Love, Hard Work Book Draft: Chapter 1
Love
Hard Work
By Mybrid Wonderful
A New Government
(For Making New Governments)
Irreni World Scale
You ever wake up, roll over, look at the blue-glowing clock to ask yourself if it is time to start thinking? And in part do so by asking yourself, "Do I rule the Universe today?" Over the many mornings of my fifty-six years I have devised many different methods for answering that question: do I rule the Universe today? Mmmm. My latest Universe ruling thermometer is to check the new movie listings on the "Rotten Tomatoes" web site on my phone. I don't know about you but when I first wake up I can't remember jack blank. Literally, my brain is off and I don't even know my name. I look at the movie listings and if I go, "oh, I remember that crap from yesterday", then I know it is time to start thinking. I mean, new movies only come out once per week. That's the first part. The second part is I look at the titles. My review usually goes something like this, "crap, crap, who would watch that?, I want to be entertained not depressed, yuck!, more crap, what the hell is that?, and meh..." After that review exercise I'm ready to think and I know that I don't rule the Universe. So I get out of bed and start the day. Because let's be serious, if I did rule the Universe then action movies would be all the new movies. :)
My favorite movies of 2018 are "Dead Pool 2", "Venom", and "Blank Panther". Yeah, okay, "Avengers: Infinity War", came out and I liked it: I just didn't fav it. That movie just tried too hard and I felt like I was sitting on the crapper pushing, pushing, pushing...then what heck was that that came out?
In my brain and in my heart I'm still a kid. There was one moment in time back in 1977 where I did feel like I was on top of the world, I ruled the Universe. Two things happened that lead me to conclude I mattered. The movie "Star Wars" came out and the album, "Hotel California", came out. "Hotel California" even went on to win a Grammy for the album of the year! Yes! 1977 was the one time I felt I belonged to our planet we call Earth, I saw myself reflected and I ruled. Yee haa! The fact that Star Wars got critically panned also meant I ruled 'cause we all like to both love and hate critics. I mean we Love when a critic agrees with us and we Hate when they don't. As one Supreme Ruler of the Universe to another we must find it as unthinkable Supreme Ruler etiquette to give a crap what an actual critic judges...'cause that cramps the Supreme Ruler style. Although I do read movie reviews for the plot synopsis. Just saying. Hmmmph.
I've always had fun imagining I ruled the Universe. It is this game I have played since as long as I can remember.
Here's a fun Ruler story. I'm not a belonger by nature, I don't join groups or go to group things. No, I fly Solo(tm). Although sometimes I do ponder my childhood and wonder what happened to finding my Chewy(tm) partner? Anyway, back in 2007 I attended one of a handful conferences I've attended in my life. I attended a Linux conference in San Francisco called "Linux World". I'm a software developer by trade. I write computer programs. I love open source software and Linux. Anyway, I get in the queue for registration. Part of the process is to create a name badge. What you may not know is that it is common practice at such a conference to have name badges that are plastic, credit-card-size, badges complete with conference art work. They look like a business card. They have a rectangular hole at the top for the lanyard hook. You then got a lanyard with a clear, plastic holder for the name badge that just coincidentally happens to be handy for both showing your name and also holding business cards of all manner of conference going folk. I'm like, "Perfect". I saw a chance, I made a move. Registration took place on a PC, a keyboard and a screen. The registration screen had you enter your registration information and finally came the name badge screen with three rows: Company, Title, and Name. So in goes, "Universe, Supreme Ruler, and Mybrid Spalding", because I hadn't changed my last name to "Wonderful" at that time. Anyway, so there I am, walking around the huge Moscone Center with a lanyard and name badge declaring I'm the Supreme Rule of the Universe. Ha! I had great fun! It was awesome! The people who smile and laugh are the ones I to talk too, and the people who sourpuss-it face I don't. Easy peasy. It is the same practice I use with with my name. People who get their back up because, "Mybrid", I walk away from. People who enjoy the imagination idea of "Mybrid" I open the door for. Yeah baby, yeah. Out with the old, in with the new!
Part of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe game is I seriously ponder ruling the Universe. How are the current Universe Rulers doing and can I devise better? I've always had an Infinity War with the powers that be; they don't know what they are doing.
My first recollection of an Infinity War battle took place in a church. I think was maybe nine-years old at the time? My family attended "The Wesleyan Methodist Church", just a couple of blocks from where we lived. I'd say our family was pretty typical for the 1970s. We went to church on Sundays kinda regularly and whenever free baby sitting was offered, aka Bible Camp, then we went.
I have never believed in Christianity even though I was indoctrinated from early childhood. I remember thinking "no way you can get all those animals on a boat". At that time I thought it was an original thought. Ha! Never underestimate the intelligence of a child. However, my thoughts were wrong because I lived in land locked, Lafayette, IN. The only boat I had ever seen was row boat on a pond behind our school that someone used for fishing. You can't get an elephant on that boat. I had no idea what a boat was because I had never seen one. So yeah. The picture in the picture book showed Noah's Ark entirely on the same page with a bunch of animals. Not big enough.
Anyway, this is a story about first serious Universe Ruling recollection. It involves a couple who had been married and divorced six times. But that's not the kicker. No, the kicker is they had been married and divorced six-times to each other. I gotta hand it to the Methodists. The Methodists practice, "give us your tired, your poor." Methodists minister to the weakest and most desperate of us. I appreciate the fact that no matter how broken one is, one can always be welcome in a Methodist church. So anyway, this couple had asked the preacher to marry them in the church. For the seventh time. Take that Catholic Church. The Pastor said yes, but on one condition. He wanted use them as an sermon topic and marry them in front of the whole congregation. So we had a Sunday service that ended with a short wedding ceremony of these two desperate, ex-cons who had both been in-and-out of jail, in-and-out of marriage multiple times.
