Not shy of constitutional breach
Curb citizens’ freedom of speech
Its members’ veto power
Annulled in the final hour

But…

Despite jingoistic drilling
of NATO and Coalition of The Willing
Revolt brews in every nation
EU crumbles in its foundation

As the EU is bound to fail
It pulls the devil by the tail
Ignoring history’s lessons of before
Dares to call for an outright WAR

Desire so great, at any cost
Millions of lives already lost
Adults of this World, step up to the plate!
Together we eridicate this heinous hate

Since man’s origin we have been endowed
To lift our mind’s deceitful shroud
Wilder than your dreams
Nothing as it seems

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

This classic book, a fictionalized autobiography, describes the journey on a motorcycle of a father and his son. It takes a while before the story picks up, but then the history of both is slowly revealed. The book is full of philosophic contemplation, such as “What is the definition of quality?” and the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. It has a beautiful ending that literally moved me to tears.

2. Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

Author Jaron Lanier does not have any social media account. That hasn’t impeded him at all, as he is one of the top 25 most influential people over the last 25 years of technological history. In his book he constructs ten very compelling and well supported arguments for removing yourself from social media. On top, he writes it in such a positive and uplifting manner that it is a joy to read.

3. Common Sense by Thomas Paine

With more and more totalitarian control being instigated by governments all over the world, Common Sense is a refreshing pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in the 18th century. In it, he advocates for independence from Great Britain. Written in a clear and persuasive way, Paine gives moral and political arguments to encourage people to fight for egalitarian government.

4. One Red Paperclip by Kyle Macdonald

I had heard the story, but never read the entire story. Kyle Macdonald started a barter experiment. He starts by a paperclip and finally ends up with an entire house. It is a lovely story, written in a light and honest way. Highly recommend for if you see more possibilities in life.

5. Bezmenov World Thought Police 1986 by Tomas Schuman

A candid account of the role that state media played in the KGB’s activities in the Soviet era. Far reaching tactics were used to change the perceived reality of the Soviet Union over an extended period of time. It contains very interesting ideas and concepts that we can find back in today’s world. When you demoralize a society, people will not know anymore what is right or wrong. Hence they become lethargic and subject to totalitarian control.

6. How to Hack Like a Porn Star by Sparc Flow

A fascinating technical story of a real hacker who takes the reader on a fictional journey of hacking a bank. A little bit of IT background will help in understanding the technicalities described in the book, but without one can still follow very well. It demonstrates the vulnerabilities in any complex system architecture. IT security should not be left to the experts alone.

7. The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eger

The author describes her heart breaking story from being deported to concentration camps in World War II, their liberation and subsequent escape to the United States. Edit Eger became a psychologist and draws wisdom from all her horrifying and her beautiful experiences in life. Deeply moving.

8. TranscEnding the Global Power Game by Armin Risi

A beautiful book which you can purchase directly from the author himself. It is a work that combines the spiritual, philosophy, esotericism, history of mankind, and proven conspiracies and projects it onto the current developments and near term future of this planet.

9. Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin

Highly thought provoking and fascinating book. Kropotkin reveres Darwin, but rightfully points out that life is more than the mutual struggle for survival. He gives a wealth of examples from the animal kingdom where mutual aid is the predominant drive. Then he investigates primitive tribes and subsequent civilizations and confirms that mutual aid is also prevalent there.

The book triggered me in pondering over the mutual struggle that we experience today, which is mainly caused by a flawed money system which creates artificial scarcity.

10. When Google Met WikiLeaks by Julian Assange

A shocking book that exposes Google’s close ties with the U.S. government, including the NSA and the State Department. It discloses the lies told by its former CEO, Eric Schmidt and the tech company’s dystopian vision for a “new world order”.

And that is why I like to experience of swimming in ice cold water. It offers me to possibility to travel away from this paradigm. It seems like a temporary escape, but I do come back differently afterwards.

