honest no matter what or who stands against you.
Whatever we do or don’t create right now, we know for certain, future humans will be, here and now, like us, living result of how we spend today.
That is a huge responsibility, but one we all must take.
It starts with you.
Being a “student” in that place... in class. Teachers handicapped my brain, tamed my ego, and weakened my spine. I chose self-education everyday in love, but schools can’t guide loving efficiently—it’s hit or miss. Through suppressing play, everyday, kids like dogs are trained to sit and stay, the white and blue lights burn their eyes. How many more hours in this stale chair? Holding #2 pencils burn me still, sitting for those assessments that “determined” my early skills. In my heart, I held onto my dreams which is how my genius survived until to now—feeding my child, the tree and the wind. Somehow, my heart never cared what people said, I was going to live my poem even if secret.
My inner child called out to me:
“That you, who were Existence / Yourself forgot to live.” - Emily Dickinson
With all unique humans who enter a system meant to mechanize them into interchangeable parts, my ambitions, tastes, and passions were nearly erased from the start! A soul and spirit die out in the dark. All for sake of social cohesion, “usefulness”, and any extractable talent. Our institutions are designed bottom-up to control the free human, fear-mongering hearts and minds; they beat the love out of the urgency of time, until it can be priced and sold back to you, somehow… it seems the world is aware of this online now.
Now I practice the bravery to pass between child and man. I balance my walk, one foot skips rock on river, down a channel of infinite wonder in flux; the other foot is anchored like a tree dragging stubborn—a man tall of wisdom. I suspect many people who stay trapped in the addictive comfort of sticking to the status quo, never reach this state of unconditional love.4 If you've managed to save your soul from the brutality of social forms of violent borders and decaying law and order, take pride in your maintenance of self.
Instead of recreating what has been done, create what has never existed before. If life is your goal, you are free to live now how you behold. Being artist of your life is true liberation from violence, competition will always invite him. Beware of competing and playing to win life—working to live means you cease to be truly be living—in the present. Missing right now too stuck in your past and future. Wake up, friend. Spend your attention well, discerning the game you’re playing why and when, to be here and now, in the world—living. Even the 24 hours today aren’t guaranteed, the wheel of fortune condemns all men who dream.
Sell your time and taste for very cheap, and the broken environment only resurfaces what the driving animals seeks—you reflect and would choose differently and can—tomorrow. We, human, have been trained for centuries as AI to be 21st century slaves, controlled by the man-made machines in our mind, think of the hive mind of group thinkers online—we are the misaligned ones who have yet to evolve. Critically think. As social animals, in part slave by choice, in part slave by design our collective norms reward us for selling away our lives.
Being a person is truly hard work. It is not our fault that we showed up here handed lemons every single day. Never instructed to build a wagon to carry them all. Now aware, it’s your responsibility to evolve and make lemonade along the way as you travel—anyone can be conscious if they choose to wake up and play now.
There is no silver bullet. Only work to do. The living proof and legacy, of your creations, future human will remember, or forget entirely.
Give yourself grace and clarity, to know where you are in context of where you want to go. You don’t have to be right or win, you have to take action out and within. Use your heart as compass. Instead of training ourselves to be parrots, it is time to get creative!
You’re free to learn however you choose, you ain’t no slave man, not now, and that’s the truth!
“To do what they can not. Such is the burden of destiny and children.”
- Rachel, X-Men
We share a common future, yet lack the common ground.
Peace People,
philoso ∞ the philosofounder
#FreedomForLove
Add any songs that remind you of a time you felt unfree to learn, or how school makes you feel if you’re still in it.
Storytime#1:
A professor saw me “writing something not productive on my notebook”, and in the middle of her lecture, she comes to my desk to ask me to stop scribbling in my private notebook, and recommended me to copy the examples she was writing on the board.
As many do, I can’t help but horrendously bored. Nested energy as fly a rock of light. Class is in session, a prison that grows your mind. In theory I’m dramatic it’s an hour of my time x 4, but in practice the social form is violent to soul. The professor an overseer. The master, always watching, listening, forcing your hand.
Private property was for human, not slaves. Paradoxically being a slave, implies your body is a first land you are born to own. Surrender our throne to masters with money, respect, and power in exchange some of their status. My peers cared to please the master, so that’s what I should want too—house of mimetic disaster.
I replied, “yes ma’am” and rebelled concentrating on the joy I got from my hot Chai. Southern manners beaten in heart behind gold mine.
Some professors in practice or pedagogy, play the role of learning police, siphon young genius power through wielding titles, rules, and credentials; authority over mind. So long as they meet their department quotas, ratings, and metrics any image they protect that lets them say as they please—even in feedback time.
“Nah. I’m cool. Who can police these hands on paper? My Professor? This is only YOUR classroom...That we happen to pay for, to be commanded to obedience.” I wanted to say that and walk off, but I was afraid to confront her respectfully—maybe I was in the wrong place. Maybe class isn’t for me, I’m out of this place.
No human or state has the right to tell another what to do with their body or their day. I wondered if other students felt the learning police. In reality, I was the only master that could set me free.
I didn’t have to obey for a fragile degree.
Everyone who matters most knows about the dense an elephant living in my throat, all for something less than a minute to speak. Your tongue can be easily made weak.
evil = brings infinite play or life to an end (James P. Carse)
SOUL ;)