I became a serious Supreme Ruler during the sermon. See, the sermon starts out how the Pastor espoused Methodist principles of ministering to the poor and those most in need. Therefore this marriage was not a mockery of God and marriage, but a Pastor and his congregation participating in ministering to a couple who may yet find redemption with our help. I have to say, of all the Christian denominations, I find the Methodist practice of helping the thieves, lepers, and whores the most to my liking. Anyway, that's not the part I had issue with. No, the part I had issue with was the civil part. The Pastor reminded us that along with a spiritual responsibility of marriage comes a civil responsibility. He further went on to say that with marriage comes over seven-hundred civil rights-and-privileges exclusive to marriage and went on to name a few. That's when I got serious. No, just no. Stop it. First of all, what's with bundling individual rights and privileges. Individual rights and privileges should be decided as individual, ala carte. At nine-years old I was like, nope, those seven-hundred rights and privileges should be listed individually and I should be able to designate my wishes and exercise my rights one-by-one, no packaging allowed.
Looking at the state of marriage today, I think my nine-year-old self was onto something. Civil social-engineering of marriage has been a disaster in this country.
That was then. What I do for a living now is write software programs. My interest in being a Supreme Ruler of the Universe though has maintained by a large appetite for reading up on social engineering. I've read broadly about history, economics, religion, anthropology, social science, social studies, cognitive science, and of course speculative science fiction. Speculative science fiction is the business of social engineering by speculating new ethics and new morals based upon imagined new technology.
My insights come from a combination of two things: broad reading education coupled with a talent based upon reason and observation. Irreni World Scale is the culmination of years of education and of reason from a Supreme Ruler of the Universe eye. *~wink*~
Where does one start when thinking like a Supreme Ruler? George Carlin had a good definition of a comedian I thought that also applies to defining a Supreme Ruler. Essentially Carlin defined a comedian as someone who observes life and points out the absurdities. He then immediately proves his point and says, "take for example a disposable douche, is there any other kind? When would you not dispose of a douche"? In some sense I'm a comedian. I look at life and observe absurd.
One such absurd example is the religious right's claim to Christian privilege in this country because we are a Christian Nation. To which I retort, oh yeah? What about the thousand years between 300 CE and 1787 CE when the Catholic Church was literally in bed with the state as a state church? Weren't these thousand years of Christian nations? Were they a success? The Catholic Church was the Christian Nation church for the countries of France, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and such. How did that work out? What was the American Revolution revolting from? What were the Protestants protesting? Funny thing is when I point out the Christian Nation absurdity then Christians just act like I'm speaking Klingon or something. Imagine that. Being a Supreme Ruler is hard.
Anyway, my infinity war started at the moment of our first childhood consciousness thoughts and ends at death. So I can safely say that social engineering has been an Infinity War for me, a game of Supreme Ruler of the Universe where I enjoined degrees of seriousness and whimsy.
I'm going pick on economists. Basically I'm a coward and everybody picks on economists. I'm not going to alienate anyone picking on economists because everyone does this and also economists are resigned to this fate. :)
The Powers That Be, our Supreme Rulers, have no clue what they are doing with the economy. Look around you. I have two fundamental economy observations that show the absurdity of The Powers That Be Economy are:
1. Savings
2. Gasoline prices
I grew up in the 1970s. Our high school had a class we were required to take, called "Home Economics". We learned how to balance a checkbook. We learned how to bake. Ummm, yummy cinnamon rolls from scratch. We also were taught the necessity of having a savings account and saving money.
Do you hear that today? What no? If you tell someone today you that you are putting money in savings account then they will tilt their head like a dog looking at a penguin for the first time: is that a dog or a cat? What?
You see savings accounts since 2007 having been paying zero percent interest. When we were taught savings in high school we took one-hundred dollars and put that into a savings account that paid five-percent. We then compounded that interest over forty years and came up with a million dollars! Or something like that.
Later on when in the 1980s and 1990s as I followed economic news there was always this leading indicator that all economists talked about: American savings-to-GDP ratio. Seems after WWII then Americans established a some benchmark savings to GDP ratio or some such. The recession in the 1980s seriously drained American savings accounts and credit-card debt was on the rise. Economists warned that the clouds would fall if that savings ratio sunk too low. Further, if that savings ratio sunk lower then all the nitrogen would fall out of the sky and finally all the oxygen and we would all suffocate to death. That would suck. Savings, savings, and more savings were promoted by economists.
Then 2007 came along and BAM!!! Savings? What's that? Turn on any economic forecast in 2018 and you will not hear one single peep about American savings having any impact on the economy. No, today it is all about 401k investments in Wall Street. Mmmmm. I wonder why?
The point is that The Powers That Be Economy are clueless. They have no clue what they are talking about and the savings predictions of before 2007 prove it.
Gasoline prices are another case of clueless. It all started in 1999/2000 with the demise of Enron. Enron was a Fortune 3 company, one of the largest companies in the world. Enron's shenanigans and ultimate collapse in the energy markets lead to oil price increases. Economists warned that if oil prices rose by as much as ten-percent then this would cause inflation. Rising oil costs meant rising transportation costs. Rising transportation costs meant rising food costs, including rising costs of McDonald's burgers. Economists predicted that a ten-percent increase in gasoline prices would mean a ten-percent increase in food prices because food is mostly transported by truck.
In 2007 in California gas prices peaked at five-dollars per gallon. That is not a ten percent increase. That is a five-hundred percent increase over 1999. And yet you could still buy a hamburger at McDonald's for under one dollar. In fact, McDonald's even had a one dollar value menu and yet gas prices in California hit five-dollars per gallon.