Mental hurdles

Before taking the plunge, there are many mental hurdles to take. You know it is not going to be nice and a part of you is revolting. Your mind breaks down the entire effort into many smaller steps. Every step encompasses a decision. The decision to go for a swim, the decision to pack your gear, the decision to go to the water, the decision to get undressed, the decision to step to the edge.

And the biggest one of all is to actually jump in the cold water. You know what is going to happen when you jump, and you know it is not going to be nice. You are actively choosing for discomfort, or flat out spoken, pain.

This is the first benefit. Daring to choose for something that is uncomfortable. pushes your mental and physical limits. Not out of competition with others, just with yourself. This is a training that will pay itself back many times later.

When you submerge yourself, many things happen. First of all, as you can imagine, you put your body under tremendous physical stress. Your system gets in a shock. It screams to get out.

Calmness

The key here is to remain calm. Pace your breathing, one breathe at a time, in and out. I imagine myself being a captain on a ship, my body. I am only the captain, I am not the ship. I hear and feel the hull is suffering, but I also know the ship is very well capable of coping with these extreme conditions. My mind is safe in the boat cockpit.

Let your body do what it knows what to do: adjust. It takes around a minute before you notice. Your body is protecting the most vital organs which resides in your core. It therefore circulates less blood to the auxiliary organs. You start noticing that your body can handle these conditions a bit better.

Some people like to bathe, I prefer to swim. At a certain point I decide to return. When I turn around, I see the distance back to the shore. Somehow it is always much more than I thought it would be.

And this is where your personal leadership is trained. You are under extreme pressures, but you also realise it is of utmost important to remain calm. Panic is not an option. The only way out is to swim back, stroke by stroke, meter by meter. What keeps me going is the thought of being on the shore again.

As I focus on the next meter ahead of me, I have no time to think of anything. My pressing appointments, the depressive state of the world or the cashier that was not nice to me, they have all become irrelevant. What a bliss.

Euphoria

As I reach the shore, I climb out of the water. I feel a sense of euphoria, but I do not let myself indulge in it. It could lead me into taking unnecessary risks. I know it is important to dry yourself as soon as possible and immediately get warmly dressed. Your body will notice that the dangerous conditions have disappeared and your systems starts opening up again. It circulating the warm blood away from your core to your limbs. This can result in the after drop: your core temperature going down.

As I warm up, all the challenges of the rest of the day don’t seem so heavy any more. The body can handle it, I just need to remain calm.

Please note: if you feel inspired to do swim in cold water, please prepare carefully. Read thoroughly the information you can find on the internet and ask for experiences, advice and assistance from others.

I never dared to share this with others, as this is not socially accepted in the world we live in. Furthermore, I did not understand the emotion. I did not know what it was that “they” did not see; I certainly did not see it either. Hence, I repressed this feeling. Thanks to a strong intellect, I was able to adjust myself fairly well in society for the first three decades of my life.

But life taught me that things are not always as they seem. I started a quest to bring me closer in line with that which houses in me. Bit by bit, step by step, I slowly began to intellectually understand what we, me included, did not see.

The issues in the world are merely symptoms of the real issue: the current paradigm. No solution, how inventive it may be, will suffice to solve the challenges. However, when we embark on a mission to discover the fundamental mysteries of life: who we are, where we come from and why we are here, we can actively build and grow towards a new paradigm.

We can already start today. Each individual can start with their own inner revolution towards sovereignty. If you want to start that journey and build a radically better future, I invite you to read my book Path to Sovereignty.

History has shown the great dangers in blindly following one belief or the other.

Is there another way to approach this? Can there be a way where it is unnecessary to choose a side? Can both sides can be right AND be wrong? Can they both be relevant and irrelevant? That would require a new paradigm of thinking. Jiddu Krishnamurti spoke about this belief dynamic.

“To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what truth is, what God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness belief is unnecessary. It is the man who is not aware, who only hopes and supposes, that looks to belief or to disbelief, to support him, and to lead him to act in a particular way.

Now, if you approach it quite differently, you will find out for yourselves, as individuals, something real which is beyond all the limitations of beliefs, beyond the illusion of words. But that—the discovery of truth, or God—demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth—and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it—to recognize that, to realize that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is.”

from The Book of Life by J. Krishnamurti

What do you think?

