To Vax or not to Vax?

As it appears, people who do not want to vaccinate their children are anti-vaxxers. 

Ok. First, let's give the anti-vaxxers the benefit of the doubt, and celebrate them where it's due. 

It's great for a child to have parents who care for their wellbeing, and know enough of history to know that governments or their supporting institutes can't always be trusted, nor pharmaceutical companies that are legally bound to conform to their shareholders dictate.

Of course vaccines should be objectively tested with the highest diligence, to determine their risks over benefits. And of course governments and commercial operations should be forever treated with a level of wise suspicion. Bias and corruption are facts of life, and most likely always will be.

Indeed, if any class should be laughed at, it's those who think the label 'anti-vaxxer' (which is code for: "backwards idiot conspiracy theorist") is good enough to close the debate. 'Anti-vaxxer' is a smear that's over-used, and a smear that brings question to professionals who too casually use it. A smear is not an argument. Period.

Ok. So how do we break down the game? How do we convince people who don't trust vaccines and for whatever reason?

First, if you want them to listen you then try to be nice. No matter how wrong they may be, their concerns are at base founded. Anything injected circumvents your body's defenses and is therefore, potentially, extremely toxic or even lethal. No one's a fool to be concerned about that much.

Second, you spend a little bit of money properly proving that the vaccines are safe. This is done by studying people who were and were not vaccinated over their lifetimes, using thousands of subjects. This is how you identify long-range effects (that control for secondary correlates) that are otherwise hard to link back to the vaccine.

If vaccines don't contribute to autism, for example, then it should be easy enough to prove. Autism rates in vaccinated groups should be about the same as those in unvaccinated groups - if the vaccines are all good.

A comprehensive tax-payer funded study, conducted by those without bias, should put the [otherwise] anti-vaxxers minds at rest. 

(And note we must be careful here. If vaccines really are causing problems like autism, then there will be interests wanting to be sure we don't find out about it, especially if corruption or blatant failure of due process is identified).

Yet this is the problem. Penetrating, broad-scale studies are not being done, as it seems. According to Robert F Kennedy Jr. they've never been done (in America, at least). If he's right, then that alone should induce some vaccine resistance, should it not? Frankly it would spook me, as well. Without comparative long-range studies, true vaccine safety is simply not known.

Of all the things that so many billions of research dollars could be poured into, you would think the definitive proof for 'vaccine virtue'--where the pros are empirically proven to outweigh the cons--would be amongst the highest objectives on the list, for public research. 

And maybe this is the problem. We're not going out of our way to prove the suspicions of the anti-vaxxers wrong. Yet, we obviously should. And until we do it, I say 'we' are the ones who are at fault.

We can also put fluoride, EMF radiation, food additives, and funny chemicals alround, etc, on the to-do list for broad research. Why not? Indeed, as I'm sure the reader can gather, not doing this kind of research is a concern on its own. Pertinent research not being done becomes suspicious by its absence. 

So please, let's get on with it.

-Andrew Atkin

Update: 21 - 4 - 24.

An very good documentary, directly relating to my article.

https://rumble.com/v4pkvsf-do-vaccines-make-us-healthier-2024-update.html

Is the Western world in the Spiritual blues?

 

-Andrew Atkin

Religion--and spirituality--should be about opening minds, not closing them.

The terror of death:

There's an interesting man, Dr Michael Newton, who did hypnotic regressions on hundreds of people. He [supposedly] regressed people back to their life between incarnated lives. Anyway, one thing that he said that was of interest to me, was that Atheist-materialists repress their fear of death.

That they repress their fear is believable to me, not just because absolute death is unpalatable, but because of the way materialists seem to act. I've seen two kinds of "repression" from this camp...

People either become aggressive in response to the conversation on spiritualism (and death) and reject having to even talk about it--operating a "just don't go there" defense--or, they relate to it in an emotionally knocked-out way, where they become psychologically split from the meaning of what they believe. That 'split' type will listen to someone talk about spiritualism and death, but only with a kind of vague indifference.  

The split type is the most defended, I believe. They're a lost cause to try and convert from their position, because they're unreachable (psychologically). The ones who can potentially reconsider are the more aggressive ones, who typically just say "don't go there!". Those guys can still, potentially, think about this stuff with sincere engagement - they just need to first take a deep breath.

