New World

5 Solutions for a New World

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With the rise of alternative media, seeing the flaws in the mainstream media is quite easy if one knows where to look. It’s also particularly easy these days, thanks to the dawn of the Internet, to dig deep into history and discover that it has been completely misrepresented, along with the many forces behind it. As an alternative community, it seems the focus has been solely put on pointing out everything that is wrong in society. But what about solutions? It would seem that everyone is in this journey to change the world together. If that is the case, then it’s important to start focusing mass amounts of energy on the solutions to these problems rather than just simply pointing out the flaws. Finding the holes is easy; putting sustainable solutions in place is much more difficult.

This article aims to provide a brief introduction to real life solutions already in place.

It is the opinion of The Last American Vagabond and Wake Up World that the poor social structure of society is due to the over centralization of power that resides in the hands of a very small group of the ultra élite whose reach stretches into virtually all aspects of society. This is discussed in a previous article called The Coming Revolution: A New Vibrational Reality. When one finds themselves in a system that is beyond repair, there is no other choice but to start anew. Therefore, the solution is that of creating a new system through mass decentralized movements rather than trying to fix an old broken system. It is a system in which people take control over their own lives and communities though a bottom up approach. The solution will not happen through a top down approach because the system was created by the élite to benefit the élite. All levers that can bring about change have been systemically rooted out. The system was intentionally built-in this manner to maintain the control of power over time. So what can Americans do at an individual and local level to start to bring about a new system of real decentralized change?

1) Embrace Localized Organic Food and Renewable Resources

This can be done in many ways, all of which include: community gardens, farmers markets, home gardens, urban rooftop gardens, permaculture farms, localized energy grids, along with forms of renewable energy like wind farms and solar panels. The more that communities begin to localize production of food and resources, the more power local communities will begin to accumulate as more capital stays within the community, and problems from the external environment are easier to recover from. The large power of agribusiness begins to decline as the monopolies diminish and profits suffer from low demand. This will also make people healthier in the process as non-chemical laced food is replaced with freshorganic substitutes. As they say, pay the farmer or pay the doctor. People might as well help the local economy by facilitating a self-sustainable community in the process. Permaculture is an excellent place to start as it is directly in tune with nature.

2) Take Part in the Collaborative Economy

This is a decentralized economy that is made efficiently functional through a collaborative economy, a sharing economy, an on-demand economy, and collaborative consumption. A collaborative economy is an economic system of decentralized networks and marketplaces that unlocks the value of underused assets by matching “needs” and “haves,” in ways that bypass traditional middlemen. Examples include Kickstarter, Taskrabbit, and Transferwise. The sharing economy is when underused assets are shared directly by individuals. Examples include AirBnB, Landshare, and Cohealo. The on-demand economy is made up of platforms that match customer needs directly with providers to immediately deliver goods and services. Examples include Uber, Instacar, and Shuttlecook. Finally collaborative consumption is when traditional marketplace activities like renting, lending or swapping are done through technology not possible before the Internet. Examples include eBay, Zipcar, and Zopa. This whole new economy allows for individuals to directly connect without unnecessary middlemen while also sharing goods and services that are then recycled through society.

3) Boycott and Buycott Ethical Practices

The traditional voting system has proven to produce more of the same with each passing election. Empty promises are made to get a candidate in position, and then it’s politics as usual. People must begin to vote for the change they want to see in the world. Not with traditional voting, but by voting with action, by boycotting companies that have ethical practices not in alignment with their world vision, and “buycotting” places they are aligned with, or that do align with their ethical standards. This corrupt hierarchical system can only continue to function if people continue to take part in it. If even 20% of the population was to withdraw energy from the system, it could very well collapse like a deck of cards. This also includes boycotting taxes on the grounds that the tax money is not only illegitimately taken, but used for purposes in which are in total disagreement with what the people want. There is hardly anything the powers that be can do if this type of boycott mass movement is done on a large-scale. New systems can then arise to take the place of old ones.

