Watching out for and exposing corruption and abuse of power needs to be something that is so permanently embedded into people’s minds that it becomes as natural and just as much a part of everyday life as eating, drinking and sleeping.
This should be extremely simple to accomplish and yet it won't happen easily.
Just take all the conversations that people have every day about meaningless things like sports and celebrities (bread and circuses to distract the Roman mob)... and replace those things with topics that actually matter.
That's really all there is to it.
These types of conversations aren’t going to come from the top down. They’re not going to come from the public & private institutions in society that build, maintain and depend on centralized hierarchy.
They’re going to have to come from regular people.
Tens of millions or hopefully hundreds of millions of independent citizen journalists keeping power in check.
It has to become a permanent way of life that is enshrined in every public square and passed on to every generation, plain and simple.
That’s personally the only way I can see that would finally break the life and death cycle of Centralization/Decentralization.
“People are waking up. They're getting involved. They're saying, "Not another
day! This is where I mark the line." Their desire to change the world is turning
from simple wishful thinking on Monday mornings into tangible action. The
thoughts they used to have only occasionally about their relationship to the rest
of the world now occurs to them all the time.
They're beginning to see activism not as something that is done only at non-
profit meetings and at protests, but that activism is a way of life - that it
represents nothing less than our personal, spiritual choice to choose
determination over defeat, and compassion over apathy. Ultimately, in some
way, it is the choice to reject our culture's post-modern slide into narcissism.
It is to reject the modern consumer philosophy that true happiness and joy
comes from personal material accumulation, from seeking personal desires
and needs.”
-Tim Hjersted
We have the ability to do this now thanks to technology.
Thanks to technology everyone can participate. Everyone can record and gather data using nothing more than their phone. Everyone can access information on virtually any topic in the world using the internet. And everyone can become a publisher who distributes and shares content using social media.
The implosion of capital outlays associated with the desktop revolution, and the virtual disappearance of transaction costs associated with the network revolution, have eliminated the gap between what can be produced within large hierarchical organizations and what can be produced at home in a wide range of industries: software, publishing, music, education and journalism.
This effect is no longer just limited to the digital world but also is starting to be felt in the physical world with 3D printing and the internet of everything.
In other words...
Decentralized networked organizations now have the potential to constrain the power of large, hierarchical organizations in a way that once required the countervailing power of other large, hierarchical organizations (what may be referred to as binary hegemony).
Everyone can now become their own independent, decentralized broadcasting station.
We can take the web of technology that makes up the surveillance state and flip the camera around 180 degrees and use it against those in power.
Steve Mann, a computer science researcher, calls this practice “sousveillance” which he coined in 2002. It comes from the French root “sous,” meaning below, to refer to surveillance that turns the tables on the powerful.
Watching The Watchers
Nearly all of the biggest, most important, most relevant, most ground breaking stories over the last 5-10 years have come from alternative independent media, decentralized media, citizen journalists, open source journalism, social media, hackers, leakers and whistleblowers.
Over the next 5-10 years, we will overtake corporate mainstream media as the dominant source of information in society.
It’s already happening.
Social media DESTROYED mainstream establishment media this year in the 2016 elections.
We bitch slapped them from every direction and they’re still reeling and trying to recover from it.
And even if the establishment’s anointed one (Clinton) “wins,” that’s not the point.
And what you think of Clinton, Trump, Sanders, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or any of them isn’t the point either.
What you think about statism and anarchism and whether to participate in the political process or not isn’t really the point either.
You have to look past the candidates and the political process and see the far bigger, more important trends going on here.
The Real Issue Is Not The Election, It’s Not
Even The Political Process
It’s About Who Controls The Narrative
And Controlling The Narrative Is EVERYTHING
Trump crashed the Republican primaries like a wrecking ball because he was an outsider and the media has done everything in their power to stop him. Sanders almost did the same thing in the Democratic primaries. And the jury is still out on the general election but it’s too late for the corporate media now regardless of what happens. Their credibility has been completely destroyed and will never be recovered at this point.
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A huge example of how we are now starting to dictate the narrative is when Clinton addressed “conspiracy theories” and the alt-right in one of her speeches.
What you think about the alt-right is irrelevant. What you think about conspiracy theories is irrelevant.
The mere fact that Clinton was forced to go on the defensive and address issues that were 100% created by alternative media sources is a MASSIVE turning point.
Mainstream media is no longer the only ones that are determining what questions are asked.
The entire issue of Clinton’s health, which is now a major national debate across all platforms, was an issue that 100% originated from alternative media. That video of Clinton collapsing as she’s getting into the van came from just a regular citizen using a cellphone.
That shows the power we are gaining.
And it’s not just about journalism and exposing criminal behavior. It’s about spreading knowledge, raising collective awareness, educating and starting conversations.
It’s about re-structuring the human race into a collection of individuals who question everything, who think objectively and who form their belief systems based on independent research.
A lot of people like to make fun of the idea of “raising awareness” on social media. I used to be one of those people.
But contrary to what a lot of people think, raising awareness does make a difference – a HUGE difference.
The mere act of simply IDENTIFYING a problem and raising awareness about it is sometimes enough to solve the problem because once people are aware of a problem, in some cases that is enough for them to stop participating in it.
“As soon as structures of oppression are identified they tend to kind of disappear.
Not instantly of course, there's resistance. But it's a general truth that power
prefers darkness. If it's exposed to the light, it erodes. If people can see it, it
erodes. And this happens all throughout history.”
-Noam Chomsky
Raising “awareness” is all about controlling the narrative. Controlling the narrative is everything.
Karl Marx Urged His Followers To Seize
Control Of The Means Of Production.
Instead, Let Us Urge Each Other
To Seize Control Of The Narrative.
Whoever controls the narrative decides what issues are discussed in public, what questions are asked and who is held accountable in the public eye.
Why do you think one of the very first things a military does when it stages a coup is seize control of the news stations?
It’s because if you control the flow of information and you control the narrative, you have the power.
This is one of the reasons why the recent coup in Turkey failed. They failed to seize and maintain control over the news stations.
(There’s still a lot of debate about who exactly was behind that coup and whether it was staged or not, but that’s beside the point…)
This is Part 2 of a 4 Part series.
To read Part 1:
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@asymmetricanarch/citizen-journalism-part-1-the-key-to-achieving-a-moksha-state-of-panarchism
In Part 3: Why language is a weapon and how to reach a tipping point in the balance of power.
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https://www.facebook.com/isaiah.sieg