And then there are the [apparently] religious people, namely the Western Christians. I believe these people are more afraid of death than they appear. In the Western world, religion is not what it used to be. There are few true believers. Why?

We've broken down religion by contradicting it with a simplistic representation of science. Religion in the West has become more of a soft tradition than a social-psychological foundation with teeth. Crudely, Christianity has gone from Jesus Christ to Santa Claus. It's not serious anymore.

Because of this, I think there's little true confidence in life after death in the modern Christian world. So the Christians are afraid too. The whole Western world is afraid. 

Ok. So what's the effect of all this? It's a good question to ask because [real] religion is powerful stuff - and it's gone. I can only speak from my observation, but I will. I think our abandonment of religiosity has made the West weak - vulnerable to depression and fear.

People feel an ultimate meaninglessness behind everything. What does anything really matter if you're eternally dead after a few short decades? Nothing really. It's all just a lukewarm disco party at the end of the day, right?

So, our existential grief sucks the spark out of life, as that morbid cloud of doom is always there in the subconscious. 

At worst, this 'existential crisis' can make us self-centered and ethically corrupt. You know...live for yourself, for today, because you have no tomorrow. And as the atheistic mind might assume, higher idealism for the brotherhood of man is just a trick of the mind - an emotional disturbance born from evolutionary pressure, that survival once decided to be useful.

Body and Soul:

Okay. Before you take the gun out of the draw, I have some good news. The consciousness (meaning, spirit) is not created by the brain. It can't be, has been [logically] shown not to be able to, and there's empirical evidence from multiple areas showing it almost certainly does not. Biological death is not conscious death. Biology is not the material of the mind...

-This needs much further explanation, but I will say the following for sake of imprinting a basic picture: 

The atomic world (meaning material world, as we experience it) is effectively an avatar structure born out of the field (aether) of which gives birth to the material (vibratory) world. Consciousness is much more likely based within the field directly, than matter itself - that's what everything points to. 

When your computer dies you don't die with it. Same for the brain - which is just a computer, of course.

From my observation, scientists who claim otherwise typically have no idea about the evidence supporting the non-materialist case. Or more typically, they refuse to give the evidence the time of day as they see the supposition as inherently implausible. They would've never really tested their assumptions, and I notice they have a picture in their minds of what 'material' even is that's literally 100 years out of date. This, I think, is the essence of why they believe life after death is inherently implausible.

Religious rebirth:

Anyway, there's hope for a new kind of authentic religion (if you can call it that) in the West. But it won't be Christianity, Islam, or Jehovah's Witness, etc. Those old ideas are past their use-by date, and they're so full of corruptions, I believe, that they should be held at a cautious arms length in any circumstance (see here).

Victorian science has given the fundamentalist faiths a lethal kick to the gonads. In turn, I don't believe there's any coming back to Christianity (and other) in the way it was in the past. But we do need a religious rebirth of sorts, or at least a major overhaul in the way we relate to our old dogmas. 

The 'overhaul' must honour the scientific standard and be consistent with what we know to be fact. From there, we can likely get the West out of its spiritual morbidity, and into a faith that the modern mind can respect. Not a faith based on grand stretches and wild speculation, but a faith that can be believed-in with confidence.

What should that faith be? Well, it's already evolving in a way via research, insight and philosophy. There are a lot great conversations going on - but that goes beyond what I want to write here. (Explore the links below the page, if you will).

But one thing I would like to say, is that a modern 'great' religion, if it ever comes to be, would surely not be dictatorial or cultish. Its leaders, if any, would be more akin to ethical philosophers than authoritative priests who are above debate. And it would be a faith of inspiration - not intimidation (I hope).

--------------------------------------------------

Note: On the Near Death Experiencers:

The curious thing about people who've had an NDE, is that they have the same confidence in life after death that you and I have in the night turning to day. And their anticipation for their post-biological future is overwhelmingly positive.

As research on NDE people has made clear, the broad effect from their experience is that they become more spiritual yet less religious (in the institutional meaning of the word) and less materialistic. Money and position is generally only a means to an end, for them. They're less miserable and suicidal, yet also less risk-averse because they feel they can't ultimately lose. Death is seen not as a fearful end, but a natural transition.