4) Branch Out Into Alternative Currencies

One of major problems in today’s society stems from a central control over the national currency. Since the currency is so widely used, problems to one of the major pillars in society like banks that are considered “too big to fail,” can cause the whole system to crash. Also, through central banks, the money supply has been increased at a ridiculous pace, while devaluing the currency in return. This has widened the wealth gap in the process as the rich have much more access to this newly printed money. Breaking off into alternative currencies such as Bitcoin, gold and silver, as well as local based currencies derived from local services and goods, and labor hours, will truly allow communities to stand on their own legs instead of solely dependent on a central force. These local based currencies have all already been implemented successfully in places like Ithaca, NY through Ithaca Hours and countries like Greece through the use of the TEM.

5) Don’t Vote

Obviously if this country was functioning under a legitimate democracy, voting would be of the utmost importance in society. However, many feel today that it doesn’t make a difference at all, especially at the federal level, and to a lesser degree at the state level. This is a subject that will undoubtedly upset some who feel that voting is the one true way to enact change; which all can agree on when assuming the system is not corrupt and each voter has a voice. In America’s current political system, that could not be further from the truth. Americans have seen overwhelming evidence that voting machines have been tampered with.

They have seen politicians getting caught in lies, flip-flopping on important issues based on party pressures, and watched as candidates accept massive legalized bribes to carry out future legislation, otherwise known as campaign contributions.Voting in a system in which the vote itself makes no difference to the outcome, is showing compliance to the system and therefore giving it legitimacy. The establishment wants people to vote in high numbers, so when a leader is elected, they are legitimized. If hardly anyone votes, then the leader has far more shaky ground to stand on. In today’s corrupt two-party system, the best course of action would be to not vote and focus one’s energy at the individual and local levels. At the local level voting can still work, but that also comes with increased participation and understanding in how the local community operates and functions. Local communities must be restored before national change comes.

It is no longer a question of what the solutions are, but instead a matter of putting them into practice and building off of them. Pointing out all the problems in society is all for nothing if solutions are not implemented. The new society is deeply rooted in the people taking back their sovereign right to self-govern and self-sustain themselves rather than be reliant on a large central state for all the answers. It WILL NEVER come from the top. They built the system in a way in which they always will remain in control. Therefore, it’s time for a radical shift inside us, the people. A fundamental shift in one’s own consciousness has to occur first. Once this happens, the next logical step is to branch out into the local communities in which one lives. It’s a bottom-up approach in which the seed is planted inside the soul first, then leading to seeds being spread and harvested within local communities. We can’t relay on some external force to bring about change. It’s up to each and every one of us to be the change we want to see in the world. We must literally manifest the new world we want to see by embracing that energy in our own collective actions. This is real change through real action.

Watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/YaxrQAv1S38

Artificial worm starts to wriggle

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C elegans
The project to create the C. elegans nematode in code should unlock more secrets of how it lives

A project to create artificial life has hit a key milestone – the simulated creature can now wriggle.

The Open Worm project aims to build a lifelike copy of a nematode roundworm entirely out of computer code.

This week the creature’s creators added code that gets the virtual worm wriggling like the real thing.

The next step is to hook the body up to a simulation of the worm’s brain to help understand more about how and why it moves.

Swim speed

The Open Worm project started in May 2013 and is slowly working towards creating a virtual copy of the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode. This worm is one of the most widely studied creatures on Earth and was the first multicelled organism to have its entire genome mapped.

The simulated worm slowly being built out of code aims to replicate C. elegans in exquisite detail with each of its 1,000 cells being modelled on computer.

Early work on the worm involved making a few muscle segments twitch but now the team has a complete worm to work with. The code governing how the creature’s muscles move has been refined so its swaying motion and speed matches that of its real life counterpart. The tiny C. elegans manages to move around in water at a rate of about 1mm per second.

“Its movement closely resembles published literature on how C. elegans swims,” project leader John Hurliman told the New World Notes blog.

The immediate next step for the project is to plug in the system used to model how nerve fibres in the worm fire to get muscle segments twitching and propelling the whole creature forward.

Soon the Open Worm creators hope to make a virtual version of C. elegans available online so people can interact with it via a web browser.

For Spiders, It’s Cruel to Be Kind.

