The Power of Information

It’s fundamental to human nature: People are drawn to power.

Everybody wants it, but not everyone wants to wield it themselves. Most people are content to tap into power held by someone else. Few are capable of handling it in the first place; it does require some talent and a sense of purpose. However, fallen humanity is typically too cowardly and selfish to do it right.

In the Kingdom of Heaven, we recognize that all our power is second-hand. We recognize some part of our natures will demand power over things we cannot handle, and refuse power over things we should. Right this moment, as we see the transition from the Western to the Networked Civilization, we have already begun seizing the power over information. In response, those who hold power unjustly are scrambling to claw back as much information as they can. In virtual space, information is everything.

Recently there has been a significant activist movement fight against the mainstream media. With two brain cells to rub together, you could figure out the MSM are lying about most things, offering the propaganda of the plutocrats to keep them in power. But the narrative slipped away from them long ago, as independent information sources exploded on the Net. Granted, many site pretending to offer that are carefully structuring their offerings to avoid certain things. Caveat lector — reader beware.

On the Network, information is action. Meat space activism seldom brings the desired result. Even more seldom does the desired result stick. But information is a genie that cannot be put back into the bottle. Things may lose our interest, but they remain unforgotten somewhere out there. The Internet never forgets. So for those who cling to unjust power, it’s all about preventing information getting out in the first place, or at the very least, controlling that release. Think of terms like “copyright” and “no tweets during the event.”

It’s the same with Windows and Mac operating systems. I’m not going to evangelize Open Source as a religion, but you know why it’s different. It’s wide open; the information might be very hard to read, but it’s there. Nothing is hidden from the user intentionally. While the developers are often hostile to users’ wishes, quite by accident the developers’ wishes tend to coincide with the users’ best interests.

I am advancing consciously the Networked Civilization, and as my part in the mission, I promote migrating computers to Linux when it will serve the purpose. For now, I favor Lubuntu Xubuntu as the single version of Linux most likely to work for the common computer owner and user (despite the unusual interface). Since it won’t work with every piece of hardware (particularly the RealTek 8188ce wifi chipset), I prepare plain Debian as the backup or Scientific Linux. Each has its own unique advantages and would tend to cover the vast majority of those who aren’t all that eager to leave Windows, but feel it’s necessary. I’m preparing a basic curriculum to help people make the transition without getting lost. (Note: Lubuntu on the most recent test drive was an embarrassing failure.)

When Windows is the only thing that works, I try to find tools that return more power to the user. Too many people let Microsoft and friends make choices for them. Those choices are seldom really in the users’ interest.

By these choices, I return a measure of power to the users’ hands, power that they should have, and should want.

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Linux for the Common User

Because of my long experience with teaching in general, and teaching Linux in particular, I am a firm believer in task-oriented instruction for computers.

I’ve been playing with Linux for about 20 years. I’m not a guru, just a power user. However, I have been a professional educator for about the same length of time. Not just a classroom curriculum jockey, but someone who studied deeply about the human capacity for learning. Indeed, the primary task of any counselor, elder or pastor is instructional. The only way people change is if they change themselves; all they need is exposure to the possibilities.

Some things humans learn requires a broad exposure to theory. You have to get the whole picture or you can’t understand any of the parts. That’s true of computers if you manage technology use or write software. For common users, that’s simply not necessary. Beyond a small range of introductory concepts, most of it is simply answering the needs of how they use computers.

Having taught Linux to a few individuals here and there, I’ve always had the greatest satisfaction when I simply met the needs of the user. Indeed, it’s the same when I teach Windows computer security, for example. It’s not a question of hiding things from people; I’m always willing to answer any question for which I can find a useful answer. But that’s the whole point: The answer has to meet real needs. Common users need only so much theory as they use. Computers are just a tool for them, not a career.

One of the things I’d love to do is teach migration from Windows to Linux, but in a classroom or laboratory setting. Aside from that basic level of background understanding and orientation to the differences, Linux is best taught to learners on the basis of how they will be using it. So that would mean I’d get to write the curriculum for any group based on what migration means to their work needs. It’s not about evangelizing folks into becoming silly fan-boys, which is what you usually encounter when chasing down Linux information on the Net. They just need to know how to do what they have to do for their own purposes.