Since a few years, Google started conducting business in a way contrary to these pillars. It excessive censorship violates the ability to learn, to self-express and to communicate. Together with its massive (meta)data collection and outright abuse of power, Google has become a very dangerous conglomerate with more centralized power than any nation in the world. I, personally and business-wise, could no longer justify using any of its services. I started the long and arduous journey of finding and creating solutions for all the Google services that I was using. For certain things in life, I want to live by principle, not by concession or comfort. Freedom of Speech is one of them.

Moving away from Google is a LOT of work. It is already a lot of work simply in understanding the dangers, especially in an age of censorship. It is also very confusing. There is little joy or reward. You also risk jeopardizing your business and friendships. Furthermore, is this even the best route to take?

Nevertheless I hope that it gives a perspective of the large dependencies we have in the digital world. The power consolidation has led to digital dictatorship where just a handful of people can directly influence and directly control the behavior of every individual. Those otherwise meaningless virtual ones and zeroes determine and direct your life in this physical world.

Disclaimer: technology changes fast. Some of the suggestions below will become obsolete over time. Also, some alternatives might carry some privacy risks as well. I have kept the technicalities to a minimum. Furthermore, there are many more actions one can take to increase privacy, like using a VPN service or the Tor browser. The below steps are primarily focused on no longer using Google products. I suggest to always do your own research first (and use an appropriate search engine for that) before implementing any of these steps.

It is a long process that can take weeks or months to implement. Many of the Google services are collaboration tools. That means that if you move away from Google, you impact the way you work with others. This might stir a hefty discussion which will take time and energy.

The first steps are only concerned with actions to take on your desktop or laptop computer. The last steps, far more complicated, focuses on the actions for your Android mobile devices. This article does not cover any of the other Google products, such as the Nest product line.

1. Sign out

A first important step is to sign out of every Google service that you use. You will have to log in every time you need to use its services. Annoying, but you will become aware to which extent you are dependent.

2. Choose the right browser

Blocking third party cookies you no longer protects you from being tracked. Browser fingerprinting has become the norm. By combining browser, browser version, operation system, operation system version, screen size, plugins installed and many more, a fairly unique identifier of you can be created. With that, it no longer matters if you accept cookies or are logged in to Google. Use a separate dedicated browser for all your Google services and only for your Google services. With the other browser(s) you can surf the net as you are used to. With Google’s latest efforts to track people’s behavior on the internet (FLoC), it is advisable not to use Chrome.

3. Google Search

Google’s powerful search engine is set as default in many browsers, tablets and mobile phones. It takes some tweaking in the settings to change this. Currently I am using qwant.com and duckduckgo.com. Their search results have nowadays improved so much and can easily replace Google Search.

4. Gmail

There are many alternatives to Google Mail (Gmail), free and paid. With paid email solution, you have more control in general. A first action is to automatically forward new incoming emails from Gmail to your new email address. The next step is to inform all your contacts and update every newsletter, subscription and account with your new address. This is a long process and takes a lot of time. Patience is key.

You could setup an automatic reply in Gmail to inform the sender of your new email address. Instead, I used the opportunity to manually remove myself from accounts and mailing lists that I was no longer interested in.

In the meantime, you can download all your Gmail emails and import them into your new email account. At this point, you cannot yet delete your Gmail account as it is required for many of the other Google services.

5. Google Calendar

If you use Gmail, you probably also use Google Calendar. There are many alternatives available, online and offline. Finding the right alternative for you depends on many factors. I would recommend to look for one with ICS compatibility, so you can import your existing Google Calendar entries.

6. YouTube

Now that you signed out and use a new and fresh dedicated Google browser, you would probably see different video suggestions than you are used to. However, there are better alternatives.

There are many alternative video platforms. I found Odysee.com a promising potential replacement for YouTube. Many youtubers have moved there because Google closed their accounts or deleted their content. If you are a content creator yourself, you will unfortunately have to miss the advanced functionalities of Youtube Creator and Youtube Studio.

