“If anything happens just make it go away. Get rid of anything suspicious. I don’t care what you do. Make it look like an accident or whatever if you can’t clean up the mess.”
Sir Jared’s remote instructions to his robot servants in the field were acknowledged as the screen’s moving dots all signaled in sync.

(His father tasked him with preserving their precious ancient real-estate and all the land their family amassed over the past centuries. It was practically given to them by those who could not afford to pay the fees for owning their own.)

It was a bit of an organizing feat but after many meetings with GAME’s AI advisors the control mechanism was online and any authorized person could interface with it with their level of clearance. Jared was using level “D” (for Daedalus), which was also known as God mode.

So far there were a few hiccups, but without repercussions for the family of course. No, it was just a matter of fine tuning the AI instructions, so he learned. If one leaves too much room for the AI to interpret, it seems to fall back to its military training, which is not very stealth and does not care about the mess it leaves behind. Luckily the biggest incident with land dwellers that came in its way so far involved just one family, and Jared’s instructions to make it look like a dramatic family affair were executed satisfactorily.

But the inevitable could not be stopped, and the family was preparing for an influx of bodies from other sites. Since the global attempt to bring UBI and guarantee basic human rights never came to fruition, the predicted statistics were starting to play out. Masses of displaced people started roaming for food and shelter. The Family Traditions Alliance was well aware of these outcomes even before these last years of socioeconomic disintegration. They simply chose to strengthen their control, instead of backing the AI Governance movement (which would dilute their statue to mere cultural artifacts), and used their AI network to sabotage any effort that would threaten their hegemony. It would be pointless they thought, as the sheep need to be herded by the families, as they always have been. “Surely no AI could be expected to do that as gracefully as the families always have?”, Jared thought smugly, convinced this was true.

He was looking forward to meeting his father tonight, who was advising congress today how to handle these growing groups of uncontrollable masses that were scrambling to get their basic needs met. He was chosen by the heads to present the plan of The Families (as the alliance is also known to go by). This revolved around the idea to establish HEALTH areas where anybody’s basic needs were met, and then some: education, entertainment, cooperation, whatever one wishes to do within its perimeter. Of course all this would work in a controllable fashion, as laid out in the all encompassing vision of The Families’ eNET AI. The Families were not sure about the potential of supporting this large number of bodies, but they supported eNET’s conclusion to keep them around for potential future benefit. (And to let sleeping dogs lie of course.)

“80 days” is now “180 days”

I was wrong about the timeframe and had to change the title of my semi-fictional short story, but its content is unfolding as we speak.

The outline:
180 days ago, an incursion of Hamas has seen the lives taken of over a thousand Israeli civilians. This led to a global condemnation by the international community, and a swift and consequent response by the Israeli govt. Now, after months of bombardments and surgical operations on the ground, Israel has just ended the “final war” on Gaza and the west bank, and over an estimated 2 million Palestinians have died, while only a few Palestinians managed to escape Israel. Israel has thus gotten rid of their long time self proclaimed “enemy” and thinks it can finally breathe and live in peace. A TV editorial piece covering this “normalization of israeli day to day life” is aired on CNN on a TV in the background, while two western journalists have coffee complaining that they were not allowed to film on the ground what was happening. “Indeed! What is coming of this world when journalism is reduced to writing op-eds for the powers that be?”

The story:
(credits to ChatGPT)

In a quaint café just adjacent to the newsroom, two Western journalists, Jessica and Henry, sipped their coffees, bitterness lingering not just in their cups but in the atmosphere around them. A sleek, glossy television hung on the wall, presenting an editorial piece on CNN that was saturated with juxtaposed images of serene Israeli landscapes and the triumphant echoes of victory, contrasted against the haunting stillness of a decimated Gaza and West Bank.
Jessica squinted at the screen, her fingers nervously circling the rim of her porcelain mug. “They’ve dubbed it ‘The Final War’,” she murmured, a sardonic chuckle scarcely concealed beneath her words, “80 days and a death toll that numbers in the millions, yet somehow ‘peace’ is the word dancing on every anchor’s lips.”

Henry, his eyes reflecting the somber ashes of the devastated Palestinian territories, nodded. “Peace, they say, is what remains when the dust settles. But this? This is a graveyard silence.”
The TV editorial, narrated with a meticulously measured tone of optimism, waxed lyrical about the “new dawn” for Israel, a nation that could now breathe without the shroud of enmity suffocating its day-to-day. And yet, the two journalists, tethered to the ethical chords of their profession, could not ignore the specter of those 2 million souls hovering above the freshly claimed tranquility.