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sn-spider-thumb-200xauto-17060

It turns out nice guys do finish last, at least among arachnids. A 6-year study of a New World spider reveals that although colonies composed of docile individuals fare better in the short term, their passive behavior ultimately does them in. A species may need a mean personality to keep from going extinct, the results suggest.

Not all spiders earn their frightening reputations. Even within a single species, some individuals are much mellower than others. Take the social spider Anelosimus studiosus, a native of North and South American forests that builds collective webs that house 40 to 100 individuals. In 2005, ecologists discovered that not all A. studiosus had the same disposition. When two spiders shared a container overnight, docile animals remained beside each other the whole time, whereas aggressive ones attacked each other and then moved to opposite corners. Jonathan Pruitt, an ecologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, wondered which personality was more successful in the wild.

To find out, Pruitt performed personality tests on dozens of A. studiosus spiders and then arranged them into 90 couples consisting of an aggressive pair, a docile pair, or an aggressive spider matched with a docile one. The arachnids’ personalities are heritable, so a docile pair produces almost exclusively docile offspring, aggressive mates mainly make aggressive offspring, and mixed pairs produce a combination of docile and aggressive babies. After 1 week in the lab, each of the pairs had created small webs, or nests, on chicken wire within separate containers.

Pruitt returned to the Tennessee woods where he originally collected the spiders and wired each of the 90 nests onto trees and shrubs. For the next 5 years, he removed other species of spiders from the territory surrounding half of the webs. These 45 webs served as a control to test the hypothesis that disposition matters when hungry, solitary spiders abound in nature. The colonies in these well-maintained territories faired roughly the same as one another between 2007 and 2012, no matter the personality of their founders.

In contrast, colonies in the areas that were open to invaders differed from one another over time as solitary spiders began to infest the webs. Colonies founded by aggressive spiders successfully fought the intruders off, but produced fewer offspring because of the continuous conflict. In contrast, the predominantly docile colonies ignored intruders and continued to reproduce. In 2009, the docile colonies were flourishing, and their offspring had begun three times as many new colonies on nearby trees and shrubs compared with offspring from aggressive communities. Yet by 2010, the docile spiders’ apparent advantage began to wane as invaders increasingly ate them and stole the insects snagged by the colonies’ webs. By 2012, not a thread remained from the webs established by docile pairs, and only a quarter of those started by mixed pairs were left. Meanwhile,three-quarters of the original 15 nests founded by aggressive pairs stood strong, the team reports today inEcology Letters.

In nature, A. studiosus colonies consist of a mix of docile and aggressive individuals. In short-term studies, Pruitt says, aggressive spiders appear to be troublemakers because they often brawl with members of their own group. However, this study showed their importance when it comes to defense. “Originally, I thought aggressive spiders exploited docile ones, but now I see that the aggressive ones catch most of the food and take care of the society,” he says. Without aggressive spiders to care for them, docile spiders would go extinct whenever other spiders abound. Pruitt speculates that docile behavior still exists because it is useful to the colony in small doses. Perhaps docile individuals provide better care to hatchlings, he says.

For these spiders, passivity represents an “evolutionary dead end” because it comes with quick payoffs but dooms the lineage over time, Pruitt says. Much of the evidence for dead-end strategies comes from mathematical models that predict extinction after a tipping point, but this study documents such a strategy in action and defines the conditions that lead to a lineage’s demise. “The tipping point occurs when invaders are abundant,” Pruitt says. “Without them, colonies founded by docile individuals would flourish, but with them, they succumb to extinction.” The results from this study suggest something about aggression in general, Pruitt adds. “Species without defense might be driven to extinction by enemies”.

“This is a great, robust study that takes the study of animal temperament—which is kind of narrow—and puts it into a broad evolutionary framework,” says James Traniello, a behavioral ecologist at Boston University. “The whole idea of evolutionary dead-end strategies is poorly understood,” he says. A number of studies, such as those on Darwin’s finches, document how species diversify in real time, Traniello says, “and here we have a study that shows what goes on at the opposite side, how lineages decline.”

Source: sciencemag.org