The latest round of Powers That Be Economy absurdity is tax cuts. Or rather, tax cuts without cutting spending. None other than the Wall Street Journal is projecting that the short term economic gains from slashing taxes will peak early next year and then fade by 2020.
I mean, come on, short term gains for long term losses? This is also called cutting off your nose to spite your face. These tax cuts without spending cuts were reckless and irresponsible to be polite about it. To be cynical about it one can just listen to what the Republican politicians are telling us: they did it so as to balloon the deficit and force tax cuts that cut Social Security and Medicare.
These are the Powers That Be Economy people who are the Supreme Rulers of our Universe.
Have you had enough yet?
Irreni World Scale must necessarily appear absurd. For example, Irreni is designed for micro-modular governments of size thirty people. This means there will be around two-hundred million sovereign governments based upon today's seven-billion size world population. Today we have less than two-hundred sovereign governments.
You have to realize though that today's Supreme Rulers of our Universe have failed absurdly. Any competent solution put forward must necessarily look absurd by comparison.
The only question then is the reasonableness and efficacy of the new absurdity.
This book is going to lay out the case that the Irreni World Scale formula for absurdity success makes sense. For example, the plan to achieve two-hundred million sovereign government requires two-hundred years to implement. We will go from two-hundred to two-hundred million over two-hundred years.
So that's the Introduction, a requirement for absurdity. Our government failures today in the United States and in the world are extreme in their absurdity. If the consequences were not life-and-death then we might be able to laugh about the absurdities and call them absurdity comedy.
But the stakes are life-and-death. What started for me as a childhood absurdity of play thinking that I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe has lead me on a path to creating Irreni World Scale, an absurd solution for absurd times.
Absurdity is the order for the day, perhaps with a side of fries. The only work left for the rest of this book then is to make the case that Irreni World Scale is the right kind of absurdity.
Fantastic! Build the MGO, build the world! THESE are the times that try our social skills. The social media warrior and the comment troll will, in this endeavor, shirk hard work, doing so from within the information shadows as if bridge trolls whose life's meaning is simply to scare the frightful and the children as they cross into the future bridge. We the people that commit to the hard work required to build our future communities with love for everyone will ensure our individual and world's security with prosperity without end. Tools, language, and social groups are our intellectual heritage and yet when we take the measure of each one is deficient: we are surrounded by technology's breath taking pace, emojies on the Internet connect all our languages, and yet are politics regress, we do not see new social skills required to make new communities keeping pace. We must have the courage as our parents and their parents before them to boldly go into new frontiers, even as those new frontiers are social estate and not real estate.
Love Hard Work. If you've coming looking for disposable political content that characterizes politics today then you will be disappointed. This book, "Love, Hard Work" is a book that is a call to action, to do things. And action that is necessarily made from love and hard work. Love is required to promote the well being of everyone on planet Earth and hard work is required to upgrade our social skills so we can build new social estate.
Let us begin.
This is not a technical manual specifying how a system works, a system designed for all seven-billion people on the Earth today and even more tomorrow. Everyone should feel welcome in reading this book as the message is meant for everyone. That message is simple: build an MGO.
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis Papers
Crisis, what crisis?
The above album art was part of a social campaign to bring about social change, namely the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Before the EPA was created the large cities in the US were smog ridden, trash heaps.
In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote the Crisis papers to gin up support for the war. Are we in crisis today?
No.
We are not.
We are in quality of life mode, not crisis mode. We now have the capacity to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for all of Earth inhabitants even as the population is its largest ever.
The only reason we have not done so is bad politics, bad governance. And no one is out there proposing some 2018 EPA to clean up our political trash. Until now. Irreni World Scale upgrades our politics to serve us all.
This book has an impossible task of convincing people that three-hundred million governments of size thirty people is the future. An additional impossible task is to convince this plan will take two-hundred years in an instant gratification age.
But neither three-hundred million governments nor a two-hundred-year plan is as impossible a task as convincing people we are not in crisis mode.
This is because Irreni is something new. New ideas. New ideas are easier to sell than shifting human nature gears. Our human nature is to perceive ourselves in crisis mode. News really should be called Bad News. If it bleeds it leads. News since its inception has always attracted subscribers with sensationalism, however muted. Journalism is considered the fourth estate because its role was taken to mean taking out the trash. Investigative journalism doesn't investigate why marriages work, but rather extra-marital affairs of people in power.
Celebrate! Dance to the music! We live in fantastic times! Imagine an average American from 1776 being transported to an average American home today? Indoor plumbing, indoor electricity, automobiles, television, computers, and smart phones! The wonders to behold for this 1776 American!
And yet our media today is stuck in the same rut as it was in 1776, sensationalism of bad news.
Celebrate!
We should be full of joy for all the advantages we enjoy today! Why aren't we? Human nature.
"The reasonable person adapts themselves to their environment. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person."
--George Bernard Shaw
Being a human is like mountain climbing where no matter how much mountain has been progressed, we are focused on the next progress.
The reason our politics has eclipsed its ability to progress is that we have reached the limit of crisis politics. We need to shift to celebratory politics.
Crisis politics is defined to be politics established to oppose tyranny and oppression. The US Constitution is such a document. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the opposite pole of tyranny that benefits the few. The few govern today in every country.
Crisis politics is not quality of life politics. Crisis politics is opposition to the tyranny of the few to carve out life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as an opposing force to tyranny to the extent possible. That extent has been reached and our politics have reached the limits of happiness capacity.