The screen showed children in Israel, jubilant and carefree, playing on swings and in schools that were once shuttered by the looming threats of conflict. Their laughter resonated in a place where, merely miles away, the laughter of other children had been permanently silenced.
Jessica spoke again, “In an oddly perverse way, it seems like an apt conclusion, doesn’t it? We wage wars, spill blood, and then, just sit back and mold narratives. We weren’t allowed to film the horror, to showcase the raw truth to the world.”

Henry’s gaze remained fixated on the screen, “Because, Jess, the stories of agony won’t feature in the victory parades. The architects of ‘peace’ are the ones scripting the tales for history. Our lenses, capable of capturing the tears and fears, are replaced by poised pens forced to write op-eds that echo the triumphant horns of the victors.”

Their coffees, once steaming and lively, now sat cold in their cups, as did the remnants of a war that seemed, in its aftermath, to have settled into a perilously comfortable obscurity.
Behind them, the TV continued its broadcast, ignorant to the sentiments simmering in the hearts of those who knew that peace, authentic and enduring, was not crafted from the bones of obliterated nations. It was, instead, forged in the fires of understanding, compassion, and coexistence – elements all but erased from the scene they had so tragically been barred from documenting.

Their conversation, shrouded in cynicism yet punctuated with an unsettling truth, unfurled against a backdrop of calculated narratives and stark, unspoken realities. The world watched, applauded, or shook heads in distant disapproval, but the echoes from the rubble were drowned out, suppressed beneath the jubilant cries of a peace that came at an unspeakable cost.

As they left the café, the journalists, guardians of untold stories, cast a final, lingering glance towards the screen – a mirror reflecting a future where stories of unimaginable despair would remain buried beneath triumphalist tales of victory. And therein, in that reflection, the irony of a ‘peaceful tomorrow’ met the ghosts of yesterday’s devastation, forever entwined in a dance of veiled truths and unmasked atrocities.

Does this topic appeal to you?

In my opinion to become intellectually free involves a curious, open and conscious mind able to investigate what is holding one in its grip (captive). It involves willingness to see the (un)conscious subjugation to one side of a story, to detect one’s (willful) ignorance of the other side (the unknown). Once an individual detects their own polarization on an issue, they have a chance to investigate the blind spots surrounding the matter and gather new insights.

Now, you might be an intellectual with deep philosophical understanding of the world, yet we all suffer from blind spots. Sometimes those blind spots are temporarily uncovered yet quickly buried because of cognitive dissonance. Autonomous thinkers tend to withstand the pull of the majority stance on polarizing issues, but they are but a small fraction of mankind, and the majority of people still care too much what their peers think. Autonomous or not, we all suffer from the blind spots unknown to us, that have never been uncovered before.

Because in essence the mind is lazy, and always tries to come up with simple corroborating views that defend the “known”. The neurons in our brain are operating in a Last In First Out (LIFO) way, making knowledge with the most neural affirmations more important and harder to counter. It is designed that way for many reasons that served us in our scary past in the wilderness, but you probably know that and I digress. I think striving for intellectual freedom implies understanding this, and means embracing strategies that counter this innate “regressive” nature of our brain’s frontal cortex. I say regressive here as I believe as humans we are able to use our latest biological upgrade to not give in to our basic animalistic instincts when that is not desirable.

In this short piece I intend to lay out a strategy of questioning oneself, in order to help with uncovering the influences withholding you from seeing the bigger picture, the totality of any issue. In the end I will give you a practical exercise to help you see where you are in your current journey to become intellectually free.

(WARNING: the implications can be severe as it might lead to falling out with groups that demand your blind and “loyal” onesidedness. Are you prepared for that?)

This list is far from complete, but you can begin by asking yourself the following questions. (Many of these touch upon/overlap the same psychological phenomena, yet readers may resonate with one over the other. The point is to uncover these workings.)

1. Do I tense up when I receive information unknown to me? Tension is detrimental to an open stance, to cooperation. Cooperation is key to understanding, because it is only through other perspectives that we can escape our own intellectual bubble.
2. Do I tend to find opposing arguments to reject new perspectives? In other words, am I dominated by an egocentric intellect that (again) tends to reject new knowledge in order to hold on to your own “intelligence gathering”? An “open mind” strategy can more effectively gather new insights, whilst the energy lost in a “rejective” mindset would be better used in the (cooperative) pursuit of knowledge.
3. Do I tend to reject arguments that do not fit my internal status quo? This is similar to the second question, yet it directly points to the resistance towards questioning a particular belief system one has deeply identified with. It is here that we probably tense up most, as our brain’s neural network is “short circuited” in a way, to make new connections, yet the old connections are fighting to stay alive and relevant.
4. Am I challenging the viewpoints I gathered over time? Over time we might have (subconsciously) taken on one-sided narratives either fed to us or subconsciously chosen by us (that support an identified belief system). As an intellectual it is foolish to think that we are free from our psychological tendencies, and as such one needs a birds eye view on oneself in the bigger context. Luckily it only needs an open mindset to investigate this.
5. Am I voicing simplistic arguments that align with those in power? Do you intuitively feel that you are ignoring a more nuanced view? This is an indication that deeper investigation into the matter is needed. It is all too easy to feel supported by the populist stance on something, simply by feeling one is part of a majority. Yet any intellectual seeking freedom is always ready to do the work of diving deeper into any issue that begets a one sided presentation, especially in support of powers with vested interests. The moment one becomes aware of this should surely trigger alarm bells.
6. Is my reasoning free from fallacies? Are you aware of the mental gymnastics your mind has to perform in order to try to defend your previously held beliefs? Do you understand the corrosive dynamics of believing such fabrications over truth?

