The following pages describe some of the connections between freedom and other social issues. Keep in mind that this page is far from complete: we welcome your contributions.
Copyright was originally invented to prevent creators from starving to death. Unfortunately, it has propagated a system where people are forced to pay royalties rather than freely donating their money to creators. Now we are at the point where copyright strangles up-and-coming creators because their friends don't choose to support them unless they are forced to do so.
In addition to the problems caused by royalties, restrictive copyrights reduce the usefulness of a creator's work. The existence of the Internet has clearly revealed these limitations: with easy access to information, legal considerations are the primary obstacle to collaboration.
These legal problems stifle other FIGs, and so we recommend that all FIGs consciously use one of the following alternatives to copyright for licensing their own works (especially since unmarked works default to ``all rights reserved''):
Of course there are other alternatives besides the above, but we do not recommend them, because we believe all other alternatives have subtle weaknessess that make them less useful. FIG.org will publish a document explaining these weaknesses, and other details of copyleft as soon as we can.
Past cultures understood the relationship between what we eat and what we become. We have been taught to forget this relationship, and to treat food as mere entertainment. Rather than seeking out foods which nourish us, and give us clarity of thought, we tend to put anything into our mouth unless it tastes `bad'. The unfortunate thing is that what tastes `bad' or `good' to us is largely a matter of conditioning.
There is strong evidence to suggest that consuming substances such as refined sugar causes us to lose control of our thoughts and actions, but we have been conditioned to `enjoy' this process as a social event. Even more unfortunately, refined sugar is only one of many, many chemicals which we consume in such vast quantities that we cannot be certain of their effects.
It is easy to sound fearmongering when discussing this issue, because it affects nearly every human being on the planet. FIGs have a duty to continually discover the things which enslave them, and work to eliminate them. Food addictions are more widespread than many people can imagine, and we must seek out alternatives if we are to be truly free.
FIXME
The FIG Collaboration Protocol (FCP) is a set of guidelines for how FIGs can work together to build a larger FIG. In that sense, it is a formalization of processes which already exist in nature, and have built the FIGs we see around us. It will be interesting to document and describe some applications of the FCP, especially in regards to existing organizations.
See Homesteading the Noosphere for a third-party description of the processes on which the FCP is based.
FIG is not just about humans, it is about every level of creative organization. Animals are creative, too... as are plants and even the smallest quanta known to us. We need to protect the freedom all FIGs, and stop waging war upon them.
This is about limited competition: surviving without enslaving or destroying other species. We protect those species because we understand that their freedom will benefit us in the future, simply because they live differently than we do. Diversity is of tremendous value.
When we start to understand how our consumerist habits are related to freedom, we are in a position to take action on a larger scale. We must fight for the freedom of all people, and actively work to dismantle negative power structures.
Reductionism and determinism have captured the attention of scientists for the last 300 years. Every FIG intuitively feels that the idea of determinism runs fundamentally against the things which motivate us. This has caused some FIGs to disregard science completely, while others have worked on science to bring it into line with the reality in which we live.
For the past sixty years (since the 1930's), the reductionist viewpoint has been at a standstill. It has come no closer to explaining any of science's mysteries in the realms of quantum physics and astrophysics.
Finally, science is moving forward again, and the movement comes from a promising direction. Ilya Prigogine, among others, have discovered that the clearest explanation for recent results is that there is no such thing as determinism. Free will reigns supreme.
The holy grail of classical determinism has been exposed for what it is: wishful thinking that we do not need to take responsibility for our actions. At last FIGs in the field of science are able to integrate their work with their creativity.
Copyright (C) 1998 FIG
The creator offers you this gift and wants it to remain free.
See http://www.2b1.de/FIG/freedom.html for more information.
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