We are now in the information age, the quality of life age. We have the capacity to feed, shelter, and clothe one-hundred percent of all humans. The only thing holding us back from doing so is us, our human nature.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This means any power structure that funnels power to the few will be corrupt. Crisis government is designed to fight the funnelled power. Shifting perspectives from crisis government to celebratory government then means massively distributing power and this is why Irreni calls for what are now called countries to be groups of thirty people, or MGOs (micro-modular governing organizations).
Crisis government is revolutionary whereas celebratory is innovative. When the tyrants albeit capitalists or government officials run amok then the tyrants are tore down and so large disruptions can ensue, up to and including all out revolution or corporate collapse. Crisis government then is by nature one step forward and two steps backwards. Corruption is built into the few governing the many, a top-down system. Success becomes failure as the riches of success corrupt those few in power, turning them into tyrants. The corrupt system is tore down and a new one replaces it. This is all expensive and costly. Crisis government then is inherently limited in success because corruption increases as success increases and the system then succumbs to revolution of some sort.
Celebratory government is incremental innovation. This is because celebratory government starts with a calibration of the quality of life today and then innovates improvements to the calibration to increase the quality for all.
To better understand crisis versus celebratory government then let us apply the differences to a modern problem at large: climate change.
First there is the immediacy framing. We are told that we have twelve years to respond to climate change. This is crisis management. We have a deadline and we have to scurry, scrounge, and fight to meet the deadline or suffer dire consequences.
Does this frame make any sense whatsoever? First, for this frame to apply this assumes that world governments can respond in a timely manner. As if? Right? Come on, do world governments have any track record of responding on such short notice? The frame is silly.
Why give the frame of twelve years at all? Well, the story goes that we will reach of point of no return that we cannot halt changes. The celebratory perspective is to admit disaster is reality and realize that twelve years is a ridiculously short time for global response. So, celebratory response would be to look for incremental, innovative changes that can begin to mitigate the coming disaster incrementally rather than some perceived complete and total solution.
Second there is the isolation framing. Climate change response is considered isolated from the overall world state. The world state is not a zero-sum game where any change adds and subtracts from some world state total. But neither is world state infinitely flexible. The reality is world state exists somewhere between a zero-sum game and flexibility. Celebratory politics always considers the overall state of the world and how any change impacts overall state. This is because the objective of celebratory politics is to increase overall quality of life.
These two frames of immediacy framing and isolation framing are foundations of crisis politics. There are no long term plans in crisis politics where long term is defined to mean longer than one human life span. Climate change response will always be us for now and ever more. Being in a constant state of emergency for now and ever more is a poor quality of life.
The quality of life standard for climate change is to change the very name to Earth stewardship. The spelunking motto is "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints." Every human can feel the evolutionary pull of wanting to leave the Earth in as good as shape possible for future generations. As the Earth reels and rolls through its various environmental changes then our celebratory response is to minimize the negative impact on current people as well as sustain a good Earth for future generations.
We are not going to solve any of the big problems of 2018 with a crisis mentality. It is exhausting because everything is framed as a crisis and we all become desensitized to the crisis of the day. Around every corner and on every web page a new crisis is brewing.
Crisis government and crisis mentality must go and be replaced with quality of life government that celebrates life. We must quantify overall world state and look to increase on a forever trajectory.
Irreni World Scale shifts our entire governing perspective from crisis management to quality management. Power is massively distributed with MGOs as a firewall against absolute power corrupting absolute. Millions of governments replacing hundreds of governments acts as a firewall against crisis inducing corruption. The two-hundred year time-line provides time for multiple generations to create and pass-on new social skills required for everyone governing. The two-hundred year time-line provides time for quality of life metrics to be established and then governing experiments to prove out quality of life increases.
Irreni World Scale then replaces static government of static laws with experimental government with experimental laws. Static laws provide fertile ground for corruption because permanency is the bedrock of corruption. Power permanently established is power easily corrupted. Crisis government demands static laws whereas celebratory government demands experimental laws.
Experiments require laboratories and lab equipment. Irreni World Scale has both. The laboratory is the Terran Sea Otter Academy (TSOA). The TSOA is charged with experiment inception, data collection, analysis, and refereeing. The experiments are conducted by MGOs. The MGOs are the building blocks of governing experiment. MGOs are combined into larger entities via contracts of experiment called projects. These projects are run until the experiment concluding criteria are met or the project canceled due to faulty premises, faulty configuration, or changing world circumstances. The TSOA is solely responsible for MGO composition from outside of the members of the MGO. The TSOA can reconfigure MGO membership to meet experiment criteria as well as to break up MGOs that abuse power.
The Irreni World Scale plan is roughly broken into four stages: corporate, local, state, and country. First corporations are replaced with MGO projects. This can take from fifty to one-hundred years. Second local governments are replace, then state, and finally countries themselves are replaced. These stages will overlap as different regions on Earth adopt at varying rates of efficacy.
The call-to-action today is a Make campaign. Automation is rapidly replacing mundane, repetitive jobs. Irreni World Scale is calling for initial MGOs to form as a jobs program. Job security comes from taking control of our own job fates. We learn various modern job skills such as 3D printing. MGOs are formed under existing corporation law. In parallel the TSOA will be constituted. Software identified in later chapters will be developed to run the initial experiments as projects and to initiate the MGO refereeing system.
Start a corporate MGO. That is your action. The TSOA will need financial resources. At a high-level these two initiatives are the beginning, chapter one.
Hard Work
By Mybrid Wonderful
A New Government
(For Making New Governments)
Irreni World Scale
Welcome to Love, Hard Work!