With an intellectual update and 'faith' renaissance, people in general can come closer to the outlook enjoyed by those who've gone through an NDE. That is, they can come away from their spiritual blues. This belongs to all of us - if we can get past our fears and take the time to look and consider.

Note: The strength of the evidence:

Dr Jeffery Mishlove, a life long NDE (and other) researcher, made an important point on evidence in his recent talk.

He said that any isolated case on the NDE and Past lives recall, etc, can be rightly nit-picked and broken down with possible 'other' explanations, making the evidence from a singular case inconclusive... 

That's true. It's hard to prove reincarnation and NDE cases, etc, to the point where the validity of a given case is conclusively undeniable. Creating laboratory-type conditions where there can be zero potential for contamination is virtually impossible, in practical terms. And that's what you may need for an inarguable proof that could satisfy the strictest of sceptics.

But what Mishlove also said, that was very true, was that the gravity behind the evidence is not the isolated cases as such, but the fact that we have so many robust cases....

Documented cases of children who remember past lives, for example, runs into the thousands. NDE cases run into the millions. There are also countless cases of out-of-body experiences (usually accompanying NDE's) where people in hospitals are reported to have explicitly seen and heard things that should have been absolutely impossible from their geographical position and debilitated state of mind.

It's the shear volume of cases, demonstrating consistency in the structure of the experiences, with validations, that gives the greatest weight to the evidence - moving in the direction of being able to declare 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the consciousness is not derivative of brain activity. There is a domain of what we can call 'spirit' outside what is immediately observable, in simplistic material terms. 

To be clear: When a single patient tells a doctor, word for word, what they said about them in another faraway room while they were totally unconscious, then that is freaky. When it happens thousands of times over, with all different people, and is formally documented then it's more than freaky. It demands serious attention. This is where we are.

So, this is what people should appreciate if they are to look into this work. Look broadly, don't just nit-pick isolated cases. Develop perspective on the body of evidence.

Related links - my personal content:

My personal "religious" philosophy (video).

Example (one of many) of how a brain cannot generate a consciousness (video).

The mechanical argument for life after death.

The consciousness model.

The spiritual revolution we need.

The hand of God.

Outside links of interest:

Leading researcher on NDE's (video)

Mark Gober "the end of upside down thinking" (video).

The Consciousness Model

 

There are excellent (not flaky) reasons to believe that consciousness does not derive from processes of the brain. There are insurmountable logical problems with that idea. But to cut a long story short the alternative picture, popularly proposed, is that the consciousness is the 'first cause' to the material world. The idea being, that the consciousness(es) creates the material world as a kind of collective dream. Hence, the material world a simulation.

This is a speculative hypothesis that may or may not be right. It looks absurd on the immediate face of it, yet it's fair to say that it's no more radical than the idea of anything existing at all - and existence, from a strictly logical outlook, is self-evident yet mad...

The fact of existence suggests that something can give birth to itself out of nothing, which is more magic than magic. Magic at least respects some kind of [incomprehensible] cause-to-effect. Existence suggests an effect with no cause at all. Yet here it is - and here we are. That's "mad".

The popular assertion from people who assert that consciousness comes first and is the be-all, is that the brain does not create consciousness but filters it. Filters? This doesn't make good sense to me. I think what is more likely, is that the brain focuses consciousness. Think of it like this...

When you're watching a movie, you may be so absorbed in the screen that you forget where you are - you forget the room you are in. When you finish the movie, you then feel like you've "woken up" to the room you were always in. The movie had focused your conscious attention - not filtered it.

I suggest that this is how the brain/mind works. The consciousness is based in the field behind the brain (to be clear, I'm talking about the same field responsible for magnetic forces, and [as best as we can know] the same field responsible for matter as we know it. Matter is a vibration within the field). So, for a given lifetime, we log on to our brain just like we log on to a TV to watch a movie...

The brain is, in effect, a read-write terminal that read-writes the outside material world (and builds internal models of the outside world, that then allow us to run simulations. We call it thinking) and also read-writes from the consciousness itself. So basically, the brain is an extremely sophisticated 2-way bio-electric eBook. But ultimately only a book.

It's interesting to note, that people who have near death experiences (NDE's) consistently report that when they die (temporarily) it's like waking up and 'going home' - and from their experiences they say that this life (this material life) is the comparative dream. It's like my example of 'waking up' from a movie you were absorbed in. NDE people also report having a "wider consciousness" and being far more capable of clear thought and lucid perception; again, just like waking up from a prior zone, immersed in your TV.