Here’s hoping some day I get to teach Linux.

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The World Is Mere Context

Revelation is true knowledge; everything else is just application.

Further, you must rise to your own application under God’s command. I cannot make rules for you. The most I am permitted to do is decide if your application conflicts with mine, and to what degree. Then I must decide whether it prevents fellowship and mission partnership, and how much limitation. Then I have to remain flexible enough to recognize when the context and God’s leadership demands a fluctuation.

In other words, absolutism is a huge mistake.

The ancient world understood this instinctively. To Westerners, this seems to give reality a sense of constant flux, an instability that is uncomfortable because it requires constant attention. Our fallen nature demands that our intellect rule, and the intellect presumes it can lock some things in stone and not consider them any further. God says you have to remain in constant communion with him, always ready for the most inexplicable changes. Further, I insist God demands of us a quantum reckoning of reality, where a given object can be multiple things with multiple values all at once. The question is not the nature of the object, but it’s role in your mission. It inevitably requires you seek some awareness of what a thing means to others involved in the context, even if you can’t accommodate their values.

If I tell you I have a pacifist orientation, that doesn’t mean I regret my military service. There was good in it, and something of that life still beckons today. It was both evil and noble. If you wear that uniform today, I have no trouble telling you what great sorrow you are causing against God’s justice, but also what great good can come from walking in God’s divine justice within that context. I can tell I’m glad I’m not in your place, and yet wish I was.

It’s not enough to propose a simple distinction between flesh and spirit here. Its unjust to suggest my internal conflict is merely carnal desire for human pride in the uniform and accomplishments against the spiritual wisdom of withdrawing from human conflicts. That’s a Western style of compartmentalization, an over-simplification. The interaction of soul and spirit is far more complex than that. It’s wrong to slaughter people in foreign countries who are no threat to your country. It’s wrong to lie about whether they are a threat. It’s wrong to occupy their land and absorb their resources, to absorb the astronomical expenses from your own country’s resources. But it’s good to learn human limitations and overpowering your human entropy, of living in difficult circumstances. It’s good to learn to take orders on a human level. It’s good to learn to live on multiple levels of reasoning, but not good to let it make you schizophrenic.

The Western mind is all wrong for reality, because it has no clue about reality, only an apparent grasp that seems to work part of the time. If you evaluate Western success by Western values, it proves nothing. The values of Christ on the Cross lead you to embrace an entirely different kind of success, not discernible from a Western epistemology.

If you want to follow Jesus, take up your own cross and crucify your Western assumptions.

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Job 15

Eliphaz gets downright rude with Job. He says Job is a blustery fool, referring to his defense as the harsh hot wind from the eastern deserts. He accuses Job of encouraging blasphemy from irreverent folks. Eliphaz feels Job’s sin is self-evident from the way he talks.

Eliphaz gives us the impression that he is older than Job’s parents. To him, Job is insulting his elders. Discounting entirely the possibility of revelation, Eliphaz insists Job is just a mouthy punk. He alleges Job is all worked up and angry with God, but nothing Job says implies anger. This is the whole point. Eliphaz clings so tightly to his broken orthodoxy that he has to make stuff up to maintain his position. He offers the same tired mythology, half truths that miss the point.

Once again Eliphaz asserts that his many years of observation plus human tradition outweigh revelation. Everyone knows, he insists, that only the evil suffer misfortune. It’s the same old dark visions of a guilty conscience everyone simply assumes must be there. In the process of weaving this image, he hints that Job is boldly defiant against God. He simply cannot imagine how God could let anyone wicked prosper, nor anyone righteous suffer. However, the whole way through, he is led by the same failed logic assumed by most of humanity. People who are happy and prosperous simply must be living right, and folks who suffer must be evil. If God doesn’t make sense, why, He simply can’t be God!

It never occurs to these men that God is beyond their pitiful logic.

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Our Catholic Friends

We don’t have to be enemies; we can turn a benign eye on any institution.

