These days…

Everyone wanted to know how to work better, harder, faster, stronger when I was growing up. Work a week in 4 hours was a mega bestseller.

Efficiency experts were on the rise everywhere.
Do more, live more, sell more, spend more...
I was working in tech then... Agile methodologies were in their full dick swing glory. Evangelizers, coaches and consultants were onboarded to iterate everyone up to speed.

My impressionable friends were programmed into the motivation epidemic ~before the influenza plandemic~
Tribes of influencers pillaged the digital landscape. Invading the feeds of the unsuspecting with organic growth and algorithmically calculated ads.

Leaders in thoughtspaces made their bones in webinars and TedX sharing events promoted endlessly through social networks. Eventually herding communities they could tax to share their tricks.

Entrepreneur was a common title back then. Gary was still trying to make it work while a lot of my friends were raising Seed rounds with angel investors to build the most motivated bro culture startups that would disrupt the incumbent and rape their fleeting customers.

Disruption was a winning trend. Incentivising owners to become renters. Property became a burden. And eventually everyone became part of the sharing economy.
It wasn't clear where the ship was heading... Does every old man become bitter? or is it only when society is crumbling?

Well I met a bitter old man that saw it coming. His name was Jaak. Jaak spent his time growing tomatoes and Poblano peppers while blasting old-time rock n roll.

He checked into his PC to check on research of corruption, manipulation, and manufactured consent. Everyone else called those things conspiracies collectively.
I thought of them as grand conspiracies when I met Jaak. Some were laughable to me... Auszwitz denial, implantable microchips, mind-altering 5G antenas, gain of function research, and so on...
Other things seemed more plausible... economic manipulations, supply chain interferences, groups dedicated to globalization and progressive ideologies... I didn't consider globalization to be a threat at all.

Jaak also warned about mandated experimnetal injections and class-based travel and economies. I remember assuring him there was no chance that would go mainstream. He always said he hoped I was right.

Well Jaak was extraordinarily free. A man you could only kill. You couldn't corrupt him with luxuries, money or threats. I had a sense that he risked being put in a cage only to be beaten with a stick... I imagine that's what they want to do to people like him.
Well Jaak was 68 when the plandemic was released unto the dormant public. Jaak had been trying to wake them up for decades. Now it was his old dismissive friends that were blowing up his phone at all hours of the night to ask for guidance. How did he know and prepare?

I saw it all unfold with a consistent sense of incredulous amuzement. I only started getting anxious and depressed later... When my group-chat of digital nomads collectively labeled me a danger and threat for promoting the idea of personal freedom, I got booted and avoided in real life too.

Of course there were others that welcomed me.

Well since all that I've been radicalized. I've become radically free. Radically honest. Radically independent.

That's to say... I've been in the sidelines before, a passive bystander in the observation of decaying social norms.

Now I'm activated. Like charcoal.

I'm an artist, devoloping my craft with care. Not to become a sensation or turn a profit. Not to become an influencer. My humble aim seems, in it's intierety, unnatainable: To live and breathe in a way, and to use words in a way, in which, another might find it to point to a compassionate Way of Living.

I am a teacher as well in this sense. A teacher in the method of my teachers. The teachers of the subtle way of questioning the world. The community of teachers turning over the settled stones of normality and discerning the insects and worms that are found sheltered beneath.

I'm a scientist in the dark caves of hell. The caverns that contain the demons and traumas in my heart. I dig and unearth the stories that have been burried under scar tissue and reactive defensive mechanisms.

Well the work of freedom is not easy. There's no demand for it in the market so the average salary can't buy you a slice of banana. Freedom is not accepted by manipulative friends or needy parents. It's not promoted in dogmatic churches or support groups for the fiercely self-interested.

Freedom exists as an opportunity to those who retire themselves voluntarily. To stop the voluntary compliance and contribution.

Some retreat.
Some Surrender.
Some call it meditation.

Surely, more would try it at least out of curiousity... but there's a catch. A fear that you might get stuck in freedom.
You might get bored to infinity.
Or that you'd be lost never to return.

I think the way back is clear to see. But the truth is I am stuck in Freedom. It's just that it's voluntary.
I don't know why I would go back? To slavery that is...
You could kill me.
Or put me in a cage or beat me with a stick.
But you can never corrupt me into compliance... into quiet abidance of your made up rules.

Like I said I'm still learning. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Jaak and my teachers. The ones that pointed the way through their actions and words.

The ones that quietly retired to the space of freedom. Care. Power. Love.