NDE people also suggest that incarnating (focusing) to a material brain leads to deep amnesia. This relates to the greater reality that we're supposedly more truly based in. Again, like when you're absorbed into a narrow focus on something, you can't remember outside things because your mind is zoned-out of all memory not associated with your current brain activity, that naturally holds you captive for the time. 

To me, this is a more plausible model than claiming material is not really there and consciousness is primary. Though that might ultimately be the case, we can't know. For the sake of hypothesis though, I think it's better to see the consciousness as based within the field, and focused to the brain for a given lifetime. The model is robust and explains a lot, including much psychic phenomena.

A final note. I have not explained the consciousness itself. That's because I can't - no one can. Though real, it's totally incomprehensible in itself. We can only observe its relationship to the brain - not understand what it actually is.

Security: A better argument for a World Government

 

Robert F. Kennedy impressed me a short while ago, when he spoke about the threat of terrorist states in the modern technological age. He expressed that we can't afford to have dangerous rouge states in this modern world - which is true. But what he did not express was the fact that you don't, or soon won't, need a whole nation to build weapons of mass destruction.

Technical plans for fabricating atomic bombs, for example, can always be leaked and downloaded, and advanced malicious devices can be developed easily using virtual prototyping and 3d printing, etc.

Nuclear is just one demon. For example, there's biological and chemical potentials of course, and cheap auto-targeting laser technology that can destroy 100 eyeballs per-seconds. Add to this, tiny grenade-drones and EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bombs that can take any city back to the stoneage in a couple of hours overnight. And, everything and anything else that can be thought of and developed by a small collection of individuals.

My point is, the terror problem can only grow because technology will only get better - and cheaper. So we have to be realistic. It may only be a matter of time until a sub-extremist group, with a little money and godly dedication, does untold damage.

The only reason why Isis, for example, hadn't murdered millions with a nuke (or other) is because they couldn't. But this will change. Indeed, consider also if France's parliament becomes dominated over time by Muslim extremists. They would then inherit control of France's already established nuclear capacity. My point is, the vulnerabilities are great and can only grow. 

I'm not scaremongering - it's just logical.

I argue this is one of the better reasons to embrace advanced (meaning intrusive, yes) global surveillance systems, and to maybe develop a global government to a degree, so to enforce it. 

I believe we need to lay a powerful defensive foundation to resist the threat of terrorism. Our growing technological status demands this. Indeed, if we did not have our intelligence systems today, then we could only guess as to what kind of carnage we would be looking at already.

Has the ever-growing threat of technology-driven terror been realised by our military deep states? Of course it has. It's plain. Maybe this is why there's a shift on the political level towards a kind of global control system? Maybe the Pentagon's models have indicated that we simply must have these systems now? We can wonder.

Andrew Atkin - July, 2023

Tax: Are the rich really the heavy lifters?

 

Take this scenario. A rich man, John, who owns half the supermarkets in New Zealand is in despair, because his Australian counterpart, Harry, is still far richer than he is and it's making him feel inadequate.

John then comes up with an idea. He donates $10m each to the National, Act, Labour and Green parties, to ensure all parties are incentivised to do his bidding.

John then has some friendly talks with the leaders of the parties, to ensure they understand what he expects of them. Warm smiles within the club. All is well.

The result, is that immigration policy becomes discretely modified. It becomes very easy for John to import visa workers on a minimum wage, who will stock his shelves throughout the painful hours of the night.

Before the policy change, John had to employ Kiwi's in a relatively tight job market. He prior had to pay $32 per-hour for his graveyard workers, which cut deep into his profit margin. Now he only has to pay $20 per-hour, due to the freshly modified visa system.

With quadrupled profits, his wealth looks to be more in line with his Australian counterpart, Harry. He feels a little better, but alas not for long. He soon starts comparing himself to Elon Musk so he's back to losing sleep.

John then gets another idea to help him feel better. He grabs a soapbox, a powerful megaphone, and demands admiration and respect from his workers with a speech. The speech goes something like this....

"Behold! 80% of the governments tax-take comes from my wallet and people like me, because I'm the biggest income earner. I'm the reason you have free healthcare and an accommodation supplement. You guys pay virtually nothing in tax. I'm your Santa Claus - I'm your superman."