The Roman Catholic Church is highly varied internally for the simple reason that it covers the whole world. The central identity is the institution and hierarchy, and teaching is frankly secondary. The hierarchy permits a surprising variation in theology so long as you don’t challenge the authority of the system itself. Thus, a number of Catholics subscribe to my teaching and find it fits in well with their membership. Just because I am personally not a good fit is no reason for my fellow Christian Mystics to leave any church organization.

There are plenty of commendable overlapping ideas. As always, keep in mind that I believe all theology is merely an intellectual adaptation to the ineffable divine Presence. It is our best human response to a moral imperative, and our response itself cannot be sacred in that sense. So while some members of the Catholic hierarchy take their creeds and teachings very seriously, we need not let that be a source of conflict.

I note in passing the Church as a whole assumes the human intellect is not fallen. Naturally this difference leads to different answers to the various questions religion recognizes. Still, there are a lot of times I have to applaud something that comes so close to what I would say myself. An example: 6 Reasons (+2) to NOT Send Your Daughter to College. I recommend reading it.

If you understand much of what I have written about backgrounds and influences on human thought, you recognize this teaching stands in the middle between my ancient Hebrew positions and that of common American social mythology. It’s a very strong mixture of Roman with the more conservative German influences of yesteryear. In other words, it clings tightly to the foundation of early church thinking while recognizing where we are in the world today. The practical application is hardly different from my own answers to the same questions, though some of the underlying assumptions are different. Thus, the author is a very wise conservative, while I am a radical on the typical scale of American thinking.

If you chase down to the bottom of the page and read some comments, you’ll see the complete failure to understand the whole point of the article. Most of comments are the very typical orthodox feminist assumptions that have invaded all churches of late. You have to be amazed at the patience of the church leadership, because some of these feminazis are Catholics themselves. There is something to be said for institutional resilience, and I find it an endearing trait of the RC Church, not for the mere fact itself, but how they manage to pull it off. It reflects a more ancient shepherd’s ethic of tolerating a lot of noise and answering only when it can be instructive. Let them rant and rave; only those who show restraint and wisdom will advance to greater authority in the system. Notice the high degree of social stability it promotes without oppression.

We stand to learn a great deal from that system.

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The Pitch

This blog claims to offer something readers won’t get anywhere else.

Since I don’t take myself that seriously, it’s obvious this is not a self promotion. Sure, I claim to speak for God, but then I offer a short book (no longer available) on how anyone with sufficient urge and interest can become a prophet, too.

I’ll admit my approach to the whole question of life is unique enough that most people, on first encounter, think it’s bizarre. Still, I offer copious support for my approach in books and constant references to how I get to the answers I provide. Given time and effort, most people could duplicate my approach, if not my specific solutions.

But that’s the point: You don’t need to duplicate my results. You need only see that there are results and get a taste of how they feel in your soul. In that sense, it’s the approach I’m selling, not the end product.

Even the evaluation of the results is different. That is, I try to point to a different system with its own evaluative matrix. If you want what most folks want, I won’t be of much assistance. I start out assuming you want something else, a want residing on an entirely different level of consciousness. I try to alert folks to that other level and give it shape. In so doing, I remove all the constraints most folks assume without thinking.

Take a look at who I am so that you can learn who you are. Not what I am or what I do, but see the person and taste the unique energy of life itself as embodied in my words. Explore that space everyone else ignores, and which some folks actively hide from us. You need not take my path, but I hope you’ll catch the vision that there is another place to live and path to it.

In essence, I’m an iconoclast. Don’t get so lost in the symbols that you forget what they symbolize. I assert bluntly that everything on this plane of existence is symbol at best, and most of it pure sewage. I rant long and often about how our world takes itself too seriously, when it’s a big lie in the first place. I call it “mysticism” — it’s not about the answers, but how you get them.

All the other stuff — Game Theory, talk of divine justice and computer technology — are simple manifestations of that other way of looking at life. Sure, you can ask questions; you should. But recognize that my answers are mine, and not necessarily yours. Look at the answer as a token of something bigger. Then go and search that something bigger and get your own answers.

