Living Free In Societal Decline

Living Free In Societal Decline
By Ed Komarek
1/18/08
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My blog: http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/

I think most people recognize the fact that global civilization is on the decline even though they don’t understand the fundamental causes for that very well and what they can personally do to arrest the decline and possible collapse. Creativity, innovation and pursuit of liberty have in the past given rise not only to today’s mature civilization but have also sown the seeds for decline and even collapse. Positive forces give rise to negative entrenched predatory special interests which in turn harness individual and collective creativity and innovation for use as predatory self interest rather than the common good. Citizens either are unaware of how they contribute to collapse by assisting through predatory self interest or they feel they have no option but to support predatory established interests because of the high wages, health insurance and other benefits.

In this essay I try to assess the situation and then provide possible solutions to our predicament including my own individual solution for my own personal freedom of body, mind and soul. It’s my and the older generations responsibility, benefiting from life’s experiences, to pass on the torch to the younger generation by sharing concepts and solutions developed over our lifetimes. Because of our relative short lifespan relative to more universal standards, about the time we humans begin to catch on to things we die and often much of what we have learned has been lost to the next generation. This slows our evolutionary development. Until such time that we can increase our lives tenfold we must rely on passing on what we learn to the next generation in order for our humanity to evolve further. Once we can suppress aging, the transference of experience should become less of a problem and in turn give rise to other problems arising from how we use our extended lives for better or worse.

It is becoming increasing obvious to me as I enter old age contemplating the rise and fall of civilizations that creativity, innovation and liberty outside of the predatory interest is a threat to these interests and is suppressed. With age I can begin to grasp the big societal picture and see that entrenched, local, national and global interests have gained a large amount of control over governments and media. Both big government and mass media are now the instruments of the entrenched interests used to rule rather than serve the people. Individuals and populations worldwide are increasing feeling caught in a pincher between the iron hammer of government control and taxation that enslaves the body, while mentally feeling ensnared and suffocated by massive amounts of government and business propaganda dished out on a daily basis in the mainstream news and entertainment media.

George Orwell’s dark future of a modern sophisticated feudal society has arrived and has become encapsulated into the global elite’s vision of the new world order. The so called new world order is nothing other than a simple repackaging of the old feudal order for modern times. The new world order as envisioned and implemented by the entrenched interests is an autocratic global plantation system of masters and slaves. Money, its supply and restriction, becomes the new control standard, the new carrot and stick for the new sophisticated Orwellian global plantation.

The entrenched established interests and the elite that run them control finance and the banking system through the central banking network, thereby ensuring unaccountable to the people special interest control over all aspects of people’s lives. President Andrew Jackson for all his faults saw this threat with the developing Robber Baron United States Bank in the 1830’s and broke this developing central bank but it was established once again by the old Robber Baron families in the early 1900’s.

It now should be obvious to the reader that in order to stop the decline and impending collapse of society we need to envision and implement a societal organization structure superior to the autocratic systems of social control that is presently in effect. Furthermore we need to in furtherance of a bright future vision need to access the weaknesses of the entrenched interests responsible for societal decline and collapse. It should be noted that the nature of a cloud is determined by the nature of the individual droplets. The same is with a society of individual intelligences, when individual people change those changes the nature of society. Societal reform can be affected through a combination of self improvement and discovery and societal action. It is imperative that those with personal understanding and societal understanding combine both avenues when involved in activism for social transformation.

For most of my life I have concentrated on personal understanding and avoidance of societal autocratic subjugation. It is only now in my later years that I am attempting to share my lifetime of experience and personal development with others so as to pursue an activist approach toward social transformation. Others having become involved in activism in early years might not seek personal understanding till their later years and on the Internet both evolutionary flows combine for the benefit of all.

The way I have attacked autocratic subjugation has been to embark on a lifestyle of low consumption early in life. Not only does this dropping out of an oppressive system weaken the system, it also allows me to live a life that is my own, allowing for personal liberty and free thought. My personal approach has been to not participate in social systems of mutual predation and the way for me was to cut consumption and opt out of the system. Another way to opt out of the system would be to make a large amount of money quickly then opt out of the system living more affluently on the income generated. The danger in my method is that I retreat out of the system and later in life not communicate my experiences into effective action later in life. The danger of the second method is that the person gets trapped in a consumption trap where affluence and family require continued autocratic system participation and focus.