Introduction
Before we get started, duty demands I lay down a couple of things first. Irreni World Scale means hard work. Hard work in the past meant physical labor, back breaking labor of long hours. Hard work today means brain labor of social skills, getting along with people productively. Don't Panic! Two-hundred-million world governments proposed by Irreni as opposed to today's two-hundred world governments is not meant to happen over night, but rather over two-hundred years.
Introduction: December 4, 2018
You ever wake up, roll over, look at the blue-glowing clock to ask yourself if it is time to start thinking? And in part do so by asking yourself, "Do I rule the Universe today?" Over the many mornings of my fifty-six years I have devised many different methods for answering that question: do I rule the Universe today? Mmmm. My latest Universe ruling thermometer is to check the new movie listings on the "Rotten Tomatoes" web site on my phone. I don't know about you but when I first wake up I can't remember jack blank. Literally, my brain is off and I don't even know my name. I look at the movie listings and if I go, "oh, I remember that crap from yesterday", then I know it is time to start thinking. I mean, new movies only come out once per week. That's the first part. The second part is I look at the titles. My review usually goes something like this, "crap, crap, who would watch that?, I want to be entertained not depressed, yuck!, more crap, what the hell is that?, and meh..." After that review exercise I'm ready to think and I know that I don't rule the Universe. So I get out of bed and start the day. Because let's be serious, if I did rule the Universe then action movies would be all the new movies. :)
My favorite movies of 2018 are "Dead Pool 2", "Venom", and "Blank Panther". Yeah, okay, "Avengers: Infinity War", came out and I liked it: I just didn't fav it. That movie just tried too hard and I felt like I was sitting on the crapper pushing, pushing, pushing...then what heck was that that came out?
In my brain and in my heart I'm still a kid. There was one moment in time back in 1977 where I did feel like I was on top of the world, I ruled the Universe. Two things happened that lead me to conclude I mattered. The movie "Star Wars" came out and the album, "Hotel California", came out. "Hotel California" even went on to win a Grammy for the album of the year! Yes! 1977 was the one time I felt I belonged to our planet we call Earth, I saw myself reflected and I ruled. Yee haa! The fact that Star Wars got critically panned also meant I ruled 'cause we all like to both love and hate critics. I mean we Love when a critic agrees with us and we Hate when they don't. As one Supreme Ruler of the Universe to another we must find it as unthinkable Supreme Ruler etiquette to give a crap what an actual critic judges...'cause that cramps the Supreme Ruler style. Although I do read movie reviews for the plot synopsis. Just saying. Hmmmph.
I've always had fun imagining I ruled the Universe. It is this game I have played since as long as I can remember.
Here's a fun Ruler story. I'm not a belonger by nature, I don't join groups or go to group things. No, I fly Solo(tm). Although sometimes I do ponder my childhood and wonder what happened to finding my Chewy(tm) partner? Anyway, back in 2007 I attended one of a handful conferences I've attended in my life. I attended a Linux conference in San Francisco called "Linux World". I'm a software developer by trade. I write computer programs. I love open source software and Linux. Anyway, I get in the queue for registration. Part of the process is to create a name badge. What you may not know is that it is common practice at such a conference to have name badges that are plastic, credit-card-size, badges complete with conference art work. They look like a business card. They have a rectangular hole at the top for the lanyard hook. You then got a lanyard with a clear, plastic holder for the name badge that just coincidentally happens to be handy for both showing your name and also holding business cards of all manner of conference going folk. I'm like, "Perfect". I saw a chance, I made a move. Registration took place on a PC, a keyboard and a screen. The registration screen had you enter your registration information and finally came the name badge screen with three rows: Company, Title, and Name. So in goes, "Universe, Supreme Ruler, and Mybrid Spalding", because I hadn't changed my last name to "Wonderful" at that time. Anyway, so there I am, walking around the huge Moscone Center with a lanyard and name badge declaring I'm the Supreme Rule of the Universe. Ha! I had great fun! It was awesome! The people who smile and laugh are the ones I to talk too, and the people who sourpuss-it face I don't. Easy peasy. It is the same practice I use with with my name. People who get their back up because, "Mybrid", I walk away from. People who enjoy the imagination idea of "Mybrid" I open the door for. Yeah baby, yeah. Out with the old, in with the new!
Introduction: December 4, 2018, Infinity War
Part of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe game is I seriously ponder ruling the Universe. How are the current Universe Rulers doing and can I devise better? I've always had an Infinity War with the powers that be; they don't know what they are doing.
My first recollection of an Infinity War battle took place in a church. I think was maybe nine-years old at the time? My family attended "The Wesleyan Methodist Church", just a couple of blocks from where we lived. I'd say our family was pretty typical for the 1970s. We went to church on Sundays kinda regularly and whenever free baby sitting was offered, aka Bible Camp, then we went.
I have never believed in Christianity even though I was indoctrinated from early childhood. I remember thinking "no way you can get all those animals on a boat". At that time I thought it was an original thought. Ha! Never underestimate the intelligence of a child. However, my thoughts were wrong because I lived in land locked, Lafayette, IN. The only boat I had ever seen was row boat on a pond behind our school that someone used for fishing. You can't get an elephant on that boat. I had no idea what a boat was because I had never seen one. So yeah. The picture in the picture book showed Noah's Ark entirely on the same page with a bunch of animals. Not big enough.
Anyway, this is a story about first serious Universe Ruling recollection. It involves a couple who had been married and divorced six times. But that's not the kicker. No, the kicker is they had been married and divorced six-times to each other. I gotta hand it to the Methodists. The Methodists practice, "give us your tired, your poor." Methodists minister to the weakest and most desperate of us. I appreciate the fact that no matter how broken one is, one can always be welcome in a Methodist church. So anyway, this couple had asked the preacher to marry them in the church. For the seventh time. Take that Catholic Church. The Pastor said yes, but on one condition. He wanted use them as an sermon topic and marry them in front of the whole congregation. So we had a Sunday service that ended with a short wedding ceremony of these two desperate, ex-cons who had both been in-and-out of jail, in-and-out of marriage multiple times.