The only reason you would keep coming here to read is because my answers overlap yours enough to share a common experience in the exploration. It would be the same reason someone might hire me for any particular work at all: My output works for them well enough to use it. Either the results or the approach beckon to something inside of you. Take what you can use; the best payment is seeing you appreciate it enough to use it.

Life for sale.

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Not Passing the Hat

I am more grateful than words can describe.

I’m typing this on a laptop for which I traded something I had but couldn’t use. The guy has given me other gifts for helping him with his ministry, sort of a consultancy. Sometimes people donate computer stuff or other useful things. Sometimes they give me money to support the computer ministry.

For the first time today I got a donation on the basis of my online pastoral ministry. It came in a nice card with a promise to make it a regular support offering. My readers know that I’ve never solicited any donations (aside from asking for help finding some software) and my computer clients already know I’ll work for the sheer joy of it. That’s how I do things. I’ve never felt comfortable charging money for anything, and I have managed to avoid it for a good long time. I simply make it possible to donate without raising the issue. While the resources are available, I’ll keep doing what I do.

I suppose if I had to visit the local county library and post from the free computers, I would. I do this because I must. I’m driven. Making a big deal of the offerings would only cheapen their meaning. The Kingdom of Heaven runs on sacrifice; it’s a gift economy. Freely sharing resources is a reflection of His glory.

I’m still not asking for donations, but I wanted folks to know I take this pastoral ministry seriously. I am totally serious about keeping it rooted online. If you can read this post, you are provisionally a part of my parish. If you need any kind of pastoral care, it’s yours for the asking, but only what I can do online. I suppose if we were geographically close enough to each other, you could receive more direct attention, but the whole point is how unlikely that is. We are on a very narrow path right now, and precious few would have any interest in the peculiar teaching I follow. Not seeking donations is a critical part of that.

It’s not that I have no needs. Who wouldn’t find a way to use more money if they got it? Officially I’m below the poverty line, but that’s not very meaningful, to be honest. I live frugally and figure I’m doing quite well. My calling keeps things pretty simple. The Internet is my parish; this laptop is how I get around it. This blog is my ministry office. Only the actual worship requires a physical space with a physical presence, so we use my home for that. For now, this is the best we can do.

And everyone who reads these words is a supporter, one way or another. Thank you.

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More Virtual War

Our enemy is neither human nor human institutions.

I’ve noted in the past the grand overlap between Christian Mysticism and the practice of faith online. Ambition will destroy your work. Our objective is to fight our own fallen nature. Not that there is something to be achieved, as in a conquest, but to defeat our weaknesses whatever they be, whenever they arise. So our virtual warfare is not in some expectation of changing things, even when we know God will do just that, using our obedience to His justice.

If anything, our objective is to enjoy His glory, the fruits of our justice. We defeat the demons inside us, not out there in meat space nor virtual space.

We can turn a benign eye on any person or human institution. They can never own us. While the demons can surely infest people and institutions, that is not a factor in our considerations. We are attacking the gates of Hell with a water pistol. We invade and rescue the justice of Our God, but the parable places those gates inside our own souls. The only thing we can actually change, by God’s mercy and grace, is ourselves. Everything else is His problem.

If our sense of mission calling leads us into some despicable place, among despicable people, then we go. The demons there cannot own us unless we surrender. Whatever harm they might do is God’s problem, because it won’t affect our eternal destiny.

Whatever our mission, it will grow from the shepherd’s heart. We are outnumbered in meat space and online, simply because few will ever hear the shepherd’s calling. They’ll be sheep and sometimes predators, but we who care for the sheep will always be a tiny minority. Regardless how many folks are called, few will ever answer. The reasons for this are not for us to know, only to embrace the fact itself. It doesn’t make us elite and superior, just available. The same power and blessings are there for anyone to claim.

As virtual shepherds, we never pretend to change the Internet nor any factor involved except our participation. If we do God’s justice, we are bringing Him glory online and He will enlarge our domain. If we are faithful in little, He will increase our responsibilities. It will never be more than we can handle, but it will most certainly grow.

