Category: Thoughts

I once posted that I officially love WordPress. I also like blogs and blogging and while discussion forums are usually only an entertaining way to burn some time, even forums can sometimes be useful and a source of information that is hard to find elsewhere.

But there are a couple of things on the “social” Internet that I officially hate: Twitter and Facebook and everything else that can be described as a “Social Network”.

I already thought that SMS is an unworthy form of human communication, so ever using Twitter was entirely out of the question for me.

But several years ago, I was somehow talked into opening a LinkedIn account and since LinkedIn aims a “professional” audience, I gave it a shot and fed the LinkedIn servers with my data and “connected” with other people that I knew through my various jobs.

Yet, over all those years, I wondered what this thing actually did for me. The answer was simple: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m pretty sure that LinkedIn gained some useful information from my data and the data of the people that I connected with and could create valuable profiles that they could sell to advertisers or use otherwise. After all, that is what Facebook does for a living – and most Facebook users don’t realize at all that they are the product that Facebook sells to its real customers, which are advertisers.

All other social networks pretty much have the same business model as Facebook. The thing for me is that I hate ads and being treated like consumer cattle. So, a few days ago, I finally closed the only social network account that I ever owned.

I don’t mind when people want to use stuff like Facebook, Google+, WKW (a German Facebook-ripoff), Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing or the like. I mean, it’s the year 2012 and billions of people are still watching TV, too. So how could actively using “social networks” on the Internet be any worse than being passively brainwashed by mass media?

Me, I’ve just read too much “Fahrenheit 451” and other dystopian literature and don’t like the idea of being somebody’s product. So please don’t expect me to accept an invitation to join such a network. I’ve already left enough traces of me on the web that are there for all to see, and that ought to be enough.

Just as common sense predicted, German politicians are not going to stop at censoring child pornography, but now want to extend the censorship of the Internet to political websites as well. German Family Minister von der Leyen said so herself in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt.

It shouldn’t surprise anybody, but it’s another huge leap towards the end of Freedom of Speech on the Internet – and everywhere else. As I’ve said before, child pornography was only abused by our politicians to establish the technology that is necessary to censor all kinds of content on the Internet, and now they move on to their real goal: Suppressing unwanted political ideas and voices.

If you think that I’m paranoid, then let’s just try to discuss this subject in ten years from now when nobody has put a stop to this development. In all likelihood, publicly discussing the idea of Freedom of Speech will be illegal by then.

Although it has all been done and written before, people don’t learn from history or literature. If you haven’t done so, read Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell or The Fourth Realm Trilogy by John Twelve Hawks. Study your history books about how the dictators Stalin, Hitler and Mao established their power – and how they wiped out the Freedom of Press already in their early days.

We are observing the end of Freedom and Democracy – not only in Germany, but throughout the world. The so-called “War against Terrorism” was invented to establish all sorts of surveillance technologies – not to fight terrorism, but to frighten, control and observe the citizens. Internet censorship is not about fighting child pornography, it is about controlling what is being thought, written and said.

George Orwell had the vision and meticulously described how to implement an authoritarian surveillance state. Soon the technology will be in place to let his nightmare become reality.

In case that you believe that your voice in the next elections will make a difference: It won’t. It’s not the political parties or the elected politicians that run your country. The industry controlled lobbies determine the fate of your nation. And for them, it doesn’t matter whom you vote for. They just buy their policies from whoever is in charge and willing to sell. The large shareholders of huge corporations are more important for your future than who is the chancellor or president of your country. (Unless, of course, you live in a tyranny – there the leaders of the country and the owner of its industry are the same persons.) And those people don’t want you to think, discuss and criticize. They only want you to work for them, consume and make them even richer.

Does that sound socialistic or communistic to you? If so, then you bought into the lies of Capitalism and the so-called Democracy behind it and you badly need to wake up and reconsider your convictions: You live in a soap bubble that’s about to burst.

Democracy is an illusion. Your Freedom is an illusion. In our world, your only freedoms are to work, to consume and to get brainwashed and sedated by your daily dose of TV.

The Roman Emperors gave their people bread and the Colosseum to keep them quiet. Today we have a whole entertainment industry that gives you electronic gadgets, game shows and daily soaps to shut you up and to make sure that you won’t break out of your robotic existence. Marx described religion as the “Opium of the people”. They didn’t have TV at the time. The entertainment industry and TV are a sedative that is much stronger than institutionalized religion ever was. And it works so well that people don’t want to wake up. In fact, they are afraid of it. It’s comforting to believe what everybody wants to believe. It’s comforting to not think about what a self-determined life could be like. Nobody wants to take responsibility for themselves. It’s frightening to conceive that there could be an alternative to our shallow way of life. So we choose the easy path, turn on the TV, put our minds to sleep and stay in our superficial robotic life.

We have transitioned from slavery to feudalism over the early industrial worker to today’s so-called service society. It’s more subtle today, but your salary is calculated to only allow you to rent a place to live, buy food and to dream about your next new gadget, car or vacation. Your regular salary does not give you a long term perspective to check out of the rat race or to really change your life. You have to keep going to work in order to survive unless you become too old for the work market and are allowed to retire. There is no way around it if you don’t want to live as a social outcast in poverty. Without a piece of land that you can call your own and financial independence, you cannot leave the system.

But once, every four years or so, when we are asked to vote for our countries’ leaders, we experience the illusion of significance and influence – while in reality nothing ever changes. If there is a change, it only serves to keep us quiet and sedated and the system going.

I hope you find these thoughts as depressing as I do. It’s a start and maybe it will keep you awake to think about a change.