Most of the workers buy it, and weep with appreciation for John. Except one worker, Mike, who took a basic economics course when he was in school. He was hiding behind a counter praying for a better world. Mike understood that yes, of course, John and all the other big income earners were paying most of the tax. But he also understood who was making John's money in the first place - overwhelmingly, the low-paid workers underneath him.

The morals of the story:

1. To think straight on economic reality you must first observe raw production, and only second 'money's received'. That is, you need to think in terms of the "real economy" to avoid confusion. 

No one gets rich on their own. You need an army beneath you, to do the bulk of the heavy lifting (producing).

2. Crony capitalism (which is what the story highlights) is the friend of socialism. It creates the very problem that justifies government intervention for wealth distribution (tax), ultimately leading to [virtual] socialism.

The truth is, if our economy were correctly balanced so markets were not irresponsibly manipulated, and we got rid of dis-optimised regulations, anti-competitive practices, irrational professional licencing, and every other bit of junk long driven into politics via the forever efforts of special interests, then over time we would hardly need to tax the populace at all. And we would all--from the bottom to the top of our society--be much more prosperous and progressive to the end of it.

The real solution?

Political decentralisation. Government needs to be close, and small, and on the peoples highly transparent leash. Otherwise, the slow-burning evolution to a bought-and-paid-for political machine becomes inevitable. And alas, it's already happened of course, in New Zealand and most of the Western world today.

-Andrew Atkin, May, 2023

Death and Rebirth of the Western family

 

Family destruction:

The family structures in poor countries is different to Western countries. In large part the family is more than just a social union in poor countries, it's also a defence to dangerous poverty. So the pressure to stay together in the family is strong, as people are co-dependant to meet their most basic needs for safety and nutrition, etc.

In one way, this can look good as families in poorer countries appear strong through unity. But are they really so strong, if the people are only together out of a deep fear for what could happen to them if they separated? You could argue maybe not.

In the wealthy West, we see families fragmenting and separating all over the place, with members often rarely visiting each other and sometimes never visiting at all. This can seem sad, yet we can ask ourselves...Are modern Western families only exposing a deeper truth was always really there? Would people in poorer countries like to separate from much of their family, if only they felt it was safe enough to do so? The answer, is quite possibly.

Being genetically related to someone is only an abstraction in terms of its social meaning. Of course, related-links are no guarantee that you'll like someone, though it's true of course that growing up with people, and spending a lot of time with them, makes family a context where social bonds can and will obviously occur.

Suppressing family rebirth:

Though no needs are more fundamental than food, safety and shelter, the social need is obviously still very strong. The West, though largely abandoning traditional family structures, still has a drive to form some kind of "tribe" and develop friends of the type that are close, and even closer than their related family...

I think these kinds of friendships require two things. First the person must be "your kind of guy", and second there must be a considerable amount of time to socialise on a one-to-one level, where two people can speak freely in a context of trust. In this manner, friends can often become more of a family member, in substance, than related family members. This process can (theoretically) lead to the development of new families, and families based on social needs over survival needs.

Note: The picture I'm drawing is different to what you could call a gang. In a gang people are "groupies". They join together out of a need to create some kind of symbolic family that they never had in childhood, which is a way of fighting a kind of private desperation. You will notice that the members in a gang always socialise in large groupings, not devolving into much private social intercourse. A gang is no kind of natural family or 'tribe' and the conformity pressures tend to be acute, which suppresses individualism and likewise authentic attachment. You have to be able to be yourself to connect genuinely with others.

In my view, new and social-need based families would develop in Western society if the circumstances permitted it. That is, if government got out of the way so public demand could have its way.

Modern family fragmentation is maintained though scholastic and work pressures, that seem to work to keep the development of new unions inhibited. It's hard to get to know people as a real friend in the Western world. Westerners have lots of 'mates' but few real friends. As a society, I think we pay dearly for this.

Allowing for family rebirth:

I think we could allow for the development of new families in the West by giving more opportunity for young people to socialise - properly. Schools could help with this if they gave teenagers more time to broadly socialise as they see fit, and without the schools prescribing their social opportunities by choosing their classes and classmates. 'Free schools' of this type have long existed and they've been successful for decades. It's proven to work.