Do you think you are already aware of these inner workings of your psyche? It not only requires the acquired mindset as described, but it involves an active awareness throughout our walk of life, moment to moment, decision after decision. It is very easy to fall back to our ancestral patterns of giving in to those appealing to our basic fears, or to carefully “planted” belief systems. The pull of our brain neurons, shaped year over year, are hard to ignore, yet an intellectual wants to understand this and take the bigger picture into account to let in new and more revealing insights.

Great, you made it this far and are probably hungry for some practical application. Let’s see how our “reactive” mind responds to the following topics, and if we can navigate towards “freedom from the known” and gain more comprehensive insights.

1. How do you view racism? (Unfortunately the word “racism” implies multiple races, yet there is only one race: the human race.) This implies favoring one (usually bigger) group of humans over another based on their ethnicity, skin color, or any other traits they are not responsible for. You might think you are free from this, but let me give you some examples that might trigger your defenses:
   • Should muslims have more or less rights than Christians? Easy question that can have an easy answer. If you favor one over the other, does that involve mental gymnastics to make it seem “right”?
   • Is the Israeli government involved in systematic oppression of the Palestinian people? Do you think they seem to use sophisticated methods like propaganda and ad-hoc fabricated lies in response to events to influence the world’s perspective? Do you think they are involved in the abuse of basic human rights? There is ample work done by researchers/scholars to get to the facts and deeper insights. Are you voicing only their arguments, or do you want to know what is really happening?
   • Is democracy for everybody or just some select group(s)?
     This touches upon equal chances for everybody and basic human rights. Again, what is happening in your mind? Do you feel a pull towards favoritism? What is the reasoning involved? Is it convincing/appealing to some basic instinct?
2. How do you view speciesism? This is the view that one animal’s life is more valuable than the other, and should be protected from harm/slaughter. (Cats ‘n dogs over pigs, that way of thinking.) Let me ask the following in particular to get a it closer to your defenses:
   • Do you care about sentient beings’ (humans/animals) suffering unnecessarily? What would be the consequence of that stance for your daily life? In your version of paradise, would you kill other beings for pleasure? Knowing we already live in a world with abundant food options and science showing us that a plant based diet is the healthiest, does your mind reject this? If so, what thoughts are coming up? Are mental gymnastics involved (fallacies in reasoning)? Are you willing to do work to investigate this? Is that worth it?

Those are just some issues I came up with that seem to have a polarizing effect in the world. I am curious to hear where you are in your journey towards intellectual freedom, and what other issues you think deserve more honest attention.

(Trolls and propaganda accounts will be banned. Please be constructive!)

After a life of working as a professional geek in web technology I came to a crossroads. I acknowledged the call to use my experience and knowledge not only for my own benefit, but for a larger cause, for that of society. A couple of years ago I started investigating other areas to venture into, that would be more in tune with my journey as a human being. I joined different groups of creatives and artists and had a lot of learning experiences and fun. But then I became part of a growing community of people that understand the need for personal leadership. Almost every week I got to experience and contribute to a lot of workshops and events, by and for the community. Bringing tools to the table that allow for the whole to become more than the sum of its parts. I witnessed beautiful moments with different people working so well together when given the right tools, safety and guidance. So empowering! Each step made me more aware of my strengths and weaknesses, and the reward when going beyond them.

I decided to work on my weaknesses, but also to hold onto my strengths and to use them, recognizing a global need to work together towards a sustainable future. And in this movement there is a place for smart machines and knowledge engineering that help achieve these goals. Information needs to be shared, knowledge applied, and audiences reached.

So I decided to bring together resources from the IT industry with interesting organizations and companies that make a difference in life. To allow professionals like me to connect and work with good causes and inspiring entrepreneurs and leaders. After 15 years of growth as a professional in web technology I have a good understanding what is needed and what can be done to create intelligent and robust internet services and applications. I have also taught and mentored pupils with what I know and love about technology. But these last couple of years have also made me realize my strengths as a human being, and that is to connect with others and inspire them to go beyond the usual.