Thus, our best representation of common users’ needs is simply doing what’s right for our own calling. Then we share the blessings by telling how we do things that weaken the power of evil over ourselves via our computers.

The Internet is our modern Roman Road system. It’s how resources are moved across the human space. Most freight moved by ships, but the command and control traffic moved by the roads in ancient Rome. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t see a bunch of advertising or entertainment online, but we didn’t build it, nor do we maintain the roads. We simply ensure our travel is according to our mission. We make use of something far bigger than ourselves and most of us pass unnoticed. We fly under the radar, seldom called to challenge the system directly, but taking what God says He provides for His calling.

So I block advertising aggressively in my browsing. I prefer plain text browsing with Lynx, but there are plenty of sites where that won’t work. I use Slimboat and take great care picking through the settings. It’s not the best browser, but it’s quite good for some things. I wish Midori would come along as well, and it might some day, but it’s not there yet. I really like Seamonkey as well. It offers far more options than Firefox does, and isn’t so heavy and resource hungry. I use various browser controls to deny lots of cookies and seldom keep any of them past the session, if that long. I use BleachBit to wipe the browser caches clean several times each day. I prefer Linux for online work because it’s much harder for predators to attack via browsers and such. I do email in plain text because it’s safer for everyone.

And on and on, I do all the things I can to ensure God’s justice online for myself. Nothing in my actions hurts anyone else, though it may well hinder some demonic activity. Advertising is not the right way to pay for the Net. It’s not my job to create the new Network Civilization entrepreneurial techniques, only to note here what isn’t according to God’s justice. If enough people adopt ways to kill bad revenue models, the right ones will more easily arise. That it might put folks out of work is just the way things go in this world; the economic system is pretty messed up in the first place. That it might close some websites means only that something better will replace them. The one thing the Net does best is level the playing field in the business of transmitting information across the entire human space. God blesses that use.

You don’t have to attack anyone or anything to win God’s victory, just defend your own mission.

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Virtual War

We are at war.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be involved; the war goes on without your active participation. For Christians, it is an extension of our ongoing battle against the demons who want to subjugate us. While the primary battlefield is our own fallen lives, we know that the effects reverberate across all Creation. When in any context we embrace divine justice, all Creation notices and rejoices with us in that moment. To strengthen our connection to the divine changes everything we touch, and everything that touches us.

This applies in virtual space, as well, with a full integration that spills across our lives in both meat space and virtual space. But when we apply quantum reasoning to our interaction with God’s Laws and the Internet, we see the rules of meat space do not apply uniformly in virtual space. We enter a different world and divine justice means something quite different. In quantum logic, context is everything.

When we walk in God’s justice in meat space, we leave the results to God. We enter a new life here below with our focus on the Spirit Realm. We no longer measure thing by what they seem to our human flesh. Suffering no longer serves as a warning to stop doing something, but we rely instead on God’s revelation. We trust our convictions first and foremost. So it is in our dealings with virtual space, where the same pursuit of divine justice follows an entirely different path.

I’ve warned here often enough that God is destroying Western Civilization. I’ve also noted that He is raising up a new civilization that I call the Networked Civilization. The terminology doesn’t really matter that much, but it gives us mental hooks on which to hang our thoughts. This new civilization will come with or without any conscious efforts on our part. However, if we choose to participate consciously while firmly in the grip of faith, we stand to conquer sin with far greater effect. The same God who promised to move heaven and earth when we walk in His justice will do the same in virtual space. Just as previous civilizations rose and fell through the invisible hand of God at work, so the West will collapse and the Network will eclipse it.

I don’t have the authority to issue a call to battle; that’s not how it works. Rather, I’m doing my best to indulge His glory to the fullest, and sharing with you what I’ve seen. To that end, I’ve enlisted in the virtual war on the side of the user. Most of them will never have a clue, and have long ago surrendered to the same slavery whether in meat space or virtual space. Never allow yourself to get lost in thinking you can change their hearts. Rather, change your own and know that claiming your personal victory is the most you can do for them. All the more so is this true of the battle for virtual space.