Another thing we can do is allow for the development of private communities, where there's more opportunity for people to group amongst their kind of people. It's not snobbish to wish to isolate people who make new unions difficult. It's natural. We all need to keep away from people we don't want to know, at times. Social privacy is vital for the development of real friendships.

Another thing I recommend is for people to try and keep their workload down to 30 hours a week - obviously you need time. This is easy to achieve in our technologically advanced world, at least if governments would allow it to happen. But alas, governments like to keep people working as much as possible for two reasons: One, is their financial backers are totally dependant on it. Two, they need your taxes to pay-off voters with election bribes. So it's doable in theory, yet hard in practice.

Regardless, a family rebirth based on social truth over the abstraction of biology could be a wonderful thing. There's no comparison in fun within groups of people who really know and like each other, as compared to people who are only trying to like each other because they feel they need to, to stay together and survive.

Were our politicians primed? - for mass vaccination

 

Let's start with the simple facts of the matter. The Pfizer vaccines were:

1. Hardly even short-term tested, let alone medium and long-term tested.

2. Radical in their function, creating unsettling questions on their potential longer-range health impact.

3. Given direct approval for public use due to Covid's emergency status, of which quickly proved to be a gross over-reaction (Covid was a non-pandemic by historic measure), resulting in basic checks on vaccine safety being erroneously removed.

4. Dishonestly promoted in a manner so to resist even rational vaccine hesitancy.

5. Mandated into the public. Thousands of New Zealanders received the vaccine, in spite of the fact that they never really wanted it, which is a serious human rights concern. 

That's all we need to know, to know that something strange happened to our politicians. The unanimous support for the mandates from our representatives was irrational - yet it happened. 

So how could this happen? I can only speculate and will.

My assumption is that our political parties were carefully primed from the very beginning. Authoritative voices would have had long conversations with our politicians before the vaccine show hit. The advisors would've said to them something akin to...

"You know, we have some incredible technology coming down the pike, using what's called mRNA. This technology can allow us to develop a vaccine in record time - not years, but months. Many medical professionals, including some quacks and anti-vaxxers, will oppose this technology if we try to use it. They will oppose it primary because they don't understand it. 

This is what worries me. It's not that their concerns will be entirely without argument, as it's true enough that no medication is 100% safe, but if they're given a platform they will scare millions out of taking the new vaccine. The result would be Covid body-bags reaching the height of the beehive. 

Interfering with free speech and moving in the direction of mandates is not something we are comfortable with, but this is a pandemic we're fighting so we need to ask if those body-bags are acceptable. I believe a war against vaccine hesitancy is a war for life."

Someone got into their heads. I think someone who talks like an impartial authority guided them over months, acting as a very believable "one source of truth".

Note, the observable propagandist will be propagandised themselves. It's hard to be believable if you don't believe what you're saying yourself. Nearly all of the Covid medical hierarchy would have been running on faith from above, just like our doctors were (er, that we were told to talk to...for "informed consent").

So that's my best bet. Our politicians were carefully primed by people who have themselves been carefully educated. The advisors had created parliamentary group-think on an impressive scale. Who else could have done it?

Ultimately, propaganda works by isolating alternative voices. Our politicians were taught to "know" that the critics were ignorants, even before they presented themselves. This is what priming does. It pre-conditions people's future responses. Our politicians laughed at the alternative voices even before they opened their mouths.

To conclude:

What was too obviously missing with the Covid show was authentic debate, otherwise holding the we-know-betters to account. If our politicians had made focused and sceptical investigations, the spell would've been broken. The mandates would then never have happened, or certainly not at the outrageous scale that we saw.

This is what makes the most obvious sense, to me. So, our political leaders, on a global scale, were played for fools by interests who have long learnt how to do it? I think so. Again, it's what makes sense to me. It's the only way this social and medical disaster could have happened.

And now the hole is dug. If the vaccines are proven to be more toxic than Covid itself (and it's looking that way) then our politicians and most of our medical establishment will be resistant to admitting it - or even knowing about it (people tend not to look for what they don't want to know). From here, they won't be second-guessing anything. The vaccines can then only be "all good".

Can Online working create Paradise on Earth?

New Zealand gives an interesting case in immigration. The country imports a large number of people from India and China, and those immigrants are almost invariably excellent people. Cultural differences between immigrants and NZ-borns are superficial, and immigrants from Asia are law-abiding and industrious. 