I became a serious Supreme Ruler during the sermon. See, the sermon starts out how the Pastor espoused Methodist principles of ministering to the poor and those most in need. Therefore this marriage was not a mockery of God and marriage, but a Pastor and his congregation participating in ministering to a couple who may yet find redemption with our help. I have to say, of all the Christian denominations, I find the Methodist practice of helping the thieves, lepers, and whores the most to my liking. Anyway, that's not the part I had issue with. No, the part I had issue with was the civil part. The Pastor reminded us that along with a spiritual responsibility of marriage comes a civil responsibility. He further went on to say that with marriage comes over seven-hundred civil rights-and-privileges exclusive to marriage and went on to name a few. That's when I got serious. No, just no. Stop it. First of all, what's with bundling individual rights and privileges. Individual rights and privileges should be decided as individual, ala carte. At nine-years old I was like, nope, those seven-hundred rights and privileges should be listed individually and I should be able to designate my wishes and exercise my rights one-by-one, no packaging allowed.
Looking at the state of marriage today, I think my nine-year-old self was onto something. Civil social-engineering of marriage has been a disaster in this country.
That was then. What I do for a living now is write software programs. My interest in being a Supreme Ruler of the Universe though has maintained by a large appetite for reading up on social engineering. I've read broadly about history, economics, religion, anthropology, social science, social studies, cognitive science, and of course speculative science fiction. Speculative science fiction is the business of social engineering by speculating new ethics and new morals based upon imagined new technology.
My insights come from a combination of two things: broad reading education coupled with a talent based upon reason and observation. Irreni World Scale is the culmination of years of education and of reason from a Supreme Ruler of the Universe eye. *~wink*~
Where does one start when thinking like a Supreme Ruler? George Carlin had a good definition of a comedian I thought that also applies to defining a Supreme Ruler. Essentially Carlin defined a comedian as someone who observes life and points out the absurdities. He then immediately proves his point and says, "take for example a disposable douche, is there any other kind? When would you not dispose of a douche"? In some sense I'm a comedian. I look at life and observe absurd.
One such absurd example is the religious right's claim to Christian privilege in this country because we are a Christian Nation. To which I retort, oh yeah? What about the thousand years between 300 CE and 1787 CE when the Catholic Church was literally in bed with the state as a state church? Weren't these thousand years of Christian nations? Were they a success? The Catholic Church was the Christian Nation church for the countries of France, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and such. How did that work out? What was the American Revolution revolting from? What were the Protestants protesting? Funny thing is when I point out the Christian Nation absurdity then Christians just act like I'm speaking Klingon or something. Imagine that. Being a Supreme Ruler is hard.
Anyway, my infinity war started at the moment of our first childhood consciousness thoughts and ends at death. So I can safely say that social engineering has been an Infinity War for me, a game of Supreme Ruler of the Universe where I enjoined degrees of seriousness and whimsy.
Introduction: December 4, 2018, The Powers That Be Economy
I'm going pick on economists. Basically I'm a coward and everybody picks on economists. I'm not going to alienate anyone picking on economists because everyone does this and also economists are resigned to this fate. :)
The Powers That Be, our Supreme Rulers, have no clue what they are doing with the economy. Look around you. I have two fundamental economy observations that show the absurdity of The Powers That Be Economy are:
1. Savings
2. Gasoline prices
I grew up in the 1970s. Our high school had a class we were required to take, called "Home Economics". We learned how to balance a checkbook. We learned how to bake. Ummm, yummy cinnamon rolls from scratch. We also were taught the necessity of having a savings account and saving money.
Do you hear that today? What no? If you tell someone today you that you are putting money in savings account then they will tilt their head like a dog looking at a penguin for the first time: is that a dog or a cat? What?
You see savings accounts since 2007 having been paying zero percent interest. When we were taught savings in high school we took one-hundred dollars and put that into a savings account that paid five-percent. We then compounded that interest over forty years and came up with a million dollars! Or something like that.
Later on when in the 1980s and 1990s as I followed economic news there was always this leading indicator that all economists talked about: American savings-to-GDP ratio. Seems after WWII then Americans established a some benchmark savings to GDP ratio or some such. The recession in the 1980s seriously drained American savings accounts and credit-card debt was on the rise. Economists warned that the clouds would fall if that savings ratio sunk too low. Further, if that savings ratio sunk lower then all the nitrogen would fall out of the sky and finally all the oxygen and we would all suffocate to death. That would suck. Savings, savings, and more savings were promoted by economists.
Then 2007 came along and BAM!!! Savings? What's that? Turn on any economic forecast in 2018 and you will not hear one single peep about American savings having any impact on the economy. No, today it is all about 401k investments in Wall Street. Mmmmm. I wonder why?
The point is that The Powers That Be Economy are clueless. They have no clue what they are talking about and the savings predictions of before 2007 prove it.
Gasoline prices are another case of clueless. It all started in 1999/2000 with the demise of Enron. Enron was a Fortune 3 company, one of the largest companies in the world. Enron's shenanigans and ultimate collapse in the energy markets lead to oil price increases. Economists warned that if oil prices rose by as much as ten-percent then this would cause inflation. Rising oil costs meant rising transportation costs. Rising transportation costs meant rising food costs, including rising costs of McDonald's burgers. Economists predicted that a ten-percent increase in gasoline prices would mean a ten-percent increase in food prices because food is mostly transported by truck.