If you still require to use YouTube to watch a video, a good option is to use a YouTube client. This is an application that shows all YouTube videos, but does not link it to your identity. Many of them remove the advertisements as well. I use FreeTube. If someone sends me a YouTube link, I copy/paste the title in FreeTube and watch it there.

7. Google Maps

A great alternative to Google Maps is OpenStreetMap, which has even more details.

For route planning and navigation, many other options exist. It is always worth investigating who is behind such service. For instance, the popular navigation app Waze, it is owned by Google.

8. Google Drive

Just like your email in your Gmail inbox, Google monitors the files you store in Google Drive. There are plenty alternatives. Before signing up to any service, make sure to find out if your content is being scanned.

9. Google Meet

Many alternatives are around, both free and paid. The Open Source project Jitsi offers a free alternative to Google Meet. For those owning servers, it offers the installation guide to install it on your own digital premises. It encourages to install the

10. Google Analytics

Any website owner wants to have metrics on website traffic. Google Analytics (GA) gives a very powerful tool to get insights in who is visiting your website. Since many websites use GA, Google is able to trace the entire journey of the internet user.

Several paid alternatives exist. For WordPress websites, I recommend Matomo, a free open-source alternative that respects user-privacy.

11. Google SEO tools

SEO tools such as Page Speed Insights and Google Search Central help to optimize the findability of your website.

12. Google Adwords

I have used Google Adwords in the past. I do not have any current knowledge of it. There are other suppliers of paid advertisements but the question remains to how much data collection is collected and for what purposes.

13. Google Adsense

I have used Google Adwords in the past. I do not have any current knowledge of it. If anyone knows of valid alternatives, please share so in the comments.

14. Find alternatives

I have listed a few of the solutions that I have found. But my situation is as unique as yours, so it is important to do your own research when deciding to switch. Here are several very useful websites that contain good alternatives for Google and other Big Tech software. As developments in technology go very fast, make sure to check all these sites. When choosing an alternative, also think of inter-compatibility, the learning curve, the migration process.

switching.software
privacytools.io
prism-break.org
Awesome Humane Tech
Opensource.Builders

Your mobile device

So far, most of the steps are simply a matter of finding a replacement and switch over. They can still require a lot of time and not every alternative offers 100% of the sought functionality, but the process itself is comprehensible. It becomes far more complicated when you also use Android mobile devices. It also requires a lot more technical knowledge to remove the Google services from your device and is sometimes not even possible.

A new Android device requires you to login with a Google account before you can use your phone. Your phone number, the IMEI number, the MAC address will all be linked your account. Google can track your location even if you have disabled location services and the airplane modus switched on.

15. Leave your phone at home

This step does not require any technical skill and it is a very effective action. At the same time, for some, it is one of the most difficult steps in this list. Challenge yourself every time you go outside: do I really need the phone? By leaving the phone at home, you are not feeding its algorithms. By being without a phone, you are not informing people you do not know, who work for companies you don’t know, where you are and what you are doing.

The first times you leave your phone at home, you will immediately notice what addictive habit you have built over the years. You also stimulate your thinking and memory skills again.

16. Google Playstore

There are alternatives to the Google Playstore. F-Droid is a repository of open source apps. Aurora is a front-end to Google Playstore where you can login anonymously.

17. Other steps to consider

You could go to the settings and Force Stop all the Google applications (GAPPS). This might cause your phone to complain as for certain operations. Another option is to degoogle your phone. This is a risky and technical exercise that should either done with utmost care or by someone who understands what to do.

Final thoughts

In 2020, I had already removed my Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp accounts. In comparison with the above, that was easy for me. If you embark on this journey or even implement a few of the steps, I wish you best of luck. I also thank you deeply for doing so.

I have experienced how dependent I was on one single company. A wise strategy to follow, both personally and business wise, is to reduce your dependency. You will have slightly more overhead, but the big benefit is that you are less vulnerable to the dictations of a single supplier.

