Spring Cleaning of the Soul

Eternity hopes you’ll spring.
Being jumpy isn’t so good, but being ready to jump is. During my military service I never had a chance to experience a static line parachute drop. Let’s pretend someone decided I should do this, and provided the means. Would I? Of course. I’m crazy enough to try almost anything.
It’s not so much I’m brave, but I just don’t care about the consequences in comparison to the opportunity. There’s a risk something could go wrong and I’d get hurt or die. Getting hurt is hardly new, and dying is just a circumstance, as I view it.
Right now you can get some really good aerial surveillance equipment cheaply. Anyone can. A remote controlled helicopter with a decent video camera is less than $200 now, and the the price is plummeting. It’s not just government agencies, but commercial entities and all sorts of idiots are buying or building these things.
You probably already know about the ways you can be tracked online. Maybe you know it’s possible to use off-the-shelf equipment to track just about any cellphone number, though I realize the expertise is not yet common. The point is, anyone can do it if they want to learn and pay for the equipment. The price of this is also plummeting, and the threshold of expertise, as well.
Indeed, competence and interest is about the only thing preventing everyone and his dog keeping track of you or I. There was a time just a few years ago competence and interest kept most folks off the Internet, but now Facebook is approaching one billion members. That’s about one for every seven humans on this planet. Factor out the non-individual accounts and it’s more like one in eight. It is now the primary means of checking on anyone, since so many people likely to draw such attention happen to have an account there.
That’s not the reason I avoid Facebook; it’s because the folks running that thing are themselves filthy scumbag liars. Primarily, they lie about what they offer, and what they’ll do to change what they offer. They do all sorts of things they know will hurt you and try to keep you from knowing about it. Whatever good they might claim to bring is utterly spoiled by their psychopathic treatment of users. There are enough psychopaths in my life already. It’s not fear but a powerful sense of annoyance.
My privacy was compromised long ago when I signed that enlistment contract. But you can limit the encroachment of global surveillance, for now. The primary limitation is the number of people doing surveillance, and their capacity to process all the data. From what I’ve seen, you’d have to be viewed a pretty serious threat to warrant a genuine effort with any degree of competence. Most of us simply don’t count for much, but as capacity to automate these things rises, the threshold will plummet. You can be nobody doing nothing at all and still be under surveillance.
The best defense is stop caring. There’s not much you can do to stop it, and it gives rise to an awful lot of opportunity to entertain ourselves. Be creative; be a distraction and put on a good show, doing something totally off-the-wall, out of character. Even if all you do is post something online with some the surveillance terms — “human to animal,” “collapse,” “outbreak,” and “illegal immigrants” — and do it persistently to mock them, it’s worth polluting the system just for the entertainment value. You can’t change what other people do, but you have a perfect right to claim all the humor they refuse to enjoy.
The other important factor is making sure you know what you are doing is completely good and right by your own internal value system. Neurosis is any number of layers between your conscious mind and self-honesty. You are the only one who can change you, at least in the sense you have to first identify things you don’t like before you can decide whether they can be fixed. Some things you just have to live with, but plenty of things moulder in the basement unexamined.
Under current rules and laws, I could never go back into the military. I’m hardly the kind of journalist or VIP who would be invited to come play so I can give them good PR. With my arthritis and permanent injuries, versus my current efforts to remain as fit as this aging abused body can be, I probably don’t qualify physically for such fun. But I would go in a heartbeat, and it’s about the same for a lot of other unlikely things. Then again, I go down into my soul’s basement pretty often and keep it swept clean. Judging by the number of people who suffer obvious neuroses, that must be one of the most courageous things we can do. So They can surveil as much as they like, because I can’t allow such things to affect my behavior; I’ve got plenty of internal drives to satisfy.
It’s not that I don’t care about the world. Following my conscience and convictions is, by definition, in the best interest of everyone.