In 2007 in California gas prices peaked at five-dollars per gallon. That is not a ten percent increase. That is a five-hundred percent increase over 1999. And yet you could still buy a hamburger at McDonald's for under one dollar. In fact, McDonald's even had a one dollar value menu and yet gas prices in California hit five-dollars per gallon.
Introduction: December 4, 2018, What Now?
The latest round of Powers That Be Economy absurdity is tax cuts. Or rather, tax cuts without cutting spending. None other than the Wall Street Journal is projecting that the short term economic gains from slashing taxes will peak early next year and then fade by 2020.
I mean, come on, short term gains for long term losses? This is also called cutting off your nose to spite your face. These tax cuts without spending cuts were reckless and irresponsible to be polite about it. To be cynical about it one can just listen to what the Republican politicians are telling us: they did it so as to balloon the deficit and force tax cuts that cut Social Security and Medicare.
These are the Powers That Be Economy people who are the Supreme Rulers of our Universe.
Have you had enough yet?
Introduction: Irreni World Scale Absurdity
Irreni World Scale must necessarily appear absurd. For example, Irreni is designed for micro-modular governments of size thirty people. This means there will be around two-hundred million sovereign governments based upon today's seven-billion size world population. Today we have less than two-hundred sovereign governments.
You have to realize though that today's Supreme Rulers of our Universe have failed absurdly. Any competent solution put forward must necessarily look absurd by comparison.
The only question then is the reasonableness and efficacy of the new absurdity.
This book is going to lay out the case that the Irreni World Scale formula for absurdity success makes sense. For example, the plan to achieve two-hundred million sovereign government requires two-hundred years to implement. We will go from two-hundred to two-hundred million over two-hundred years.
So that's the Introduction, a requirement for absurdity. Our government failures today in the United States and in the world are extreme in their absurdity. If the consequences were not life-and-death then we might be able to laugh about the absurdities and call them absurdity comedy.
But the stakes are life-and-death. What started for me as a childhood absurdity of play thinking that I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe has lead me on a path to creating Irreni World Scale, an absurd solution for absurd times.
Absurdity is the order for the day, perhaps with a side of fries. The only work left for the rest of this book then is to make the case that Irreni World Scale is the right kind of absurdity.
Chapter 1
Fantastic! Build the MGO, build the world! THESE are the times that try our social skills. The social media warrior and the comment troll will, in this endeavor, shirk hard work, doing so from within the information shadows as if bridge trolls whose life's meaning is simply to scare the frightful and the children as they cross into the future bridge. We the people that commit to the hard work required to build our future communities with love for everyone will ensure our individual and world's security with prosperity without end. Tools, language, and social groups are our intellectual heritage and yet when we take the measure of each one is deficient: we are surrounded by technology's breath taking pace, emojies on the Internet connect all our languages, and yet are politics regress, we do not see new social skills required to make new communities keeping pace. We must have the courage as our parents and their parents before them to boldly go into new frontiers, even as those new frontiers are social estate and not real estate.
Love Hard Work. If you've coming looking for disposable political content that characterizes politics today then you will be disappointed. This book, "Love, Hard Work" is a book that is a call to action, to do things. And action that is necessarily made from love and hard work. Love is required to promote the well being of everyone on planet Earth and hard work is required to upgrade our social skills so we can build new social estate.
Let us begin.
This is not a technical manual specifying how a system works, a system designed for all seven-billion people on the Earth today and even more tomorrow. Everyone should feel welcome in reading this book as the message is meant for everyone. That message is simple: build an MGO.
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis Papers
Crisis, what crisis?
The above album art was part of a social campaign to bring about social change, namely the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Before the EPA was created the large cities in the US were smog ridden, trash heaps.
In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote the Crisis papers to gin up support for the war. Are we in crisis today?
No.
We are not.
We are in quality of life mode, not crisis mode. We now have the capacity to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for all of Earth inhabitants even as the population is its largest ever.
The only reason we have not done so is bad politics, bad governance. And no one is out there proposing some 2018 EPA to clean up our political trash. Until now. Irreni World Scale upgrades our politics to serve us all.
This book has an impossible task of convincing people that three-hundred million governments of size thirty people is the future. An additional impossible task is to convince this plan will take two-hundred years in an instant gratification age.
But neither three-hundred million governments nor a two-hundred-year plan is as impossible a task as convincing people we are not in crisis mode.
This is because Irreni is something new. New ideas. New ideas are easier to sell than shifting human nature gears. Our human nature is to perceive ourselves in crisis mode. News really should be called Bad News. If it bleeds it leads. News since its inception has always attracted subscribers with sensationalism, however muted. Journalism is considered the fourth estate because its role was taken to mean taking out the trash. Investigative journalism doesn't investigate why marriages work, but rather extra-marital affairs of people in power.
Celebrate! Dance to the music! We live in fantastic times! Imagine an average American from 1776 being transported to an average American home today? Indoor plumbing, indoor electricity, automobiles, television, computers, and smart phones! The wonders to behold for this 1776 American!
And yet our media today is stuck in the same rut as it was in 1776, sensationalism of bad news.
Celebrate!
We should be full of joy for all the advantages we enjoy today! Why aren't we? Human nature.
"The reasonable person adapts themselves to their environment. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person."
--George Bernard Shaw
Being a human is like mountain climbing where no matter how much mountain has been progressed, we are focused on the next progress.
The reason our politics has eclipsed its ability to progress is that we have reached the limit of crisis politics. We need to shift to celebratory politics.
Crisis politics is defined to be politics established to oppose tyranny and oppression. The US Constitution is such a document. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the opposite pole of tyranny that benefits the few. The few govern today in every country.