Photo by Trinity Kubassek from Pexels

You and I, in this orchestrated divide
March away from each other, every stride

This conflict between me and you
Both deeming our truth to be true

Passionately with scientific facts we strike
Repeating what we heard, parrots alike

I am no expert, neither are you
Can’t we reach a breakthrough

Let us see beyond this frame
Understanding its purported aim

Divide and conquer is their play
Not very original I dare say

We know very well from the past
How to end this alienating cast

Mitigating the other’s fear
We again come near

Navigating safely together
Through future’s stormy weather

Dear Child

I am very sorry
We told you not to worry

It has been now an entire year
That we adults live in constant fear

You wisely ask what is so bad about dying
That we delude ourselves by its denying

You ask if we prefer not to live life at all
Incarcerated by the fright that did us befall

Polarized, we are in such devious strife
We can’t possibly live a sustainable life

Please show to us, adult women and men
How it is to behave responsibly again

That we should really listen and care
About others and the ideas they share

Dear child, it is now upon you that I call
Please take over the control

Let your divine and youthful light
Guide us out this dark night

So we leave this history behind
Compassion and empathy in our mind

Entering what we always dreamt of
A world of love.

February 2021
Poem inspired by questions of my children about the Covid-19 world event

When war is declared, truth is the first casualty

Arthur Ponsonby

“Do your own research”

If you feel you can no longer trust what you are being told, you have to find a new source of truth. These days, with lockdowns in place, finding new truth has never been easier. From your arm chair, you simply type a few keywords in your favorite search engine and the results start rolling in.

The problem is that the most popular search engines have built a thorough personal profile of you. It already knows what you are thinking. It already knows your values. It already knows your interests. And, it knows more about your weak spots than you do.

The search results that you get are not the same as what your neighbor will receive. For these search engines, we are all living in our own information bubble. It feeds us with links we will most likely click on. You find what you subconsciously already wanted to have confirmed. And by doing so, you reinforce your own bubble even more. People feel thoroughly protected and are ready to evangelize the unconverted.

The evidence for this is found on every social media platform. Fierce debates take place. Facts are being fired as ammunition in order to stifle the opposition. Unfortunately, the other side strikes back with facts as well.

Politicians, medical experts, leaders and scientists are found on either side, well dug-in to defend their position. Where does that leave you, other than being forced to pick a side?

A way forward

I am no exception to the rule. I am prone to the same things. The world is a very confusing place and I do not always have the time and energy to look further into the details. Moreover, I sometimes simply lack the motivation and interest to properly investigate certain matters. That said, when my core values are being triggered, I jump up immediately. I begin my internet research.

I have to admit that the meaning of the term research has eroded significantly since my graduation. Many times, I actually do not do any actual research, but instead learn about the opinions of researchers. And in a recursive cycle, sometimes these researches are simply airing the opinions of other researchers.

Being aware of that, I try to force myself to the follow a number of steps and principles to come to a better understanding.

It was never my intention to create a plan for myself for this. It is actually only in this year that I became consciously aware of how I over the years have come to my versions of truth. It is an elaborate process, but it rewards me with the richness of differing perspectives. Simultaneously, it impoverishes me with the lack of being absolutely confident that something is 100% true. In the current social polarization, that place is very lonely to be.

I am sharing my guidelines to have a dialogue with you as a reader. Not on the hot topics of today, but more on the process. Is there a way or method to, at least for yourself, come to a fair and valid conclusion?

Guidelines

1. Get out of the spiral of negativity

Before starting any research, it is important that you feel good and start with a happy clear mind. Especially during this crisis, it is easy to fall into negativity and generate depressive feelings and thoughts. Whether you think it is fully justified to have these feelings considering the situation, is irrelevant.

Have a good night’s rest. Practice sports. Go running. Personally, I prefer to swim in cold open water. During and after, my body is mainly concerned with managing my temperature. Once achieved, I feel fully refreshed and happy.

2. Acknowledge your bias

Human are wonderful and powerful beings. But we also have our weak spots. We are prejudiced, even if we tell ourselves we are not. That is fine. It is important that you are aware of your own bias.