In my case early in life at the age of 17 I traveled to Alaska from the deep south to go to college at the University of Alaska where I dropped out in a couple of years to pursue my bliss and personal understanding. In the summers I worked for Alaska Department of Fish and Game, then joined the teamster union and ended up working three summers on the Alaska Pipeline for Big Oil, one of the most powerful entrenched interests of modern times. By investing that money and living very simply I bought my freedom for the rest of my life. This a avenue or exit from decline that young people are in a good position to take advantage of early in life but once family and other responsibilities are incurred it becomes increasing more difficult to take this approach to personal freedom.

I realized in my early years through numerous camping trips with my family to the western states, Alaska, Canada and Mexico that I could live and be happy with very low consumption. When I went to Alaska on my own I noticed that many people lived very simply and happily in small cabins in very extreme temperatures with low fuel consumption and independent living through self determination. I saw that my friends could live very comfortably in only 150 square feet of living space. The kitchen was in the corner, a table with chairs by a window, and a loft upstairs for sleeping. The added benefit was that it was easily to keep clean if one made sure all the necessities had their place and were put back in place after use so that the living space did not get cluttered up.

I also realized early on that paying rent was just throwing money down a rat hole so to speak and that the way to go was to buy land and build a small cabin and housing costs were saved for the rest of one’s life. If I wanted to move I could sell at a profit because of appreciation and improvements to the land and move elsewhere to begin the process all over and accumulate a small income so with low overhead my life was my own to do what I wanted. Today I live on little over an acre with two cabins that I built myself, one I rent out and one I live in. Both cabins are about 300 sq feet each. So not only do I have no rent from the property I also get an income and this combined with other small investments in land and in stocks I live and travel on a monthly income ranging from 500 to 800 dollars.

I use a laptop computer to write on, and travel about 5 miles to Cairo Georgia in winter to connect to the Internet, and in the summer about 10 miles from my 150 sq foot camp house on a trout stream in North Carolina. I have a trailable 25 foot sailboat under my shed that I put in the water on the Gulf Coast that I bought off the Internet for 3500.00 dollars. In the past I have lectured on UFOs in the old USSR, spent time in India, hiked through England and Scotland, to the Big Island of Hawaii a couple of years ago and am about to embark on more world travel soon. All of this I do very frugally on a shoe string by mostly camping and hiking. I have proven to myself that I can live a very diversified life with most of my needs and desires being met on very little money.

By living simply and frugally I weaken the established order in two ways. Entrenched interests need high consumption so as to force people to work and support entrenched interest control. The most predatory organizations pay the best and get the most innovative and creative minds to support predatory actions against other special interests and world populations in general. Entrenched interests need bright well paid wage slaves to further their dark and predatory visions for humanity and for this reason these interests press for increased and excessive consumption so as to force people into service to maintain excessive lifestyles.


By failing to participate at least for very long I weaken special interest control that uses high consumption as a control mechanism. This is why we are bombarded daily by hours of commercials and government mass media propaganda in the news and entertainment media to spend spend, spend without thinking! Corporations and governments say spending is good for the economy and heaven forbid if people quit spending recklessly why we would surely be in a depression they say. They could be right if people started dropping out quickly either from personal choice or out of economic necessity and there would be plenty of pain to go around. Those hurt the most however would be those that have the most to lose and that would be the entrenched interests. It’s going to be hard for older people set in their ways, but perhaps the younger generation can grasp and act on these concepts by getting on a beneficial course early in life.

The second thing about my approach to social transformation and with the help of the newly emerging Internet, I can with my time and limited resources, reach out to the rest of society to provide concepts and insights gained from my lifetime of experience. We can’t live free or find liberty unless we can gain the conceptual framework or situational awareness of our precarious position. In order to act we must understand the situation or our actions will be ineffective or come to naught. I believe now that in a way the Internet can be though of a kind of stop gap method of life extension because once ideas reach the Internet they can live on, even though the individual giving rise to them is gone.

Any approach to individual and collective social transformation requires that the individual extricate themselves as individuals and groups from the autocratic regime collapsing world society. Personally I don’t see how one can support an autocratic regime while at the same time undermine it. It’s just too easy to get started with high ideas only to find that on the road to truth and freedom somehow one gets sidetracked. Instead of becoming freer the individual becomes even more captured and subjugated by the surrounding system the longer one stays in it. So many of the sixties generation has such high hopes only to slowly see them fade away as they fell back into the autocratic system.

I am reminded of the prophetic book by Ray Bradbury called Fahrenheit 451, where the hero finally finds freedom and emerging transformation not in the collapsing Orwellian society but outside of society, on the fringes. I am not saying my way is the only way, far from it. All I am saying is that this way seems to be effective, self sustaining and personally enlightening. I find myself happy, satisfied, and at peace with myself and in my small way can contribute to society in a positive and transformative manner in my later years.