This is not about winning any grand wars. Nothing is so clean and simple. The situation will always be fluid and there are no clear cut objectives. Every action is simply a doorway to what lies beyond and persistence is the whole point. The sheep never stay fed and predators keep breeding. Our mission is to stay on the mission field and keep at it until we die. As we war in virtual space, it’s all the more obvious how parabolic our whole discussion will be. Yet you should never lose sight of one truth: This is God’s work.

The war will continue with or without your conscious participation.

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Quantum Missionary

Quantum reasoning allows us to integrate fully our personality and character even as we operate on multiple levels in differing contexts. It takes away the Western compartmentalization that leads to neuroses and schizophrenia.

The very same mystical ethics that keep me from political activism in meat space makes me also quite activist online. Even online, my activism is muted to provoking others to the same divine justice as carries me through this life.

Today I went jogging. Do you know what a grand miracle that is? In my youth I ran all the time, but it’s been a couple of years since I last was able to do that. My knees and hips have long complained of simple walking, to the point I have at times used a wheelchair. After working very hard for some weeks, I have gained enough strength in the joints to bear the jolting, at least for a time. It wasn’t so much a conscious goal, as if I could have been running all along, but a happy result of doing everything else I am supposed to do. I’ll take it as a marvelous gift and enjoy the warmth while the sun shines. In accordance with God’s command to me personally, I’ll strive to keep up the sort of activity that makes it possible. If there is one thing in my life approaching addiction, it’s that old runner’s high.

In virtual space, my addiction is harder to define in English. There comes those moments when something I write and post on this blog leaves me physically shaken. Something in my spirit confirms to me I have broken through yet another barrier, shattered one more bar on the prison of my soul. It’s wholly unlikely many of you, dear readers, will feel the same thing reading those posts. I’ve gotten some pretty strong reactions to the most routine posts, and sometimes dead silence from something that thunders in soul — not so much as a “like” here or on Facebook.

The mechanisms and tools for this aren’t that important. They are good tools, but in themselves mean nothing without the mission and use. The Internet has been a pretty important tool. However, far more important is the fact itself of communicating with folks I’ll probably never see in the flesh. And not just sharing a few ideas, but it’s the ability to offer some inspiration that helps you climb out of this world.

Yes, I love this laptop because it’s much easier for my body; my fingers and hands work best in this position, leaned back in my office chair. I love running Debian on it. It came with Windows 8, which I cannot bear. I’ve tried Scientific Linux 6, Xubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 (better writing software) on it, but none of them had the full range of drivers that work that well. Nothing else I might try appeals to me, so it’s Debian. My desktop is a much more powerful machine, but there’s no way I can sit this comfortably for long periods while using it. Besides, I can take this with me on those days when the other occupants of this house and mobile home park make it difficult to write. No, it’s not the best choice in every way, but it’s the least painful for the way I write.

There are probably better blogging platforms than WordPress, but I doubt they could offer the level of exposure I have here without paying money I don’t have to spend. There may be a better ISP than Cox, but testing all the offerings is itself a painful task that takes away from writing. Again, these are just tools, not my religion.

However, while not an activist in meat space, it waits only the necessity of fighting for me to become an Internet vigilante. Up to now, I’ve not seen any threats to my mission that can’t be easily handled on my end of things. I won’t hesitate to pirate any software I believe will work for me, as well as just about any other media available somewhere on the Net (just ask me privately if you are hunting something), though I try to use legitimate copies when I can get them. I generally prefer Open Source when it will serve the purpose, and I often recommend it to others. I’ll take the time to make things work better and publish the results of my hacking so others can benefit. All of this reflects my best understanding of God’s justice on the Net.

For the most part, it’s nothing more than assertively operating as my convictions demand. It makes running possible because God’s character in Creation backs it up, and it has made things work pretty well on the Net. I can’t tell you how to live; I can only tell you what God has shown me. I can declare what offers me a clear conscience and hope it helps you with your own.

The Net is not meat space, and the rules of one cannot apply to the other. When you embrace the reality of what things actually are, not what someone’s mythology demands, you find whatever you do is much more doable. That’s the whole point of quantum reasoning: Get the mission done.

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