Crisis politics is not quality of life politics. Crisis politics is opposition to the tyranny of the few to carve out life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as an opposing force to tyranny to the extent possible. That extent has been reached and our politics have reached the limits of happiness capacity.
We are now in the information age, the quality of life age. We have the capacity to feed, shelter, and clothe one-hundred percent of all humans. The only thing holding us back from doing so is us, our human nature.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This means any power structure that funnels power to the few will be corrupt. Crisis government is designed to fight the funnelled power. Shifting perspectives from crisis government to celebratory government then means massively distributing power and this is why Irreni calls for what are now called countries to be groups of thirty people, or MGOs (micro-modular governing organizations).
Crisis government is revolutionary whereas celebratory is innovative. When the tyrants albeit capitalists or government officials run amok then the tyrants are tore down and so large disruptions can ensue, up to and including all out revolution or corporate collapse. Crisis government then is by nature one step forward and two steps backwards. Corruption is built into the few governing the many, a top-down system. Success becomes failure as the riches of success corrupt those few in power, turning them into tyrants. The corrupt system is tore down and a new one replaces it. This is all expensive and costly. Crisis government then is inherently limited in success because corruption increases as success increases and the system then succumbs to revolution of some sort.
Celebratory government is incremental innovation. This is because celebratory government starts with a calibration of the quality of life today and then innovates improvements to the calibration to increase the quality for all.
To better understand crisis versus celebratory government then let us apply the differences to a modern problem at large: climate change.
First there is the immediacy framing. We are told that we have twelve years to respond to climate change. This is crisis management. We have a deadline and we have to scurry, scrounge, and fight to meet the deadline or suffer dire consequences.
Does this frame make any sense whatsoever? First, for this frame to apply this assumes that world governments can respond in a timely manner. As if? Right? Come on, do world governments have any track record of responding on such short notice? The frame is silly.
Why give the frame of twelve years at all? Well, the story goes that we will reach of point of no return that we cannot halt changes. The celebratory perspective is to admit disaster is reality and realize that twelve years is a ridiculously short time for global response. So, celebratory response would be to look for incremental, innovative changes that can begin to mitigate the coming disaster incrementally rather than some perceived complete and total solution.
Second there is the isolation framing. Climate change response is considered isolated from the overall world state. The world state is not a zero-sum game where any change adds and subtracts from some world state total. But neither is world state infinitely flexible. The reality is world state exists somewhere between a zero-sum game and flexibility. Celebratory politics always considers the overall state of the world and how any change impacts overall state. This is because the objective of celebratory politics is to increase overall quality of life.
These two frames of immediacy framing and isolation framing are foundations of crisis politics. There are no long term plans in crisis politics where long term is defined to mean longer than one human life span. Climate change response will always be us for now and ever more. Being in a constant state of emergency for now and ever more is a poor quality of life.
The quality of life standard for climate change is to change the very name to Earth stewardship. The spelunking motto is "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints." Every human can feel the evolutionary pull of wanting to leave the Earth in as good as shape possible for future generations. As the Earth reels and rolls through its various environmental changes then our celebratory response is to minimize the negative impact on current people as well as sustain a good Earth for future generations.
We are not going to solve any of the big problems of 2018 with a crisis mentality. It is exhausting because everything is framed as a crisis and we all become desensitized to the crisis of the day. Around every corner and on every web page a new crisis is brewing.
Crisis government and crisis mentality must go and be replaced with quality of life government that celebrates life. We must quantify overall world state and look to increase on a forever trajectory.
Irreni World Scale shifts our entire governing perspective from crisis management to quality management. Power is massively distributed with MGOs as a firewall against absolute power corrupting absolute. Millions of governments replacing hundreds of governments acts as a firewall against crisis inducing corruption. The two-hundred year time-line provides time for multiple generations to create and pass-on new social skills required for everyone governing. The two-hundred year time-line provides time for quality of life metrics to be established and then governing experiments to prove out quality of life increases.
Irreni World Scale then replaces static government of static laws with experimental government with experimental laws. Static laws provide fertile ground for corruption because permanency is the bedrock of corruption. Power permanently established is power easily corrupted. Crisis government demands static laws whereas celebratory government demands experimental laws.
Experiments require laboratories and lab equipment. Irreni World Scale has both. The laboratory is the Terran Sea Otter Academy (TSOA). The TSOA is charged with experiment inception, data collection, analysis, and refereeing. The experiments are conducted by MGOs. The MGOs are the building blocks of governing experiment. MGOs are combined into larger entities via contracts of experiment called projects. These projects are run until the experiment concluding criteria are met or the project canceled due to faulty premises, faulty configuration, or changing world circumstances. The TSOA is solely responsible for MGO composition from outside of the members of the MGO. The TSOA can reconfigure MGO membership to meet experiment criteria as well as to break up MGOs that abuse power.
The Irreni World Scale plan is roughly broken into four stages: corporate, local, state, and country. First corporations are replaced with MGO projects. This can take from fifty to one-hundred years. Second local governments are replace, then state, and finally countries themselves are replaced. These stages will overlap as different regions on Earth adopt at varying rates of efficacy.
The call-to-action today is a Make campaign. Automation is rapidly replacing mundane, repetitive jobs. Irreni World Scale is calling for initial MGOs to form as a jobs program. Job security comes from taking control of our own job fates. We learn various modern job skills such as 3D printing. MGOs are formed under existing corporation law. In parallel the TSOA will be constituted. Software identified in later chapters will be developed to run the initial experiments as projects and to initiate the MGO refereeing system.
Start a corporate MGO. That is your action. The TSOA will need financial resources. At a high-level these two initiatives are the beginning, chapter one.
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