As I have developed my philosophy on life through my experience and pondering I naturally came to a place that I have noticed many others have. I do not want to control anyone or be controlled by anyone else. It's a pretty simple idea, but one that has not been the major trend for all of human history as there is apparently a natural desire for power that exists within man.

I think the desire for power over your fellow man is actually a misplaced affection for not wanting be controlled yourself. Not wanting to be controlled is a reasonable desire or even expectation, but one that is not necessarily granted to you as a human today. This becomes circular when you realize that it often stems from a fear of being controlled.

As an empiricist, I have noticed that I have greatly benefited from learning the lessons of my experience. If experience has taught me anything, it is to put out what you want to receive. There are many different ways of acquiring what you desire of course, but in my experience, if greed is ruling your decision process, you will make decisions that you will later regret.

I am not advocating laziness or criticizing capitalism when I say that your focus should not be solely on selfish gain to the detriment of your fellow man. I think this is painfully obvious to most reading this, but obviously not to the world at large. I do have great hope that we will learn from our experience and come to these conclusions on a collective scale, but I think this will take refinement of current thinking on anarchy and private property and probably many other things.

When we overcome this selfishness, and learn to truly act for the benefit of ourselves it will be because we have completely realized that our connectedness and common ground and even our differences should be respected and harmony with nature and with ourselves should be instituted.

Whether it be writing or engineering or scientific research there can be a million different paths to go down that can be of a benefit to yourself and also your fellow man with no need to have control over each other. As we begin to realize this more and more, we will begin to act more and more cooperatively and create so much abundance that some day we will talk about times of war and poverty as ancient problems that we experienced in our evolutionary progress.

We are all much more powerful than we currently realize. We truly have the power to create a reality on earth that is abundant for every single one of us. Our current system may make this sound impossible, but that is because the current system is unsustainable. Examples would include our current dependance on fossil fuels and other limited resources that are being depleted at rate that has inevitable short term and long term consequences.

When Ideas Have Sex

I believe we are in the process of dealing with some of the biggest problems humanity has ever faced. Over time many different forces have have been at play to bring us to an interesting time in history. Thankfully the internet is here and the wisdom of the crowd may be able to come with an ingenious plan to change the path we are on to a more sustainable one.

The internet and now digital or crypto currencies and even social media platforms are empowering a new generation of communities that will eventually create a huge economy and even a form self governance that is not based on force by a centralized government.

Steemit and it's attention economy are incentivizing the sharing of ideas and collaboration and cooperation not only to build the economy but also the community. If you don't think that is a efficient model for encouraging ideas to have sex than please name me a better one.

Private Property

Speaking of ideas having sex, I recently read a Steemit article from @ekklesiagora that concluded:

There are various ways in which the dictum “property is theft!” happens to be true. We define theft as the illegitimate confiscation of the personal possessions of another person or the stealing of what rightfully ought to belong to another. Capitalistic property constitutes theft by allowing banks to confiscate more value through foreclosure than is actually owed on the remaining mortgage; it constitutes theft insofar as it allows private appropriation of the product of collectivistic production; it constitutes theft by allowing corporations to obtain higher profit margins by socializing costs and privatizing profits; and it constitutes theft by allowing speculative investors to get rich by appropriating as private profit the value added to their property by the contributions of their neighbors or of society.

As someone who has embraced and even campaigned for free market capitalism, the ideas presented by @ekklesiagora are slightly hard for me to deal with because capitalism is built on the idea of private property. Never the less, these ideas seem to effectively make the point that private property is theft in my opinion. As there is conflict with some of my previously made conceptions on these issues, these ideas are now having sex within my mind and I am sure that I will be pondering and probably writing about private property into the future.

I have noticed conflicting ideas within myself about the above statement about private property as theft being the reason that it's possible for - "...speculative investors to get rich by appropriating as private profit the value added to their property by the contributions of their neighbors or of society".

As is usually the case, there is likely a solution to be found in the balance between the extremes of the ideas of personal governance and collective ownership or of personal property and collective governance.

The Gift Economy and Steemit

ideas for images and titles from http://www.steemideas.com/

While writing this article I got another idea from steemideas.com that sent me down another line of thought this is very much related so I will give my initial thoughts on the gift economy.

When an economy is not built on trading value, but gifting things of value to each other, this excites my imagination about the future. But it is also excites me that many people are having these ideas right now. It seems to me that the creators of Steemit may have had this in mind all along. I was gifted with my initial Steem just like anyone who sets up an account and I was given an opportunity to present my content for my share of the attention economy.

It almost seems as if Steemit was designed to enable the gift economy. There is no forceful coercion on Steemit. All the interaction in the community and the economy of steemit is completely voluntary. I offer my content freely in hopes that it is found valuable to someone that then gives me an upvote which is connected to a monetary reward.

image and video sources: [1][2][3][4]

info sources:

http://everything-voluntary.com/voluntaryism-3

http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-five-rules-of-disinformation/24889?print=1

https://steemit.com/anarchism/@ekklesiagora/property-as-theft-the-libertarian-socialist-critique-of-property-part-1

http://upliftconnect.com/building-community-economy-gifts/