My Philosophy

I have come to a simple philosophy, which can be written as such:

“As a digital developer/creative I wan’t to do something good with my skills for my community or the world at large, and in that order (start local, go global).”

It builds on the following assumptions:

• “we” are (potential) digital developers and creatives and we love what we do
• we are spiritual beings (as opposed to machines) and have a need for purpose in life, and want to connect with others and contribute to something greater than ourselves
• we like to meet each other regularly and work together in real life
• developers are well paid for their work and can therefore work less to provide for income
• developers would thus like to commit some spare time to contribute their strengths to a greater cause
• there are companies and organisations out there that need our help and expertise
• together with them we are capable of identifying their need for digital technology and capable of defining and realizing possible solutions
• we are capable of starting up projects, organisations or companies for causes we identify ourselves if this is needed
• we can be self sustaining, by giving enough of our time and teaching others our skills and about our community tools, principles and best practices
• together, and in a transparent way me make up what these tools, principles and best practices are all about
• It is ok to create revenue from work, as long as this work serves the greater cause
• it is not ok to create services for one’s own profit, and dress it up with feel-good sauce and labels to make it look acceptable

And that is how DevSurplus came into being. Let’s hope you hear from it some time in the future :)

After two years of designing workshops and gaining experiencing with relevant techniques and settings, we decided to start a company around the Art of Hosting. Me and my two friends Joost and Marien had been ‘stepping up’ on many occasions, and felt the natural urge to combine our strengths and serve the world.

We sat down each wednesday, when each of us was able to find time for our endeavours. Each time we got a little closer to each other, and a little further with our plans.
But to go ahead we first had to apply the Art of Hosting steps to ourselves. So we laid down our own Chaordic Stepping Stones and derived a shared purpose and vision. Then we thought long and hard about the way we would introduce our services, and were hoping to come up with some concrete product form. But this isn’t easy, as the AoH approach involves a lot of knowledge, principles and techniques.

In the end we all thought it would be beneficial for organisations to let us host their key moments, like important meetings, to allow them to see how people can work together in efficient and empowering ways. But that’s when we got in touch with our first client. An organisation comprised of hundreds of employees and thousands of psychiatric clients, having heard of the AoH, and wanting to get involved. After many talks we are almost there, and waiting for them to sign off on our first workshop. Exciting times!

After 6 months of mondays with De Universiteit, and many insights later, we finally found the time to set up our own coaching sessions. You see, we learn all kinds of great things together in co-creativity with De Universiteit, and they are all invigorating and inspiring, but many of us felt we wanted to touch more deeply onto the subjects at hand, and apply our new insights on ourselves.

So we came up with Coach Surfing, a recurring evening that would enable us to do just that. To coach each other and to help identify the things that matter most in our lives. To help with priorities and steering in the right direction. And by sharing these insights we can carry loads together.
When we put our heads together we came up with a format that we thought would suit our needs. The first half of the evening was to be dedicated to finding out our most profound/important need(s), while the second half would serve as a practical moment to distill our intentions and formulate our calls to action.

Yesterday was our first real night together, and after a familiar in-orderly introduction and check-in round, we laid down our hosting principles and guidelines (suspend judgement etc) and went to work.
We set up clusters of three persons per table, to enable two interviewers to use Appreciative Inquiry on the third person, the subject, while one of the two interviewers would also harvest (in writings and drawings) what became manifest. We asked the group to rotate three times, to allow everybody each role, but only if they felt like it.

We anticipated the need for sufficient time, and only helped to guide the groups in their time management, to allow each with a need to be addressed.
And off they went. In a self organising fashion each group found their strengths and created a sense of wellbeing, while investigating what matters most.
We went far beyond our original timeline, but sensed that the first half of the evening (the inquiry) was most important.

When we finally manage to squeeze in a break, most of us went outside to socialize and clear heads. Practically everybody was buzzing with good vibes and insights, and a lot of the newcomers were talking about the open atmosphere and self organizing principles.
When we came to the last stage, we realized three rounds were not an option, and we suggested we would continue the same setup, but with the focus on distilling “the next step(s)”, to allow us to leave with a small and practical list of things to do until our next meeting. Of course they took all the time they needed, and we ended up doing our checkout round well after 11pm.

The checkout was wonderful! Everybody was amazed about the potential, and wished this initiative would continue to grow, allowing more people to join in. We hoped for this to happen, but to actually hear and receive this wonderful feedback was still a surprise ;)
Tim asked us to come down by breathing in and out together, and so we ended our activities. That didn’t stop us from mingling afterwards and enjoying the night together with a beer tho!

If you want to know more about De Universiteit, you can join our facebook group, or go to our website (see link at top of this article). Be aware that most of it is in Dutch!