New Zealand's Asians are gracious and unintimidating. To be simple, no one ever feels that the Asian guy could pull a knife on them. The complaints that people do have about Asian immigrants in New Zealand, tend to be more childish than substantial.

The reason for this is clear. New Zealand operates a strong filter. Asians don't come to New Zealand without a solid background check. Hence, New Zealand only sees the best of what Asia has to offer, and to its great benefit. There are immigrants who do come to New Zealand without the filter, due to some unusual immigration privileges, and contrasting this is where the country sees its biggest (real) social problems.

You can see the point. If a country or region wants to grow rapidly with people, and it's small, then it can operate a strong filter and cream the best of what the world has to offer. It can rapidly develop an unusually high concentration of intelligent and respectable people. 

Of course, if you want to live in a place that feels good, then the people factor is overwhelming. No one's happy when they have to deal with gangsters and junkies, etc, begging in the street.

So this is the point. With the online world potentially supporting at least 50% of existing jobs, we have the practical foundation for mass-migration on a revolutionary scale. It's now a live-anywhere economy. So, I predict that we could see massive demographic shifts, in choice growth hotspots. To explain: 

Small or highly independent districts, in nice locations with good weather, can choose to grow rapidly simply by importing young online workers with clean backgrounds. The more of those people you have - the more attractive your country becomes. 

Not only would your location become richer with the higher concentration of industrious people, but the greater concentration of good people will make the country more attractive on social grounds alone... 

This will drive snowball growth. The dependant and somewhat depressing parts of society will proportionally shrink, making the country ever more attractive. Ask, why should people tolerate massive social problems, and risk being voted into socialism (like Venezuela), when they can just walk away from those countries? 

Conversely, bad countries will get worse, with the effect being a snowball to the bottom as they lose all their good people.

My prediction is that in time, soon enough, we will see the development of paradises on earth, or much closer to it. If you want to be part of these paradises, then I suggest taking care with your reputation. Don't do anything concerningly criminal or abusive - and keep the tattoos off your face, hands and neck. Otherwise the gatekeepers might not open the gate.

-Andrew Atkin

The New Zealand Decentralisation Movement

 

Maybe you think National can save the day, in 2023? Yet how can they? Labour will be back again after do-nothing-National gives us a couple of years to breathe.

Same people. Same games. Same objectives. Same motivations. Same media. Same special interests. Nothing real changes and we know what our government can do.

We came close to outright forced vaccinations in New Zealand - with no conversation on human rights. The anti-mandate protesters tried to force that issue open, yet the only answer replied was riot police.

We need to break the back of government as we know it - before it breaks ours. It has gone much too rogue and it's getting late.

The only robust solution to the dangers of serious government overreach is extreme political decentralisation. Only decentralisation can sustainably resist corruption.

We need a political system similar to what we see in Switzerland.

Switzerland is amongst the most socially stable and prosperous countries in the world. Yet their central government is virtually irrelevant compared to ours. The body of nearly all their politics is local.

A decentralisation movement needs to push for local autonomy, with strict protections against government overreach. We need a real constitution that protects us. New Zealand's current constitution is not even legally binding. It is a joke.

We should also push for the freedom for people to develop autonomous new-build villages, and townships, that can be as independent from government as a cruise ship is today. Like in your home, this means nearly no external bureaucracy, regulation or tax. Can you imagine the efficiency?

Understand that totalitarianism is associated with the centralisation of power - freedom with the opposite.

The longer we procrastinate, the more centralised we will become, so the harder it will be to reclaim our freedom. Look at China today. We don't ever want to go there, yet we will with the next apparent crisis (i.e excuse).

This is a real political war now - and we need to fight it.

-Andrew Atkin

Why Klaus Schwab should focus on the Octopus - not Humans

 

Transhumanism:

Well, the king of Internationalist agendas, Klaus Schwab, wants to take us to the amazing new world of Transhumanism. Crudely, this means augmenting the human brain directly to the internet. 

Kind of like..."Just close your eyes and you will have a cellphone appear in front of you. You can press the icons via your will alone".