Far more important is your thorough understanding that there is a high chance that your internet research is covertly restricted to your own biases. Advanced algorithms predict what you are most likely to click on, and will feed you with that information. And, your ego wants to see information that confirms it bias.

3. It is okay to change position (even multiple times)

To acknowledge your bias is already a victory over the Self. Changing position is even a greater accomplishment.

Unfortunately, politicians have all too often misused this by covering up for willfully not being truthful. As long as your starting point was based on your truth, and your new position is based on your new truth, then you can reposition with honor, not with shame.

4. Explain only to yourself

And that brings us directly to the next point: you do not have to qualify anything to anyone, except yourself. Everyone lives in their own truth, and similar to religions, your truth is as just as superior as theirs.

5. Triangulate

It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without Accepting it

Great quote, not from Aristotle! (source)

Investor Ray Dalio uses triangulation to make decisions not only for his business, but also for his health. Thanks to this strategy, he avoided risky life altering surgeries and was able to continue happily ever after. His story is an inspiring read.

You can use triangulation. Find opposite views to your bias and carefully listen to the questions and critical views. Then find how proponents of your bias answer or rebut them. This way, you establish some sort of dialogue between two opposing opinions.

It is important to find believable people with whom you disagree. These could be experts in the field, but could also include friends or family who you can fully trust and still disagree with. How did they come to their opinion?

6. Follow your gut instinct

I find this the most difficult of all. First of all since this is a intrinsic feeling, it is hard to rationally explain it to yourself, let alone others.

Secondly, it is not always discernible what you feel. In stressful times, you might mistake your inner fears as your gut feel. I always question my feelings if they are not covert weaknesses.

There is a lot more to say about this, but that goes beyond the scope of this article. I have written more about this in my article Living in two worlds.

Step 7. Phenomenology

Try to pronounce this word! Phenomenology is is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.

It is used in product marketing research to validate or discover actual behavior of consumers. In a consumer panel, when people are asked how they use a product, they will often subconsciously answer what the researchers want to hear.

By applying phenomenology, a researcher observes the behavior of the consumer by living with that family for a certain period, leading to refreshing insights in the actual perception and usage of the product.

In your internet research, also look for the personal stories and anecdotes that people tell. You can find those on forums and in the comment sections.

Step 8. Ponerology

I believe we all have a dark side in us. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment showed how that could get activated when we are put in position of power. Furthermore, a small percentage of people has psychopathic tendencies. The higher up the echelons of society, the larger percentage of psychopaths can be found.

The Theranos story is a fascinating example. The two founders committed massive fraud with a proposition that was too good to be true. It shows how honest, intelligent and hard working people get pulled into the false narrative and are duped into perpetuating the lies.

I think we should be aware that evil exists. Ponerology is the study of evil. Pathological liars do exist and their intentions differ greatly from the majority of the people.

When finding your truth, carefully discern who is providing you with the information. Has this person or organization been caught with illegitimate practices before? No fool proof way exist for detecting of evil, but it already greatly helps to be aware of its existence.

9. Tech savvy

The algorithms behind internet searches are firstly intended to increase advertisement income for the media platforms. It comes at a hidden cost to the user, whose data and meta data is being sold to advertisers.

There are many (technological) solutions to better protect one’s privacy online. It ranges from simply installing a browser plugin to going at lengths in spoofing your identity.

Nowadays, governments and commercial organizations can also pay the media platforms to make sure certain data is promoted or completely restricted. You will for sure miss out on that information.

You can however still be informed that information was being removed. For instance, many YouTube content creators have come forward this year by saying their video was removed, because they gave their opinion on a certain topic. At least you can infer that there is controversy on this item.

Conclusion

The list above is definitely not complete, but I hope you find it of some use. Please let me know your thoughts.

As said before, it does not help to get 100% clarity. It does to understand the complexity of this world much better. And by doing so, we depolarize society. I believe that is better to cope with the world’s challenges. But, in the end, that is just my opinion…

Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Photo by Justus Menke on Unsplash