The theory's not unsound. It is in fact partly demonstrated. There have been successful experiments where monkeys have learnt to manipulate images on a screen, quite accurately, with their thoughts alone. How it works: The computer reads the monkeys brainwaves, which then achieves the actuation. The monkey learns to control its brainwaves (though unconsciously, of course) and therefore develops an interactive 'language' with the computer.

Ok. The problem with brain-to-machine interfaces that use only brainwaves, is they're extremely low-fidelity - they have a huge noise-to-signal ratio. So, there's no promise for making brainwave-based interfaces more efficient than communicating traditionally, via your fingers or tongue. But that can change. If we install a biologically-friendly electrode into your brain, loaded with hundreds of hairy nanowires, then the signal-to-noise ratio can increase incomparably. And indeed, you should expect the brain to rapidly learn to communicate via the electrode interface, especially if the brain is young. In a highly plastic (baby) brain, neural clusters should quickly grow around the electrode, making the link intensely automatic.

The result? Let's put it this way. If you wanted a McDonalds coffee sent to you via a driverless micro-car, then you wouldn't need to talk with imagined words as commands (Note, words are not thoughts, they're only expressions of thought). The electrode can read your thoughts directly. Hence, you can just will a McCoffee be posted to your door, and it's done. Slobtopia? Yes.

To clarify: This is the same kind of communication people report on, who go through a near death experience (NDE). Like in an NDE, we can just communicate by thought alone. Using electrodes and an internet, there's no reason why the human brain can't learn to do this and bypass a spoken language. Our brains, if implanted from birth, would learn an automatic code via associative learning that can do away with the need for a conscious language. Our brains could also learn to manipulate robotic machinery as effortlessly as we manipulate our legs and arms. Indeed, in this model the internet becomes a direct extension of our nervous systems.

Is there a catch? Yep. A hole in your head, and almost certainly unintended consequences from so diabolically contradicting natures way. It might just make us all mad, especially if big brother overrides the off-switch. Exotic experiments like this can be a great idea for quadriplegics and the like, but I think the rest of us should be asking that they "keep it in the lab". It's not like we really need this technology just now. We're already a little too sedentary, don't you think?

Biological replacements:

Nature throws away anything she doesn't need. Every organism is stripped back to only what is needed for its optimal survival. In humans, we can see the progression clearly with a simple example. When humans mastered the ability to make clothing we lost our fur, and this provided some substancial advantages. It meant less lice, disease, and most valuable of all it gave us efficient temperature control.

Ok. Now look at modern technology and where it's taken us. Already we can see that we no longer need a mouth as we know it. Like a baby, we can survive by sucking on smoothies alone. So, in principle we should throw away our toothy mouths, and enjoy the reduced infection risk and absence of tooth decay. Our mouths should become a mere nostril for a straw, with no jaw, and we can chirp like a bird to communicate.

But that's just the beginning. Obviously we don't need legs anymore, so we should be rid of those silly things too. In fact, we don't even need our arms in the age of mobile robotics.

So how far can we actually go, given our technological status? Well, we could almost go to the level of a floating brain. And that's just it. The creature that's closest to that 'ideal' is not a human, but an octopus. The octopus has a huge brain in proportion to its size, with masses of neurons that run down its tentacles, and it is in fact an amazingly clever animal.

The octopus is a perfect candidate to evolve (with our help) to become a co-dominant species of this earth. It also has the perfect physical structure for space travel, which is its greatest value. Its biological needs are very humble and it can float in a perfectly protective liquid, supported from virtually anywhere. Its ultra-dextrous tentacles can seamlessly integrate with an army of mechatronic controllers, to manipulate the outer world/s with ease. Humans, by comparison, are a ridiculous and expensive mess to support and maintain.

So hear me, Klaus. With a touch of genetic engineering so to mix some human genes into the octopus, you would be better off leaving us humans alone and instead focusing on building Superpus: An octopus with human-like mechanical intelligence, that can then help manage and develop our planet and beyond. You'll get better results. Shrinking humans to their brain would take too long and the politics is awkward.

Humans can still be the gods of superpus. Superpus would be no threat. We can install a kill-switch into the superpusies brains to be sure they forever remain our anxious slaves. And then from there, life on earth can expand to the heavens via a millions-strong army of superpus-managed robots, that can terraform inter-planetary geologies and engineer new life to meet the demands of vastly different environments. And us traditional humans can go back to dreaming without the cellphones stuck in our heads.

-Andrew Atkin